Glenn Randall presents “How to Shoot the 2021 Perseid Meteor Shower” on Wednesday, May 19, 2021 at 7pm, virtually. Meeting details emailed to members.
Shooting the 2021 Perseid Meteor Shower
The August 2021 Perseid meteor shower promises to be exceptional because it coincides with new moon. That means dark skies and the possibility of seeing as many as 50 meteors per hour. On Wednesday, May 19th at 7 p.m., professional landscape photographer Glenn Randall will teach club members how to make spectacular photos of this rare event. His talk will describe where and when to go to see the largest possible number of meteors. He’ll explain why the meteor shower will peak after midnight, discuss the best lenses for capturing meteors, and provide the right exposure for meteors. He will show how to capture a simple meteor-shower image showing a single meteor and also discuss how to make more sophisticated composites that contain dozens of meteors. That discussion will include the best way to shoot the land and background sky and the best way to select and add meteors to the composite land/sky image in Photoshop.
Perseid meteors over Turret Arch, Arches National Park, Utah. This image is a composite of 49 meteors shot on the nights of August 10-11, 11-12, and 12-13, 2018. Almost all of the meteor images, plus the land image and background sky image, were shot from the same camera position on the west side of Turret Arch. A few of the meteors were shot from a second camera position, also on the west side of Turret Arch about 50 yards from the first camera position.
Perseid meteor shower over Snowmass Mountain and Hagerman Peak reflected in Snowfield Lake, Maroon Bells-Snowmass Wilderness, Colorado. Composite of 40 photographs shot from one camera position over a five-hour period on August 13, 2015.
Perseid meteor shower over the Titan, Fisher Towers, Utah. This image is a composite of 64 frames shot over a nine-hour period on August 11th and 12th, 2016. The land was lit by the waxing gibbous moon, which was 65 percent illuminated. The meteor-containing layers have been rotated around Polaris so that all Perseid meteors appear to originate at the radiant. Some meteors were sporadics.
About Glenn Randall:
Glenn Randall has been a full-time photographer, writer, and instructor for 42 years. Over 2000 of his photographs have been published, including 87 covers, and he’s sold over 10,000 prints. Rocky Nook published the second edition of his book The Art, Science, and Craft of Great Landscape Photography in the spring of 2020. It published his book Dusk to Dawn: a Guide to Landscape Photography at Night in spring 2018. Farcountry Press published three books of his landscape photographs: Rocky Mountain National Park Impressions, Colorado Wild & Beautiful, and Sunrise from the Summit: First Light on Colorado’s Fourteeners. Glenn has had 25 feature articles published in Outdoor Photographer, where he is a contributing editor.
