Astrophotography

I’ve always loved the night sky, the stars, the moon, the peacefulness that comes with it. My journey as a photographer has been interesting. I have developed better skills and understanding over the years. My photography is nothing like it was when I first started, neither is it the same as two years ago, everyone evolves.

I’ve always looked at photographs of the milky way thinking, damn, I want to take photos like that. I remember my first ever photograph of the stars was back home. Me and my friends went to the mountains to star gaze and thought I would give it a go. I captured a shooting star and was so proud of myself.

When I worked for Point O’ Pines Camp for girls in New York, I remember looking out over the lake and thinking, I’ve never seen the sky like this before, I must photograph this whilst I’m here. Three months go by and I didn’t take a single photograph at night, until two nights before I left. I forced myself to go out late at night and this is the shot I got. In that moment of time, I was so happy. This photograph was way better than what I had taken the previous year.

However, I never fully explored astrophotography until this year that I’ve been in Australia. I’ve never seen the night sky in all its glory as I have since being here. I remember arriving on Keppel Island, where I lived for four months, and the first night looking up at the sky and thinking oh wow, I can actually see the full milky way above us right now. It took a friend of mine to actually get me to go out and photograph the sky and I’m so glad she did. Although I was glad to have taken this photograph I wasn’t as proud as in the previous times, and I think that’s because I understood photography more and also, I knew I could do better. It’s also incredibly noisy.

Since then I’ve taken many photographs attempting to capture and achieve what I knew I could. I’ve managed to capture the stars but the bright milky way galaxy that I’ve seen other photographers take has always been slightly there but not enough. I’ve never understood until now that it’s the Galactic Centre that’s the brightest part of our galaxy, the part that produces these amazing images. Photography can be hard at the best of times, a lot of people don’t realise what goes into creating an image, but astrophotography is on a whole other level. I didn’t realise the amount of planning, preparation and understanding that goes into these images.

This is my first ever image taken having learnt all of this and I cried of happiness. I finally achieved what I’ve wanted for so many years. This is what has motivated me to go out more and attempt to photograph the galaxy.

So, from then on, I’ve gone out with the understanding and knowledge of where the galactic centre is going to be, the position of the moon, the phases of the moon, everything. Unfortunately, it’s been incredibly cloudy when I’ve gone to shoot, and this discouraged me a little. However, I know that sometimes there will be clouds, but clouds pass and if not that night, try again. The galaxy is always going to be there.

My latest camping trip, I had loads of clouds passing right through the milky way, I couldn’t get a clear shot. The clouds became so immense that I gave up. You couldn’t even see the stars. So, I went to bed, but a few hours go by and I think, let’s just go have a little look before going to sleep, and there she was. I grabbed my camera and tripod that was already set up and headed to the beach. I thought, I want to capture all of this but how, I don’t have a wide enough lens. Panorama. I took multiple shots going from the top to the bottom. I was on a time limit as the tide was coming in. After every shot, I would turn on my torch and see how far the ocean had rolled in as well as turning to the bushes and just generally looking around me as I was in Croc and Cassowary territory. But after coming away I looked at the photographs and this is what I managed to create. This is the proudest I have been to date with my astrophotography.

Daintree Rainforest - Cape Tribulation, QLD. 2023.

I still have a long way to go. These are all single images. I want to try stacking. And although I have managed and learnt how and when to capture the Milky Way, I still need to learn how to plan my compositions and the image I want to create. But it’s a start that I am very grateful to have achieved. PhotoPills is the app that has helped me out and I still don’t fully understand it. Let’s see what future photographer Sophie will achieve.

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