Spend a night capturing mesmerising star trails for you to create a star trail and a star trail time-lapse! This Masterclass teaching you how to set up your camera, plan your photoshoot, how star trails work, stacking your photographs and editing from start to finish.
David Magro Diaries 2019
During 2019 I will be visiting amazing new locations across Australia photographing the night sky and putting together new events for people to enjoy the night sky.
After a fantastic workshop at Catherine Hill Bay in March I photograph a self portrait with Emma. I often photograph silhouettes with the Milky Way as the backdrop but now I want to photograph people clearly seen.
As the Milky Way isn't visible all year around I still want to photograph at night when conditions are not perfect. I had experimented with light painting before and now I wanted to create more abstract images. I designed and built a range of light painting equipment specific for what I wanted to capture. The Central Coast Council were conducting workshop for their upcoming Exposure event and asked me about possible ideas. Instantly light painting lit up my mind.
Yes I do Milky Way panoramas over lone trees!
I searched for this lone standing tree in perfect composition aligning with the Milky Way above. The light pollution from nearby Kingaroy shone bright yellow and the green airglow rested on the right side with red. The LMC is also bright in the night sky with Jupiter next to our black hole.
As we waited for the Earth to rotate and everyone composed their cameras, I snuck behind them and captured them shooting. I had just bought a new 35mm lens a few hours prior and this is my first photo.
With this image, the yellow light pollution adds colour to the dark night sky with Jupiter shining bright within the Milky Way core.
Balancing the foreground with the night sky and light pollution is a challenge for post processing. After multiple edits this was the final.
During the day I planned to photograph the road leading to the Milky Way with the iconic Ivory Rock in the distance. At 1am after the Masterclass workshop I came back to create this image with my flashlight.
An Australian pyramid with the Milky Way stars!
Last year Jenny came to my Masterclass and later show me her photograph of a pyramid in Australia with the Milky Way. I asked if it was possible to bring this experience to others on a Masterclass workshop. We gained permission and we had a fantastic night! The clouds unexpectedly arrived to create a moody scene and we had to patiently wait before we could capture the stars between the clouds with this colossal structure.
More to come...