--- title: Behind the Shot with Aaron Priest description: Behind the Shot With Aaron Priest On the night of December 27, 2013, Chris Georgia, Garrett Evans, and I hiked up Artist’s Bluff in Franconia Notch State Park, New Hampshire. […] image: https://blog.reallyrightstuff.com/hubfs/Imported_Blog_Media/Artists-Bluff-Banner.jpg --- [Skip to content](https://blog.reallyrightstuff.com/light-and-shadow/bts-aaronpriest#main-content) Really Right Stuff Open main navigation Close main navigation - Contact us Contact us [All posts](https://blog.reallyrightstuff.com/light-and-shadow/all) October 20, 2023 # Behind the Shot with Aaron Priest By  [Really Right Stuff](https://blog.reallyrightstuff.com/light-and-shadow/author/really-right-stuff)  ·  1 minute read ## Behind the Shot With Aaron Priest On the night of December 27, 2013, Chris Georgia, [Garrett Evans](http://www.facebook.com/AGEvansPhotography), and I hiked up Artist’s Bluff in Franconia Notch State Park, New Hampshire. What a view! [!["Hiking Up" by Garrett Evans](https://blog.reallyrightstuff.com/hs-fs/hubfs/Imported_Blog_Media/Hiking-Up.jpg?width=677&height=1018&name=Hiking-Up.jpg)](https://blog.reallyrightstuff.com/bts-aaronpriest/hiking-up/) “Hiking Up” by Garrett Evans [!["Artist's Bluff View" by Aaron Priest](https://blog.reallyrightstuff.com/hs-fs/hubfs/Imported_Blog_Media/Artists-Bluff-View.jpg?width=961&height=320&name=Artists-Bluff-View.jpg)](https://blog.reallyrightstuff.com/bts-aaronpriest/artists-bluff-view/) “Artist’s Bluff View” by Aaron Priest Photographer: Aaron Priest Franconia Notch State Park, New Hampshire [www.aaronpriestphoto.com](http://www.aaronpriestphoto.com) Camera: Nikon D700 Nikkor 14-24mm/f2.8 Panoneed robotic head Promote Control Gear: [TVC-34L](https://reallyrightstuff.com/tvc/) Versa Tripod TA-3-LC Leveling Base [TH-DVTL-55](https://reallyrightstuff.com/dvtl55/) Plate 192-FAS Nodal Slide BD700-L Plate Settings: 14 mm ISO 2500 f/2.8 0.3-30 sec (5 exp. of 1.7 EV steps)   Straight ahead is Echo Lake, to the right are the ski slopes of Cannon Mountain (they were grooming the trails that night), and to the left is Interstate 93 snaking its way through Franconia Notch. Overhead Orion, the Milky Way, Jupiter, and the Beehive Cluster can be seen peeking through the fast moving clouds. Chris and Garrett are sitting near the edge shooting the lake and mountain, and to the rear is one of Garrett’s cameras shooting a time-lapse of behind the scenes footage. This panorama is a crop of a 360° x 180° sphere that I took with a robotic panning head, in several brackets for a high dynamic range or HDR image to capture the highlights of the bright lights and snow to the shadows of the trees and mountain sides. Later I took a selfie of me holding up the boulder to blend into the sphere later so all three of us could be in the finished shot. The full spherical panorama can be explored [on my website](http://galleries.aaronpriestphoto.com/Night/2013-Artists-Bluff/). [!["Selfie" by Aaron Priest](https://blog.reallyrightstuff.com/hs-fs/hubfs/Imported_Blog_Media/Aaron.jpg?width=731&height=1024&name=Aaron.jpg)](https://blog.reallyrightstuff.com/bts-aaronpriest/aaron/) “Selfie” by Aaron Priest The sphere is stitched from 13 positions (2 rows of 6 columns plus a dedicated zenith shot) of 5 exposures, plus an extra bracket of me standing by the rock, for a total of 70 images. RAW conversion, noise reduction, and sharpening to 16-bit TIFFs was done with Adobe® Lightroom, exposure fusion with Photomatix Pro, stitched with PTGui Pro via an .xml positioning file from the Panoneed, and blended with a combination of PTGui, Enblend, and Photoshop layers by hand—particularly the moving clouds. The interactive sphere on my website is displayed with PanoTour Pro 2.0 and KRPano. The cropped 3:1 panorama is about 12” x 36” printed out at 300dpi. [!["Aaron" by Garrett Evans](https://blog.reallyrightstuff.com/hs-fs/hubfs/Imported_Blog_Media/Aaron2.jpg?width=683&height=1024&name=Aaron2.jpg)](https://blog.reallyrightstuff.com/bts-aaronpriest/aaron2/) “Aaron” by Garrett Evans   “Artist’s Bluff” Copyright ©2014 [Aaron Priest](http://www.aaronpriestphoto.com). Supplemental images ©2014 [Garrett Evans](http://www.facebook.com/AGEvansPhotography). All rights reserved.   Share: [facebook-f icon](http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=https://blog.reallyrightstuff.com/light-and-shadow/bts-aaronpriest) [linkedin-in icon](http://www.linkedin.com/shareArticle?mini=true&url=https://blog.reallyrightstuff.com/light-and-shadow/bts-aaronpriest) [twitter icon](https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=https://blog.reallyrightstuff.com/light-and-shadow/bts-aaronpriest) [pinterest-p icon](http://pinterest.com/pin/create/link/?url=https://blog.reallyrightstuff.com/light-and-shadow/bts-aaronpriest) [envelope icon](mailto:?body=https://blog.reallyrightstuff.com/light-and-shadow/bts-aaronpriest) ## Related posts [![](https://blog.reallyrightstuff.com/hubfs/Imported_Blog_Media/MG_0271-Edit-arch-and-meteor.jpg)](https://blog.reallyrightstuff.com/light-and-shadow/pow-thomasobrien) [Inspiration](https://blog.reallyrightstuff.com/light-and-shadow/tag/inspiration) ### [Photo of the Week: Meteor Shower!](https://blog.reallyrightstuff.com/light-and-shadow/pow-thomasobrien) [![](https://blog.reallyrightstuff.com/hubfs/Imported_Blog_Media/Colorfall-banner-Aaron-Reed.jpg)](https://blog.reallyrightstuff.com/light-and-shadow/bts-aaronreed2) [Nature](https://blog.reallyrightstuff.com/light-and-shadow/tag/nature) ### [Behind the Shot with Aaron Reed](https://blog.reallyrightstuff.com/light-and-shadow/bts-aaronreed2) [![](https://blog.reallyrightstuff.com/hubfs/Imported_Blog_Media/130324_BURKARD_236.jpg)](https://blog.reallyrightstuff.com/light-and-shadow/behind-the-shot-with-chris-burkard) [Inspiration](https://blog.reallyrightstuff.com/light-and-shadow/tag/inspiration) ### [Behind the Shot with Chris Burkard](https://blog.reallyrightstuff.com/light-and-shadow/behind-the-shot-with-chris-burkard) # Really Right Stuff Really Right Stuff is the benchmark in engineered support systems. 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