A Word From Our Photo Editor…

Photo by Logan Brumm

So, what makes a good photo? Well, it’s not up to me to say, which is why I asked the master (a.k.a our photo editor), Jeff Kida, to share his thoughts on YOUR images. From time to time, Jeff will give you his feedback — what worked and why, plus a few tips — on the images you post to our Facebook page.

Let’s start with this photo by Logan Brumm. Logan submitted this photograph when we asked our Facebook community to post their pics of stars.

Here’s what Jeff had to say about Logan’s photograph.

Logan did some serious thinking and pre-planning for this shot.

• He lives in Flagstaff where we have very dark skies (not much human caused light pollution)
• He chose to shoot just before the Perseid meteor shower in mid-August. This means he was more likely to capture an added element streaking across the sky, which of course happened.
• He chose to look south toward Phoenix which produced a yellowish glow in the horizon from 150 miles away. This gave really nice separation between the dark sky and the mountains.
• He framed his horizon line very low making this image about the sky, as it should be.
• He used a high ISO (1600) and a wide lens opening (f 2.8) that allowed him to capture the Milky Way in a 27 second exposure which kept the stars looking like pinpoints and not streaks.
• There’s an added bonus of a red beacon glowing across the water from a distant mountain top. This adds one more point of interest to a very nice photograph.

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