My City Under the Stars
By Stephen Bay
NIGHTSCAPES JUDGE & COCURATOR
I took this photo last Thanksgiving eve. I had some free time as we didn’t have to clean (going to a friend’s house) and we had already prepared our dishes (homemade ice cream). So I went to Balboa Park to see if it was at all possible to capture stars trails in the middle of the city. I already had a location picked out: the south end of the lily pond in front of the botanical building. Probably one of the most popular photo spots in the park and maybe even the city. But I hadn’t seen any star shots from here so I wasn’t sure if it would work out. When I arrived, I was a little discouraged as I could barely see any stars at all, maybe 2-3 total including polaris. Despite this, i set up my camera and recorded star trails for a few hours. It turns out they show up a lot better on the sensor.
Sony A7Rii / Star Trails: 207 shots at 21mm / ISO 320 / f4 / 60s
Foreground: 21mm / ISO 320 / f4 / 60s and 21mm, ISO 100 / f4 / 60s
ABOUT THE PHOTOGRAPHER
Stephen Bay is a landscape and scenic photographer living in San Diego. He was originally from Canada but has lived in California since 1997. He first came to the US for graduate school in Computer Science during which time he met his wife and then decided to permanently settle in the US. While he found his career as a computer scientist was very intense and rewarding he decided to leave that profession and focus on photography.
His passion for photography comes from his love of traveling and exploring new places. Initially, his work focused on urban scenes as he always found it enjoyable to go into a city and just walk around exploring with no fixed destination in mind. He also enjoys exploring the natural environment through hiking and camping and this interest, combined with California’s spectacular beauty, brought him into landscape photography.
Stephen and his wife decided to move to San Diego in 2015 in part because the city had so much to offer photographically with beautiful coastlines, amazing skylines, and the mountains and desert just a short drive away. With such incredible surroundings, he decided to focus on capturing local subjects and presenting them with his own point of view.
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https://sandiegobeautiful.com
