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Chasing stars
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Chasing stars



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We love the outdoors and our newly adopted hobby is taking us everywhere! My wife lovingly supports my hobby, i had to try and capture the beautiful Milky way w...
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We love the outdoors and our newly adopted hobby is taking us everywhere! My wife lovingly supports my hobby, i had to try and capture the beautiful Milky way way behind her while she waits patiently for me to do what i love!Captured in the Freestate province in South Africa
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upload_dateJun, 2015

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6 Comments |
Byurat Platinum
 
Byurat June 16, 2015
Very creative photo, I have a question>what back lighting was present? Is this a RAW stack with flash or light from camp fire?
kobusodendaal
kobusodendaal June 17, 2015
Hi,thank you - I have a big soft light torch that i use.
chriswhittington
 
chriswhittington June 17, 2015
fantastic work - love the golden tones and the sky of course :-)
kobusodendaal
kobusodendaal June 17, 2015
:) Thank you for the comment
annemariaucamp
 
annemariaucamp June 17, 2015
Bitter mooi !!
kobusodendaal
kobusodendaal June 17, 2015
Dankie
goodmary
 
goodmary January 15, 2016
What a fun photo, those stars are awesome, looking forward to more of your work
kobusodendaal
kobusodendaal June 18, 2016
HI, Thank you!!
tonycorado
 
tonycorado June 15, 2016
nice colour contrast of the subject and background!
kobusodendaal
kobusodendaal June 18, 2016
HI, Thank you!!
Blondeangelcindy
 
Blondeangelcindy March 12, 2019
wow!

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Tags

#star #night #milky way #adventure
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Behind The Lens

Location

I have only recently became more interested in star photography and have tried a couple of shots every night around the house. One night i felt confident enough to to make an outing out of the interest and went out of town to a family members farm in the country side outside of a small town in South Africa. I went deeper and deeper into the field to minimize light pollution and started experiencing different shots and lighting. This picture was actually captured while i was patiently waiting for a 45 min star trail exposure.

Time

It as around 21:00 at night. For these type of shots you need really dark skies and require you to stay out past bed time :). Unfortunately we could not get far away enough to not have the city lights brightening up my shots, but it worked out well.

Lighting

As i mentioned already it is important to capture shots like these on very dark sky nights, minimum light pollution. Of course you will have to have a subject to draw the attention and therefor need some sort of light source to light it up with. It is quite an interesting exercise, because you end up playing with different lights (warm/cold) and also do a couple of trial runs to experiment with how to light up the subject without over exposing parts of the image.

Equipment

Because you have to slow shutters, 15 - 25 sec, you need a tripod and a remote release. Like i mentioned, this shot was captured when i had my camera set up to capture a star trail, so I used my wife's Canon 350D with a Canon 17-80 lens, with a tripod, remote release and a big torch to light up the subject - O and of course a beautiful wife to sit on the roof f my car :)

Inspiration

3 things: 1. My interest in star photography, it always amazes me that you can capture the light of the milky way on a camera even thou you can not see it with your eyes. 2. My thirst for adventure and (maybe) showing off pictures of where i have been and what i am up to - i am just one of those people who enjoy sharing great moments, even if i have to be creative and create it first! and then on number 3. My wife who is always game for a nice picture! We create moments, and while we waited for the long exposure to finish we played around and created a beautiful moment that will last forever.

Editing

Unfortunately like many of you that do not own expensive professional equipment will know, my cameras are very bad at high ISO's and generate a lot of noise; Therefor i must do some post-processing. On a shot like this i will generally increase the clarity and sharpness and then do some noise reduction. Depending on the colors in the sky, i might adjust the color sliders lightly to give a memorizing look in the stars. Pleased excuse my editing skills in the picture, i am fairly new to light room and did not do a proper job on the picture, i almost ruined it to be perfectly honest. I went back and re-processed the original and it came out spotless, no visible noise or over exposed areas with much more detail. If i can give you a tip, pictures are sometimes closer to perfect than what you might think and chances are that if you are inexperienced like myself, you might just mess it up :)

In my camera bag

Today i never leave the house without my Canon 600D, Canon 50mm 1.8, Canon 17- 85 4-5.6, my favorite travel lens Tamron 18- 250 3.5-6.3 and my most recent add on Sigma 150-600 5-6.3. I also carry in my bag a tripod and a Nissin flash as well as extra memory cards. I have now started to look at filters, but still have a lot to learn. Always consider the weather conditions and go prepared, if you go for night shots, you will most probably stay out late, take a Jacket something to nibble on and a big big flask of coffee!

Feedback

My advice to you would be to firstly get yourself a app on your phone that can give you a direction indication on the milky way, will save you some time and test shots if you cant see it because of light pollution (I use Sky view and it works great!). I would also say plan to stay late, very late; the later it gets the darker the sky and the more vibrant the star light in the sky - you might get the milky way at a lower angel, which will help if you do not have a very wide angle lens. And then lastly capturing stars in a picture is not difficult, give yourself some time to play with different light sources and method to light you subject (trial and error) it might be tricky at first but once you have you can be very creative and be very creative!

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