10 STEPS TO AWESOME ASTRO SHOTS
The universe is back in fashion. Everywhere you look there are astonishing images of the night sky. Visit Instagram and you’ll see the Milky Way and the northern lights arching across the sky above beautiful landscapes, while NASA and the Hubble Space Telescope fill the internet with close-ups of planets, galaxies, nebulae and sparkling star clusters.
All that takes expensive equipment and trips to exotic places, right? Wrong. With a DSLR or mirrorless camera – and even a compact camera if it has a full Manual mode – you can take incredible images at night.
Night-sky photography is all about taking long exposures, but there are two distinct disciplines; deep-space astrophotography and nightscapes. The former is largely the reserve of astronomers and involves the purchase and use of telescopes. It’s an expensive and time-consuming pursuit that involves stacking and processing video frames, and also requires travel in order to be under the darkest skies.
That’s not what we’re concentrating on here. Instead, you could say that we’re exploring nightscapes; landscape photographs that feature the night sky. You can just point your camera up and take images of stars, but the end result is not likely to be very interesting. It’s far better to craft a nicely composed image with an unusual celestial backdrop.
Via star trails, the Milky Way, the ethereal northern lights and much more, we’ll learn how – and just as importantly when and where – to become a proficient nightscape photographer. So get your eyes to the skies!
Jamie Carter is the authorand edits
