Monday morning early…. 3am early….. I geared up and headed over to Botany Bay hoping to get in and see if the clear skies would hold. I wanted to photograph the milky way above the trees that are so starkly contrasted against the beach and waves. With the trees leafless branches they would cut a brilliant sillohuette against the starry sky. In preperation I had checked the weather and cloud cover, the tide, the stars (using Stellarium) and determined that 5am – 6am would be perfect. It was about a 2 mile hike to the beach from the gate and then another 1/2 mile out to the trees so I left really early hoping to get there with plenty of time and maybe do some time lapse. At the last minute I decided to throw my beach cruiser (bicycle) on the car, as riding that distance would be a whole lot quicker than walking.

The Adventure Begins

I got there with plenty of time and unpacked my bike and gear. After jumping on my bike and heading off through the trees I realized immendiately that I would have trouble seeing anything. There was absolutely no moon and the trees blocked what little light there was from the stars. So I got my headlamp out and tried to fix it to the handle bars. After flopping around for a bit I decided to hold it and then finally I put it on my head. I was hoping to avoid being totally blinded with only my little puddle of light in the vast darkness. But that wasn’t to be. It was a little eery cruising silently through the woods unable to see much of anything. Eventually I got to my destination and I was able to turn my light to red only.

My excitement level intensified as I got closer and closer to the ocean. There was no light pollution anywhere and the stars were incredible. I had never seen the milky way so visible in this part of the world before. Once I got to the beach I was a little bit unsure what to do. I was too excited. 🙂 After a moment or two and some deep pulls from my water reservoir, I recovered and got to work.

Milky Way over the ocean and trees

This is a single image captured after about an hour of shooting when I was able to get a little closer to the tree. I was shooting at 3200 ISO to get as much deep space color as possible and I knew my post processing techniques could handle the noise that such a high ISO would generate. I got several more images from that early morning and I’m really excited to work them going forward.

I hope you enjoy!

MWBotany

Astrophotography Workshop

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