On my recent trip to Devils Tower and the Badlands of South Dakota, I was hoping to capture the Milky Way one of the nights. I had to contend with thunderstorms, high winds, etc.. In the end as I laid out my route to be the most logical with the time I had, the nights with clear skies played games with me. The forecast for the Badlands was showing just a few clouds for Saturday night, so that looked good. But after I left on Thursday, each day the forecast went from Few Clouds, to Partly Cloudy, to finally Mostly Cloudy for Saturday night.
I just went with it, as the clouds made for some cool day time conditions. I set up by the Big Badlands Overlook for the night. The sky was actually clear to start with, but it didn't take long for the clouds to roll in. And the night was this repeating pattern of clouds, a short window of some stars, then clouds back in, then a short window of stars, etc. As the Milky Way was to rise, the clouds though seemed to have gotten their thickest, but then about 3:15am the clouds cleared up for about 20 minutes and I got the Milky Way! There was still some clouds along the horizon, but I will take it.
With those clouds on the horizon, they reflected some distant lights too. So while sometimes I will clone out any lights on the horizon, in this case I left them in to show where the various colors in the clouds along the horizon were coming from. Maybe I was thinking too hard and I should remove all of the lights.
The ground layer has a blend of a twilight layer set to 50%. My thinking was it would help provide more detail, but at 50% would allow some of the natural color come through from at 3:30am.
Nikon D850
Sigma 14mm f1.8
ISO 3200 (No Moon)
20 secs
f1.8
All comments are welcome,
A Timelapse is coming, that's why I did one still image from the timelapse to start.
Jim
I just went with it, as the clouds made for some cool day time conditions. I set up by the Big Badlands Overlook for the night. The sky was actually clear to start with, but it didn't take long for the clouds to roll in. And the night was this repeating pattern of clouds, a short window of some stars, then clouds back in, then a short window of stars, etc. As the Milky Way was to rise, the clouds though seemed to have gotten their thickest, but then about 3:15am the clouds cleared up for about 20 minutes and I got the Milky Way! There was still some clouds along the horizon, but I will take it.
With those clouds on the horizon, they reflected some distant lights too. So while sometimes I will clone out any lights on the horizon, in this case I left them in to show where the various colors in the clouds along the horizon were coming from. Maybe I was thinking too hard and I should remove all of the lights.
The ground layer has a blend of a twilight layer set to 50%. My thinking was it would help provide more detail, but at 50% would allow some of the natural color come through from at 3:30am.
Nikon D850
Sigma 14mm f1.8
ISO 3200 (No Moon)
20 secs
f1.8
All comments are welcome,
A Timelapse is coming, that's why I did one still image from the timelapse to start.
Jim
