One of the things about astrophotography is that it is weather dependant. You need clear skies and you definitely need to be away from all the light pollution in the city. Luckily last night was the perfect night to get out to shoot some photos of the Milky Way. But where to go? Well, not too far away is a dark sky preserve called Torrance Barrens. It is one of the closer spots to the city for some really dark skies. My friend Nigel came along with me and after arriving we scouted out a few locations. Once we selected our preferred spot we set up our gear and waited for night to fall.
View to the sky
When night finally fell and we started seeing the stars out in full force it was time to start shooting. I tried a little light painting in the photo above to get some light on the foreground. I had some technical difficulties with the light I brought so I ditched it and continued the rest of the night without it.
Enormity
At one point I decided to take multiple shots of the Milky Way to create the panoramic image above. It ended up being 32 photos that had to be stitched together and straightened out. Whew!
Checking out the views
Before packing up and heading home we decided to have a little fun and add ourselves to the photos with our headlamps. We found it a little difficult to stay as still as possible but for our first attempt we did pretty good.
