The Blue Lantern Inn

The Blue Lantern Inn, originally uploaded by Tony DeSantis Photography.

The Blue Lantern Inn is a small inn that sits up on the bluffs at Dana Point. This quant little place over looks the Dana Point Harbor.

After shooting the sunsets down below off of the rocks at Dana Point it was a pretty clear night and I knew I wanted to get some star trails done. I instantly thought of this area. To the left of this building is a small over look that looks over the entire harbor and that is where my first thought was to do the Star Trails. I set up the tripod and camera measured off a 30 second exposure locked in the shutter release to constantly shoot and settled in for an hours wait. As I was walking around and the camera was doing its thing. I noticed the inn and thought this would be an even better shot. So I walked back to the camera picked it up and moved it to this spot. Again setup tripod, measure off for a 30 second exposure, set the shutter release and settle in once again for an hour while the camera clicks off 120 frames. One thing I did do different here is because the building is so bright compared to the sky. I took a few shots of the building at a faster shutter speed and blended it in post processing later. I actually took 3 shots to blend in because of the lighting disparity in the building.

Post processing was rather simple.  I googled "photoshop star trails tutorial" found an downloadable action for processing of the photo's.  This made it pretty simple to do.  After putting all the photo's through Adobe Raw and adjusting for White Balance, Exposure, and noise.  I saved all the files to Tiff's and loaded them into CS-5 to use the action I downloaded from the internet.  Some minor adjustments after that and presto!

The Shot:
120 Exposures, F/5.0, ISO 400, 30 seconds, 24mm 24-105L,

Post Processing:
-Raw all photo's
-Set the same White Balance, Exposure and Suppress Noise
-Save all as tiff's

CS-5
-Star Trails Action for all photo's
-Wait 1/2 Hour
-Adjustment Layer-Curves for Contrast
-Adjustment Layer-Levels for white and black point
-Copy Background Layer- Free Transform to adjust for distortion
-Cropped to taste
-High Pass sharpen
-Framed, Drop Shadow and sized for posting