Hug Point skies

Who says you can't shoot the Milky Way in the winter?

 

I've been interested in panoramas for the past four years or so, mostly because of my night shooting. It's really, really difficult to convey the "bigness" of the night sky with a single photo--even one taken with an ultra-wide lens like a 14mm.

 

There were a lot of things happening in this photo that I wanted to capture, and so this full-circle approach seemed appropriate. In the upper right you can see the remnants of some really strong zodiacal light (this photo was taken over TWO HOURS after sunset) that was still glowing in the western skies and nearly reaching out to the Pleaides. The Milky Way is arching from (approximately) west-northwest to east. But what I really like is the different (and clearly stratified) airglow visible in this photo, with the greens being lower on the horizon than the reds. Cool stuff.

 

On the ground, this was taken at Hug Point, Oregon, and you can see the waterfall right on the beach.

 

I would be remiss if I didn't mention that Yuri Beletsky's circular full-sky panoramas inspired me to give this a try. This style is a little more documentary than my normal approach to fine-art night-sky photography, but I thought this situation warranted this particular treatment.

 

Also, if you're interested in learning more about taking and processing night-sky photos, I'm doing a couple of workshops this summer at Crater Lake National Park. Check out my website for more details and shoot me a message if you have any questions.

 

Thanks for checking out the photo!

Done