Looking Back in Time

[iceman (Mike)]

This is probably my favourite shot of the past year. It’s a shot I’ve had in my minds eye for 12 months and finally at IISAC2014 I was able to pull it off!

I’ve called it “Looking Back in Time” – a nice play on words since we’re looking in the rear-vision mirror at the Milky Way galaxy – at light from stars which was emitted thousands or millions of years ago. We are literally looking back in time when we view the stars in our sky.

The Milky Way is in the mirror, and the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds are in the top left. A car driving past at the right time helped provide some beautiful subtle foreground lighting.

The first version is a composite containing an in-focus shot of the Milky Way in the mirror, taken directly after the rest of the shot. The stars in the mirror were out of focus and the vision I had of the photo, had them all in focus. So I masked the version of the in-focus stars over the top of the photo.

The original photo, the single exposure with the background in focus, is the second shot. I don’t mind the stars out of focus in the mirror but in my minds eye, I created the shot above so I made the composite.

Both shots are a single 8s exposure at ISO12800, Canon 6D and 14-24mm lens.

- Large 1
- Large 2
- Blog

I hope you enjoy it as much as I do. Thanks for looking.

[pluto (Hugh)]

Nice one Mike, I like your composite!
Geez that 6D is good at high ISO

[CapturingTheNight (Greg)]

Been waiting for you to post this one here so I could see what title choice you went with. Great choice and great concept and execution Mike I have noticed that your recent shots with the 6D have had a more purple/magenta bias to them over your previous shots. I'm curious- Is this a conscious decision in post processing or a feature of the 6D in general?

[sheeny (Al)]

Very nice.

Al.

[Rod771 (Rod)]

Yep! That's what I was talking about! Except its way better than what I was picturing in my mind.

8 sec/ISO 12800 - experimental or necessary for this particular scene?

Fantastic composition and a great result, well done Mike

[EagleEyes (Andy)]

Nice pic

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

I like this and both versions look ok to me, more nice work Mike...all your recent photos are making me long to attend another IISAC

Mike

[iceman (Mike)]

Originally Posted by pluto

Nice one Mike, I like your composite!
Geez that 6D is good at high ISO

Thanks Hugh. The 6D is brilliant! I want a second one

Originally Posted by CapturingTheNight

Been waiting for you to post this one here so I could see what title choice you went with. Great choice and great concept and execution Mike I have noticed that your recent shots with the 6D have had a more purple/magenta bias to them over your previous shots. I'm curious- Is this a conscious decision in post processing or a feature of the 6D in general?

Thanks Greg, appreciate the feedback.
You're right about the purple/magenta. I've noticed it myself a bit lately and it hasn't been entirely intentional but I haven't changed it much either. I had set the white balance to 4000 in camera for most of the recent shots because with the Nikon 14-24 on, the images all come out brown.

I'm also using a new laptop from my previous batch of images (from September last year), so the different screen is probably influencing my colour balance too.

I re-looked at this one and added a bit more green and it looks more neutral now, which is good. Thanks for the prompting! I've attached the update.

Originally Posted by sheeny

Very nice.

Al.

Thanks Al!

Originally Posted by Rod771

Yep! That's what I was talking about! Except its way better than what I was picturing in my mind.

8 sec/ISO 12800 - experimental or necessary for this particular scene?

Fantastic composition and a great result, well done Mike

Thanks Rod, appreciate that. The 8s was more necessity because I was sitting in the passenger seat, leaning the camera against the door frame/window and trying not to move it during the exposure. I didn't have a stable tripod base or anything because of how close I had to get the camera to the mirror.

So I bumped up the ISO and reduced the exposure to get the stars sharp!

Originally Posted by EagleEyes

Nice pic

Thanks mate!

Originally Posted by strongmanmike

I like this and both versions look ok to me, more nice work Mike...all your recent photos are making me long to attend another IISAC

Mike

Thanks Mike - we did miss you this year. Hopefully next year?

[ourkind (Carlos)]

Very cool Mike, looks great!

[StephenM (Stephen)]

Great idea, and very well executed Mike!

Cheers,
Stephen

[iceman (Mike)]

Thanks Carlos, thanks Stephen.