I have been there and clicked some pics last summer. I reached that location at 10:00 PM and waited until 2:30 AM for the Milky way to rise & show up behind the lighthouse. I am sure that would have been the reason.
Will happily go again once I get pliukait's Sigma.
Nicely done - and it looks like a genuine night scene without pumped up shadow recovery. All in all I'd say this was a worthwhile 3:30am investment! Dave
Extraordinary shot, love the light rays from the lighthouse without interfering with the Milky Way. Great job, hope you got a good nap after. Thanks for sharing. Bob
For those of us who haven't tried this before, is this a composite shot, or did you expose mostly in the time between the lighthouse flashes? I had thought that the light from the lighthouse would be far in excess of the Milky Way light and hence of DR of the sensor, but maybe I'm wrong?
Thank you all for the very kind words! I'm glad you all enjoyed viewing this one.
The "few minutes to spare" at 3:30 am was because I needed to meet @Mitesh at 5 am to find some black bear and we wanted to get in there early before daylight.
I was sleeping in the back of my truck (with cap) but a few skeeters snuck in and kept buzzing my ears all night so I got up at 3am and figured I would hussle around and go shoot this lighthouse, which wasn't far from my base camp. I did a little research before the trip and knew this night was my best possible option and where the core was going to be. The weather cooperated so it was game on.
I probably didn't spend more than 15-20 minutes on location as I was running out of time and had a 45 minute drive to meet Mitesh. It didn't help matters any to hear a pack of Coyotes off to my right less than 200 yards away yipping and fighting over something.
I went back the next morning but was late as Nautical dawn was already hitting by 4am when I arrived. I think I came away with some interesting shots from that morning and will post those as well.
Again, thanks to all of you for the kind words. It's much appreciated.
jaggedhorizon wrote:
That's a beautiful image, well done!
For those of us who haven't tried this before, is this a composite shot, or did you expose mostly in the time between the lighthouse flashes? I had thought that the light from the lighthouse would be far in excess of the Milky Way light and hence of DR of the sensor, but maybe I'm wrong?
No this is a single image exposure, no blending and mostly just LR adjustments were made.
I was actually pleasantly surprised to see the inverted light beams emanating from the lighthouse. I could not see it with my naked eyes but quickly noticed it on my LCD screen after the exposure. This was caused by the metal frame work surrounding the light itself.
As for the timing of the light and exposure, I simply went straight to my default settings for this type work and ran with it. I did lose some detail in the brightest part of the light but I wasn't concerned with that as the MW was my main priority.
This was shot with the Canon 6DII and cheap manual Rokinon 14mm f/2.8
