A UP Milky Way Eh

Its almost midnight, the campfire is nothing but a few hot coals, you have had a couple drinks, the cool night breeze coming off the lake on a clear night has you thinking its time to get in the sleeping bag right. Not!!! Its time to pull out your camera, find some open sky, and capture some astrophotography.

That exactly what I did on my last night on Drummond Island in the Upper Pennisula of the great state of Michigan. How I got the shot, that's a bit of a story. I learned a little. I know what I wont do next time I capture a milky way shot. And I know what I will do next time. This is the first time I have specifically anticipated on trying to capture the milky way. Before I even set foot on the island I had already done some research and looked at where the milky way was to be in the sky the nights we were there and how late it was in the sky. Using Google Earth's sun/starlight over the terrain function I was able to see where the milky way were to line up.

Now I know that Milky way is going to visible and and really starts to get below the horizon after midnight(I didn't want to stay up that late anyway). Next, I have to hope while I am there that the weather cooperates and that I will get a clear night. I was only going to be there for 3 nights. Night 1 storm clouds are coming in and the sky is overcast. Night 2 scattered clouds with the clouds where the milky way is. Night 3 clear without a cloud in the sky. BINGO!!!!

I go out to a more open area and walk out onto a rock in the lake that get me just far enough out that I can see the milky way over the tallest tree in the center of the milky way. Now the milky way is not exactly an arch in the sky like the composed finished photo shows it. The ends of the milky way at the horizon are approximately 180 degrees apart from each other and the top of the milky way arch is almost directly above you. That's a lot of area to capture in a photo.

So what did I do? I took multiple photos and stitched them together to create the whole photo. In total I took 9 photos with an 8mm lens in portrait orientation. I had a lot of overlap between photos because it is very difficult to see what you have in frame in the dark. If I were to do this again I would use a different lense. I would take more photos with my 24-70 at 24 mm F2.8. I cropped out alot of sky above the milky way that looked very "stretched out" I also think the horizon would be straight if I used the 24 mm focal length.The horizon is hidden behind the trees but is almost mirrors the arch of the milky way. I set the ISO at 6400 with a 20 second exposure for each photo in the stitch. I may next time drop the ISO 1 or 2 clicks while upping the shutter speed 1 or 2 clicks. It depends on the focal length and if I get any trailing.

I got home and was eager to see how this stitched together. Before I stitched the images I first adjusted the white balance of one of the images by cranking both the vibrance and saturation all the way up and then adjusting the white balance settings to where there were equal amounts of yellow and blue along with equal amounts of green and purple. Adjusting white balance this way is a really good way when you really don't have a white object in frame to use as a reference. There is a point where you will see an image that is too warm switch almost immediately to too cool. Same with the tint it will go from a green tinted image almost immediately to a purple tinted image. If you set you slider at those 2 break over points your white balance should be about spot on. Just remember to turn the vibrancy and saturation back down.

After that I adjusted the shadows and highlights slider to give me a little contrast in the milky way. I then synced all 9 images and stitched them together in lightroom.

I did a little warping after it stitched to flatten out the horizon as much as I could. I cropped out the stars above the milky way that looked stretched out and a little on both sides of the image. I have latly not been using standard ratios for images. If i think an image looks better composed with an "odd" ratio then so be it. If I print it, I will make a custom frame for it that will fit it.

After cropping and I did a little dodging and burning in the milky way to bring out a more contrast in the milky way. After dodging and burning I did a few adjustment filters to darkening the area where a street light was in the trees. Turned on noise reduction and played with it to where it didn't look like the stars was a bunch of noise but there wasn't soo little stars that it didn't look like a night sky anymore. After that I adjusted the dehaze function just subtly that it brought out a little more contrast in the milky way.

And that was pretty much it. There might have been a few post changes of the shadows and highlights as I thought fit along with bumping up the vibrancy a hair.

I think the photo came out great. The next time I do a milky way photo I plan to use the 22-75 mm and take a bunch more photos. I think I will use a laser pointer to make it easier to spot the edge of the frame for each photo in the stitch. I think the 8mm warped the image too much. But you live and learn.