Shooting the Stars
Last night I attended the meeting of the Jefferson County Photography Club in Charles Town. John Kracke presented some images and discussion about photographing stars and star trails, even under local light polluted skies. He offered some interesting ideas and inspired me to go back into my archives to see what I had.
Dark skies are one of the things that people say are essential for this kind of work and I had the good fortune to have some great dark skies in North Dakota when I was there in 2015.
People have seen my “Milky Way over Tunbridge, North Dakota” but during that shooting session I captured a few others that have been sitting on the hard drive for three and a half years. After going back and finding these, I really want to do more!
(Click on the image to see a larger version)
September is a great time to photograph the Milky Way in the Northern Hemisphere. Technical: Olympus EM-5 MkII, M.Zuiko 12mm f/2 lens; ISO 1600, 25 seconds @ f/2.
This image, with slightly different framing shows one of the most dense concentration of stars in the Milky Way. This was captured at ISO 3200. That extra stop of exposure enhanced the incredible cloud of starts near the center of our galaxy. Technical: Olympus EM-5 MkII, M.Zuiko 12mm f/2 lens; ISO 3200, 25 seconds @ f/2.
Just above and to the left of center is the great galaxy M31, glowing in the midst of the star field. Amazing to be able to capture it with a small digital camera and a “normal” lens. Technical: Olympus EM 5MkII, Panasonic-Leica 25mm f/1.4; ISO 3200, 15 seconds @ f/1.6.
Light, Shadow, Form, and Texture 