On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.
From the exotic to the familiar, whether youāre traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
š¾BillinGlendaleCA
I’ve been shooting nightscapes featuring the Milky Way for almost 7 years, shooting with 4 differenty cameras.Ā First was with the Samsung NX500, then the NX1 which were smaller sensor cameras.Ā Last year I moved to a full frame camera with the Sony A7iv which has better light gathering abilities as well as a wider field of view.
In July, I added the astro converted A7r to my toolkit.Ā This was turning point in my astrophotography journey: first, when I took my first shots of the Milky Way, everything was red, so I had to set a custom white balance to get everything to look “normal”; second, I started to take more narrow field shots of nebula and galaxies(you’ve seen some of those here at On The Road).Ā The later change in focus, lead to considering different processing software than I’d been using in the past(Sequator, Lightroom, and Photoshop) as well as differing techniques to process these photos.Ā Most of the experienced deep space use a program called PixInsight at $250 is a bit out of my price range, so I went with Sirli a free open source app which had just been updated with many improvements and leaned how to use it thanks to the wonderful videos by Rich at Deep Space Astro on YouTube.
I’ve been mostly confined to home the past 5 months, first due to a tire on the Prius that I’ve not been able to get replaced, by work, by inclement weather that seems to coincide with my days off from work and the disaster with my star tracker that I mentioned on my last appearance on these pages.
This has given me time to think about some of the shots I’ve taken in the past and ways to make them better.Ā I’ve had two problems with my more recent work(say the last 5 years), light pollution leading to discoloration of the Milky Way and lack of contrast, and color consistency between my shots.Ā The Milky Way core in even my most recent shots has varied with too much yellow and too much red, the portion of the Milky Way above the core was usually hard to see, since increasing the brightness and contrast there affected the rest of the picture, even using a gradient.
I could go with what a fellow photographer on a FB page devoted to the Mojave desert produces, white stars and a dark blue background but I want to capture the violent and chaotic nature of the core of galaxy with stars of many colors drawn to the center of the galaxy by the super massive black hole and the swirling clouds of dust.Ā Sirli helps in two aspects, I have more control over the light pollution by being able to do what is called Background Extraction that removes gradients in the shot and Color Calibration that neutralizes the background color and I can calibrate the same set of stars for each shot.Ā I’m pretty happy with the results.
If you like these shots, consider subscribing to my Patreon at BillinGlendaleCA | creating Photos | Patreon.
I grew up in TO, I never remember seeing the Milky Way.Ā When I was hiking down to Point Mugu State Park, I noticed these peaks and thought it would be a great foreground for a Milky Way shot, if only the light pollution wasn’t so bad.Ā I decided to try anyway.Ā When I arrived the Milky Way was barely visible, and only if you knew where to look.Ā I snapped 40 shots with my NX1 and a foreground shot with the landscape being lit by the street lights behind me.Ā I shared those shots with you last year.Ā With these shots, after background extraction and color calibration, as I stretched the image to brighten it, it was like watching the image start to appear on the photo paper back in my darkroom as a teenager in TO.
This shot was taken about a year ago as I write this, it was the first Milky Way shot I took with my then new Sony A7iv.Ā The location for this shot was about 5 miles south of where I shot the photo in TO.Ā With this shot I was testing out a light pollution filter that have for the A7iv.Ā I was headed to a location along PCH had I had shot a many times before, but thought I’d passed it and stopped at a small turnout along the coast.Ā The spring flowers in the foreground added a nice touch with the Milky Way overhead, the Pacific ocean in the foreground that the lights of Los Angeles in the distance.Ā After shooting this shot, I started home headed south, and found my regular shooting site about 100 yards further down the road.
I really loved the Trona Pinnacles as a foreground, but I will never, I repeat never drive there again in the Prius.Ā The dirt road to get there is filling removing and that’s not the worst, there is a wash filled with sand crossing the road.Ā I felt luck to get in and get out without calling AAA.Ā I’ll park and walk the 5 miles next time or hitch a ride with some friends with a 4WD car.Ā This was 40 exposures shot with the NX1 with the foreground light painted.
I shot this a few years ago with my NX1, I liked the composition so much that I reshot it last year with my Sony A7iv.Ā This was shot on the Boy Scout Camp Road, named for the Boy Scout Camp(Camp Three Falls) at the end of the road.
This was shot at the southern end of Lockwood Valley about 4 miles south of the Boy Scout Camp Road.Ā I’ve shot here many times before, but this was the first time shooting with the A7iv.Ā I was a bit frustrated that day since UPS attempted to deliver my newly converted A7r just a few minutes after I’d left for work, so I’d have to wait until Monday to pick it up.Ā As I turned off Lockwood Valley Road onto the dirt road to park, I noticed this road grader parked to the side and thought it would make an interesting shot with light painting.Ā Folk that I’ve shown this shot to think I Photoshoped(or GenAI’ed) the grader in, but it was really there.
I’d shot at Live Oak Tank a few years earlier with my NX1, this time with the Sony A7iv, I arrived early before the Moon had set to first shoot the foreground and then shoot the Milky Way after the Moon had set for a panorama arch.Ā After I shot the panorama, I took this stacked shot of 16 exposures along with a base foreground shot with several light painting shots.Ā There were some clouds over Palm Springs to the southwest that the light pollution lit up, these clouds only got worse as the morning progressed.
My first trip to Joshua Tree was at Ryan Mountain, the second was here along the Barker Dam road.Ā I like this location due to the rock to the right of the frame that looks like it is flipping the bird at the Milky Way core.
This is the darkest location of all the shots I’m sharing today.Ā This is an ore loader about a quarter of a mile from what was the Kearsarge railway station.Ā I’ve shot both the Winter and Spring/Summer Milky Way from here.Ā This was shot with the A7iv, 16 sky shots, a 4 minute base foreground and light painting shots.
Baud
The shots really pop.Ā Excellent work, Bill.
YY_Sima Qian
Incredible!
Wanderer
The roiling core against calm land is beautifully effective. Ā Great opening scenes for a sci-fi film. Well done.
š¾BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: Thanks the difficult part is figuring out how far to take the background extraction.Ā But it does add quite a bit more contrast to the shots.
@YY_Sima Qian: Thans, much; hopefully I’ll be able to get out soon.Ā I missed the whole Winter Milky Way season.
@Wanderer: Exactly, I wanted to show the violent nature of the core, it gets lost sometimes.
š¾BillinGlendaleCA
We in the astrophotography community lost a true giant at the end of March, Alyn Wallace.Ā Alyn lived for the past year in Istanbul with his girlfriend having left his native Wales.Ā He hosted a monthly YouTube series called “What’s in the Night Sky”, that pointed out events for the next month in the sky that would be interesting to photograph.Ā At the end he would select a topic for the month and invite his viewers to submit their photos and would award a first, second, and third prize.Ā I won second place for my shot of the zodiacal light shot at the Red Cliffs at Red Rock last April.Ā Alyn’s last video was him traveling 4 hours outside of Istanbul to shoot the P12/Pons-Brooks comet between the Andromeda and Triangulum galaxies withĀ some multicolored cliffs in the foreground.Ā From what I’ve gathered, Alyn passed away from a post surgical infection, he was 34.
p.a.
Looking on my phone.Ā When I get home will use larger format!
CCL
Stunning.Ā Thank you for sharing all the tech details.
eclare
Great photos, a lot of work goes into them.Ā I really like the Malibu photo with the glowing ocean.
That is tragic about Alyn, 34 is way too young.
Snarlymon
As always, spectacular shots.
š¾BillinGlendaleCA
@p.a.: I think you’ll find them better on a larger screen.
@CCL: Heh, glad it wasn’t too boring.Ā I’ve been working with this technique for a couple of months.
@eclare: The Malibu shot was pretty tricky to process due to the pervasive light pollution from LA.
@Snarlymon: Thanks much.
Dorothy A. Winsor
Beautiful pics
OzarkHillbilly
Nicely done Bill, very nicely done.
schrodingers_cat
@š¾BillinGlendaleCA: Your photos inspire me to do a galaxy background in one my coloring pages or landscapes. Breathtaking
lashonharangue
Beautiful!
arrieve
Amazing shots as always. Our universe is stunning in every sense of the word.
S Cerevisiae
Spectacular! Love your night sky photos. My friend Travis does beautiful northern lights photography in northern Minnesota, you would love his work. (Shameless plug for the new book Spirits Dancing by Travis Novitsky and Annette Lee, MN Historical Society Press, 2023)
edited to correct publisher
stinger
All the difficulties you’ve encountered over the years have only made the resulting images more spectacular. Thank you for sharing these!
kmax
Bill you stated “I grew up in TO” above.
This is driving me nuts.. the only place I know of with that nickname is Toronto Ontario and I don’t think that fits.
What is TO?
Netto
My first reaction to the first photo was “oh, nice thunderstorm shot.”Ā Just my brain misfiring, I guess.Ā In that and all of these shots, you’ve really done a masterful job of balancing foreground and sky.Ā Maybe not the primary objective of an astrophotographer, but those foregrounds really make the shots pop.
kindness
Kevin Drum does some good astrophotography.Ā Processing after the shot seems to be the main component of clean shots.
How is it that a tire on a Prius can’t be changed?
cope
These are really wonderful pictures. It’s all about the foregrounds as far as I’m concerned. Ā Whenever I have taken photos of stuff in the sky, I have always tried to have some foreground for context.
Thank you and good luck with the Prius
ETA: I just love the pic with the grader in it but I don’t know why.
Mike Mundy
Never visited the Trona pinnacles. But have driven on Trona Road!
Miss Bianca
@kmax: took me a second, too, for the same reasons you cited, but I believe Billin meant “Thousand Oaks” by TO.
J. Arthur Crank
@kmax:Ā Ā TO = Thousand Oaks, I think.
StringOnAStick
I love your work. Perhaps being forced by circumstances to rework older shots has given you some nice rewards!
š¾BillinGlendaleCA
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Thanks much.
@OzarkHillbilly: Thanks, I’m looking forward to what I get this year.Ā I’m going to add some more narrow field work, got my kit all together.
@schrodingers_cat: Ours can work, but take a look at photos of M51, it is two galaxies interacting(I was doing a test of my setup and shot it, but it is a bit tiny with my camera).
@lashonharangue: Thanks, there are amazing things in our night sky.
š¾BillinGlendaleCA
@arrieve: Thanks, there’s more there than meets the eye.
@S Cerevisiae: We don’t often get a view of the northern lights down here in the south, but I might have captured them when I was shooting a panorama last year.Ā Someone in Death Valley got a shot of them close to the horizon the same night I was shooting about 50 miles to the northwest.
@stinger: I think branching out a bit into deep space has helped a lot, it has given me exposure to additional tools.
@kmax: We folk from the Conejo Valley refer to Thousand Oaks as TO.
š¾BillinGlendaleCA
@Netto: There’s a very good astrophotographer in Australia that focuses more on the foreground and his work is something I strive for, but he really doesn’t focus much on the sky.Ā Having done more deep space photography than he has, I do tend to put a bit more importance on getting the sky right.
@kindness: I’ve not seen any of Kevin’s work, but processing the shots in at least 50% of the work in astrophotography.Ā The tire on the Prius can be changed, it was a matter of paying for it.
@cope: I like the mix as well, but really do try and get a sky that pops, so about 50-50 between foreground with light painting(or not) and the sky.Ā One of the managers thought I’d photoshopped the tractor in there, it is really there and light painted.
@Mike Mundy: The pinnacles are about 5 miles down Pinnacle Road from the Trona Road.
š¾BillinGlendaleCA
@Miss Bianca:
@J. Arthur Crank:Ā This is correct.
@StringOnAStick: It is a bit of a combination of having some time when I can’t go out and shoot and looking at new tools that are normally used to deep space work.