Juxtapose: West Grinstead Star Trails

March 6th, 2024, brought one of those magical misty nights in West Grinstead, West Sussex. I'd been scouting this twisted, gnarled tree for weeks—its distinctive shape silhouetted against the sky made it perfect for star trail photography. When low mist settled into the valley on this clear March night, I knew the conditions would create something special: the juxtaposition of earthbound fog and celestial motion.

West Grinstead sits in the Low Weald of West Sussex, an area of rolling hills and valleys where mist often forms on clear nights as cold air settles into the low-lying areas. This weathered tree stands alone on a hillside, its twisted branches reaching skyward like gnarled fingers. The title 'Juxtapose' captures the contrasts in this image—stillness versus motion, earth versus sky, the transient mist versus the eternal stars, life's finite nature versus the universe's infinity.

The technical challenge was significant. With mist present, I needed to carefully balance exposure to show both the fog-filled valley and the stars above. Using my RF 15-35mm lens at 20mm and f/2.8, I captured 489 separate exposures of 20 seconds each over 171 minutes—nearly three hours standing in the cold March night. At ISO 800, each frame gathered enough starlight while keeping the mist's subtle glow from overexposing.

The mist created this ethereal atmosphere, blanketing the valley below while the tree stood above it like a sentinel. Meanwhile, the stars traced their circular paths around Polaris overhead, completely unaffected by the earthly fog below. Stacking 489 frames revealed these sweeping star trails—the same stars that have wheeled above this West Sussex hillside for millions of years, indifferent to the transient mist that forms and dissipates each night.

Standing there for nearly three hours as my camera clicked away every 20 seconds, I watched the mist shift and flow through the valley while the tree remained motionless and the stars maintained their steady rotation. It was mesmerizing—three completely different timescales playing out simultaneously: the mist moving minute by minute, Earth rotating hour by hour, and the tree's growth measured in decades.

When you look at this photograph, I want you to feel those juxtapositions—standing in the misty West Sussex countryside beside a twisted tree, watching 171 minutes of Earth's rotation traced in star trails above, where the ephemeral fog of one March night meets the eternal motion of the cosmos in the Low Weald.