Milky Way

We’ve had a couple of moonless nights recently and I’ve got to see the night sky on all its glory. We’ve got proper ‘F*ck me’ sky’s at night where we are and you can see the Milky Way and everything. I obviously had to try and photograph it.

I had tried this about 10 years ago on a pissed up night in the Andes. The skies there were magnificent. I had come back from a restaurant after downing a bottle of wine or two and thought “I must get a shot of the Milky Way”. I grabbed my tripod and camera and set off into the pitch black to a field away from where my accommodation was. At this point I realised I had left my shutter lock at the hotel. “Nevermind, I’ll just stand here with my finger on the shutter release button” I thought. In my drunken state I estimated I should be stood there for about 15 minutes and because I didn’t have a watch or mobile phone with me I would have to count the seconds, 900 in total!

I stood there, probably wobbling about all over the f*ckin place, when all of a sudden 2 large paws landed on my shoulder and I felt the breath of an animal on my neck. I became sober immediately. WTF was this? A bear? A cougar? A Jaguar? Then I saw an animal in front of me too running about, it stopped and barked at the other animal. Luckily it was a pair of rather large Labradors wanting to play. As quick as I became sober I became pissed again and began to wrestle with the dogs.

I didn’t get a half decent photo of the night sky.

Now I’ve realised you need to take the photo in as little a time as possible. Ideally no more than 30 seconds. So I bang up the ISO to as high as it can go, open the aperture as wide as it’ll go and Bob’s yer uncle. I’m going to do more over the forth coming months.

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