Milky Way Over Horseshoe Lake

[Andrew McLachlan]

While up at Horseshoe Lake last week I made sure to go out each night to create some starry night images. I did not notice the subtle pinks and greens in this scene until I reviewed the images the next morning...not sure if it is a very subtle aurora borealis or a combination of airglow and light pollution...there is some light pollution visible from the town of Parry Sound, which is many miles away, on the right side of the composition. No mosquitoes were present during the creation of this image :bg3:

Big thanks to Don Lacy for recommending Royce Bair's eBook on photographing the starry sky. It was a huge help to understanding this new learning curve :S3:

Nikon D800
Nikon 18-35mm @ 18mm
ISO 6400
f 3.5 @ 30 seconds ( the stars are not perfect pin-points at this exposure, they did trail a tiny bit )

Look forward to comments.

154950

[Judy Howle]

Wow, Andrew, that's fabulous! A beautiful setting on the lake as well as the superb capture of the stars.

[Rachel Hollander]

Hi Andrew - I very much like the composition and think the colors whatever they are add to it. Only thing I'm not sure about is the reflected stars in the water. They seem a bit brighter and draw the eye. Perhaps tame them a bit.

TFS,
Rachel

[Don Lacy]

Really nice Andrew, I like the balance of the composition and nice color of the Milky Way and light pollution ( which in itself can be really beautiful)

[dankearl]

The foreground is way too dark and uninteresting to me (like most milky way photos).
I actually prefer a bit of moonlight to light up the land, you don't really get the milky way, but you get a starry night scene
which is preferable to me.

[Andrew McLachlan]

Thanks for the comments folks...Dan, I thought the same thing regarding the foreground after posting...will see if I can lighten it up a tad...Rachel, yes there are 3 stars in the middle that do appear brighter than the rest, will try to tone them down or replace them with some of the others that are not quite so bright.

[Morkel Erasmus]

Nice work Andrew - welcome to the exciting world of nightscapes.
I do think Dan has a point, I prefer a strong FG element with subtle light painting to anchor the scene at the bottom.
I would recommend an exposure time of 25 seconds, to cancel out the effect of earth's rotation at wide focal lengths...

[Don Railton]

Very Nice Andrew.

Bit late to the party but i agree that a bit more defination in the reflection will add a lot to this image.. For Astro photography I use 15 to 20 sec exposure with aperture wide open as a starting point, then juggled ISo vs shutter to find a happy compromise between start trails and noise.. Will admit to not having done a lot of astro stuff tho...

DON

[Andrew McLachlan]

Thanks Morkel and Don...much appreciated!