The Most Beautiful Photographic Subject - The Milky Way

 

Spring Valley, NV

"We are all stars in this galaxy. All of us. No one's greater than the other."

- Scatman Crothers

I guess I should amend the title just a little bit. Anyone who knows me already knows the answer. But that's not what I'm talking about today. The title of this blog should read, The Most Beautiful of Photographic Subjects (Non-Nude)". Yes. That would be more accurate. 

Every photographer who enjoys photography has one thing they love to photograph. If you were paying attention, you noticed my qualifier... "who enjoys photography". To some, shooting is a job and when they are done with the job, the last thing they want to do is hold a camera in their hands when they aren't getting paid. I can respect that! I've known some who gladly tell you when they are done with work, the camera goes into the bag and no force of nature can make them pick it up again until time to clock back in. 

I am not one of those people. I shoot for my own interests as well as professionally. So for myself and photographers who can identify, we all have something we've developed a fondness to shoot. It could be anything (not including selfies and you kid/pet pics). Landscape is likely the most popular genre of photography, although I don't have any empirical data to support that hypothesis. I would say Bird and Wildlife is the next most popular, followed by Portraiture. But other genres include, Food, Still Life, Street Photography, Macro, Fashion, Sports... I could go on. 

Northern Colombia

Everybody has their thing. Mine? Aside from Art Nudes? I'd have to say it's photographing the Milky Way. My good friend, John Kompare was the first to suggest going out in the middle of the night to photograph the stars. If memory serves, we went out to the Eldorado Dry Lake bed just outside Las Vegas before you come to Boulder City. We ventured out with our tripods and cameras ready to capture the night sky. I had a huge stainless-steel (or maybe aluminum) tripod and was ready to do my thing. 

Learning is still the most interesting aspect of photography to me. What I thought I knew turned to to be absolutely incorrect. In my mind, I'm taking pinpoints of light that are very far away. Of course that meant a small aperture. AND you're photographing light sources. Any idiot knows you need a fast shutter speed for that. Click I take my shot. NOTHING. Just blackness. I thought I'd left my lens cap on. Nope. Had my camera malfunctioned? What the hell? 

Just for giggles, I extended the shutter speed to an exaggerated degree, in an attempt to get something.... anything. And that's all I got... something. I opened up my aperture. Boom! There were the stars. DAMN! I was the idiot! I had to sit back and think about how this worked, but yeah. I learned something new that evening. Stars may be light sources, but they are TINY light sources. This wasn't like shooting the moon. 

Virgin River, Utah

Sadly, I can't recall the details of seeing the Milky Way for the first time. I was in the military somewhere. It was in the middle of the night and pitch black under the trees. When out route took us into the edge of the treeline, I recall gazing skyward, seeing the cluster of stars, but had no clue what I was looking at. And just the same, most people I talk to now have never seen the Milky Way. We live in cities with so much light pollution, it's impossible to see. I wasn't taught this in school. Sure, I knew OF the Milky Way galaxy, but friggin' nobody told me it was possible to SEE it. I knew of Saturn and the different planets. Nobody told me I could see them! 

The earth is in a unique position within the Milky Way galaxy. You may have heard how the earth sits in the Goldilocks (or habital) Zone in our solar system. We are in an orbit around the sun that's not too close to make oceans boil and not too far away that they freeze. Our solar system orbits within the Goldilocks Zone of the Milky Way on one of the spiral arms that is not too close and not to far from the center. Therefore we are able to view the interior of our galaxy and when we look outward, we still see another cluster of stars from the outer arm of our galaxy. 

Rhyolite, NV

Right now, is the end of the season to see the Milky Way. Spring to mid-Fall is the season to view the Milky Way galaxy. You can still go out and see a sky full of stars, but you won't see the center of the Milky Way because during the late Fall and Winter months, the earth's tilts our plane of view the other way. It's been a while since I have photographed the Milky Way, but it remains the most beautiful thing I've seen that isn't a nude woman. I invite you all to enjoy the dark night sky. Las Vegas is the brightest place on the planet at night. I've driven maybe an hour north, looked back, and you can still see the Milky Way in the southern sky. Always look south. You can use a night sky app to see exactly where and when the Milky Way will be up. 

I invite you to join an astronomy club and hopefully they have a telescope for you to witness Saturn or Jupiter. Visit a planetarium in your city. Learn about the celestial bodies of our solar system. Get some binoculars and check out the moon! Or at the very least, grab your camera and tripod and go out someplace dark, with minimal light pollution, where you can see the unobstructed night sky and see what you can capture. I would say the next most beautiful, which I've never seen yet, would be the aurora borealis. How about you?

Rhyolite, NV

Last Call for the Milky Way

"This whole earth which we inhabit is but a point in space. How far apart, think you, dwell the most distant inhabitants of yonder star, the breadth of whose disk cannot be appreciated by our instruments?"

~ Henry David Thoreau

Quick shot, 6 mins before moonrise, ©2016 Terrell Neasley

And just like that, summer is almost over and "Game of Thrones" is another year's wait. So much has been going on over the last few months, but that's another story. Right now, its all about getting that hustle and getting more gigs. So much to do for the remainder of the year. Can you believe its already September? Not many days in the year left. So if you want to shoot the Milky Way, you'd better get on it and do it now. Here's why:

Art Model Covenant, ©2016 Terrell Neasley

You can't shoot the Milky Way year around. You can shoot stars all year. And you can even shoot the Milky Way looking out away from the core. But you won't be shooting the core itself in about 5 weeks time and here's why.

Relative to the Milky Way, our solar system rotates on a different axis. The axis of the all the planets rotating around the sun is about 60 degrees relative to the Milky Way. During the winter months, we can't see the interior of the galactic core which is the largest concentration of stars that zoom around the super gigantic black hole in the center of our galaxy. The sun blocks the view because the earth is on the opposite side of it.

Art Model Covenant, ©2016 Terrell Neasley

So by mid to the 3rd week in October, all the way through til March, we can't see the galactic core of the Milky Way...at least not in the Northern Hemisphere. If you're in the Southern Hemisphere then you can begin to see it again by February. All that means by mid-October, you'd better have all your galactic core shots done.

Don't wait til the last minute on this. Do it as early as possible here in September. You'll need a tripod, a shutter release cable helps, and most importantly...fast glass. Ideally, you'd be better off using a wide-angle lens with a very large maximum aperture, such as a 24mm f/1.4 lens. You can get by with a lens that has a max aperture of f/2.8, but your exposure time will be longer. If the exposure time is too long, you'll get star trails in your Milky Way because of the rotation of the earth. Typically, I get my best exposure times at about 15 to 25 seconds depending on your camera's high ISO performance.

Art Model Covenant, ©2016 Terrell Neasley

A good camera that performs well at the higher ISOs will allow for a f/2.8 lens much better. The lower performance cameras will have to be helped out with faster glass. That's the trade off, but with a good camera AND fast glass, I've had exposures of only 10 seconds.

As I mentioned, you'll need a tripod for sure, however I said a shutter release cable would help. Since your exposure will typically be under 30 seconds, you don't technically need a shutter release cable because you can set the camera mode to shutter priority. You won't have to use the BULB mode for this. I still recommend a shutter release cable for the stability factor. Because you don't have to touch your camera you avoid the probability of introducing camera shake into your shot.

All that being said, get out and shoot some Milky Way shots before you have to wait another half year! Its Labor Day, so here are some Labor Day camping and Milky Way shots from on and around Labor Day of last year. Enjoy!

Art Model Covenant, ©2016 Terrell Neasley