In 2020, when I picked up my first full-frame DSLR, I was super excited to be able to capture the milky way over some different landmarks and locations. I started my journey locally, capturing the milky way from a side road just out of town, and then started visiting some of the landmarks around my district.
This was one of my first photos of the milkyway, taken in may, 2020, using my Nikon D750 and Tokina 11-16, hence the soft edges.
Once I was feeling more confident with my skills, and had just bought my first full frame lens. I ventured down to the 12 apostles to try and capture the milkyway and comet neowise. This was before I downloaded photopills, and had no idea that it was a full moon, and the milky way wasn't visible from this spot yet!
Although I never got what I went there for, the full moon illumated the foreground beautifuly, and allowed me to capture this image, which looks absolutely amazing as it sits as a framed 24 x 36" print above my bed.
I feel like this is where my images started to drastically improve:
Once I spent more time with the art of planning, I was able to go to locations when I knew there would be no moon, little to no clouds and the milky way would line up!
This was the last milky way image taken for the season, with constant lockdowns within Victoria.
Fast forward to 2021.
This old train station was moved here before I was born, and I knew it would be the perfect foreground for the milky way! I set out at the start of the season and took this image with the new camera I had won in a Nikon Australia competition!
Using the Nikon Z5 + Nikon Z14-24S I was able to capture this image! It was the first time I was able to use my planning skills to capture the scene I had imagined!
My next challenge was to capture a milky way panorama:
Shortly after capturing the image above, we entered another lockdown, which meant the milky way pano was not attemped until june.
This panorama was made with about 15 images, and shows the milky way rising over Mt. Noorat, Australia's largest dry crater volcano.
While I am happy with this as a first attempt, I now know that I should have taken another layer for the sky, and should have done longer exposures for the foreground to remove the noise. Panoramas are definitely something I will be looking to do more of in the future. Maybe I will reproduce this with my new skills in 2022?
Now we are off to the wind turbines!
This image was a vision of mine for about 6 months, when I first visited the site and saw the old turbine perfectly positioned in front of the new towers.
It was completely pitch black when taking the images here, but off in the distance, there must have been some farm lights on, casuing the bright orange light in the background.
The milky way lined up exactly where I expected it to, allowing me to capture one of my favourite astro images so far!
And finanlly, these are the latest astro images I have captured, when the aurora australis decided to put on a show and be visible along the great ocean road in early november!!
The aurora over Tom and Eva, one of the beautiful locations along the great ocean road.
The aurora over the razorback, one of the landmarks that most people don't realise is here!
These were the most recent astro images I have taken, and are some of my favourite!
As you can see, persisting and constantly learning has allowed me to grow into a much greater photographer than I was 18 months ago. I am sure that in another 18 months I will be looking back and thinking the same thing!
Thank you for reading along with my journey of astrophotography, and if you have any questions, feel free to ask below!