The Dragon and the Swan [Explored]

Is there an artwork that changed your life? There certainly is one for me.

 

In 2015, Royce Bair published the image "Milky Way over Dragon Arch" (flic.kr/p/2dZ9rXL). It isn't the classic Milky Way core shot, but the combination of a stunning foreground, illuminated with low level lighting, and the starry sky in the backdrop, took my breath away.

 

At that time I was doing some deep space imaging and had dabbled with star trails, but I had never seen such a stunning nightscape, nor had I heared of Royce Bair or his low level lighting technique.

 

After seeing the image, I was hooked. I read Royce Bair's e-book "Milky Way Nightscapes", bought two low level lights and started photographing my own nightscapes. I combined what I had learned from Royce's book with the techniques I knew from deep space imaging and therefore, my first nightscapes were already captured with a tracking mount and I abused my deep space processing software for stacking its sky.

 

Fast forward to 2022. Nightscape photography is now an important part in my life. In the past 7 years, I have visited the 'Dragon Arch' several times and captured numerous nightscapes there, but I never tried my hand on the same composition as in Royce's image. After all, you can only fail trying to copy a perfect masterpiece.

 

This April, I visited the Dragon again and this time, I felt confident to have developed my personal style far enough to shoot the scene without just producing a far inferior copy. So here is my homage to the image that made me a nightscaper.

 

EXIF

Canon EOS R, astro-modified

Sigma 28mm f/1.4 ART

IDAS NBZ filter

iOptron SkyTracker Pro

Sky:

2 panel panorama, each a stack of 6x 60s @ ISO1600, f/2, filtered & 3x 105s @ ISO6400, f/2, filtered

Foreground:

Stack of 6x 60s @ ISO3200, f/2.8

Done