Valenta photo

By: Evan Valenta 

Photography

"These are star trail photos coupled with their time-lapses. The goal was ultimately to capture the trail of the stars' motion that appears to circle around Polaris. I had been wanting to take a star trail picture for awhile and my "creative media making" class had an open media assignment that gave me an excuse to try it. I chose a nice spot in Rocky Mountain National Park, but had set up a backup camera because the moon was to set near the edge of my main photo around 3am, potentially forcing me to cut the photos three hours short. With no working compass, I had to estimate where the moon would land. Thankfully, the moon stayed out of my frame and lit up the foreground nicely, which led to a pleasant surprise. With plenty of moonlight, I was able to capture a herd of elk roaming Endovalley in the foreground (shown at the bottom of West Horseshoe Park 1.mov). Also, a cloud that would have ruined the b camera's photo luckily blew out of the way, allowing enough time for the 2nd camera to properly capture the stars throughout most of the night. This night was very unpredictable and had a lot of not-so-ideal conditions including gushing winds that blew my weighted tripod over, breaking a piece off of my camera, and forcing me to babysit the cameras on a winter night from 12-6am. I was happy to get two trails and multiple time-lapses out of it. I hope you like them.

 2022 Showcase Selection