Just A Boring Milky Way Photo
Dude get a better foreground
Sometimes plans just don’t work out. I’d been thinking of doing a Milky Way shot with these little tidal islands for a long time, and I finally tried it the other night but the foreground just didn’t work out. I used a 35mm lens to have the close island and Milky Way Galactic Center be prominent, but the foreground just isn’t what I was hoping. I like the leading line of the sandbar, but something just doesn’t click enough for me.
Remember that the stars look the same every night. Aside from airglow and light pollution, the Milky Way you see tonight is the same Milky Way you’ll see tomorrow night. It’s the landscape that makes each shot unique. The foreground is what tells a story, creates a sense of place, and gives the viewer something to anchor the scene. Without it you just have a sky photo, and while sky photos can be impressive at first, they all start to look the same pretty quickly.
When I’m scouting a location during the day, I’m thinking less about the sky and more about what’s on the ground. What foreground elements could work with the arc of the Milky Way? Is there a leading line, a rugged coastline, a river, or an interesting rock formation that could tie the composition together? Some of my favorite shots have come from visiting a spot during the day, seeing something interesting in the landscape, and then coming back months later when the Milky Way lines up with it. That planning process — matching the right foreground with the right sky position — is where the real work of landscape astrophotography happens.
In this case, I had the tidal islands in mind as a foreground subject for a while. In theory it seemed like it would work, but once I was out there at night the islands just didn’t have the visual interest I was imagining. I tried bringing out detail in the foreground instead of keeping it more of a silhouette, but it just didn’t really click for me. Sometimes you have to try a shot to find out it doesn’t work. That said, I like that the image documents an area at night that I visit frequently during the day.
Nikon Z8 with NIKKOR Z 35mm f/1.8 S lens. Star stack of 40 exposures at f/1.8, ISO 6400, 5 seconds, stacked in Starry Landscape Stacker for pinpoint stars and low noise.
To bring out detail in the sky without overdoing the stars, I removed the stars using StarNet2, then in Photoshop I edited the sky layer then added the stars back at the end using the Screen blending mode with the stars mask file that StarNet2 generates.
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