Quarantine Chronicles: Star Trail Photography
A Window to the Stars © Andrew Fusek Peters
A remarkable scene blankets our night sky. Now that businesses aren’t open on a daily basis, there is less light pollution affecting towns and urban areas. As cities grow, the light produced from buildings can fade out the glow from stars and galaxies. Nature photographer Andrew Fusek Peters, who documents the Shropshire Hills in England for the National Trust, frequently shoots the night sky and its star trails. Using long-exposure photography, he captures stars throughout the night, to create a sky painted with the movement of the Earth.
To find a suitable day for this work, photographers must scope out moon phases, weather patterns, and the darkest night skies. Peters explains that this star trail image required 480 30-second exposures for four hours. This type of photography is typically done outside, but because of the recent public shutdowns, he decided to capture the stars from inside his home. “This pandemic has not taken the stars away…I would never have thought of trying to shoot star trails through a window. The whole concept appears fraught with difficulty,” Peters says, detailing his thought process behind the image, which has received substantial media attention. Photographers do not typically attempt star trail photography from indoors, making the conditions even more complicated. Although this time is thought of as ‘confinement,’ it was able to expand the realm of possibilities that Peters considers in his photography.
He set the camera up with his window as a frame, and slept for the night, waking up to a captivating image. The moon provided a glossy light to the bottom half of the image, nursing the star trails that filled the window space. It shows an explosion of energy and movement trapped inside four walls, similar to the way many of us currently feel. This photograph has inspired a brand new project for Peters, centered around windows, something he had not considered prior to this photograph. Art historians are long familiar with the impact that social climates, health crises, and political changes can make to art production; these factors create a fundamental change in the way photographers are able to create.
“Here were the heavens beyond lockdown, here freedom, eternity, hope. It was an honour to see the media attention this photo got and if it could lift one heart out there in the darkness, then yes, there is still a role for art in this terrible time.”
The Stars at Lightspout Waterfall © Andrew Fusek Peters
Andrew Fusek Peters has taken remarkable star trail photography before. The photo above, which he refers to as his “homage to Van Gogh’” was taken at the Long Mynd nature reserve. The painterly quality of star trails leaves his nighttime photography full of natural beauty and energy. This terrible time for history has simultaneously forced many people to reinterpret creative projects, making new attempts that normally wouldn’t have piqued. As people are forced to change their daily routines amongst a pandemic that shows no particular mercy to them, the natural world is beginning to notice that it has more space.
You can find Peters Twitter page here, and his Instagram here.
