The Milky Way casting shadows (image and time lapse)

[alexch]

Hi All,

Despite conflicting weather forecasts I decided to give it a shot and drove to Port Campbell Thursday afternoon. The cloud was heavy and a disappointment was setting in, when suddenly it became clear around 2am and stayed that way all night. Skippysky forecast was wrong for once and weatherzone.com.au, which I find quite reliable, was spot on.

So I set up at the Loch Ard Gorge lookout and managed to get a decent shot. It is interesting how the Milky Way centre casts a shadow on the water in the middle of the frame.

The small version is attached, click for a higher-resolution image (http://www.terrastro.com/iis/loch_ard.jpg)



I also made a time-lapse animation. I wish it was longer but my disposable dew-heater failed to cope and the lens got eventually fogged up. I reckon the low clouds in the time lapse are actually water vapours dissipating above the ocean as they were turning up from nowhere and then disappearing.

View in HD and with sound:
Water Dance (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9mIhb89vgo&hd=1) /Doudouk soundtrack by Djivan Gasparyan/

Equipment as usual: Nikon D700, 14-24mm lens at 15mm, f/2.8, ISO 3200.

Cheers,
Alex

[strongmanmike]

Another great vista Alex.

Your approach has a nice natural look compared to many other versions of this sort of skyscape shot. Often the forground is unaturally lit or has an unatural almost corney "prop" in the scene or the HDR process imparts an unrealistic look to the image... but not in this case. Your colours are also subtle and realistic as opposed to that often postcard vibrancy.

Nice job

Mike

[Alchemy]

Very nice, as was the
Last one too

[dugnsuz]

Your images just get better and better Alex.
And, the timelapse is very smooth indeed. Wish the rocks and water had the equivalent lighting as seen in the still image - though I think that may be difficult to achieve.
Which program did you use to merge the milky way and foreground rocks into the one timelapse sequence?
Very nice work all round
Doug

[danielsun]

Alex, your work just blows me away!! Absolutely stunning!:thumbsup:


Cheers Daniel.

[dcalleja]

Thats really amazing!

[malp]

A wonderful image, very atmospheric.

[RobF]

Just stunning - quite mesmerising really....! :thumbsup:
Makes me pine for the arch of the galaxy overhead at Astrofest.

[Peter Ward]

Sublime. :thumbsup::thumbsup:

[marc4darkskies]

I'm definitely a fan of your work Alex! :thumbsup:

Cheers, Marcus

[h0ughy]

another fantastic shot - another candidate for APOD

[Hagar]

Another stunner Alex, These costal views with the milky way are fantastic. Award winners for sure.

[[1ponders]]

Awesome Alex, absolutely awesome :clap:

[alexch]

Thanks guys for very nice comments. I am glad you liked it :)



Thanks Mike. That was what I tried to acheive - a look close to what I saw when I was there. To control the noise I had to stack and de-rotate 7 images for the sky, then stack the same shots separately for the foreground and blend them back together in Photoshop. It was much harder than at Cape Schanck because there I had enough light on the ground from the lighthouse but here the only source of light was the Milky Way.



Doug, I pulled the shadows on the foreground in the time-lapse frames as much as I could before it became too noisy; can't use my stacking technique on the animated sequences unfortunately.

I use Sony Vegas Movie Studio Platinum v9 for video and time lapse work.


Cheers,
Alex

[alexch]

Youtube quality does not do this video justice. I uploaded the original 1280x720 file (27MB) to my ISP:
http://users.on.net/~che/lochard-720YT.avi

[bartman]

Whoaaah
very nice animation!!!!!
sorry ......nice just does not cut it....
absolutely firetrucking great!
Just about to look at the hd on your website.
Bartman
By the way the Kiwi shows up nice!
Something I have not known / noticed until a recent post!

[Screwdriverone]

I Agree Alex,

Stupendous Image and time lapse. I recently went down the Great Ocean Road but it was all rainy and miserable, this makes me want to go back!

Wow!

Definitely APOD worthy.

IOTW please Mike?????

Cheers

Chris

[dugnsuz]

The High Res AVI is awesome Alex - Bravo!
Doug

[luigi]

Fantastic Image Alex, the Milky way is stunning perfect color, definition everything.
I see some noise or denoise artifacts in the foreground not sure if they will hold up on a big print.
Big fan of your work, amazing starscape!

[SkyViking]

Just beautiful as always Alex! Absolutely fantastic image. The Milky Way casting shadows, how cool is that :) I second Mike's comments here, it looks very natural and smooth, you display some very good processing skills.

[StephenM]

Great stuff Alex!

Cheers,
Stephen

[alexch]

Thanks again guys :)



I guess you are talking about the banding, I fought hard to get rid of it. This image was particularly challenging because there was not much light other than the Milky Way and I had to pull the shadow detail out of almost nowhere.

I cleaned it up a bit more:
http://www.terrastro.com/iis/loch_ard2.jpg

Cheers,
Alex

[richardo]

Alex, just great!
Your time laps is excellent.
The tide and waves dance to the heavens waltz. The music fits so well.

Thanks for another very enjoyable vista:2thumbs:

Rich

[RB]

Absolutely stunning work Alex !

:thumbsup:

[Scorpius51]

That is brilliant Alex. Well done!

Cheers
John

[rogerg]

Another excellent shot, very nice :thumbsup: