There are some things that are absolutely essential for making a star trail shot.  You must have a tripod to hold your camera steady during the shot.  You must have a method of holding the shutter open for longer than 30 seconds.  Your battery must be able to keep the camera going for at least one hour, preferably 2 hours.

A good star trail shot needs a one-hour or longer exposure to make a good trail.  That means the camera can’t move during this time.  Your tripod must be sturdy and in a stable position.  An external weight, such as a bag of rocks, can be hung on tripod to give it more stability.  The exposure mode must be set to manual and the shutter speed to bulb.  In the bulb setting the shutter stays open as long as the button is pressed.  The shutter can be kept open with a cable release that can be locked with the button depressed or a cable release with an interval timer can be used.  Nikons that used the infrared remote will time out after 30 minutes.  For an exposure longer than 30 minutes you must use a cable release.  If your battery dies during the shot, you will get nothing.  You must be confident your battery can make it during the entire exposure.  Testing is one way to gain that confidence.  Set the camera up as if you are doing a star trail shot, but leave the lens cap on.  Do a one-hour exposure and see if the battery lasts and then do a two-hour exposure.  Past experience says that no-name batteries will not make it.  Mark your batteries that are capable of 1-hour continuous use and put a fully charged, good battery in the camera just before the shot starts.

My article, "The Future of Photography," was published in the LPA's June 2012 edition of "Desert Exposure." Unfortunately newsletter articles must, by necessity, be brief and I had so much more detail to offer. This is my workaround. For completeness and to make it easier for those readers who haven't read the original article I'm including the text of that article here with my additional notes.

The presentation by Greg Rostami of the Topaz filters at the Southern California Photography Conference was interesting, and prompted a number of us, myself included, to crack open the wallet and buy these things. He said they would work with Photoshop Elements. And they do.

Once you get them correctly installed!

I’m sure the install process works fine for Macs or Photoshop users, but if you have Photoshop Elements, you may face the same issues I faced.

Chris and I decided to visit San Juan Batista and Fremont Peak this spring.  It has been years since we visited either place and we thought there might be some photo opportunities plus it was a chance to get away.  San Juan Batista is famous for the mission there as well as being featured in the Hitchcock film Vertigo.  There is also a state park around the mission to preserve the historic buildings.  San Juan Batista is such a small town that they do not even have a single Starbucks.

Photography with tripods is allowed in the mission so we got some good shots.  The mission at San Juan Batista is famous for having three aisles and for being in continuous service for 200 years.  At sundown the arches over the bells had a golden glow that made for a nice shot.  Long hallways and arches made for interesting compositions as well.  I liked the shadows cast on the walls of some of the historic buildings.

• Make sure lights are in position, chairs/props are 5-6’ away from backdrop
   
• SET CAMERA IN MANUAL MODE “M”
  • ISO- 200
  • TV (shutter priority) 1/200 (my Alien Bees work real well with syncing at 1/200, other lights work well between 1/125-1/250) Take a picture and see how it looks.
  • Set F-Stop to ____ (we will tell you when we meter)
  • Shoot in Single shot mode –not good to have in continuous mode as lights can’t keep up

In this two-step tutorial I'll demonstrate how to smoothen skin through the use of various filters, and several techniques to re-sharpen your smoothened photo and add texture to the skin so it doesn't appear too edited.

The goal of this tutorial is to teach you several skin smoothing techniques that you can use to remove blemishes, wrinkles, and essentially emulate what the 'professionals' do when they modify model photos.

• Examine image carefully.
  Consider the following:
  • Composition
  • Color balance
  • Tonality
  • Dust, dirt, or scratches

Corrective Lighting Techniques for Portraits.  A portrait photographer’s primary objective is to idealize his subject. The subject’s appearance can be made more flattering through posing, lighting, and camera angle. In many instances, more than one of the following suggestions will be employed. Evaluate each subject individually.