We visited the Badlands National Park recently. The entire purpose was to try my hand at astrophotography. It was a bit windy the night we went out, but I was still able to capture a few shots. None of them are worth showing the public though; they all turned out a wee bit blurry because I used way too long of a shutter speed. At least I know what I did wrong.
Besides the shutter speed, I learned a few things about astrophotography...
- It is way harder than it looks
- With my camera I need to be in place, and focused in, before the sun goes down
- I am a great big chicken when I am standing out in the middle of no where, in the pitch black.
I seriously would have had a Blair Witch Project experience if my family had not been out in the pitch-black-you-can't-see-beyond-a-foot-in-the-darkness-of-night with me. I can totally relate to those poor kids...
Joshua Leonard:
I heard two noises coming from two separate areas of space over there. One of them could have been a deer, but the other one sounded like a cackling.
Heather Donahue:
No way!
Joshua Leonard:
Yeah, it was like a serious cackling.
~Blair Witch Project
I think I will stick to the daylight for now, and something I happen to enjoy, panoramas.
Things you will need for beginning astrophotography....
- A tripod
- A remote trigger.... I have an app that will do this for me, or you can use your timer. Which is what I ended up doing because I forgot about my handy app.
- I used a wide-angle lens, because I was wanting a landscape shot.
- An editing program, because no matter how great of a shot you make, astrophotography almost always needs a boost from editing.
This is a great site if you want to explore astrophotography further.
You can see more of our visit to Badlands Nation Park at my new Instagram gallery called @wanderingroad
I join the following link up parties each week, when I actually blog: LINK-UP COMMUNITY