Coloma & Placerville (Part 3) - California

On the 31st October 2025, my parents and I took a trip to Sacramento, CA and dropped by Coloma, CA and Placerville, CA. We went to go see autumn foliage, but it was a bit early, at least for Sacramento. It was still a nice trip. I took photos with my phone, and the photos are split into 3 posts. I hope you enjoy viewing my photos!

Parts: 1 | 2 | 3

This blog post has photos of sunset from Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park in Coloma, CA, and night time Halloween celebrations at Downtown Placerville, CA.

After we finished up in Sacramento, CA, we made the drive over to The Mother Lode. We arrived at Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park in Coloma, CA at around sunset. The park was closed, but we parked on the side of State Route 49 and roamed the grounds for a short period of time. It was a very beautiful area, especially at sunset.

Marshall Gold Discovery State Park is the location of where gold was first discovered in California. The discovery was made by James W. Marshall in 1848, and it kick started the California Gold Rush.

A sunset scenery photo of Canada Geese (Branta canadensis), deer, autumn foliage, historic buildings, hills, and trees. The photo was shot at Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park in Coloma, CA.

A sunset scenery photo of Canada Geese (Branta canadensis), deer, autumn foliage, moon (top left), historic buildings, and trees. The photo was shot at Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park in Coloma, CA.

A sunset scenery photo of the Coloma, CA Post Office, autumn foliage, clouds, and hills. The photo was shot at Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park in Coloma, CA.

A sunset scenery photo of autumn foliage, clouds, State Route 49, hills, trees, and historic buildings. The photo was shot at Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park in Coloma, CA.

A sunset scenery photo of autumn foliage, clouds, State Route 49 (right), hills, trees, and historic buildings. The photo was shot at Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park in Coloma, CA.

A sunset scenery photo of autumn foliage, clouds, State Route 49, hills, trees, and historic buildings. The photo was shot at Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park in Coloma, CA.

A sunset scenery photo of clouds, autumn foliage, hills, historic buildings, and trees. The photo was shot at Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park in Coloma, CA.

A sunset scenery photo of Gold Trail Grange, clouds, autumn foliage, State Route 49, hills, and trees. The photo was shot at Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park in Coloma, CA.

A sunset scenery photo of autumn foliage, South Fork American River, clouds, Coloma Resort (left), hills, and moon. The photo was shot on Coloma Bridge at Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park in Coloma, CA.

A sunset scenery photo of autumn foliage, South Fork American River (left), and hills. The photo was shot on Coloma Bridge at Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park in Coloma, CA.

A sunset scenery photo of autumn foliage, South Fork American River, clouds, hills, and power lines. The photo was shot on Coloma Bridge at Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park in Coloma, CA.

A sunset scenery photo of clouds, autumn foliage, State Route 49, hills, historic buildings, and trees. The photo was shot at Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park in Coloma, CA.

After Coloma, CA, we decided to drop by Downtown Placerville, CA to see if there is any autumn foliage we can see at night. I wanted to scout out the area for our next trip. This was when I remembered it was October 31st and it was Halloween. We happened to have come upon the tail end of the Halloween celebration in Downtown Placerville. 

A scenery photo of the Halloween Celebration at night in Downtown Placerville, CA. In the photo are historic buildings.

My mom helped take a photo of me next to the giant inflatable pumpkin in they had up for the Halloween celebration. In the photo are historic buildings. The photo was shot at night in Downtown Placerville, CA.

My mom helped take a photo of me next to the giant inflatable pumpkin in they had up for the Halloween celebration. In the photo are historic buildings. The photo was shot at night in Downtown Placerville, CA.

My mom helped take a photo of me next to the giant inflatable pumpkin in they had up for the Halloween celebration. In the photo are historic buildings. The photo was shot at night in Downtown Placerville, CA.

This is all the photos for today and from this trip. I hope you have enjoyed viewing the photos! Please don't forget to share the blog post with your friends and family members! Also, if you want to get notifications when I post up more photos, "Like" us on Facebook or follow me on Instagram. These links can also be found on the top of the right sidebar.

Parts: 1 | 2 | 3

HDRs Redone - Multiple Places

I recently went back and redid some of my old HDR compositions into 32-bit ones for a more natural look. 32-bit HDR compositions usually look more natural and gives better color than a 16-bit HDR (which was what I was doing before) so I went ahead and redone all of them. Today, I am here to show you some of the new HDR compositions several places.

Links to the original posts:

• Placerville, CA
• Mill Valley, CA
• Castle Rock
• Wilder Ranch
• Mount Diablo State Park
• Sutro Baths - San Francisco
• Quarry Lakes Regional Park

Full Resolution Photos and Prints: If you want to see full resolution photos or buy prints of any of the photos you see, they are up on my portfolio for viewing. If you are interested, please select a link from below:

• Placerville, CA (Best Photos)
• Mill Valley/Muir Woods (Best Photos)
• Santa Cruz (Best Photos)
• Mount Diablo State Park (Best Photos)
• San Francisco 2012 (Best Photos)
• Quarry Lakes Regional Park (Best Photos)

HDR from the pumpkin patch at Wilder Ranch State Park in Santa Cruz, CA. 

HDR Sunset from Quarry Lakes Regional Park in Fremont, CA. 

HDR from Sutro Baths in San Francisco, CA. 

HDR of Mill Valley, CA from a drive to Muir Woods National Monument. 

HDR from American Whitewater Expeditions in Placerville, CA. 

HDR from Castle Rock Regional Recreation Area. 

HDR from Mount Diablo State Park. 

These are all the photos for today. I hope you have enjoyed viewing them.  Please don't forget to share the blog post with your friends and family members! Also, if you want to get notifications when I post up more photos, "Like" us on Facebook or follow me on Twitter and Google+. These links can also be found on the top of the right sidebar.

American Whitewater Expeditions

Remember the star trails I did last time? If you missed it, you can see it here. Here are the other photos from my camping trip. Obviously, I did not bring my camera along on the rafting trip, so there will be no photos from that. These photos was from around the campsite. I took both regular and HDR photos there. I hope you enjoy viewing these!

If you want to see my star trails, you can see it here. There is also a tutorial on how you can do star trails on there too.

Full Resolution Photos and Prints: If you want to see full resolution photos or buy prints of any of the photos you see, they are up on my portfolio for viewing. See my best photos from that trip here. See all of my photos from that trip here.

There were some baby ducklings in the pond near the campsite.
边上一个池塘里的小鸭子。

The duckling in the back was slightly blurred.  

Can't tell if this was due to bad focusing or high ISO, but I thought the slight blur made a great effect for the photo. I suspect the blurring was bad focusing. Should have used AI SERVO on my camera instead of ONE SHOT.

Another shot of the ducklings.

 American river, and a house in the background. I thought the golden color of the sun as it was setting for the day looked great on the house. 

A photo of the sunset in Placerville. This was taken after the rafting trip on the way home.
在回家路上拍的日落。

The rest are the HDR compositions I made. In my option, they weren't very good subjects for HDR. LOL Please enjoy.

This is the pond the ducklings was swimming in. I don't think they are in this shot.

A shot of the American River. A 5-stop neutral density filter was used for the shot. 

HDR composition of the house and the river. This time zoomed out a bit. 

This is all the photos for this trip. I hope you have enjoyed viewing those! Again, if you haven't checked out my star trails photo and instructions on how to do one yourself, you can see my post here. Please don't forget to share my blog posts with your friends! If you would like to get notifications next time I post, you can "Like" me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter and Google+. These links can also be found on the top of the right sidebar.

Star Trails Photo/Tutorial

Hello guys, so today, this photo is so special to me, I wanted to make it into a blog post all by itself! This is the result of the first start trails I tried. So a while back, my church hosted a rafting trip with American Whitewater Expeditions in Placerville, CA. Since we camped out for one night, I thought I'd go ahead and do a star trail photo. It was a very clear night anyways... The rest of the photos I took during that trip will come up in the next post. So I hope you enjoy viewing this star trails I did! I would also like to take this opportunity to teach you how to take star trails photography if you are interested. Those will be under the photo. Remember, you can click the photo to view it larger.

If you want to see the rest of the photos I took on this trip, you can view them here.

Full Resolution Photos and Prints: If you want to see full resolution photos or buy prints of any of the photos you see, they are up on my portfolio for viewing. See my best photos from that trip here. See all of my photos from that trip here.

Photo Data:
Exposure: 20 photos X 5 minutes (5 second delay between each)
Focal Length: 17 mm
Aperture: f/5.6
ISO: 100
Artificial Lighting: Very strong LED flashlight to light paint the trees in the foreground.

So how do you do star trails? First off let me tell you some stuff you need to do before you start. The following are required materials for these types of photos:

• Your camera (obviously)
• Full battery
• Tripod (Has to be very sturdy, won't shake in the wind)
• Powerful flashlight (Optional, depends on if you want to light your foreground)
• A red flashlight (So you can see the camera controls with out damaging your night vision)
• Intervalometer with full battery (Sometimes this feature is built-in. Check to make sure. If not, buy one.)
• Fold up chair, or tent (Somewhere you can stay for the duration of the exposure.)
• A friend (Optional, but you will be sitting for a few hours at night, all alone with nothing to do)

Next consider the following in the area you are taking the photo at:

• Are you close to a big city? If you are, you will get light pollution in the photo and it won't look good. You can counteract this later with shorter exposures.
• Is the full moon out? If it is, it might wash out your photo. Can be compensated with shorter exposures and the camera facing away from the moon.
• Is the sky clear of clouds? If it isn't, your photo might not turn out that good.
• Is the North Star in your photo? Depending on what effect you are trying to achieve, take this into consideration. If you have trouble finding the North Star, go get the Google Sky Map app for you Android device.
• Is there any good foreground in the photo? You will need some foreground for a good star trails photo or it will be boring. 
• Is it hot outside? If it's hot outside, your camera sensor heats up more quickly which in turn causes image noise.
• Is there any bright light sources around the area you are taking the photo at? Like me, I was at a camp site, so there was people walking around with flashlights. A little bit of light shouldn't be a problem, but if a person uses a light in the same place for too long, just go ahead and tell them what you are doing, and nicely ask them to turn it off. 
• Is it likely someone will bump the tripod during the exposure? If it's very likely, find a new place. By bumping the tripod, I also mean yourself! Make sure you place your chair or what ever you will be resting on while you take the photo far enough away from the camera and tripod that you won't accidentally bump into it during the exposure. 
• Is my battery full? Check that before you start, and make sure it's full! Not half full or 75%, but completely full! Your camera will be locking up the mirror for the entire exposure which will take more power than normal shooting! 

Now that you have checked those things, you have to think of this:

• How long do I have? It is generally recommended you go at least an hour. If you can't stay awake, you might want to reconsider. Stars move about 15 degrees in one hour, so how long you do the exposure for really depends on your lens's field of view. 
• When can I start? Around 30 minutes after sunset. Just make sure you can't see the sun's light in the sky anymore. (Technically moon light is really sunlight, but I'm pretty sure you are smart enough to figure out what I mean.) If you are going hours during the night for these photos, it's recommended you check the time of sunrise for the next day. 
• Should I go for one long exposure or multiple short exposures? (I will go into more detail later in this article.)

Now that you have thought about all that, let's talk about which you should do, one long exposure or multiple short exposures? 

Many beginners may want to try one long exposure but I highly don't recommend you doing this. If you accidently bumped the tripod, it will be very hard to correct if you just have one photo, also your camera is very prone to noise if you have it just take a long one hour exposure. The camera sensor is an electronic component! It will heat up and cause noise! Another reason you should not use one long exposure is if you don't want any airplane trails to show up on your photo, it will be harder to take it out of the final image than if you had multiple shots. 

So what are the pros and cons about using multiple exposures? Well one thing is, your camera will take a few seconds to record the photo down once it finishes a photo, and you have to wait before the next photo can start. This leads to the final product looking like the star trails being dotted lines because the camera missed a little bit of it's rotation during the image recording! If you shrink the photo a bit, or use some other software to fix those, it will be barely noticeable, so don't worry. That is the only con to the multiple shot method, well other than it will also use up more memory card space. That's about it, let's move on to the pros. Don't like airplane trails in your final image? Just take out the exposure with that in there before you combine! Bumped your tripod during your exposure? Take out the bad images before you combine! Taking multiple exposures will also help lower image noise which is great! If you do use this method, I recommend you let each exposure run about 5-20 minutes. I can't tell you exactly how long to take the photo for, but one easy to to try is to use a higher ISO for a few test shots, then work your way down. Every time you cut your ISO in half, you multiply the exposure you used by 2 (More details below). Then do the math on how many exposures you want to do! Program your Intervalometer to take the photos. Don't touch the tripod during the shots! Always make sure you set some delays between your photos so your camera has enough time to write to the memory card before beginning the next photo.

More on the high ISO testing. So here is the bottom line:
If your shot took 30 seconds at ISO 1600, it will take 60 seconds at ISO 800, or 120 seconds at ISO 400 for you to reach the same effect. Notice how whenever I halved the ISO, I doubled the exposure.

Now that you understand all that, let's teach you how to set up the camera settings for this.

• Long exposure noise reduction should be turned off. Just do this in post processing.
• Set your camera on RAW. There is more work room for Photoshop later on.
• Either first auto focus, than turn the lens to manual focus, or just activate manual focus and do it manually.
• Use a wide aperture. Something between f/5.4 - f/10 is good. If your lens can go wider, do that. Normally in night photography, people tell you to close down the aperture, but with star trails, you open it up wide! Don't forget that. 
• Use the lowest ISO setting available. Remember, this is a long exposure, you don't want to get any more noise! 

Once you got that all done, start the photos and wait. :) Talk to your buddy during the photos. As much as you want to play with your phone or laptop during the photos, please refrain from doing so. It will cause unwanted light in your final product! If you want to light paint the background, make sure you do it in a few of the exposures and not just one. Just incase one doesn't turn out that well.

After the photos are on your computer, open them up in Photoshop via File >> Scripts >> Load Files into Stacks. Then set the layer mode to lighten for all the layers and you are done! Sadly, I don't know how to do noise removal or filling in the gaps in post processing. If you need to do that, I recommend you go Google for a method. If you know how to do it, please tell me in the comments below.

This is it for this tutorial! If I missed anything, just tell me in the comments below. :) Thank you for reading! Please don't forget to share my blog posts with your friends! If you would like to get notifications next time I post, you can "Like" me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter and Google+. These links can also be found on the top of the right sidebar.