Tuesdays Tales from the Shoot – Astro Photography

“Fail. Fail again. Fail better – Mary Gordon”

I would love to be sitting here telling you about ALL my amazing adventures on the weekend, don’t get me wrong it wasn’t all doom and gloom, but it could have been better. The one truly amazing thing I got out of this weekend was that I did an Astro Photography shoot in Sorrento, they weather was very kind, lovely sunny Winter’s day, and almost cloudless night sky, great for shooting, If there was no cloud it could have been a little better, but again no good for sunset; and it could have been far worse! With my beloved Nikon out of action I was thinking to borrow a camera I did not know how to use, to learn about something I did not know how to do? My lovely Moth came to the rescue with a new camera, I still could not use my favorite lens (it got dropped with the camera and is dodgy too). He bought me a wonderful, better camera than I had, so there is the silver lining (Nikon D7100). Unfortunately not knowing 100% how to use the camera did make things slightly frustrating, however; to say I am overall happy with the end result, is an understatement! 🙂

So until I get a little more practice with my new Nikon (of course it’s a Nikon! 🙂 ) or I get my old camera & lens back, all portraits and further photographic excursions are currently on hold, and the horrible phone calls to clients explaining what happened was no picnic either, thank God it happened after my newborn shoot, and just as thankful I didn’t have a wedding booked! So now you will have to bare with me, while I learn my new toy, hopefully it wont be too long, as it is fairly similar to my old one, which is barely 6 months old!

So………….. to the Astro Photography

Back to the beginning of the tale as it were, this is something I have been wanting to learn for awhile, I have had a few failed attempts at shooting the night sky, not complete failures, but still pretty bad. Of course there was the lunar eclipse from few months ago, but there was a lot of light and it is shot differently. So we headed off to Sorrento on Saturday afternoon and took some beach shots, sunsets and all that, headed back into town for dinner and then once it was dark enough we headed back out to learn what was involved. Not having a camera I was used to made me very nervous, being in a strange place at night also made me nervous! But it was strangely easy to do, I honestly thought it would be far more difficult.

Being so far from any major city helped a great deal and I had forgotten what the Milky Way looked like with just your eyes! In this 21st century we really do take the simple things for granted. To say I was pleased with my first attempt is an understatement! The first one above is one of my favorites and it is not actually the milky way………but it seems other worldly, ethereal ……..it was one of the last photos I took on the night. Well, I wont babble on any more………..just a few more pics.