On a clear night, Montana's sky comes alive with stars. The further away you are from the lights of civilization, the more stars you can see.

When you get a clear night, grab your equipment and go. Be sure to pack along a flashlight to orient yourself to your surroundings when you set up for a night sky shoot. To learn about night sky events like hours of twilight, meteor showers, planet viewing, or to plan ahead to photograph astronomy events, visit a website like http://www.usno.navy.mil/astronomy.
 

If you have a smart phone, there are excellent downloadable applications for understanding the night sky. Find the latitude and longitude of your location on Google maps before you go in the field and you will have the best possible interactive sky map available. Your phone can be used as a flashlight too, with a red light option to save your vision in the dark. No phone? Pack a star map along with you.


Other essentials for night sky photography are a sturdy tripod and a cable release to insure that your camera stays absolutely motionless when you shoot.
 

When you set up your camera choose a sheltered location, away from gusting wind or any source of vibration like a nearby road or railroad track that may cause your camera to shake. Avoid artificial light like yard lights, headlights, or halogen lanterns. Choose a focal point for your shot, like an interesting landmark – a cluster of trees, a towering boulder, or a mountain peak – and use it as a silhouette against the sky. The moon can be a focal point for night time landscapes but if your intent is to capture stars, shoot when there is little to no moonlight. To make sure your image is in focus, either set the focal distance to infinity or if you can see town, autofocus on the skyline, turn on manual focus and don't move the focus ring.
 

As you plan your shot, keep in mind that a wide-angle lens will make the moon or the mountain in the foreground look even further away in the photograph. Use a telephoto on that same scene and you can increase the size of the subject making it look closer and more dominant in the frame. Filters other than a high quality multi-coated UV on your camera lens should be removed to prevent unwanted reflections in your pictures and light loss.

 
Your camera will record more stars at a higher ISO setting. The best range is ISO 200-800. Remember that with a higher ISO your image sensor records more light, but it also records more noise. Noise is less apparent when the image sensor is cool, so don’t be afraid to use a high ISO on a typical Yellowstone night. As with any type of photography, practice and experimentation is the best way to learn. The joy of digital is that you can evaluate images and make adjustments in the field.
 

The essence of photography is the exploration of interesting light. Enjoy this opportunity to try out night time photography where the air is thinner, the sky is bigger, and the wee hours still glitter with stars.
 

- Article by Jenna Caplette, with tips from Kendall of Print Refinery @ F-11 Photo in Bozeman.
 

Jenna Caplette migrated from California to Montana in the early 1970s, first living on the Crow Indian reservation. A Healing Arts Practitioner, she owns Bozeman BodyTalk & Integrative Healthcare. For relaxation, she reads novels and walks the trails around Bozeman with her four legged companion. Oh, and sometimes she manages to sit down and write.

My love affair with Miss Dixie, my Chevy Silverado 2500HD Duramax diesel pickup with an Allison towing transmission, took me completely by surprise.
 

I am not a motor head. For most of my life, I really didn’t care much about vehicles. It mattered not to me how they run; I could have cared less about what’s under their hoods. Television ads for pickups have always struck me as an excess of testosterone-driven banality. I shudder at the off-road scenes of pickups tearing up the environment – wheels turning, mud flying, birds scattering, as some young buck extols the myth of the freedom and power that is his, as he careens his pickup truck across the western landscape, singing a cowboy song.
 

However, anyone who is serious about horseback riding in Montana’s backcountry soon learns that it is inextricably interwoven with driving a truck and pulling a lot of weight – a lot of emotionally important, living weight. Towing a trailer is a reality.
 

Lacking both the interest and the skills acquired from afternoons spent with a bunch of guys in garages tuning up engines and jacking up frames for dragging on Main Street, most horsewomen are reluctant to learn the basics. We don’t care if it’s fancy, we don’t need roll bars and fog lights, and our identity has nothing to do with the horsepower at our command. We want a SAFE, DEPENDABLE, DRIVABLE machine.
 

The problem with a laissez-faire attitude towards truck ownership is that it can get you into trouble – serious, life threatening trouble. Pulling the wrong load with the wrong vehicle can take you right into the great beyond.
 

Heavy loads simply up the driving ante.  High speeds, steep terrain, narrow, washed out or soft shouldered mountain roads, Montana’s famous gumbo mud, and winter’s snow and ice can spell disaster. My adventurous spirit and my often misplaced know-it-all attitude has given me more than my share of hair raising moments while learning the ins and outs of towing a trailer with horses.
 

Mud as slippery as snot and up to my axles on a long road into the Beartooth Mountains – check.  Trying to back a fully loaded 4-horse trailer down a mountain logging road only to have the trailer pull my truck off the road – check. Jackknifing the trailer on a hidden patch of spring ice – check.  Running out of gas along the Rocky Mountain Front and facing the irony of pulling over in front of a derrick pumping oil out of the ground – check. Flying down Pipestone Pass at too high a speed and holding on for dear life as the weight behind me pushed my truck beyond the breaking capacity – check. (Note: those runaway lanes on Montana’s mountain passes aren’t there for picnicking)!
 

I have learned a few lessons – the hard way. Now I can back a six-horse trailer down a mountain road with greater ease than I can parallel park my car in downtown Missoula. All of this has made me a much more cautious and skilled driver, and it has turned me into a very discriminating truck consumer.
 

Miss Dixie did not just fall into my life. She was sought and carefully evaluated before I brought her home to meet the family. My initial reluctance with vehicles practically turned into an obsession for researching the desired attributes when I went to purchase a brand spanking new truck.  Towing capacity, power, fuel capacity, turning radius, length of wheelbase, and transmission gear ratios became key elements in my search for the right vehicle.
 

Then, there she was – on the lot of Karl Tyler Chevrolet.  A sleek, black beauty with all the power to take me up any mountain road, with a “smart” towing transmission to bring me down those mountain roads just as safely. A short wheelbase for tight turnarounds, yet roomy enough for five passengers—with comfortable seats and a great radio to boot. Yes, I admit it. I am in love with my truck. We are inseparable. You can call us the Montana Dixie Chicks!
 

Now I am just waiting for those TV ads to feature a frumpy old horsewomen like me ready to take on the world with the likes of Miss Dixie! Or perhaps I will settle for a great country western song about an old Montana cowgirl and her beloved truck – I think I’ll call up Shane Clouse and ask him to get right on that.

SuzAnne Miller is the owner of Dunrovin Ranch. A fourth-generation Montanan, SuzAnne grew  up roaming the mountains and fishing the streams of western Montana. Her love of nature,  animals, science, and education prompted her to create the world’s first cyber ranch where live  web cameras bring Dunrovin’s wildlife and ranch life to internet users across the globe. 

You can find her blog at: http://dunrovinranchmontana.com/blog/