This photo came to be by accident but because tweaking was involved and the results are very nice, i thought this would be a good candidate for a tutorial. This is a shot I took at the local lake with a peer in the foreground and the nightsky with stars visible. Comparing the lighting, there is a big contrast. Usually you cant expose stars when you have other parts lit up. The camera settings are a bit tricky and will involve a lot of trial and error but the results are really stunning.
Gear that you will need:
- DSLR that can do long exposures (up to 15 seconds)
- Steady tripod
- Wide angle or ultra wide angle lens
Camera setup:
the setup is fairly straight forward, point camera towards infinity and make sure it is steady. To avoid ANY camera shake, either use a remote trigger or exposure delay on your camera so that you push the shutter button but the exposure starts one second after to avoid the vibration. In our case we used stray light from behind to light up the peer. In order to do that we have to allow the light to travel to the peer and back in order to catch it. The trial and error comes with deciding how much light you want to let in.
- Focus:We set the focus to infinity to get pretty much everything into focus and because of the tripod we are out of the front blurring circle as well so nothing in the foreground gets blurred.
- ISO: ISO was set to 400 because it was the best compromise for noise (barely any) and light sensitivity. From ISO 200 to 400 there was a huge difference, especially in the light coming from the stars.
- Aperture: Aperture was 5.6. The reason was because we needed to keep the shutter at 15 seconds or less and ISO at 400 and still capture enough light form the peer.
- Shutter: Shutter time was 15 seconds and that was the extreme of what we could do. I would recommend 10 seconds instead but it would require more tweaking of the other settings as at 10 seconds with ISO 200, the light was not the same and some stars did not appear. The reason why the Shutter should not be more than 15 seconds was because the stars start to stretch after that. And it becomes very visible at 20 seconds. You do not want star trails that are not long trails
Scene setup:
The scene was setup so that parts of the peer is visible with some boats. The weather has to be fairly calm because you want to create a mirror surface of the water due to long exposure but you do not want the boats to move. So normal small waves are the best and they do not cause the boat to move and sway heavily. The time was midnight because the night is darkest then and the afterglow on the horizon is actually caused by a town on the other side of the hills which is not visible to the naked eye but shows up on long exposure. Here is a diagram of the layout and setup (sorry for the simple graphics but you get the point 
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I think the photo came out very nicely but could still be improved by, for example increasing ISO and adding even more stars that way but this is a lot of trail and error, maybe later on I will.
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Hi, thanks for these descriptions. I think it’s a great asset for someone like me that is just starting. It kind of gives me an idea on how you approach a photo and the technicalities behind it (like noticing a streetlight that casts light to the peer).
Best regards from Maine.