We were meant to go down to the Jurassic Coast for just the day one day last week at my friend Natalia's request. But the evening before the weather report said there would be a chance of a clear sky. Knowing that there would be minimal light pollution I suggested we venture down that night to perhaps capture the Milky Way over Durdle Door and happily the gamble paid off. Well, sort of. The clouds did eventually move in.But before they did we hurried down to the beach, seemingly the only ones there, and beheld the magnificent Milky Way above us. As I had the car, I took my Nikon DSLR as well as my mirrorless Olympus gear. For the Nikon I took the only wide angle lens I had for it, the Tokina 11-16mm F/2.8. The DSLR is a full frame model and the Tokina is a DX lens but, as I have noted in the past, it will work as a 16mm prime on the camera without vignetting. Having a larger sensor, the Nikon was more sensitive at picking up the stars than my Olympus. So how did I get these shots? I mounted the DSLR and Tokina onto a small Slik Pro III tripod on the pebble beach, set the focus manually to infinity at F/2.8 and ISO 5000. As I couldn't see anything through the viewfinder I took a couple of test shots to establish a correct horizon and then I took some exposures at 20 seconds. For the first shot with Natalia, I positioned her in the centre of the arch, asked her to look up in wonder and remain still for a count of 20 while I light-painted Durdle Door with an LED torch for a few seconds. The clouds had started moving in but we managed to get the Milky Way in the shot.For the other Milky Way shots I simply repositioned the camera along its trajectory, easily visible with the naked eye. The images were processed in Lightroom, mainly with adjustments to contrast to accentuate the Milky Way. After making these shots we slept for a few hours overnight in the car before enjoying the sunrise and spending the day, as intended, on the beach under a hot sun. I will present some photos from the daytime there in a separate post. For now, I hope you enjoy these shots of our galaxy as a reminder of how small, insignificant and yet special we are.
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Sabrina RaymondAug 30, 2016 01:04 PM
Wow! These are stunning!
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