Photographing the Night Sky –

I have been taking photography classes and recently went on a field-trip to learn to take photos at night.  subject Toronto city skyline.  I arrived, tripod in hand and ready.  The instructor let us set up and then advised us on what our camera setting should be at to get a good photo.  I set my camera and figured i got a good spot,  it was fairly early, so we were there during golden  and blue hour…. I started taking photos.  hmm not as good as I thought, so I fiddled with the settings, not the greatest idea. I really messed things up ……..my photos weren’t that great. I put the settings back to where they should be and voila,  a much better  picture  — doing my happy dance 🎉  After taking photos for about 3 hours I walked away with quite a few pictures that I was happy with.  Now to get home to edit them.  Below is two of the photos that I like the most that turned out.  The Vancouver night shot, I took myself  before I took this workshop.  Pretty happy with the way it turned out.

vancouver skyline at night

toronto skyline at night

toronto skyline at night

Last weekend I went on a starry night photo workshop, my first experience with astrophotography.   My friend and I drove to Torrance Barrens Dark Sky Preserve which is about 2 hours north of Toronto which is the closest darkest sky without any light pollution.   However there were a few clouds in the sky, fingers crossed that we could see some stars.  We set up our camera’s so that we could take photos at the proper exposure.  The only lens I have is my Canon L-series 24-105  F4 , the recommendation was a lower F stop lens, the only one I have is a prime 50 mm lens but its a portrait one, not a wide angle lens.  So I set up my tripod and found a spot.  Then disaster –  in slow motion I saw my tripod with my camera mounted it,  going down …..😱……thought my night had ended before it even started.  A miracle, the lens filter shattered and jammed but everything else was fine, the lens focused and i took some pictures that worked.  A huge sigh…the sun finally set around 10:30 pm, longest sunset ever….. we could only use are red-light flashlights, not LED ones as white light is harsh on the eyes and takes longer to re-focus in the dark – hmm who knew.  I was able to use a timer remote control. we set up a 10 min exposure but since we forgot to adjust the ISO it was over exposed, after fixing the ISO I set it up for 5 min.  It was very cool and may add this to my camera bag.  Much easier than the 2 sec. self timer I have been using in camera.  We finally left at 12:15 am, I was surprised how  many people were just arriving to watch the stars at that hour.  Hmm clearing people that don’t need as much sleep as I do…

I took quite a few photos – looked good on the LCD camera screen but when I put them into Lightroom, they needed some work.  I’m not that familiar with editing astrophotography – with the help of mr. google i was able to do a bit of work to the photos so that they looked good – at least to me.  This is when I noticed that my white balance was a bit too warm – should have used a lower K number – but at the time when I was shooting it looked too cool – hmm guess not.  I must admit that I found editing these photos much more of a challenge.   I plan on  taking more  photos of the night sky off of my dock soon- hoping I can do this alone without any help… I have my cheat sheet and I’ve been doing some reading. Fingers crossed 😏

as the sun was setting

this one was taken with the 5 min time-laps

If anyone has ways they edit astrophotography photos in light room please let me know.

M💞