I never expected the positive response to my first “Monday Mountains” post last week, showing an areal view of Mt. Kilimanjaro in Kenya. So here is the second edition. As my blog is running on CET this post might actually show as being published on Tuesday, but as I’m currently on a business trip to Los Angeles this technically is still Monday evening due to the nine-hour time difference. So it counts 😉 ….
The mountain depicted here is the Watzmann, a mountain in the Bavarian Alps south of the village of Berchtesgaden. Rising to 2713 meters (8900 feet) it is the third highest peak in Germany, and the highest located entirely on German territory.
As in last weeks Monday Mountains I gave some tips towards shooting out of an airplane window, this week I can give you some inspirations towards night photography. When I took this image of Mt. Watzmann from the balcony of a hotel room in Berchtesgaden it was actually pitch dark outside. Mounted on a tripod I set my Nikon D80 (that I was using back then) to an exposure time of 164 seconds, so almost three minutes. The f-stop (aperture) was f/5. As the camera was mounted on a tripod I used the lowest ISO of 100 for maximum image quality. I used self timer (2 seconds) to avoid any camera shake after pressing the shutter. Due to the long exposure time the star trails also nicely appeared in the night sky.
The details that come out of a long exposure night photography are simply amazing. Moonlight is very soft, so it maximizes the textures that come out of an image. You have to try this!
Have a great week!
Marcus
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