FenlandPaul

7 minutes ago, clarkpm4242 said:

The 11/10 video is highly recommended viewing!!!

As for the images, am favouring the meteors, starglow Plough and lightning storm  😀

 

Very kind of you, Paul.  I love that image too - simple and very much tells the story of the night.

Our Summer break this year was spent in the north west of Italy, nestled in the Ligurian Alps, which straddle the border with France.  I'd scouted an interesting-looking mountaintop location that I thought might make an interesting (and dark!) place from which to watch the peak of the Perseids.  At just over 7,000 feet, Monte Saccarello is one of the highest peaks in the region and is on the route of the Alta Via dei Monti Liguri, a long-distance trail and pilgrimage route.  Near the top of the mountain is a huge bronze statue of Christ the Redeemer, which I thought might make an interesting foreground.

I had no intention of hiking up with all my kit, so I'd spent a few days trying to ascertain how feasible it would be to drive up in a 4x4; I found a plausible route and some videos online that suggested it was at least possible somehow to get a vehicle to the top, so I set off in the mid afternoon, allowing myself plenty of time to look for alternative routes should my plan hit any hurdles.  After a 2 hour drive to the foot of the mountain, I started along the rock and dirt trail that hugged the side of the peak and crawled up the numerous hairpin bends as the views got better and better.  It was a lot of fun!  After just over an hour of driving I reached the summit ridge just as the Sun was setting; the blue-tinged haze in the valleys contrasted beautifully with the golden mountaintops with towering thunderheads in the distance providing some drama on the horizon.  

As I made some dinner, the sky began to darken quite rapidly and I was surprised at just how early the Milky Way core seemed to punch through the twilight.  At this altitude, all of the moisture and muck in the atmosphere was safely beneath me and the sky took on a transparency that I've not seen in years - it was wonderful.

I experimented with a few compositions and timelapses over the course of the night, really trying to make the most of the dark and clear skies for some more detailed Milky Way tracked shots.  It seemed that Perseids were dropping every few minutes and the intensity picked up noticeably after midnight.  The storms in the central Alps raged all night, really adding to the excitement of the evening, and then in the early hours I looked with disbelief as my camera started to fill with the beautiful pinks of the aurora - something I never dreamt I would capture from this part of the world; I could even make out a clear brightening of the sky with my eyes.  

As I think you probably know, it's the adventure of being out in the landscape at night that I find most compelling about nightscape photography.  I love getting great images, but for me the experience trumps everything.  Nights like this one live on so vividly in my memory and make all of the effort worthwhile.

You can follow along on the night's adventure in the film I shot, which also contains all the timelapses from the night, over on my YT channel, and linked below.  Hope you enjoy, Paul. 📷✨😊

✨Calling them Each by Name✨

📷 Canon 6Da, Sigma Art 24mm f/1.4 lens and MSM Nomad tracker

🔧 Sky: 2-pane vertorama - each pane 10x120s tracked at ISO800 and f/2.8. Foreground: 30s, f/2.8, ISO4000
🎞️ Sky stacked in Sequator. Stitched, edited and blended in Lightroom, Photoshop and Starnet++


✨Pondering with the Ancients✨

📷 Canon 6Da, Samyang 35mm f/1.4 lens and MSM Nomad tracker

🔧 Sky: 11x120s tracked at ISO800 and f/2.8. Foreground: 6s and 30s, f/2.8, ISO6400
🎞️ Sky stacked in Sequator. Edited and blended in Photoshop and Starnet++

✨Raining Fire✨

📷 Canon 6Da, Sigma Art 24mm f/1.4 lens and Kase Starglow Filter

🔧 Sky: 1x15s at ISO3200 and f/2.8. Meteors: 5x4s at ISO6400 and f/1.4. Foreground: 300s, f/3.5, ISO1600
🎞️ Edited and blended in Photoshop 

✨In its Element✨

📷 Canon 6Da, Sigma Art 24mm f/1.4

🔧 15 x 15s at ISO4000 and f/2.8
🎞️ Stacked in Sequator. Edited in Photoshop 

✨Unbound Sweet Influence✨

📷 Canon 6Da, Sigma Art 24mm f/1.4 and MSM Nomad tracker

🔧 Sky: 13x120s tracked at ISO800 and f/2.8.  Foreground: 120s at ISO1600 and f/2.8
🎞️ Stacked in Sequator. Edited and blended in Photoshop and Starnet++

✨Immersed✨

📷 Canon 6Da, Canon 50mm f/1.8 and MSM Nomad tracker

🔧 Sky: 17x120s tracked at ISO800 and f/2.8.  Foreground: 8s at ISO6400 and f/2
🎞️ Stacked in Sequator. Edited and blended in Photoshop and Starnet++

✨Atmospheric Excitement✨

📷 Canon 6Da, Sigma Art 24mm f/1.4

🔧 Single 8s exposure at ISO6400 and f/1.4
🎞️ Edited in Photoshop

Well captured!  It sounds like it was a very fleeting event (I just missed it, poking my camera out at 4.50am just as the burst had subsided).

I particularly like the misty foreground - very atmospheric and very East Anglian!

Interesting project, Paul! I imagine any client would be chuffed to bits with them.

I did a similar star trails project for the owner of a villa we stayed at in Spain last year. I’d hoped it would lead to discounts on future bookings, but sadly not - must tighten my terms and conditions! 🤣

Nicely done. It seemed to be a short and sharp display - by the time I was outside at 5am it had all but gone, but I’ve seen timestamps at 4.25am that show beautiful colours punching through the moonlight.

Lovely shots, Mike, and a stunning part of the world that’s very definitely on my list!!

Oooh, that’s very nice. Quite the display!

Nice!

Well done, Michael. Great capture. I had some colour here at dusk, but it faded quite rapidly.

That red band is a SAR arc I believe.

21 minutes ago, Daniel-K said:

top work Paul 🙂 

Thanks very much, Daniel - very kind.

8 minutes ago, AstroNebulee said:

One word Paul - STUNNING! Can't say anymore than that. Thank you for such a wonderful description and video (which I'm about to watch). 

I hope you had a lovely holiday 😊

Cheers 

Lee 

Thanks Lee - very kind of you. It was an awesome holiday, thanks, and I'm looking forward to sharing the next video, which ended up being one of the best astro adventures I've ever had!

14 minutes ago, Ouroboros said:

Wow! I’m very much impressed with all  that.  I felt as though I was there! I was most impressed by the realisation  that you not only did the night photography but you also film yourself doing it. How you go about doing that would be very interesting  - though that would need to be shot from a second perspective.   I know if it were me I have enough trouble wrestling with the photography task itself let alone filming myself doing it. Well done. Excellent. Nice resultant pics too.  

Thank you 😊. As it happens I've often talked with other people who do these nighttime videos about making a video about how we make the videos.  But we'd concluded that the audience would be very much niche-within-a-niche-within-a-niche!

When I first started making them, it was very distracting and disorganised and definitely interrupted the flow of photography. But I now apply the mindset that I'm going out primarily to make a film about the adventure under the night sky, of which photography is a part - somehow changing that mindset means I find the hassles of making the video much more palatable and I'm more likely to be willing to climb up a hill, set the video camera up, go back down the hill, and then walk back up it all to get just 3 seconds of video in the final edit!  If I didn't approach it that way, I think I would have given up by now! 🤣

In the middle of August, we had our family holiday in the Ligurian Alps, in the north west of Italy, just over from the border with France. As we were up in the hills, we explored various rivers and valleys for interesting swimming spots, one of which was a stunning spot above the picturesque village of Rocchetta.  About a 20 minute hike up from the village was a lovely pool into which spilled a waterfall.  Swimming to cool down in the late afternoon became a pattern we enjoyed and it was particularly good fun to jump off the waterfall.  I caused a lot of amusement doing this as my physique (it's not just my camera that's full frame) and many years of honing my cannonball technique seemed to be the perfect match for the occasion.

One evening I decided to head up to the waterfall to make a couple of images.  The hike up, with 16kg of camera gear on my back, was fairly tough, with plenty of hands-on-rock action, and back and forth to take b-roll shots for the video, ensuring that by the time I arrived I was soaked through and very hot.  But it was wonderful to be there at night, with the constant roar of the waterfall drowning out all but the loudest nocturnal wildlife.

My first image was a star trails shot above the waterfall.  I had in mind a fantasy-like shot emphasising the tree-lined valley, the lush vegetation and rocks behind the waterfall and the flow of the water.  While that was shooting, I headed further down the ravine, mindful that the rocks were sometimes exceptionally slippery, in order to capture the Milky Way as it stood vertically between the steep valley sides.  Conscious that it wasn't the sort of place where I could easily get help, I let discretion be the better part of valour and when the rocks started to get more challenging, and the consequences of a slip more painful, I opted to take my shot from further up the valley than would have been ideal.  In this location, the Milky Way was not quite lining up in the same way it would 50 yards downstream, so I battled briefly with my conscience before electing to make a composite image.  Given the valley sides were so steep that I couldn't see Polaris, I had to move to another location to take my tracked sky shots in any case.

After making that second image, I had about half an hour before I'd gathered as much star trail data as I wanted, so I decided to take a nighttime dip under the waterfall.  Lying on my back in the water, with the white noise of the waterfall, staring up at the beautifully dark sky above my head was one of the most wonderful experiences - the very essence of the adventures I seek in the landscape at night, and a fantastic way to cool down.  

I made a film of the whole night, which you can find here - do pop over and check out my other Nightscape Journal videos too if you like that sort of thing!

Thanks, Paul. 😊

✨Whirlpools✨

📷 Canon 6D with Samyang 14mm f/2.8
🔧 Sky: 382x20s @ f/2.8 and ISO800 | Foreground: 1x120s @f/4 and ISO3200

🎞️ Edited and assembled in StarStax and Photoshop

✨The Silver River✨

📷 Canon 6Da with Sigma Art 24mm f/1.4 lens and MSM Nomad tracker
🔧 Sky: 12x120s tracked @ f/4 and ISO800 | Foreground: 3x120s @f/2.8 and ISO6400 - 3 shot vertorama

🎞️ Sky stacked in Sequator. Edited and assembled in Photoshop, Lightroom and Starnet++

Very nice, Paul. By no means bludgeoned - looks great to me. 👌

Love those, Danny - very nice indeed. Such a great feeling getting out after a drought!

Looks like an absolutely super display!!

Not sure how I missed these initially - fantastic , Paul. Love the colours and great to have got the lightning too. 👌

Lots of nice meteors there!!

I assume, like most, you’re still having to pinch yourself using the words “Perseids and Aurora”!

Nice one, Lee. Plenty going on in that shot!!

Absolute keeper than Aurora shot! Brilliant. 

Beautiful - very nice indeed.

Very nice indeed, Geraint. Looks like the aurora was wonderfully vivid there!

Paul

That’s fantastic, Lee - one for the wall of the station I’d think!!

Wow, at f/1.4 that looks remarkable, Michael! Nice edit. 👍

On the southern side of the Wash - the great notch of North Sea that separates the bulge of East Anglia and the Lincolnshire coastline up to the Humber - is a marshy landscape that is under constant assault. Day after day, it is pounded relentlessly by military planes from the UK, US and other "friendly" countries that use RAF Holbeach as a live-fire bombing range.  There are frigates that have been beached on the northern side of the marshes to simulate seaborne prey, and large targets - very similar to those on an archery range, but on a colossal scale - dot the marshes somewhat incongruously.

I knew nothing of this place until it caught my eye during an evening of poring over Google Earth, trying to find interesting foreground subjects within striking distance of home and ideally away from the worst of the light pollution.  What interested me in particular was the control tower, perched on the edge of the marsh overseeing each day's oblivion within the vast flatlands laid out before.  What excited me even more was there appeared to be a public footpath passing right next to it.

After checking the MOD website for any planned nighttime exercises (I suppose that would have made interesting light painting!) I headed up across the Fens one balmy July evening, arriving as the golden hour subsided into the deep blues of twilight.  To my delight, there didn't appear to be any outside lights around the control tower and a relatively short walk from the car got me right up close to it.  Nevertheless, I was in a heightened state of alert during the evening, half expecting the military police to turn up and ask what I was up to - I was fairly sure I wasn't trespassing, but uniformed armed men with dogs have a habit of making you question your judgement and previous conclusions.  Thankfully, I never had to explain myself.

The night became increasingly troubled by cloud, and my planned star trails image never made it beyond a rather disappointing timelapse of clouds over the tower.  But in the gaps in the cloud I was able to make a couple of images with different aspects, one to the south with the Milky Way and a lovely reflection in the creek in the marsh, and one to the north north east with Perseus and Cassiopeia.   I'll definitely be back to this place - I think it would, be great with Orion and Barnard's Loop over it!

As usual, I made a film of the night, which I've linked below, to take you along for the adventure.  Hope you enjoy!. 😊

✨TARGET PRACTICE✨

📷 Canon 6D (astro-modified) with Sigma Art 24mm f/1.4 lens and MoveShootMove Nomad tracker

🔧 Foreground: 1x30s exposure at ISO2000 and f/5. Sky: 19x 60s tracked exposures at f/2.5 and ISO800

🎞️ Sky stacked in Sequator. Edited and blended in Photoshop and Starnet++

✨LOOKOUT✨

📷 Canon 6D (astro-modified) with Sigma Art 24mm f/1.4 lens and MoveShootMove Nomad tracker

🔧 Foreground: 1x30s exposure at ISO800 and f/2. Sky: 15x 60s tracked exposures at f/2 and ISO800

🎞️ Sky stacked in Sequator. Edited and blended in Photoshop