Ready for a Virtual Adventure? Announcing the 2024 Night Photo Summit!

We are thrilled to announce the 2024 Night Photo Summit!

This fourth annual virtual conference spans 3 days and highlights what’s new and exciting in the intersecting worlds of night photography, national parks and dark skies.

Since 2021 the summit has evolved and grown to gather photographers, artists, authors and astronomers from around the globe to share their passion for all things nocturnal.

The Night Photo Summit is here to scratch your itch, and promises education, inspiration and just plain fun. The nights may be cold now, and the Milky Way core might be hiding below the horizon, but with that comes the promise of a not-too-distant spring and the promise of new opportunities to get back out there and make stellar images.

Until then, we’re here with a cadre of new speakers and new topics to whet your appetite and to sow new ideas for the coming year. The summit is also a great way to connect with old friends and to make new ones, with multiple opportunities to network and socialize with both speakers and attendees.

Join us February 2-4, 2024, to experience 3 days of dynamic presentations from more than 35 luminaries who will light up your nights and your imagination.

SPEAKERS

We have felt immensely blessed to be able to work with so many top-notch speakers for the summit, and this year is no different. In addition to a few returning presenters, attendees will get to learn from and interact with 19 inspiring new voices.

The 2024 speakers include Sean Bagshaw, Royce Bair, Benjamin Barakat, Yuri Beletsky, Gabriel Biderman, Forest Chaput de Saintonge, Tim Cooper, Joshua Cripps, Alan Dyer, Daniel Freeman, Michael Frye, Kim Henry, Kerry-Ann Lecky Hepburn, Matt Hill, Melissa Kaelin, Marybeth Kiczenski, Lance Keimig, Tim Little, Pete Mauney, Andrew McCarthy, Brandon Nesbitt, Chris Nicholson, Eric Pare, Jessica Rojas, Jess Santos, Mike Shaw, Anthony Sleiman, Chris Smith, Babak Tafreshi, Adam Woodworth and Dan Zafra, with more to be announced in the next couple of weeks.

SESSIONS

This year’s summit features sessions on planning extraordinary images, shooting with drones at night, using weather apps and exploring urban night photography, as well as (of course) techniques including image capture, different ways of working with moonlight and star trails, black and white at night, post-processing and more.

There are classes for all levels, including a series of five pre-recorded presentations that cover all the fundamentals of night photography.

There are intermediate and advanced level courses, as well as instructive, inspirational and informative sessions covering a wide range of topics. All in all, the programming totals over 45 hours of learning and virtual adventure.

Sponsors & Giveaways

We are thrilled to announce that several sponsors are already on board! B&H Photo, Nightscaper Photo Conference, Sigma, Spencer’s Camera, Calibrite, Novoflex, Acratech, Chimani and Focus on Stars are raring to go, soon to be joined by more!

Each and every sponsor is offering giveaways to be randomly awarded at the summit’s final party. More info on that to come!

How to Join Us

If you’re into night photography, or if you want to get into it, this is an event you absolutely do not want to miss.

Tickets are $399, and include:

  • 3 days, more than 35 instructors, over 45 hours of inspiration, instruction and fun

  • a Fundamentals series of video classes for newbies or anyone who wants a refresher

  • 1 year of access to re-watch all of the courses

  • a live image review session

  • exclusive glow-in-the-dark summit T-shirt

  • personal access to product experts from manufacturers and developers sponsoring the event

  • giveaways throughout the duration of the summit

  • an unprecedented opportunity to connect with like-minded photographers passionate about the night

Moreover, if you purchase your ticket by January 13 at 2 p.m. EST, you’ll get your shirt and a swag bag before the summit!

(Note: shirts and swag bags will be mailed only to attendees with U.S. addresses, but we may be able to help those from other countries too. We’ll be in touch with more info after you register.)

Registration is available now, so sign up today and mark your calendars to join National Parks at Night for the world’s fourth online Night Photo Summit!

JOIN US ON SOCIAL MEDIA

As if all of that is not enough, we’ll be releasing plenty more information over the next few weeks. To stay tuned in to it all, we invite you to follow the summit social media accounts on:

We are very much looking forward to seeing you online next month. In the meantime, feel free to ask us any questions via the social media accounts above, in the comments below, or through the Night Photo Summit webpage.

Seize the night … online!

Lance Keimig is a partner and workshop leader with National Parks at Night. He has been photographing at night for 30 years, and is the author of Night Photography and Light Painting: Finding Your Way in the Dark (Focal Press, 2015). Learn more about his images and workshops at www.thenightskye.com.

UPCOMING WORKSHOPS FROM NATIONAL PARKS AT NIGHT

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Apr 11
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Haleakala National Park 2025
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Night Grooves: Our Favorite Photos of 2023

It’s that time again. The year is winding down, wrapping up, and we look back on all of the things we did that we are proud of, and perhaps the things we didn’t do or places we didn’t go that are still on the bucket list. It’s a big world out there, with so many dark places to explore! Soon, as we turn the final calendar page, we’ll look ahead to the new year full of promise and opportunity, and of the many images waiting to be made.

Here at National Parks at Night, we have a tradition of looking back at a year’s worth of photos and picking our favorites to share. This also gives us a moment to reflect on how fortunate we are to be able to travel to such spectacular places with you, and to remember that the world is full of beauty and wonder.

We’ve had a banger for a year. We led 22 workshops and tours, explored nine U.S. national parks visited eight islands, led seven international photo expeditions, and planned a full schedule of both new and favorite destinations for 2024.

For now, as we wrap up and wind down the current year, we hope you’ll enjoy seeing our favorite images. And then we hope you’ll take a moment or two to find and share your own favorites from 2023 with us.

Chris Nicholson

Voyageurs National Park

Nikon D5 with a Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8 lens. Four stacked exposures shot at 4 minutes, f/4, ISO 800.

A favorite photo is not necessarily a best photo. This is a fact I run into annually, when I have to choose and write about my favorite two night photos of the year.

Artistically and technically, I think this photo is good, but it wouldn’t end up in my portfolio. I didn’t have an amazing foreground to work with—just the shape of the tree line at the water’s edge, and the glass-surface reflection of pristine dark skies. I worked with what I had, most of which was technique.

But I once heard a photographer say, “A good photograph shouldn’t be of something, it should be about something.” With that in mind, I tell you that while this photo is of trees and water and stars, it’s about something else: It’s about time with my 10-year-old daughter.

This past summer Maggie and I ventured to Minnesota to explore Voyageurs National Park. I rented a houseboat called Northern Lite, and we spent five days cruising the lakes and four nights sleeping on the water. We saw eagles and loons, otters and fish, sunrises and sunsets—and yes, stars and darkness. On the first night, she walked off the boat and onto the sand, chatting as usual, when she looked up, paused mid-sentence and said, “Whoa! Is that the Milky Way?!” Her joy practically lit up the lake.

This photo is about all of those things. It’s also about our last evening of the trip. In late afternoon we secured the boat to the shore of Grassy Bay. We changed into our swimsuits and jumped off the stern to swim in the cool waters of the cove. We made a steak dinner, then built a fire on the beach for roasting marshmallows. We played a trivia game inside, and brought the flashlight outside to search the shallows for crayfish and frogs and leeches.

The next morning, as the sun rose and wicked the mist off the water, I captained us out of the park and back to the marina, smiling, feeling great, knowing I’d just finished one of the best weeks of my life—and hoping that Maggie will someday look back and feel the same.

So when I look at this photo now, what I see is the tree line that sheltered our boat, the very water we swam in, the stars that shined while we slept—and the peace of knowing that Maggie and I shared a wonderful slice of our lives together. And that’s my favorite.

Joshua Tree National Park

Nikon D5 with a Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8 lens. Three focus-stacked, blended exposures shot at 5 minutes, f/5.6, ISO 6400 (foreground); 5 minutes, f/5.6, ISO 6400 (middleground); and 15 seconds, f/2.8, ISO 6400 (background).

I love Joshua Tree National Park. I love the trees, I love the rock formations. But after a week of shooting there this fall—and after shooting there for about the fifth time in 5 years—I was feeling done with yuccas and boulders. So on my last day of the trip I wandered off looking for something different. While scouting at the end of daylight, I found this desert wildflower (a datura, specifically) tucked in a narrow valley, blooming peacefully along the trail. I knew I needed to shoot it under the night sky.

I hung around the spot for a bit, thinking through what I wanted to do, then I ate my sandwich dinner while sitting on a stone next to the flower, waiting for conditions to be right.

To get the composition I desired, I needed to get the lens only about a foot from the bloom, which meant I wouldn’t have enough depth of field for sharp stars. I also knew that once twilight was over, the valley would be void of light, leaving nothing to illuminate the main subject.

To solve these problems, I combined two techniques: I shot for both a focus stack and a starlight blend. The raw materials involved three frames, with separate focus points and exposures for the foreground, the middleground and the background. Once home I ran them all through AI Denoise in Lightroom, then blended each in Photoshop to create the final image.

Gabriel Biderman

Tongariki Night Skies, Rapa Nui

Astro-modified Nikon Z 6II with a Nikon Z 24-70mm f/2.8 lens. 8 seconds, f/2.8, ISO 6400. (Swipe to reveal the names of the celestial bodies in this image.)

Several dreams came true this year, with the most vivid being a visit to Rapa Nui (Easter Island).

I was once a young boy who loved mythology and ancient history, and that’s when I first saw the mysterious moai in a National Geographic magazine. I wanted to be an archaeologist and read as much as I could about moai, which unfortunately wasn’t much. But the seed was planted and the desire to one day stand among them never left me. When I found out we had access to the moai at night, under the southern stars, well, the trip couldn’t come quick enough!

We typically plan our Easter Island night photography tours for February, which gives us the clearest skies. However, at that time of year the core of the Milky Way isn’t visible until 1 or 2 hours before morning twilight. That’s not too much of an issue, as each night we get to see all the stars we never see in the Northern Hemisphere—and to be honest, I feel lost in the sky. It’s absolutely amazing. I feel like a young explorer, literally connecting the dots and seeing vivid nebulas and the Magellanic Clouds with my naked eye.

But remember, we still need a good foreground to balance the story. To me, nothing beats the moai for the epic foreground to connect to the constellations.

I shot this image at one of the most visited sites, Tongariki. We arrived at 4 a.m. and had about 2 hours to photograph the southern tail and core of the Milky Way, the Southern Cross, the Carina Nebula and more.

I’m so addicted to the southern skies and can’t wait to dip south of the equator again and again!

Highland Point Lighthouse, Cape Cod

Nikon Z 6II with a Nikon Z 14-24mm f/2.8 S lens at 22mm. 10 seconds, f/2.8, ISO 6400.

Sometimes our best photos are ones closer to home. I was lucky enough to travel all over the world this year, but one of the workshops I was looking forward to most was Lighthouses of Cape Cod. It was a nostalgic trip for me, as I’d spent life on the Cape from age 4 through grade 4. Lighthouses were aplenty, and, like fried clams, they are the norm in the area.

Photographing lighthouses is tricky, and it requires different capture and processing techniques to master in order to truly capture the essence of one at night. One technique we were trying to incorporate was using tilt-shift lenses to get the correct perspective of these architectural delights. Shot incorrectly, many of these towers can look like the Leaning Lighthouse of Pisa. There are ways to “straighten your buildings” in post, but we instead focused on either shooting it correctly with a tilt-shift lens or shooting it as straight as we could with our regular lenses.

This photograph of Highland Point Lighthouse was my last shot of the night. I was using a Nikon 19mm tilt-shift for a long exposure on the other side of the lighthouse, so I went hunting for another angle with my 14-24mm, which is when I came across this idea.

While this shot might not have a dramatic wow factor, it stuck with me while assessing my best shots of 2023. Everything just aligns nicely. I treated my 14-24mm lens like a tilt shift and didn’t angle it up or down, which kept distortion to a minimum. I got closer and filled the frame with the fence and was very specific with where I cropped in on the house.

The beam of this lighthouse was created by including two flashes of the light during a 10-second exposure. To me, it looks like a perfect cover shot of a lighthouse at night that you would see in a magazine. I’m looking forward to photographing more lighthouses on the cape in 2024, when we run our Lighthouses of Martha’s Vineyard workshop!

Lance Keimig

Three Moai, Rano Rakaru, Rapa Nui

Nikon D780 with a Sigma 24mm f/1.4 lens, lit with two Luxli Fiddle LED panels. 20 seconds , f/2.8, ISO 12,800.

I was fortunate to begin my year with two back-to-back tours on Rapa Nui, or Easter Island––one with Gabe and one with Matt. It’s such a special place, and having nighttime access to the moai statues is a real privilege. Having multiple nights to experience and photograph the quarry where the statues were carved was a dream come true. It’s the best location on the island for photography because of the sheer number of moai and the variation in the terrain.

The challenging aspect of photographing at Ranorakaru is that visitors are confined to a series of narrow trails due to the fragile nature of this archeological site. This makes for limited composition and lighting opportunities.

In this particular scene, there was a very limited angle that allowed me to align the three moai in such a way that they did not overlap each other and still be able to illuminate them effectively. To light the two figures in the foreground, I placed a Luxli Fiddle with a grid attachment on a stand downhill and camera left. I placed a second Fiddle further along the trail to light the third moai, also with a grid and tilted up to avoid spilling the light on the ground in front of the statue. The crescent moon was rising in the background and outside of the left part of the frame, and it provided wonderful illumination for the clouds that would have otherwise deadened the sky.

I also confess to using Generative Fill in Photoshop to remove the low railings along the path in the lower left portion of the frame. They were in shadow, but I still found them a distracting modern anachronism that took away from the feeling I wanted to create with the image. AI Denoise enabled me to use ISO 12,800 with relative impunity in this very dark environment with virtually no light pollution. I’m a nervous skeptic when it comes to most things AI (Beware the Cylons), but it has been a tremendous boon for photographers this year.

The Pleiades from Hurricane Ridge on a Smoky Night, Olympic National Park

Nikon D780 with a Sigma 24mm f/1.4 lens. 13 seconds, f/2.8, ISO 6400.

During our September workshop in Olympic National Park, we visited Hurricane Ridge twice. The wildfire smoke was so thick on the first night that we went back down to sea level before the sky was even dark. On the second night the winds shifted, and the air was mostly clear on the ridge, but as we climbed the trail to the top of Hurricane Hill, the wind shifted once more and smoke filled the valleys to the north and west.

I’d been looking forward to returning to Olympic since Chris and I did a backpacking workshop to Shi Shi Beach in 2018. I was mostly excited about photographing the sea stacks on the beaches, so it’s ironic that my favorite image from the trip is from the mountains high above the Pacific.

The execution of the image was straightforward. There was no moon, but the last lingering twilight and we did have some light pollution from the towns of Sequim and Port Townsend to the northeast. I kept the shutter speed to 13 seconds to avoid stars trailing with the 24mm lens. I stopped down to f/2.8 but I wish I had stopped down a bit more and gone with a higher ISO.

The combination of the smoke and the light in the sky made for some great soft colors, and the magnificent star cluster known as the Pleiades was perfectly positioned to juxtapose against the fir trees in the foreground. Tennyson referred to the Pleiades as a “swarm of fireflies tangled in a silver braid” and that description was never more apt than on that smoky night in the Olympics. Sometimes the simplest of images can be the most rewarding.

Matt Hill

Meteors Over High Dune, Great Sand Dunes National Park

Nikon Z 6II with a Nikon Z 24-70mm f/2.8 lens at 24mm. Two frames shot at 5 minutes, f/2.8, ISO 800, stitched in PTGUI Pro (foreground), blended with 32 frames shot at 10 seconds, f/2.8, ISO 6400, stacked and masked in Photoshop (meteors).

In August 2023 I ascended to High Dune within Great Sand Dunes National Park. This was my fifth visit to the park and my holy grail was to make a meteor shower composite over the sand dune field.

Due to adverse weather conditions during the meteor shower peak, we could not climb the dunes as a group, and that made me sad. But keep in mind it’s an 800-foot uphill slog on sand, which begins at 8,000 feet of elevation. Some were relieved.

After the workshop ended, I gave it a shot solo. The weather was promising, and I packed as lightly as possible. I brought my Novoflex Triobalance and a Novoflex BasicPod hiking kit, plus 1.5 gallons of water, my panorama rig, and two cameras and two lenses.

For this image I made a two-panel vertorama—one panel predominantly of the dunes and the other of the sky, both during twilight. The lights from below are campers having a small but very fun party.

Much to my chagrin, the quantity of meteors that evening was not nearly as great as the night of the peak. So I took Tim’s advice and composited in the sky and meteors from the night of the peak. All these images were photographed in the same direction using the same technique and lens.

I do wish I could have shot it all on the same night, but you can choose to make the best of variables out of your control. This became the composite I’ve been dreaming of making.

Ranu Kau Caldera, Rapa Nui

Nikon Z 6II with a Nikon Z 24-70mm f/2.8 at 24mm. 17 frames shot at 10 seconds, f/2.8, ISO 12,800, stitched in two rows using PTGUI Pro.

When I began earnestly making panoramas, it was because the complexity of the method thrilled me. Nowadays I use the methods as means to achieve visual goals, and especially for natural perspective control for wider fields of view.

I don’t mind if someone notices it’s a panorama, but I don’t want them to be distracted by the method. With this in mind, here is a 17-image panorama composite that covers about 220 degrees of width and about 100 degrees of height. I use a 24mm lens when I want a natural rendition and have the time to make a multi-row pano sweep, which in this case was an ironic miscalculation my part because I ended up having only one chance at this because of the weather.

The location is Rano Kau caldera on the island of Rapa Nui. We got up at 3 a.m. to attempt this Milky Way bend over the crater—and got rained out. The second attempt was our last chance. We got lucky in between rainstorms and grabbed this moody moment of power and grace. I had to work fast. And I got this one mosaic captured before we got wet again.

I enjoy this image so much that I see it every day as a metal print from Bay Photo Lab.

Tim Cooper

Aurora, Flakstadoya, Norway

Nikon Z 6II with a Nikon Z 14-24mm f/2.8 lens at 15mm. 2 seconds, f/2.8, ISO 6400.

The Lofoten archipelago is one my favorite landscapes in the world. I am completely enamored with this unique island chain located in northern Norway. The jagged and picture-perfect peaks here rise thousands of feet nearly straight up from the bays and inlets, and this rugged and striking landscape has produced more than its fair share of its iconic images. Especially in winter.

As I look back on the images I made in 2023, this one stands out as a favorite. Chasing the aurora borealis is always fun, and even a mediocre display of light is still exciting. This night Matt and I were scouting the island of Flakstadoya, and the evening’s display was phenomenal. In typical fashion, Matt and I stood nearly next to each another while capturing very different takes of the sky and landscape.

Like scent and sound, pictures can produce very strong memory recall. Every time I see this image I am transported back to that magical night. But that is not the only reason it’s one of my favorites.

This image also fulfills one of the goals I strive for in all my landscape photographs: capturing a sense of place. While it’s an easy concept to discuss, and to understand, I’ve found that I fail more often than I would like in trying to convey my impression of a place. I feel this image is one of my few that truly captures the essence of Lofoten. Or at least the way that I romantically see and remember this stunning island chain.

Burishoole Abbey, County Mayo, Ireland

Nikon Z 6II with a Nikon Z 14-24mm f/2.8 lens, lit with a Coast HP7R flashlight. Seven 4 minute exposures for star trails and four 4 minute exposures for light painting. All exposures at f/4, ISO 100.

Light painting has always been my favorite part of night photography. Creating a scene that has never existed before is thrilling. It’s starting with a nearly blank canvas. It’s a challenge. A real challenge.

Here at Burishoole Abbey in Ireland, I was determined. Lance and I had visited and photographed the abbey before and he created a fantastic image of this section that I had always admired. On this visit I was eager to interpret the same scene in my own way.

My goal was to have the tombstones seemingly glow from within while highlighting the texture of the abbey’s stone work and the wrought iron fence in the foreground. Many different angles of light would be required to achieve this look. It would take a bunch of experimenting. It would be—again, challenging.

In the end it took over 15 attempts just to determine the basic light angles and duration of flashlight illumination for those separate angles. Once I felt confident, I needed another four separate exposures lasting a minute each to paint all of the aspects of the scene I wanted to highlight.

Due to the time needed to inspect and analyze the light painting between exposures, the star trails from my light painting frames wouldn’t stack properly. So, leaving my tripod in place, I shot another seven frames at the same exposure of 4 minutes, f/4 to create the star trail frames for the final stack.

All in all, the entire scene took around 1.5 to 2 hours of time. That was 2 hours of a blissful “no-mind” state that night photography can often produce. I love light painting.

Your Turn

What was your favorite night photograph of 2023? We’d love to see it! Share in the comments below, or on our Facebook page, or on Instagram (tag us @nationalparksatnight #nationalparksatnight #seizethenight). Be sure to tell a story too—the technical aspects, the challenge overcome, or a tale of the experience.

Then … enjoy winding down 2023 and winding up 2024. There’s lot of night-seizing to be had!

Lance Keimig is a partner and workshop leader with National Parks at Night. He has been photographing at night for 30 years, and is the author of Night Photography and Light Painting: Finding Your Way in the Dark (Focal Press, 2015). Learn more about his images and workshops at www.thenightskye.com.

UPCOMING WORKSHOPS FROM NATIONAL PARKS AT NIGHT

JOIN US IN THESE MAJESTIC DESTINATIONS …
Rust & Ruinism 2025
Mar 9
Rust & Ruinism 2025
Iceland: North Coast 2025
Apr 11
Iceland: North Coast 2025
Haleakala National Park 2025
Jun 9
Haleakala National Park 2025
Chicago Post-Processing Intensive 2025
Oct 26
Chicago Post-Processing Intensive 2025

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

JOIN US IN THESE MAJESTIC DESTINATIONS …
Rust & Ruinism 2025
Mar 9
Rust & Ruinism 2025
Iceland: North Coast 2025
Apr 11
Iceland: North Coast 2025
Haleakala National Park 2025
Jun 9
Haleakala National Park 2025
Chicago Post-Processing Intensive 2025
Oct 26
Chicago Post-Processing Intensive 2025

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.

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Guiding the Light: Our Friend Improves Luxli LED Panels

Since the moment they were created and released, we have been quite partial to the Luxli Fiddle and Viola LED light panels, for both light painting and Low-Level Lighting. We feel that Luxli panels are the tools that offer the most precise control over added lighting for the type of night photography that we do.

However, until recently, that precision was mostly about the brightness and color temperature of the illumination. Photographers also need to be able to control light diffusion and spill. Originally Luxli provided a means for the former, in the form of diffusion screens that spread their already wide light sources even wider. Then last year Luxli introduced a grid attachment that narrowed the spread of the light from the Fiddle by about half and reduced the light intensity by about a third.

The Story

Fast forward to August 2023, and our 100th workshop celebration in New York City, which was attended by Josh Fischer from Luxli, as well as our good friend Jeff McCrum.

Josh is our primary contact at Luxli, and the person who goes to bat for us when we have feature requests or suggestions. It’s a tough job, as the kind of work we do with Luxli lights is quite different from what they were originally designed for, and the features that are important for us are not even on the radar of most people who buy them. (Not many videographers use the lights at 1 percent brightness, let alone .1 percent!)

Jeff is a New Jersey-based lighting designer for Fisher Dachs Associates, one of the world’s leading theater planning and design consultants. He’s also an avid night photographer. Most of us at National Parks at Night have known him for a long time––I first met Jeff the same day that I first met Matt at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery when I was leading a workshop there, years before the birth of NPAN.

Sloss Furnaces National Historic Landmark, Birmingham, Alabama. Lit with a flashlight raked across the rear wall from camera left, as well as by three Luxli Fiddle panels with grids. The one illuminating the wheel in the lower right corner has Jeff’s tighter grid. Nikon D780 with an Olympus Zuiko 24mm f/3.5 shift lens. 60 seconds, f/11, ISO 400.

At our celebration in New York, I was chatting with Jeff when Josh came over to say hello. We talked about the Fiddle, and how much we (NPAN) appreciated the new grid, but that we had some ideas about how to improve it. I explained that we often used Cinefoil or Blackwrap to try to further tighten the beam of light, but that it wasn’t easy to achieve the desired effect.

I asked Josh if Luxli would consider making a tighter grid that narrowed the light beam even more. Josh seemed receptive to the idea, and said he would share our suggestion with the engineers. Encouraged, I mentioned another issue we’ve experienced with the fiddle: the power switch being inadvertently activated in the camera bag, which not only leads to unexpected dead batteries but is also a potential safety issue due to heat buildup.

I didn’t give the conversation much further thought until I received a mysterious package in the mail from Jeff about 5 or 6 weeks later.

Upon opening the package, I was stunned to find a redesigned Luxli Fiddle grid that addressed exactly the issue I had spoken with Josh about! It was thicker, with a deeper honeycomb grid, meaning the light beam from the Fiddle would be narrower and dimmer, both of which would be useful to night photographers. Moreover, the back side of Jeff’s grid extended to cover the edges of the light, which is a culprit of light leakage in the original grid. In short, Jeff had reverse-engineered the Luxli grid, and changed it in such a way that it was now tailored specifically for us night shooters.

Figure 1.

Figure 2.

The above examples show the light intensity and beam size with (from left to right) the Fiddle alone, the Luxli grid and the Lanceli grid. Figure 1 shows the light pointed up, and Figure 2 shows the light directed straight ahead. (Settings were the same for all images to show the light reduction as well as light distribution.)

According to Jeff, the Fiddle by itself has a 102-degree light spread. The Luxli grid reduces the light output by 23 percent and limits the light spread to 58 degrees. His version, which I’m both embarrassed and humbled to say is named the Lanceli, reduces the light output by 39 percent and brings the beam down to 36 degrees.

The loss of light is not a problem—because we work in dark conditions, we often use these LED panels at 1 percent power or less. The net effect is that with Jeff’s custom-built solution, we now have much more precise control over where the light falls, making it easier to isolate added light to a localized area or a small object in the scene. It’s another tool in the toolbox, and I’m glad to have the option to use either or both of these grids as different needs arise. As both grids are pure black, they have no impact on the color of the light.

The Lanceli grid for the Luxli Fiddle.

The Lanceli grid was not the only thing in the package! I also found a small, strangely shaped piece of plastic that solves the problem of the Fiddle switch being inadvertently turned on in transit––the Luxli Switch Protector! This cleverly designed little gadget attaches securely and unobtrusively over the switch to ensure that it doesn’t get accidentally activated. Not only that, but it is made of glow-in-the-dark material, making it easy to find at the end of the night when you are packing up to go home.

If that wasn’t enough, Jeff also designed a grid system for the Luxli Viola, called the Hex Stack. Luxli does not make a grid for the Viola, so this is an entirely new product. As the name implies, the Hex Stack can be combined in multiples to further reduce the light spill by about 20 degrees per piece.

As with the Fiddle grid, the Hex Stack fully hides the edges of the light source by overlapping the outside of the fixture. Each piece added to the stack also decreases the intensity from the original output by about one stop. The Hex Stack is held solidly in place by sliding into a slot in the panel itself from either side.

Lit with three Luxli Fiddle panels with grids. The one illuminating the round tank end in the lower center has Jeff’s tighter grid. Nikon D780 with an Olympus Zuiko 24mm f/3.5 shift lens. 60 seconds, f/11, ISO 400.

Lit with two Luxli Fiddle panels. The one illuminating the wheel has Jeff’s tighter grid, and the one lighting the ground is unmodified. Nikon D780 with an Olympus Zuiko 24mm f/3.5 shift lens. 30 seconds, f/11, ISO 400.

Jeff was pretty nonchalant about the effort that he must have put into creating these tools, but they are incredibly well designed, durable and super-functional. Grids have been used to modify the light on studio strobes for decades, but creating one for an LED light unit that has over 100 individual emitters is a couple of orders of magnitude more complex. Each cell in the grid has to align precisely over an emitter in order to maximize both the effect and the output. All of these tools are made with a 3D printer using non-toxic PLA plastic.

Despite the name of the grid, Jeff didn’t make these tools for just my benefit. He’s sharing them with the night photography world! You can purchase the Lanceli (comes with a Fiddle Switch Protector) or the Hex Stack from Jeff’s website.

Much Ado About Lighting

Why is this a big deal, you might ask? Back in the day, when most light painting was done with a handheld flashlight––often one with a narrow, focused beam–– it was relatively easy to direct the light exactly where it was needed, even onto a small area in the scene. The challenge with flashlights is getting consistent, repeatable results, and not being able to see the cumulative effect of your lighting in real time. With Low-Level Lighting, using LED panels in fixed positions, both of those problems are solved, but the wider spread of the light beam makes it more difficult to get the light exactly where it’s needed, and nowhere else.

This image takes advantage of two Luxli grids to control the warm light in the background and the cool light in the middle ground, and the tighter focus of the Lanceli grids on the left and right sides of the gear and framework that make up the focal point of the image. Nikon D780 with a Nikon 24-120mm f/4G lens at 50mm. 2 minutes, f/7.1, ISO 800.

Honeycomb grids, snoots and barn doors are all light modifiers designed for that purpose. We are fortunate to have the Luxli-designed grid that narrows the light beam by about 50 percent, and now the Lanceli grid that reduces the beam width to about one-third of the original width. The Hex Stack for the Viola is the only grid available for that light, and the ability to stack multiple units makes it super versatile. I should note that it’s useful to have both versions of the Luxli grid, as well as at least two of the stackable Viola grids to meet the needs of the situation at hand.

It’s been exciting to observe and participate in the birth of a new style of lighting over the last few years, and truly exciting that Luxli and other companies have stepped up with groundbreaking products we can use, even if they were not designed specifically for night photographers. On top of that, we have thoughtful and creative people like Jeff working to make these tools even better.

Lance Keimig is a partner and workshop leader with National Parks at Night. He has been photographing at night for 30 years, and is the author of Night Photography and Light Painting: Finding Your Way in the Dark (Focal Press, 2015). Learn more about his images and workshops at www.thenightskye.com.

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