Park Avenue at Twilight, Arches National Park, Utah.

Don’t put your camera away after sunset. There are lots of photographic possibilities as the sky deepens into evening twilight.

I was at the south entrance to Park Avenue in Arches National Park at the end of the day. The clouds streaking across the sky caught my as the stars were coming out.  I put my camera on a tripod and photographed the silhouette of a massive rock formation against the dark blue sky. It is often a good idea to put a bold shape in a twilight photo. The well known rock formation (at least in Arches), Queen Nerfertiti, is at the lower right.

This photo was taken about 45 minutes after sunset. A modestly high ISO of 400 and a shutter speed of 30 seconds was long enough to capture the moving clouds (which I knew would blur into diagonal streaks) and the slowly moving stars. In the cropped portion of the photo (below) you can also see the small amount of movement of the stars during the 30 second exposure with a 24 mm focal length.  A longer exposure and/or a longer focal length and the movement of the stars would be more obvious. A shorter exposure and/or a wider angle lens wold reduce the small amount of movement.

Cropped from a small area of the top photograph.

A web sized photo like the one at the top of this article doesn’t really give you a good idea of the number of stars that were captured, but they are visible in a print. The photo immediately above is cropped from the photo at the top and shows a small area of sky around the brightest star (above and to the right of the rock formation in the photo at the top).

Mid to late April is a good time of year to go to Arches with warm days and cool nights. If you get past April, the desert country can be insufferably hot during the day. Spring and fall are prime time for tourists to the Moab area. This photo was taken April 23 a couple of years ago.

More information on landscape photography, exposure, and low light photography is in Digital Photography Exposure for Dummies.

Photo Data: Canon 5D. Canon EF24-105mm f/4L lens at 24mm. 30.0 sec, f/8,  ISO 400.