Medicine Park Star Trails

Time-lapse video of this star trails photo: youtu.be/HRg8OHnSY1c

One of my favorite features of my GoPro camera is its ability to take star trails shots, like the one you see here, with relative ease. Despite its minuscule image sensor, especially compared to a full-frame DSLR or Mirrorless camera, it has a bevy of software features to help photographers get incredible images that are difficult, impractical, or even impossible to capture with a larger, more expensive, digital camera. I suppose I’m getting ahead of myself though; let’s back up a bit and talk about this week’s picture a bit, shall we?

I shot this on the outskirts of Medicine Park, Oklahoma, which sits nestled in a valley just outside one of our family’s favorite spots in the state: The Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge. We rented a cabin (or house, I guess, depending on your definition) with some friends and spent a few days down in the area hiking, exploring, and just hanging out together. I brought a couple cameras to take some photos and video clips of the weekend, and on two of our nights there I set my GoPro on a tripod just behind our rented residence, pointed it up at the sky, set it to Star Trails mode, and went back inside until morning. The first night’s photo wasn’t bad at all, but it had several elements that I was pretty sure I could improve on for the next night.

I thought this one did a decent job of capturing the spinning sky (or, rather, the spinning earth as evidenced by the rotating stars) but I wasn’t a huge fan of the greenery on the left side which was lit up from a bright light at the edge of the yard. I also didn’t like how the horizon was slanted upwards and to the right, which was partially due to the barrel distortion of the camera lens but also thanks to the slightly askance angle at which my tripod was sitting. Ultimately, I was really hoping for more celestial spots in the background and fewer terrestrial elements in the foreground.

The following night I set up my GoPro about twenty yards north of the same location, used a flashlight to sort of gauge where I was pointing it in relation to the tree on the left, set the Star Trails timer, and went back indoors. Instead of getting up the next morning to see how things went, I woke up to the sound of strong winds whipping the trees about 3am. Not wanting the camera to topple into the nearby pond, I grabbed my flashlight, ran outside in my slippers, snagged the tripod, set it just inside the door, and went back to bed. (In retrospect I don’t think there was anything to worry about, especially because the GoPro is waterproof, but I didn’t want to take any chances.)

The next morning I was pleasantly surprised to see that everything about the original star trails image had been addressed: the horizon was straight, the tree was less prominent, and the whole scene had a sense of scale and, dare I say it, majesty that was missing in the first one. I’ve taken a handful of photos like this since owning the GoPro and it never ceases to be incredibly fun and supremely satisfying to set up a shot in the evening, check on the results the next morning, and see something I am genuinely proud to have been able to capture.