Starry Night

After seeing many incredible starry night photos on Instagram (Manuel, danke für die Inspiration), I wanted to see if I was also able to create such captivating images myself. So I ventured out one late December evening (or night to be more precise) and managed to capture this shot. Although not even close to some of the images I have seen, I am very happy with the result, also given this is my very first try.

I have been wanting to try my hand at some astrophotography for a while now, and when a clear, moonless night presented itself last December, I went out to photograph some of them stars. So at about 1 in the morning I hop in my car and drive to Pobiti Kamani, or Stone Forest, only about 30 minutes away from where I am staying. After a lot of trial and error I managed to get a few shots that were halfway descent and after about 3 hours in -6°C (21°F) and losing all feeling in my hands I decided to call it quits. It turns out that finding a composition and focus is extremely hard in almost absolute darkness if the display of your camera does not adjust with your settings.

After coming home I found out that actually making sense of all my shots was also a lot harder than I thought. Many internet searches and a few weeks later I had downloaded a program to help me, and had started experimenting. What I ended up with in the end was a stack of about 25 images of 20 seconds each, with varying brightness (lesson learned here, not good), spanning about 30 minutes in total. I also found that I liked star trails much more than just small dots for this photo.

What do you guys think, somewhat ok for a first try? Do you want to see more starry images?

I hope you enjoy my photos as much as I do. If you do, why not follow me on Instagram: @jackoleenders. It will help me out greatly!