Night Photography Blog — National Parks at Night

Chris Nicholson

Shoot for the Stars with us in Kanab: Announcing the 2024 Nightscaper Conference

We’re heading back to Kanab! To one of the premier places in the United States for dark skies and spectacular, surreal landscapes.

This week we officially launched the 2024 Nightscaper Photo Conference, and we invite you to come shoot for the stars with us.

About Nightscaper

If you’re making plans for your 2024 fall Milky Way season, then include Nightscaper in your schedule and level up your astro-landscape night photography skills. This year’s conference will be held in the nights leading up to the new moon, providing perfect darkness to photograph the setting Milky Way in the earlier hours of the night.

You’ll join other passionate photographers, scientists and inspirational speakers in Kanab. The daytime conference leaves plenty of room for going out at night with speakers, as well as with friends new and old. Speakers will also be offering local workshops before and after the conference, so you can put together a pretty awesome night photography experience in one of the best places in the world for doing so.

The Nightscaper conference goes on for four days, starting each day in late morning to accommodate those who were out shooting the night before. Daily lunches are included, as well as one dinner.

Tickets

Tickets for the 2024 conference went on sale this past week. We are offering Conference + Replays tickets for those who can travel or Replays-only for those who cannot travel but still want all that education and inspiration.

  • $549 ($200 off the full price) for in-person tickets: use code “EarlyBird”

  • $349 ($50 off full price) for replays-only tickets: use code “EarlyBirdReplay”

Early Bird tickets will be available only through March 31, so grab yours at a discounted rate while you can!

Speakers

We are very excited to announce speakers for 2024 conference. Several from last year are returning: Kristine Richer, Mike Shaw, Jess Santos, Bryony Richards, Gabriel Biderman, Matt Hill and Chris Nicholson.

In addition, we will be welcoming:

  • Alyn Wallace, 2021 speaker and author of Photographing the Night Sky

  • Alyssa Pagan, science visuals developer for the James Webb Space Telescope

  • Katrina Brown, a master of creative light painting and time-lapse

  • Michael Frye, renowned landscape photographer and author of five books, including Digital Landscape Photography: In the Footsteps of Ansel Adams and the Great Masters and and The Photographer’s Guide to Yosemite

  • Rafael Pons, the bard of PhotoPills

  • Tim Cooper and Lance Keimig of National Parks at Night

  • and the original nightscaper, conference founder Royce Bair!

For more information, visit our About the Speakers page.

And keep checking back, because that won't be the last of the names you’ll see. We'll be adding a few more speakers, and we’ll keep you posted.

Follow Us for News

We’ll be rolling out event more information throughout the spring and summer, including:

  • more sponsor and speaker announcements

  • morning add-on post-production classes

  • speaker workshops

  • lodging info

  • and more!

Stay tuned in to our conference news by following the Nightscaper social media accounts:

Also, be sure to sign up for the Nightscaper email list to receive all conference updates right in your inbox.

Finally, join the Facebook group to share your night photos and to chat all things night photography.

Chris Nicholson is a partner and director of content with National Parks at Night, and author of Photographing National Parks (Sidelight Books, 2015) and Photographing Lighthouses (Sidelight Books, 2024). Learn more about national parks as photography destinations, subscribe to Chris' free e-newsletter, and more at www.PhotographingNationalParks.com.

UPCOMING WORKSHOPS FROM NATIONAL PARKS AT NIGHT

We're Going Live! Announcing 4 Online Courses for 2024

We all love being in the field to shoot, but we all also know that opening the shutter is only half the task of creating a great photograph. The other half is processing.

To help with that second half, National Parks at Night periodically offers online post-processing workshops, and today we’re excited to announce the next rounds of those. Moreover, not only are we announcing new sessions for two popular courses we’ve run in the past, but we’re also launching two brand new courses!

The two returning courses are Lightroom Live and Photoshop Live, both of which lead attendees through the basics of mastering these two incredible tools of the digital darkroom. The two new courses take things a few steps further, with Black and White Live and Processing Night Panoramas Live teaching attendees how to master the ins and outs of these specialty areas.

We’ll be hosting all four of these online courses this spring. Each will take place on weekday evenings, two evenings per week, for two weeks—for a total of eight hours of group education over four nights. We also limit each course to 12 attendees, to ensure time for individual attention to questions and answers. Along the same lines, after the course each attendee will be offered a half hour of one-on-one time with an instructor of their choice.

For more information about each of these online workshops, continue reading below. (And in each section, check out our free tip!)

Black and White Live

Black and white imagery has always had an aura of timelessness, drama and sophistication. Using this scheme at night is no different. Since photographers shooting in monochrome cannot lean on color to provide information in any given scene, we are forced to concentrate on other building blocks to evoke emotion, to tell a story or to capture the drama. This four-night online workshop will guide you on the journey through all of that and more.

This course will teach many aspects of the digital black and white process, from tips on capturing the best raw materials in the field to processing with what we consider the best software for the job, Silver Efex Pro.

You’ll also learn what creates a great black and white image, how to understand and control tonal contrast, how to apply local enhancements to create glowing images, and more.

Black and White Tip from Lance

If you’re setting out to create black and white images, learn to see that way in the field. Your camera can help you, as if you set it properly, then it can preview your images in black and white right on the LCD. In the camera settings, change Picture Style (Canon), Picture Control (Nikon) or Creative Style (Sony) to Monochrome or Black and White. This will help you avoid passing up photographing a scene because it lacks interesting color. One example of this would be an urban night scene illuminated exclusively by sodium vapor lights. In color, those scenes are usually quite unappealing, but they often look great as black and white.

Processing Night Panoramas Live

Stitching panoramas can be challenging enough with daytime photographs—the complexity increases even more for images captured at night. If you’ve ever struggled with stitching panorama panels, this is the course for you. We will teach how to process simple and complex night panos in Adobe Lightroom Classic, Photoshop and, most importantly, in PTGUI Pro.

In this online workshop you’ll learn not just how to stitch basic panoramas, but also how to blend twilight and star-point panos in Photohsop and PTGui, how to stitch vertoramas with both star-point and star-trail toppers, how to understand and choose different projections, how to create “tiny planet” photos, and more. The course will also feature a full demonstration of the best stitching software out there, PTGui Pro, with a focus on how to use it for night panos.

Pano Processing Tip from Matt

When stitching a vertorama in PTGUI Pro, be sure to choose among the transverse projection variants. Then click and drag to place the true horizon on the center horizontal line. (If the horizon is behind a landform, align with that instead of the skyline.) Chances are the final result will look just like you envisioned … perhaps better!

Lightroom Live

For 99.9 percent of the photography world, the process of post-production starts with Lightroom. Yet so many photographers feel that they don’t fully understand the software, let alone know enough to wield its full potential.

With a strict focus on the Library and Develop modules, in this online course you'll learn how to add keywords, create collections, globally adjust your images and fine-tune your masterpiece with local adjustment tools.

And as a bonus, you’ll get our video Lightroom: Correcting Your Catalog Chaos.

Lightroom Tip from Gabe

Most of our night skies have atmospheric haze, especially from the horizon to 20 degrees above, which is where the core of the Milky Way tends to reside most of the year. Lightroom’s Dehaze slider was built to cut through haze and provide more separation in the lower-contrast areas of the scene—but it also works wonders on dark night skies! A little Dehaze can go a long way in making your stars and the Milky Way pop. Watch out though, because Dehaze also increases saturation and can make your skies too purple or blue, so be ready for a potential color adjustment afterward.

Photoshop Live

Photoshop is a challenging program to learn on your own. And it’s also massive. But don’t worry—as a night photographer, you don’t need to learn every tool, setting and checkbox in order to harness the program’s power. Having a good foundation of the program and some basic knowledge of key features (as well as intricate knowledge of some subtle features) will help you develop the skills necessary to create advanced night photography composites and finely crafted images.

Our areas of focus will be understanding the architecture of Photoshop, strategies and best practices for using layers, mastering advanced local adjustments, masking, and much more!

Photoshop Tip from Chris

Photoshop has lots of selection tools. Magic Wand. Quick Selection. Object Selection. There’s a tool for selecting the sky, or a subject, or a focus range, or a color range. Which is best? All of them! Each of the selection tools has their pros and cons, and situations where they outperform their counterparts. Therefore, learn how to use each of these tools and practice with them all. You’ll learn the situations that each excels in, and then you’ll always know which to use in different scenarios.

Come Learn With Us Online

Wherever your next passion for learning lies, we hope that one of these online courses can help. For more info on each, click here:

We look forward to seeing you there!

Chris Nicholson is a partner and director of content with National Parks at Night, and author of Photographing National Parks (Sidelight Books, 2015) and Photographing Lighthouses (Sidelight Books, 2024). Learn more about national parks as photography destinations, subscribe to Chris' free e-newsletter, and more at www.PhotographingNationalParks.com.

UPCOMING WORKSHOPS FROM NATIONAL PARKS AT NIGHT

Even More Words: Updates to the Night Photography Glossary

In January 2022 we released an e-book titled The Night Photography Glossary. It’s a reference guide to over 250 terms about night photography, along with over 80 images to illustrate. Our hope was that the glossary would be a fun educational tool that would also help unify and standardize many of the terms that all us night photographers use to describe the many crazy things we do.

We also intended the glossary to be a living document, adding to it as updates seemed appropriate, or as our niche developed new techniques and adopted new fascinations.

To that end, we recently added 25 terms, and updated others! You can read the newly added terms below.

You can also view the full list of terms on our Night Photography Glossary page, or download the e-book version.

New Terms in the Glossary

auroral corona · rays of auroras converging to form a cone or crown shape, sometimes visible when the zenith of an aurora is directly overhead

black moon · the appearance of an “extra” new moon during a specific time period; most commonly the “black moon” label is applied to a second new moon within one calendar month, though originally the term indicated the third of four new moons in one season

cityscape · a photograph that depicts a city skyline, usually photographed from a distance with a normal or telephoto lens

corona · the outer layer of the sun, visible during total solar eclipses

The sun’s corona, visible during a solar eclipse. © Gabriel Biderman.

dead sky · a sky devoid of any visual characteristics other than blackness, due to complete, dense cloud cover unlit by any nearby ambient light sources

deepscape · a photograph that depicts a landscape in front of a deep-space object in the sky

double processing · processing the same image file with two different results and then blending the two resulting images; for example, a noise blend

earthshine · the dim glow of the unlit portion of a crescent moon, caused by sunlight reflecting off Earth and onto the moon surface

light pillar · a vertical shaft of light extending from the horizon during twilight or nighttime, caused by either sunlight or moonlight radiating from below the horizon (i.e., before sunrise or moonrise, or after sunset or moonset) and reflecting off high-altitude ice crystals; also known as a “sun pillar,” “solar pillar” or “moon pillar”

lunar corona · a faint disc or small rings of light around the moon created by moonlight refracting through thin clouds

moonlight blend · a processing technique for combining a foreground photographed under moonlight with a sky photographed in darkness at another time of the night (i.e., before the moon rose or after it set) to create a final image with foreground detail in front of a starry sky; also known as a “twilight blend”

moon pillar · a vertical shaft of light extending from the horizon during twilight or nighttime, caused by moonlight radiating from below the horizon before moonrise or after moonset and reflecting off high-altitude ice crystals; also known as a “lunar pillar”

moonscape · a nighttime photograph wherein the landscape is illuminated by moonlight; [see photo]

A moonlight blend. The foreground was photographed as the moon rose from the horizon, and the sky was exposed earlier in total darkness. © Matt Hill.

noise blend · a processing technique for combining two (or more) parts of an image that are processed differently for noise reduction, such as a foreground landscape and a background sky that require different noise mitigation

noise stacking · a processing technique for reducing apparent high ISO noise by analyzing multiple exposures of the same scene in noise-reduction software

planisphere · a handheld star chart for identifying celestial objects in the field

solar maximum · the period of the highest solar activity during the 11-year solar cycle, resulting in an increased frequency of sunspots, solar flares, coronal mass ejection and auroras

starlight blend · a processing technique for combining a foreground photographed with a long exposure under only starlight with a sky photographed with a shorter, star-point exposure to create a final image with foreground detail in front of a starry sky; [see photo]

A starlight blend. The foreground was exposed for eight times longer than the sky, and the two frames were blended in Photoshop. © Chris Nicholson.

sun pillar · a vertical shaft of light extending from the horizon during twilight or nighttime, caused by sunlight radiating from below the horizon before sunrise or after sunset and reflecting off high-altitude ice crystals; also known as a “solar pillar”

twilight blend · a processing technique for combining a foreground photographed during twilight with a sky photographed in darkness to create a final image with foreground detail in front of a starry sky; also known as a “blue hour blend” [see photo]

vertorama · though the term in its basic form may indicate any photograph in a non-standard tall format, it’s most commonly used to describe a technique wherein the photographer exposes multiple frames while tilting the camera vertically through a scene, then “stitches” those frames together in post-production to create one high-resolution image that is taller and more detailed than could be created with a single frame in the same camera; i.e., the vertical equivalent of a panorama [see photo]

There’s More Where That Came From

Remember to see the full list of terms on our Night Photography Glossary page. Bookmark the page so you can return to it whenever you see a night photography term you’re not familiar with. Or, better yet, download the e-book!
Chris Nicholson is a partner and director of content with National Parks at Night, and author of Photographing National Parks (Sidelight Books, 2015) and Photographing Lighthouses (Sidelight Books, 2023). Learn more about national parks as photography destinations, subscribe to Chris' free e-newsletter, and more at www.PhotographingNationalParks.com.

UPCOMING WORKSHOPS FROM NATIONAL PARKS AT NIGHT

Expand Your Universe: Two Night Photography Conferences Coming Your Way in 2024

At the end of this past week, fall faded and winter began.

Well, that happened in the Northern Hemisphere, anyway. In the Southern, tans are starting. But regardless of your orientation to the equator, we’re all soon heading into a new year. With that new year will come a fresh slate of night photography experiences, including opportunities to interact with like-minded photographers.

For exactly that purpose, we run two annual events: the Night Photo Summit and the Nightscaper Photo Conference. Each are unique in the ways you can be inspired and engaged, and we’ll soon be officially launching both of their 2024 iterations.

For now, as the year wanes, we want to give you a sneak peak about what’s coming up.

The 2024 Night Photo Summit

The Night Photo Summit is an engaging winter conference run completely online, dedicated to inspiration, education and fun, highlighted by about 30 speakers from the U.S. and around the world.

The summit features over 40 presentations and panel discussions showcasing all aspects of night photography, dark skies and national parks. You can network with the speakers and fellow viewers in the classroom, as well as in the popular break-out sessions and virtual parties. You won’t want to miss our closing party that features over 75 giveaways—many prizes are worth more than the conference ticket! And don't forget, you can rewatch or catch the classes you missed—over 45 hours of content—for a full year.

This year’s Night Photo Summit will run from Friday, February 2 through Sunday, February 4. On January 6 we’ll announce all the details, including the names of the speakers—some returning from past years and some brand new to the event.

If you subscribe to this blog, you’ll receive that announcement. But if you want more news and info about the Night Photo Summit, be sure to subscribe to the conference email list. Throughout January we’ll send a weekly newsletter with updates and news about everything going on with the summit.

(Note that if you attended last year, you still have access to the replays for another few weeks. So if you want to review Royce Bair teaching starlight blends, or Rachel Jones Ross discussing auroras, or Alyn Wallace talking about wonders of the night sky—now’s the time!)

Night Photo Summit In Review

The 2024 Nightscaper Photo Conference

The Nightscaper Photo Conference is held in-person in Kanab, Utah—this year in the fall! It features a speaker mix of night photographers and astronomers, with topics that focus on dark-sky, Milky Way and deep space photography, as well as astronomy and the science behind the night skies we photograph. The nights are filled with people shooting together, as well as dark-sky walks and star parties.

The 2024 Nightscaper Conference will run from September 26 through September 29, hosted at the Kanab Center. We couldn’t be more excited about the lineup of speakers we’ve been honored to put together. Confirmed so far are Katrina Brown, Michael Frye, Alyssa Pagan, Kristine Rose, Bryony Richards, Jess Santos, Mike Shaw, Alyn Wallace, Royce Bair and Jack Fusco, as well as all five National Parks at Night instructors. And we’ll be announcing more soon!

Like with its sister event, Nightscaper attendees will receive professionally produced video recordings of all the conference presentations. If you can’t attend in person but know you can’t miss out on everything that happens, you will also be able to watch the presentation videos with a Replays Only ticket.

(Reminder to 2023 attendees: You still have a few months to watch those replays! Your access will expire on May 27. If you did not attend the 2023 conference, you can still purchase a Replays Only ticket to access recordings of all the amazing presentations from this year—presentations such as “Photographing Aurora Borealis” by Dr. Kah-Wai Lin, “Tracked Milky Way Panoramas” by Dan Zafra and “Color Theory for Night Photographers” by Jess Santos.)

Tickets for Nightscaper 2024 will go on sale February 29, starting with a special early-bird deal. Everything you need to know will be announced then, so keep your eye on this blog. We also suggest subscribing to the Nightscaper email list, as we’ll send periodic newsletter updates throughout the spring and summer.

Nightscaper Photo Conference In Review

Seizing the Night—Together

We hope you can join us at Night Photo Summit or Nightscaper Conference—or both! We’ve learned so much from so many of the speakers and attendees at these events. And bonus: We’ve also made a ton of new friends who share our passion for seizing the night.

Stay tuned over the coming weeks for more information about all of this and more. We’re delighted and excited, elated and enthused, to share this love of the night with so many wonderful photographers just like you.

Chris Nicholson is a partner and director of content with National Parks at Night, and author of Photographing National Parks (Sidelight Books, 2015) and Photographing Lighthouses (Sidelight Books, 2023). Learn more about national parks as photography destinations, subscribe to Chris' free e-newsletter, and more at www.PhotographingNationalParks.com.

UPCOMING WORKSHOPS FROM NATIONAL PARKS AT NIGHT

Seize the Season: Our 2023 Holiday Gift Guide

Autumn is ending, and as the trees shed their leaves (or, if they’re far enough south, their iguanas), seasonal thoughts once again turn to holidays and perfect gifts for the special photographer in your life.

Once again, we’d like to help. As we’ve been raking our leaves and lizards, we’ve also been compiling a list of gift ideas for night owls such as yourself. We’ve been writing about those gifts, and we’ve been putting those words into what you’ll find below: our eighth annual Holiday Gift Guide.

In it you’ll find ideas from camera companies, memory brands, scouting apps and more—all to help you and your shutterbug loved ones enjoy the happiest of holidays.

You can view the gift guide in two ways: you can read it in the blog post below, or you can download the full-experience Gift Guide e-book. We encourage the latter, as the e-book version:

  • is more graphical

  • has lots more pictures

  • includes some night photography tips

  • contains some deals not found below

Whichever way you browse the guide, we hope the ideas are useful for fleshing out your holiday gift list. Have a wonderful holiday—seize the season!

Acratech

GXP-SS Ball Head

Our favorite ball head company, Acratech, recently revamped their GP line to the GXP series, making the heads even stronger, and with more detailing. The GXP-SS is our go-to ball head for traveler tripods with a smaller diameter baseplate. Other new features include supporting 35 pounds over the previous 25, and a lever release clamp that accommodates a larger range of quick release plates. The lever clamp version gives the ultimate in security, and the bubble level has shifted to a more prominent position for viewing.

Special offer: 10 percent off all Acratech GXP variants at B&H Photo with promo code “BHGIFT23.” Valid through December 19, 2023.

Advocacy Groups

Membership

Night photography, national parks, dark skies. If you’re reading this gift guide, you probably care about these things, and if you know a night photographer, they probably care about these too. The things we like to do, and the places we like to do them in, all face challenges. And you and your friends can help. One way to get more involved is by joining an advocacy group. Here are some of our favorites:

B&H Photo

Gift Card

Giving a gift is never stressful when you have a photographer in your life, because a B&H Gift Card is always the perfect present. Always. It’s the gift of choice. Let your photographer (or videographer, musician or gamer) pick any camera, lens, computer or whatever new doodad, thingamabob or doohickey they may need. Of course B&H will have it—they are the world’s biggest and best resource for all photo, video and image-making needs!

Bay Photo Lab

Epic Prints

With epic images made at night (and perhaps during the day), why not show them off in the best way possible? Bay Photo’s Epic Prints combine the maximum resolution and unrivaled clarity for image quality that will leap off the walls. Epic Prints are made on Fujiflex silver halide photographic paper with up to 610 dpi resolution—four times the resolution of a traditional photographic print. You can choose between a high gloss and satin finish, both of which are mounted onto metal.

Special offer: 20 percent off one order of select wall display prints from Bay Photo Lab with promo code “NIGHT20.” Valid until December 22, 2023.

BenQ

PhotoVue SW272U Monitor

BenQ’s latest addition to their pixel-perfect display lineup for photographers is the PhotoVue SW272U Monitor. This gorgeous USB-C 27-inch monitor provides 4K resolution, 90-watt power to your laptop, a fine-coated reduced glare panel, 100 percent Adobe RGB color gamut, and a sleek, thin bezel design, plus many more photographer- and filmmaker-friendly features. Hand-in-hand is their Palette Master Ultimate software for color profiling with compatible hardware, such as the Calibrite Display Plus HL Colorimeter.

Special offer: $150 off the PhotoVue SW272U or SW321C at B&H Photo with promo code “BHGIFT23.” Valid through December 19, 2023.

Benro

CyanBird Tripod with FS20PRO Head

The CyanBird is a work of art and won’t weigh a photographer down—the latest 17.3-inch folded travel tripod from Benro is ready for adventure. Starting with the lightweight tripod legs with flip locks, setup is fast and smooth to a maximum height of 50.8 inches. The 2-in-1 pan head is an engineering marvel that’s ideal for both video and photo, and that levels easily for making fast single-row panos. Includes hidden tools, folding pan handle and a two-section center column that splits for low camera angles.

Special offer: 10 percent off the CyanBird Tripod at B&H Photo with promo code “BHGIFT23.” Valid through December 19, 2023.

Bicycle

Stargazer Playing Cards

While waiting for sunset, twilight or even the coffee to be ready, why not bust out the cosmically appropriate Stargazer Playing Cards and spend some quality time with friends or family, or even playing some solitaire? These super-cool playing cards have the legendary Bicycle air cushion finish and are printed colorfully on high-quality stock. The backs are all inspired by black holes, so remember which pocket you put the deck in.

Big and Little Parks

Flat Hat Fan Club Sticker

We love the creative art from our friends at Big Little Parks, much of which promotes the smaller, lesser-known parks. One thing that is common across all National Park Service units is the rangers who help guide and educate us about the history, nature and importance of their park. When someone officially becomes a ranger, they receive a unique hat that can easily identify them out in the field. If you are in the know, then you know that chapeau is called a “flat hat,” so well represented by the Flat Hat Fan Club Sticker for a car, computer or water bottle.

Books

Various Authors

Ah, books … the elixir of the curious mind. The photography world is full of tomes, and we can’t get enough of them, nor enough of sharing them. Here are a few we’ve loved in 2023, from monographs to instruction to parks to a coffee book of the cosmos.

Bright Beta

Adventure Log

Bright Beta has taken the adventure log pages from their No Limits Planner and turned them into a durable, compact 4-by-6-inch booklet perfect for making notes of adventures, travels and photo shoots. Use the Adventure Log to record location notes, lighting or weather conditions, or even a scouting report to refer back to when visiting a park, city or shoot location. Its 48 pages have space for 22 adventures with room to sketch, journal or just notate important information, along with prompts to log trip details.

Calibrite

Display Plus HL Colorimeter

Take control of color and focus on creativity. Every night photographer—every photographer in general—should calibrate and profile their displays, whether laptop, external monitor or projector. As modern displays get brighter and resolution increases, the demands for hardware that can help maintain consistency and accuracy over multiple devices increases too. The Calibrite Display Plus HL Colorimeter is an excellent way to future-proof your color management workflow as displays get more and more capable. Compatible with HDR, OLED and miniLED (such as MacBook Pros, common among photographers).

Callie Barbas

Moon Calendar Block Prints

Callie Barbas is an Atlanta-based printmaker and illustrator. Among her work is a handmade wood block 2024 Moon Calendar recrafted as a 12x16-inch print. It’s a gorgeous way to mind the moon phases for the entire year at a glance. Each print is lovingly hand-dyed in tea to provide an aged patina. This is a limited edition of 500, so hurry before they run out!

Cameras

Canon, Fujifilm, Nikon, Sony

We live in a golden age of digital night photography. Cameras with higher ISOs with high-megapixel full-frame sensors no longer lack image quality—though we might need more hard drive space for star stacking! Viable options abound. Here are some of our favorites:

  • Canon’s 45-megapixel EOS R5 has taken the mantle of most popular in the 5D DSLR series.

  • Nikon’s Z 8 incorporates some night-specific features, such as backlit buttons and Starlight view to make seeing in the dark possible.

  • Sony leads the full-frame sensor-size race with their 61-megapixel a7RV, which is on the tripod of many of our night photography friends.

  • However, if you want the ultimate in resolution, the Fujifilm GFX100S packs in 100 megapixels in a larger-than-full-frame medium format sensor. Fujifilm is releasing faster glass, which makes balancing your exposures in darker sky environments even easier.

Coast Portland

TX11R Flashlight

The venerable Coast HP7R flashlight has been updated and upgraded and reintroduced as the new TX11R. It has just three light modes: low, medium and a very bright full power, with no bothersome strobe mode! This flashlight has a refined focusing system that easily transitions from X-Range Spot beam to an even, Broad View Flood beam with no haloing. It’s USB-C chargeable, machined of solid aluminum, is built to IP54 specifications for water and dust resistance, and is backed by the Coast lifetime warranty.

Deep-Sky Imaging

Visible Universe Poster

Astronomers and authors Charles Bracken and Max Whitby teamed to create a complete visual record of the visible night sky as seen from Earth, and have published it in the form of a 38-by-21-inch Visible Universe Poster. Originally created for their book The Visible Universe, the poster bears the same name and is the result of their imaging from several locations in the United Kingdom, France, Australia, Chile and Spain over 3 years. This all-sky image includes H-alpha data and took several month to process.

DxO Labs

Nik Collection 6

Night photography requires lots of post-processing to bring our vision of the scene to the screen. DxO is here to help. Nik Collection 6 is a post-processing suite that fosters creativity and solves problems. It can be used as stand-alone software or as a plug-in for Lightroom and/or Photoshop. With its latest updates, Nik has improved their eight plug-ins to help the photographer de-noise, sharpen, improve color and translate images into stunning black-and-white photographs. (This is our go-to solution for black-and-white conversion.)

FireTacks

Reflective Trail Markers

Have you ever been frustrated trying to find your way back after a long night making night photographs? Check out FireTacks! They’re high-visibility trail markers with durable pins that you can press into the landscape around you during the hike out. Choose between 3D (pyramid) and 4D (cube) shapes, depending on the trail complexity. Shine a light at eye level and these will blaze back at you like a street lamp. Just remember to leave no trace and grab yours on the way back out.

Irix

21mm f/1.4 Dragonfly Lens

The Irix 21mm f/1.4 Dragonfly lens is perfect for astro-landscape photographers when there’s not much foreground. The huge f/1.4 maximum aperture makes focusing and composing in the dark easier, and it’s great to keep your exposures short and star points sharp. The lens is available in Nikon F, Canon EF and Pentax K mounts. The built-in shade also serves to protect the front element, and the focus locking ring helps you stay sharp.

Special offer: $250 off the 21mm f/1.4 Dragonfly at B&H Photo. Valid through December 31, 2023.

Jackery

Explorer 290 Portable Power Station

Sometimes a photographer needs lots of power when on the road—especially in the wilderness or backcountry, or in other remote areas without access to the power grid. Enter the Explorer 290, a lightweight portable battery. It has a 200-watt AC inverter with a 110-volt USA AC plug, two USB power ports and a 12-volt DC car-style outlet. You can charge your phone, a star tracker, camera batteries, a dew heater and more! Perfect to keep in the car for those moments when you just need some power.

Special offer: $50 off the Explorer 290 at B&H Photo. Valid through December 19, 2023.

Jeff McCrum

Lanceli Grid

The Lanceli grid, designed and manufactured by our friend Jeff, is a useful light modifier for the Luxli Fiddle, our top-recommended lighting tool. The Lanceli reduces the angle of the light beam from 102 degrees to about 20 degrees, making it especially useful for lighting foreground objects without spilling onto other parts of the scene. The light output is also reduced by two stops, which is useful for controlling illumination in very dark conditions. Comes with a Luxli Fiddle switch clip, which is designed to prevent the panel from accidentally turning on while in your bag or pocket.

LEDlenser

P4R Work Flashlight

The P4R Work flashlight is a great addition to any night photographer’s light painting kit. It has three brightness settings, with a helpful “last-used” setting memory. It also sports a CRI of 80 and color temperature of 4300 K, placing the light quality perfectly between old-school warm incandescents and most modern daylight-balanced LED lights. It’s tough and waterproof, features a tail cap switch, and boasts an advanced focus system for smooth spot-to-flood focusing with no halo. Comes with a rechargeable, 3.7-volt lithium-ion battery

Light Painting Brushes

Earth, Wind and Fire Glitter Stick Set

Light Painting Brushes has long supplied us with tools to be endlessly creative, and their new Earth, Wind and Fire Glitter Stick Set could be the most fun new tool in your belt. At 24 inches long, these sticks create a unique sparkling band of light. Earth provides a glittering green and gold effect, Wind creates a blue and silver glittering effect, and Fire creates a red and gold glittering effect. They’re great for light writing in portraits, for abstract light painting work, and for creating classic light-painted orbs and other light sculptures.

Luxli

Case for Luxli Fiddle LED Light Kits

How many Luxli LED Fiddles do you own? If you are like us, the number is at least two! While these LED panels are compact, it can be tricky to keep them organized and all together with the correct chargers, grids, ball heads, etc. Lucky for us, the company recently released a custom Case for Luxli Fiddles that perfectly fits three Fiddles and their accessories. The lightweight but rugged EVA shell protects the panels from the rigors and constant travels of a night photographer while keeping all the components neatly in one place for easy use and charging.

Special offer: 15 percent off the Luxli Fiddle Case at B&H Photo. Valid through December 19, 2023.

Moonglow

Moon Phase Jewelry

Do you and a special photographer share a special date? The night you first photographed the Milky Way together, perhaps? Or maybe a wedding anniversary, or a birthday? Visit the Moonglow website, enter a date to see its moon phase, then see a selection of moon phase jewelry to match. Necklaces, bracelets, rings, earrings, ornaments and more.

Move-Shoot-Move

Lens Warmer/Dew Heater Band

Dew can wreak havoc on a night shoot, as lens glass is one of the first things drops form on. The solution? Warmth. The Move-Shoot-Move Lens Warmer/Dew Heater Band is made from durable neoprene (wetsuit material), adapts to fit most any lens and has three power settings to prevent a lens from fogging up when the temperature reaches the dew point. It can be powered by most 5-volt power banks, weighs next to nothing, and rolls up or folds flat for easy storage in a camera bag.

Special offer: 10 percent off at moveshootmove.com with code “NPAN.”

National Parks at Night

Workshops

Send the photographer in your life on the adventure of a lifetime, crafting images under the night skies of some amazing destinations. Or get them online to learn how to better process their images. Tickets are available for several National Parks at Night adventures:

Or if none of those sound like the perfect gift, then how about Online Tutoring?

2024 Wall Calendar

National Parks at Night’s sixth annual wall calendar, titled Dark Hours, will help the photographer stay inspired by and for night photography throughout 2024. The 12x12-inch calendar is printed on heavy-stock photographic paper, and is coil-bound for easy flipping from month to month.

In addition to 14 photos by the National Parks at Night instructors, the calendar includes dates for: National Park Service events and holidays, astronomy holidays (yes, they exist), equinoxes and solstices, new and full moons, meteor showers, supermoons, eclipses, and more.

Instructor Books

Looking for some national park and night photography inspiration and education that you can always have at your fingertips? Choose from one of the books written by members of the NPAN team!

National park Service

America the Beautiful Pass

America’s national parks preserve pretty much anything a night photographer needs to practice their craft: beautiful landscapes, historical structures and, of course, darkness. For only $80 you can purchase the America the Beautiful annual park pass to begin or continue an exploration of America’s greatest idea. The annual pass provides access to more than 2,000 recreation areas managed by five federal agencies, and the proceeds are used to improve and enhance visitor recreation services.

Novoflex

Multi-Tool with 8 Functions

Get one for the camera bag. Another for the jacket pocket. And a third for home! The Novoflex Multi-Tool is a versatile, portable accessory with universal attachments for all tripods and other photography equipment. Whether the problem is a jiggly tripod leg or a loose camera screw, this handy 2.8-ounce item will keep gear stable and together in the field. Includes various sizes of hex key, flat- and Philips-head screwdrivers, and Torx T25.

Special offer: 10 percent off the Multi-Tool at B&H Photo with promo code “BHGIFT23.” Valid through December 19, 2023.

Ocoopa

Rechargeable Hand Warmer

Working with your camera’s controls in the dark can be challenging, and even more so when your fingers are chilled to the bone. Chemical hand warmers can help, but they are expensive and add to our landfills. Ocoopa has a perfect solution: a rechargeable Rechargeable Hand Warmer! Sleek, durable and well designed, Ocoopa has created hand warmers to keep our fingers warm and nimble for up to 15 hours. They have multiple temperature settings and a choice of ports to use for charging. They can also recharge your phone! 

Parks Project

National Park Welcome T-Shirts

We love National Park T-shirts. We are also huge fans of Parks Project, which not only creates cool products promoting our parks, but donates back to them as well. Our top pick from Parks Project this year is their National Park Welcome Tee that comes in a variety of colors, long- or short-sleeve, as well as an optional front pocket. For our friends in The Golden State, they also have a Welcome to California T-shirt which features all nine of its national parks.

Special offer: 25 percent off sitewide with promo code “GIVEPARKS.”

PhotoPills

LightMeter Mug

Every night photographer needs a hot beverage from time to time, and that beverage can be had in style! Sip a coffee, tea or hot cocoa in this sleek Lightmeter Mug from PhotoPills. Available in white and black, this vessel will not only keep you warm and caffeinated, it will also remind you of why you’re out late in the first place.

Special offer: 15 percent off and free shipping at PhotoPills.com. Valid through December 3, 2023.

Plum Deluxe

Night-Theme Teas

A little caffeine can help the night last longer. So indulge in one of these night-theme tea blends from Oregon-based Plum Deluxe, which sources its tea leaves and other ingredients from farms and families the owner knows personally. Before a night adventure, enjoy Full Moon Chai or Stargazer Caramel Maté Chai, or while groggy in the morning wake up with the Fog Cutter blend.

Sawyer Products

Picaridin Insect Repellent Lotion

Being out at night in wild places means exposing your skin to wild critters—such as ticks and mosquitoes. To keep them off, Picaridin is the most effective and most comfortable topical solution we’ve found. Not sticky and smelly like most insect repellents, Picarardin lotion feels just like moisturizer, except that it also does an excellent job of warding off those little blood-suckers. The 4-ounce bottles are the perfect size to fit in a camera bag, for easy access on buggy nights in the field.

Shimoda

Action X30 V2 Backpack Starter Kit

If the pursuit of astro-landscape photography takes a photographer everywhere, then it’s time to stow and carry gear in a Shimoda. It’s the most versatile, rugged, accommodating and flexible bag system we have ever had the pleasure of carrying and abusing. The Action X30 V2 Backpack has three height options with approximately 2.7 inches of vertical adjustment, as well as the most comfortable swappable shoulder straps for men or women.

Special offer: 20 percent off the Action X30 V2 at B&H Photo with promo code “BHGIFT23.” Valid through December 19, 2023.

Slow Watches

24-Hour Wristwatch

As their promo video postulates, “Does it really matter if it’s 12:34 or 12:36?” Leave the minutia of a.m.’s and p.m.’s and minutes and seconds behind, and instead focus on the natural rhythm of the solar day. The stylish, Swiss-made 24-hour Slow Watch tracks only hours. Available in three style categories, each with multiple bands and face palettes.

Studiocult

Still Frame Sunglasses

To be the coolest photographer on the strip, sunglasses are a necessity. And what says “hipster photographer” better than sporting nostalgic negatives across the eyes? Studiocult is the New York City-based jewelry designer behind these Still Frame Sunglasses, created in consultation with conceptual artist Gab Bois. The lenses are made from composite nylon, framed with matte-finish stainless steel spring-hinge temples. Includes vintage film storage box and color checker cleaning cloth.

Tether Tools

StrapMoore

When on a night shoot, we all have … stuff. Things that hang around with no obvious place to put them. An external battery. An eyeglass case. A phone. To help, the Tether Tools StrapMoore provides a way to secure such items right to a tripod, where they won’t get in the way and won’t get lost. Two adjustable straps wrap around a tripod leg, making the attachment versatile and secure, and the adjustable object strap can hold anything from one-quarter inch to 3 inches in diameter.

Venus Optics

Laowa 12mm f/2.8 Zero-D Lens

When the night sky gets so big that you have to go superwide, pop on the Laowa 12mm f/2.8 lens and dream away. This sharp prime lens features a rectilinear optical design, a removable metal flower lens hood and buttery smooth manual focus. Comatic aberration is greatly reduced, making this a wonderful astro-landscape lens. Available in mounts for Canon EF and RF, Leica L, Nikon F and Z, and Sony A and FE, and Pentax K. (Fun note: Matt used this lens to shoot the cover photo of the gift guide).

Special offer: $100 off the 12mm f/2.8 at B&H Photo. Valid through December 31, 2023.

Wasoto

Heated Socks

Avoid discomfort and frostbite on freezing nights with these wonderful electronically Heated Socks. Each sock has a USB-C rechargeable battery pack secured in a small pocket. Great elastic holds the socks on the calves. And once you are bundled up, you can control the socks’ heat and settings via a smartphone app! Keep Jack Frost away from those little piggies.

Note: Remember, this gift guide is also available as a free downloadable PDF, with lots more photos and a ton of discount codes. Download yours today by clicking the image below.
Chris Nicholson is a partner and director of content with National Parks at Night, and author of Photographing National Parks (Sidelight Books, 2015) and Photographing Lighthouses (Sidelight Books, 2023). Learn more about national parks as photography destinations, subscribe to Chris' free e-newsletter, and more at www.PhotographingNationalParks.com.

UPCOMING WORKSHOPS FROM NATIONAL PARKS AT NIGHT