Photographer Shoots a Self-Portrait with Star Trails

We recently shared a 52-week photo challenge you can do to improve you skills over the course of a year. The challenge for week #1 was “self portrait,” and photographer Trevor Mahlmann completed it by creating this eye-popping photo, titled “The Universe At My Feet.”

Mahlmann is an engineering student at Purdue University whose passion and knack for photographer have attracted quite a bit of attention in recent times. Last year he photographed the ISS from 40,000 feet in the seat of an airplane, and a few months later he shot another one in a self-portrait while on the ground.

For this latest photo, Mahlmann took out his new Canon 7D Mark II with a Canon 8-15mm f/4L, set it up (15s exposures at f/3.5 and ISO 400), and had it continuously take pictures. After 5.9 hours, the 32GB memory card got filled up with 1,424 RAW photos. After merging the images together with a base photo of himself, the self-portrait above is what resulted.

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Image creditsPhotographs by Trevor Mahlmann and used with permission. You can find more of his work on Instagram and Twitter.