I love looking up into the sky on a warm Summers night. I also love The Milky Way. The only problem is that they do not occur Down Under at the same time. To get a decent shot of the Milky Way in Australia you need to go out in the cold Winter months like I did a few years ago. The first shot you see below was taken on Kangaroo Island, which is south of my hometown, Adelaide. When you get out of the city you get rid of what is called light pollution. It’s all the glare from the street lights of the big cities. Kangaroo Island is one of those places that have near no light pollution in many places, allowing you to get shots like the one below.

I have been asked if it really looks like the image above shows. Well. No it doesn’t quite look as colourful as the photo I took. But you can see where the Milky Way spreads out over the sky. With the naked eye it looks closer to this photo below. What I have done with the first photo is intensify the reds yellows blues and other colours.

But when you initially take the photo the camera will pick up the light that you eyes cannot see. If you look at the photo of my camera you can see the light is getting picked up. In the white light of that photo, are all the red orange yellows and blues that are in the first photo once I intensify them in a program called Lightroom.

So is it a matter of pointing and shooting? I wish it was that easy! No all the shots in this post were shot on a tripod, with the shutter speed being set to 20 -30 seconds.

It’s not Winter at the moment, which means I would need to get up at an ungodly hour to even get a glimpse of the Milky Way. But Summer brings out my most favourite constellation… Orion!