sachinus2010

Live from Mars

This composition was in my Dream List since last few years. Last year my attempt failed since I didn't know the exact spot from where I could get the Milky...
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This composition was in my Dream List since last few years. Last year my attempt failed since I didn't know the exact spot from where I could get the Milkyway Arch. This time, I had done enough planning, study and maintained all the info together at one 'Place' on PicnPlace. When I got this chance couple weeks back, I took a 6 hour one side drive to this place. I knew exactly where to shoot from coz I had the GPS coordinates stored on PicnPlace. PicnPlace is an app available for iOS and Android cell phones. #PicnPlaceApp

And I must admit, my inspiration was Wayne's (Wayne Pinkston) picture posted on 500 pix few years back.

About the Photograph:

This came out to be one of the most difficult shots for me. At this location, there's not enough ambiance light, but a weird light pollution too. The area is vast and it wasn't easy for me to place LLLs and light up the landscape.

So I did something differently. I took the landscape foreground pano pictures just before the moonset and Milkyway Panos after moonset. The camera fixed on the tripod ... and the tripod not moved once setup.
Created a Pano for foreground and then one for the Milkyway and then carefully aligned and blended it.

Details:

Foreground is a 11 shot Pano taken before moonset @ F2.8 - ISO100 - SS 18

Milkyway (started shooting 40 mins after moonset) - This is 12 shot Pano ... To reduce the effects of high ISO, each of these 12 shots is a stack of 10 shots @ F2.8 - ISO 8000 - SS 17sec.

Total of 131 pictures to capture this to my perfection.

Milkyway stacking done on Sequator.

Stitching the Panos, Blending them and further post processing in PS & LR.

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