I am continually amazed by the amount of light modern digital cameras can pull in. We have gone from the days when cameras struggled to capture what we could see to being able to photograph things almost invisible to the naked eye. Milkyway photography is a great example of this. While just staring at the night sky is a reward in itself, using a camera to amplify what is there can have amazing results. However they do require a little bit of processing on computer bring out those amazing images we see on the web.
Original raw image from the camera after stitching two images together. Pretty but not really spectacular.
Nothing has really been added or subtracted from the original image. Some distortion from the stitching process has been removed and then it really is just a process of amplifying the light that has been captured in the digital image while trying to keep the dark bits, well dark. Still learning lots about doing this, but got lots of hints from David Magro whose workshop I was at when I captured this image earlier in the week. Essentially to get the final image below involved adjusting the dehaze, clarity and contrast sliders in Lightroom, using luminosity masks in Photoshop to burn in the lights and dodge the darks as well as removing noise, adding some vibrancy to the finished image and increasing the exposure in the foreground.
Petrel Cove, South Australia, Canon Eos 5D IV, EF 16-35mm f2.8L II, 16 mm, ISO3200 f2.8 30s, 2 photo stitch
While this image is not amazing for lots of reasons, I do love that I have caught the Milky Way, our two neighbouring galaxies and the bioluminescence in the surf in one shot. All in all feeling quite happy with my nights work.