Namibia Bobby Bradley Namibia Bobby Bradley

Cattle Fence at Twilight

Th stars in Namibia never get old to look at, photograph or sleep under.  Especially in the cooler months of May, June and July when the rains have cleared the air and left endless clear, cool and still skies the stars really shine.  As if by design it is also during these months that the Milky Way rises in the east as the sun sets and travels across the sky to set in the west as the sun rises again.  There is really no better place or time of year to get an unobstructed view the stars that Namibia in the winter.

This photo is a composition of 2 photos taken about 30 minutes apart.  While it is possible to get the twilight lit foreground and the stars in one shot there would be significant motion in the stars.  Blending the 2 shorter exposure photos together for foreground and sky I was able to still give the idea of the Milky Way rising as the sun set.

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Namibia Bobby Bradley Namibia Bobby Bradley

Namibia Night Sky

I've been shooting the Milky Way for a couple months now on/or around new moons and the one thing that I've been really missing so far is a strong foreground to play with.  On this night, as sort of a happy accident, I finally got a chance to get something nice to balance against the night sky.  One of the volunteers at the center was giving a talk on the stars and we were all collectively star gazing for a little bit right next to where we share dinner every night.  It wasn't really a great spot to stargaze since the lights over the tables and in the kitchen were still ablaze, but we went ahead anyway.  I brought my camera along to take a few milky way shots to show some of the interns and to my amazement the lights from the building washed the grasses in front of us beautifully!  

I don't think that I could have known any better to plan this, but once I saw how the light on the grass built up on a long exposure I was very excited and reframed things a little.  I also tried out a new photoshop plugin called Astronomy Tools to get a subtle twinkle in the brightest stars in the sky.  It's intentionally subtle and I think adds a nice pop when you view the image large.  The plugin included a bunch of other tools that I haven't played with yet, but look very promising.

Processing:

Nikon D600 | Nikon 16-35mm

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Namibia Bobby Bradley Namibia Bobby Bradley

More Milky Way Shots

Night Sky at the Hot Spot

I got this image last month while taking some timelapse footage during a new moon and almost completely clear skies.  I can't reiterate enough how clear the skies are in Namibia!  This nice aerial view was achieved by setting up on top of an old water tower about 20-30' in the air.  The building in the foreground in called "the hotspot" where the kitchen is located and where everyone at CCF comes together to eat meals daily.  Admittedly, the building itself is not that much to look at, but gives a nice sense of scale and space to the image I think.

I played around with setting while shooting the Milky Way and this was definitely one of the best shots.  Using a D600 I ramped up the ISO super high to 3200 and set the shutter to 30s.  I used the amazing Nikon 16-35mm lens for this, but unfortunately this lens is an f/4 which is pretty slow for nighttime shots.  However, because the D600 handles noise amazingly well f/4 turned out to be just fine for this kind of shot.  I was pretty surprised to find that the image out of camera actually looked pretty incredible and the photoshop work I did was mostly normal RAW tweaks and color balancing.  There were some steps I took to reduce noise and boost the Milky Way, but I didn't have to spend nearly as much time post processing as I thought I would which was a pleasant surprise.

500 Rule

A rule of thumb that I came across online was the 500 rule for star photography and I have to say it seems to work well in practice.  Basically, the rule works to give you an idea of the longest shutter speed you can use to get sharp stars.  Or, the other way to say it is use this rule to avoid any star trails or having bean shaped stars instead of points of light.  The rule works simply.  First, take your focal length in 35mm format.  If using a crop sensor figure out what the equivalent 35mm focal length is and use that (i.e. Nikon D7100 and lower multiply focal length by 1.5x).  Now take 500 and divide by your focal length.  In my case 500 / 16 = 31.25.  The result is the safe number of seconds you can expose without star trail.  It's easy to see with the math that the longer the focal length equals shorter exposure so it becomes pretty important to have a fast lens once you start zooming in (i.e. f/1.4 ideally).  But, the flip side is a quality slower lens coupled with a good full frame sensor with good noise handling will do just fine since you can use longer exposures.

Processing:

Nikon D600 | Nikon 16-35mm | Photoshop

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Namibia Bobby Bradley Namibia Bobby Bradley

Milky Way Center

This shot was a long time coming for me.  I had tried to get a nice shot of the Milky Way Center a few times already but admittedly I had no idea what I was doing so I was relying on trial and error.  I did some research and went out on the night of a new moon which was also perfectly clear save a few clouds off in the distance and shot the night sky for several hours.  The result turned out amazing.  I shot this at a very high ISO (8000) because my lens is only f/4, but the D600 handles the noise amazingly well.  

I was also a little timid with how to process this image, but I intimately just employed some contrast and exposure adjustments in Lightroom before editing in Photoshop using my normal color balancing workflow with curves and selective color.  I tried taking some time-lapse on this evening as well, but processing that to look anything decent is going to take some time going frame by frame editing in Photoshop.  

I know have a huge amount of respect to those who shoot and edit night time-lapse footage as there is a massive amount of time and effort into getting the footage and then editing it together.  I may try to do some more time-lapse in the future, but it’s not as instant a gratification as still shots are.

Processing:

Nikon D600 | Nikon 16-35mm f/4 @ 35mm | 15s | Lightroom | Photoshop

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Namibia Bobby Bradley Namibia Bobby Bradley

Trying some Star Photography

"The Stars at night, are big and bright *clap clap clap clap*

- Deep in the heart of

…..Africa?”

Yeah, the stars in Namibia are really spectacular.  We are staying on a farm that generates it's own power which shuts off at 11pm and we are 45km from the nearest town which is only about 30,000 people.  There really is hardly any light pollution at all.  A far cry from living in NYC for the past bunch of years.

I’ve never really tried star photography because, well, I just haven’t been anywhere where I could see stars.  So, criteria one for star photography is a kind of a big one - go where you can see the stars.  Criteria two is to have a camera with a good high ISO sensor and I have that too.  The Nikon D600 is a full frame sensor with amazing low light capabilities.  I previously had a D7100 which also was great at high ISOs but nothing compared to the large pixels of the D600.  Criteria three?  A fast lens.  I have a Wide Angle 16-35mm f4 lens which does OK because I can compensate with high ISOs (like 4000 - 5000 ISO), but you really need a f2.8 lens of faster.  f2.8 to f4 is one while stop of light which makes a huge difference at night (as I have found out).

 I took this shot with an old Nikon 28-70mm f2.8D wide open.  There is a little weirdness in the corners called Coma (the stars look like discs instead of points), but that’s OK.  This came out looking fine for my purposes.

In terms of post-processing I only used Lightroom to mask out the milky way a little to give it some punch and then do some noise reduction.  Turned out nicely if you ask me.

Processing:

Nikon D600 | Nikon 28-70mm f/2.8D | Lightroom

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