Sunset and star trails on Velika planina

After a busy summer and hardly any time spent in the Slovenian mountains I hiked to Velika planina one Sunday afternoon after work. It was kind of late as I only made it to the chapel around 5.45, but the light was just getting warm. Almost all Sunday hikers had already left so I was pretty much alone.




Having photographed the ridge trail I climbed the chapel hill, waited for the sun to disappear behind the ridge and then wandered around a little, hoping for after sunset colors.








But then I saw amazing red misty light to the north, rising from the Kamniška Bistrica valley, so I practically ran to the other side of the plateau. Totally out of breath I made it to the top and caught the last 10 seconds of the sun before it set behind Mt. Krvavec.


I had a hunch the colors would only get better, so I found a nice cottage for the foreground, set up my tripod and waited.


I had my tripod, the moon was new, so it made sense to try and take some star trails shots. It was so dark I had huge problems composing and focusing. And fog was beginning to creep in from the valley.


It was the fog that made me give up. The lens was fogging up so badly I ended up with a bunch of useless shots. I did manage to get this:


And an ISO3200 shot of the Milky Way.