Exposure Stacking – Real Artists Ship
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Real Artists Ship Photography Blog By Neal Grosskopf

Technique: Exposure Stacking

Neal Grosskopf

Brunette Park – Keweenaw Peninsula, Upper Michigan

Before & After

Here’s a shot I took last August (2019) up in the Keweenaw Peninsula of Upper Michigan at a small park on Lake Superior called Brunette Park. One of my main purposes of this trip was to take night sky photos as it’s a very dark location. I ended up spending two nights out until 2-3am shooting the stars and it was a blast!

Location

As I mentioned before, Brunette Park is located in the Keweenaw Peninsula of Upper Michigan. There’s a road that travels along Lake Superior for a long ways and there’s several small parks you can stop at and enjoy the view. Brunette Park is one of the larger parks up there and faces almost directly south. Many of the other parks are at an angle so they may not work as well for Milky Way photos.

One of my nights at the park there were quite a few people there also looking at the stars. Another large group started a fire in a fire pit, but left at about 11pm. Something to consider if you also visit the park as there may be others there who could get in your photo. The shot here was from my second night at the park where I pretty much had it to myself. The only downside that night was there was some clouds coming in which you can see in my photo.

Composition

I will admit, I’m not original in the composition you see in this post. I had seen it somewhere else online during my scouting and decided to shoot it myself. The shot it taken near the fire pit so if there’s others at the park using it, you won’t be able to take it as they’ll be in your way or the smoke will obscure your view.

This is a good time to call out that it’s very important that you spend some time scouting a location online prior to visiting it, especially if it’s 7 hours away like this was. For instance a lot of the parks up here had trees that would be in way of the Milky Way. A lot of times online, you can find 360 views of parks on Google Maps which helps with determining the spatial layout of a place. I also recommend stopping at places during the day and using Photopills to virtually see where the Milky Way will be later which I did at several of the parks along Lake Superior during the day.

Once I had my composition, I took five images using my Sigma 14mm lens at f1.8. I had accidentally left my camera in crop-mode the entire vacation so this technically is a 21mm shot, doh! I had my Skyguider Pro with me as well, but didn’t use it for this shot as the clouds were rolling in pretty quick and it usually takes me a long time to setup. Also the Milky Way was moving across the sky and by the time I would have had it setup, it probably would have been behind the tree already.

EXIF Information

    Post Processing

    I worked on this photo on and off over the course of 4-5 months. Since having a kid, I haven’t had as much time to both take and post-process photos anymore. The post-processing part is especially difficult as I usually need 4-5 solid hours to edit a Milky Way photo as it involves a lot of masking and small tweaks.

    For this shot, I used Sequator to stack the 5 exposures. Then I imported it to Lightroom and sent it to Photoshop. In Photoshop I made my typical pixel-level edits first like removing star colors, adding an orton effect and star minimization. After that I started creating masks and setup my adjustment layers with levels, curves, white balance etc.

    Software Used

    Lightroom
    Photoshop
    Raya Pro
    Sequator

    Techniques Used

    Exposure Stacking

    Have a Question?

    Neal Grosskopf

    April 2019 Discover Wisconsin Calendar Photo By Neal Grosskopf

    Before & After

    Hi and welcome to my website! I thought I’d put this post up after discovering this photo will be featured in the 2019 Discover Wisconsin Calendar. I’ve been submitting photos to the Discover Wisconsin photo contest for the past couple years. Each year, they reached out to me, but it wasn’t until this year that a photo was picked for the final calendar. I’m super excited to have one of my photos featured in the calendar and to be associated with Discover Wisconsin as I think they’re one of the better places to have your photos featured in Wisconsin.

    A cool thing about this shot is it’s the first time I’ve ever seen the northern lights and photographed them which at the time was very exciting!

    Location

    This photo was taken at the Bayshore County Park in Brown County, WI which is about 15 minutes away from Green Bay, WI on the bay of Green Bay. On this night I had originally headed up to Door County to take pictures of the milky way in either Sturgeon Bay or Cana Island. Before I left I had heard that the northern lights might be out, but I wasn’t planning on shooting them as I had never seen them before and it’s never a guarantee they’ll be out. I typically like to go somewhere and take pictures if it’s a pretty strong chance I’ll get the shot I want, otherwise I’ll stay home.

    On my way up, once I passed Green Bay, I checked an app that tries to predict auroras and it said there was a good chance I’d be seeing them at that time. Shortly after that I saw these strange clouds moving faster than normal, almost like spot lights you’d see from a casino pointed in the air. I decided to make a quick detour at Bayshore County Park.

    On my way down to the water level I noticed a county cop parked in the parking lot. I was the only other person in the parking lot besides the cop so I was preparing for him to talk to me seeing as it was past midnight at this point. As I was setting up my tripod he stopped over in his car and asked what I was doing there as the park was now closed. I said that I think the northern lights are out and pointed at the horizon. He seemed a little surprised as to the naked eye at night they really don’t look that impressive. He told me to take a couple shots of it and move on which is what I did. The photo you see here is one of about half a dozen that I snapped quick before leaving. After that I headed up to a park in Door County and took photos until 3 or 4 am.

    Composition

    Admittedly, I was in a hurry when taking this shot as I didn’t have a lot of time with the cop instructing me to take a couple photos and move on. I fired off a half a dozen 30 second exposures. I found some nice rocks near the parking lot to use a foreground element and then leveled my tripod.

    For a couple shots I used my LED lights to illuminate the foreground and for a couple others I didn’t. In one shot the aurora was stronger and the foreground wasn’t lit. In another one the opposite was true. With this, I combined both photos later in Photoshop for the best of both worlds. Each were about 2 minutes apart and my tripod hadn’t moved between the shots which made it easier to combine them. Below are the two photos I used for this one –

    Before & After

    Check out a few other shots I got this night as well – https://www.flickr.com/photos/neal_grosskopf/albums/72157680117433943

    EXIF Information

      Post Processing

      Unlike a lot of my photos this was didn’t require a lot of post processing. Like I mentioned earlier, I had one shot with a stronger aurora and another with a better lit foreground so I combined both of them to create a stronger image. Beyond that, I changed some basic sliders in Adobe Lightroom like white balance, exposure, contrast and saturation. I also tried to make the branches light bright on the smaller tree on the left hand side as I found them distracting.

      Overall, I’m very excited to have this be featured in the Discover Wisconsin 2019 calendar! If you’d like to see more of my work check me out on the following sites:

      Software Used

      Lightroom
      Photoshop

      Techniques Used

      Exposure Stacking

      Have a Question?

      Neal Grosskopf

      Mobius Arch – Alabama Hills, California

      Before & After

      I was fortunate during my visit to the Alabama Hills that the Milky Way lined up nicely inside Mobius Arch. As I was scouting it out during sunset I held my phone with the Photopills app up to the arch and was surprised that it would line up just after sunset that night. I ended up waiting there another two hours until it got dark just in case other photographers showed up. Unlike many of my other shots, this particular one I created a video editing series on how I made it step by step. Check that out here on Youtube – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYnX9sc0AAw&index=1&list=PLUZk6cRYiDTOuQRFlKHvU-MN3v-HiO1UJ

      Location

      Mobius arch is located in the Alabama Hills region of California near Lone Pine. The park has been used as the movie set for many Hollywood movies due to its unique features and only being 3-4 hours from Los Angeles. Getting to the arch is pretty easy, in fact its exact location can be found on Google Maps. Once you get to the parking lot, take a left and follow a trail for roughly 100 yards and it’ll lead straight to the arch. At first you’ll see the backside of it opposite of what you see in my picture. Head down a hill and you can see this vantage point of it. During you visit make sure to check out all of the other arches at the park. I like to think of the Alabama Hills as sort of a mini Arches National Park minus all the crowds of people.

      Composition

      Like I mentioned early, I knew I wanted to shoot this arch, but I had no idea the Milky Way would line up with it so nicely.  Most of the pictures I’ve seen of it online, the Milky Way is either to the left or right, but I haven’t seen any so far where it’s inside the arch which was something I was excited about. I visited it in mid September in case anyone else is trying to get a similar shot.

      For this shot, I got down low, below the arch and aimed my camera upwards. Perhaps the easiest way to see the scene as I did – is to check out my 360 photo I took below.

      360 Image - Mobius Arch - Alabama Hills, CA;

      For this shot I used two LED light panels to light the scene. One set off to the right which you can see in the 360 photo and another laying on its back inside the arch. For both LED panels I wrapped them in a white t-shirt and lowered their intensity to its lowest setting. After that I fired off 5 shots focused on the sky and 3 more focused on the arch which I could user later to focus stack.

      EXIF Information

        Post Processing

        This shot, like all of my Milky Way shots required a lot of post-processing. I would estimate it took me between 6-8 hours. I edited it as a series of many other photos so as I got going, it started to go quicker. Unlike most of my other photos, I created an 8 video series of how I created this which you can check out on Youtube – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYnX9sc0AAw&index=1&list=PLUZk6cRYiDTOuQRFlKHvU-MN3v-HiO1UJ

        1. Starting out, I created a neutral white balance in Lightroom
        2. I then did manual exposure blending Photoshop
        3. After that I did focus stacking
        4. Then, created a smart object for the ground and sky and editing in Adobe Camera Raw
        5. From there I removed color noise
        6. Added a high pass filter to the stars
        7. Removed chromatic aberations form the stars
        8. Cleaned up fringing
        9. Added adjustment layers such as levels, saturation, color balance & exposure

        Overall, it’s a photo that I’m really proud of, and happy I ha to chance to shot this iconic location.

        Software Used

        Lightroom
        Photoshop

        Techniques Used

        Exposure Stacking
        Focus Stacking

        Have a Question?

        Neal Grosskopf

        The Trona Pinnacles

        Before & After

        While I’m not from California, the Trona Pinnacles seem like a very popular location for night sky photographers in the area. I was lucky to be able to visit them (and the Alabama hills) during my trip out to LA last fall and I’ve finally finished culling and processing my 1,500 photos from the trip. Here’s one of my favorite compositions from that outing.

        Location

        The Trona Pinnacles are located in the middle of nowhere and were a 2-3 hour drive from my hotel at Joshua Tree National Park. I did a day trip up to Alabama Hills the day before and stopped by the Trona Pinnacles during midday to familiarize myself with the area. It was a scorching 100 degrees out in September and there wasn’t any shade to hide from the sun.

        Probably the worst part about visiting the Trona Pinnacles is the gravel road leading in to them. It’s about a 30 minute drive (if you’re driving safely) down a bumpy pothole ridden road. It was even worse leaving at night when it was dark as I was afraid I’d not see a pothole in time and get stuck. Fortunately I had driven the road 3 times before that during my scouting and the 2nd drive in.

        Once at them, you’ll see the large pillars of rock rising up offering almost unlimited compositions. There is one field of pillars about 200 yards from the bathrooms which is where I decided I wanted to take my photos. I also drove around the loop to pick out some secondary compositions in case there were other photographers in my area. I then came back the next day with my wife during sunset to get some pictures while she read a book in the car for the next couple hours (I love my wife!)

        Composition

        Having scouted the area out during daylight, I immediately knew where I wanted to shoot so I tried to strategically park the car in the spot so nobody would drive up to the area and mess up a photo. I was constantly paranoid about other photographers showing up seeing as it’s a popular place. I find nighttime photography to be extremely difficult when other people are around!

        Despite my worries I only saw 2-3 cars pull in during the nighttime and we all respected one another. In fact one women went out of her way to not accidentally shine lights in my area the entire time. As I was leaving I thanked her letting her know, that she’s probably my favorite photographer I’ve ever shot with (lol) and I never even talked to her!

        Back to this photo – as I was wrapping up sunset I started picking out some shots with foreground subjects. I found a lot of rocks about this size so I positioned that in my shot. The wind started to really pick up, perhaps 20 mph and it was blowing sand around like crazy. Because of this I had to leave my one lens on for the entire shoot which is something I don’t usually do. I also wrapped the entire lens mount in a t-shirt to further try to protect it as I was having flashbacks of going to the beach and getting sand in my gear and it never coming out again.

        I then recalled this composition from earlier and got it setup. I also setup my LED light and had to move it several times to get the lighting how I wanted it. As you can see in the before photo, I really didn’t get it right and had to mostly post-process the light into the photo.

        I then fired off a series of shots focused on the foreground and another 5 shots focuses on the stars so I could focus stack these later.

        EXIF Information

          Post Processing

          Like a lot of my night sky photos lately, these took a long time to process. I would estimate each of the four photos in this series took 5 hours each. The later ones were less time as I got into the flow of things. It starts in Lightroom by getting the white balance correct. Then I exposure stacked them manually in Photoshop. After I blended the focus stacked images together. Next, I created a smart object for the ground and another for the sky and made some tweaks to those. After that I removed color noise from the ground and then remove star color using the color blend mode and a gaussian blur. After that I did a lot of defringing on the photo and finally made my mask for the sky and the ground.

          I also tried a new technique for this series of photos by using something called star minimization. This seems counter intuitive as it removes stars or makes them less bright, but it gives more emphasis to the Milky Way as its gets crowed with stars.

          The nice thing with these desert shots is there’s no trees to have to mask around. The western photographers in the US have it really easy as they only have to mask around rocks. Us east of the Mississippi photographers have to deal with that pain in most of our shots!

          Finally, I adjusted the photo with probably 30+ adjustment layers such as color balance, levels, exposure, saturation and hue and saturation.

          Thanks for reading!

          Software Used

          Lightroom
          Photoshop
          Raya Pro

          Techniques Used

          Exposure Stacking
          Focus Stacking

          Have a Question?