My First Milky Way Photo Can Be Your First Milky Way Photo
you can learn how to photograph the Milky Way from a master in just a few days
Back when I had my real estate broker’s license, I awarded myself on the closing of my first transaction where I was neither buyer nor seller with the purchase of a Canon EOS M50 mirrorless crop sensor digital camera. My great desire was to photograph Mount Rainier, and the Olympic Mountains which I had a view of from our new home in Union WA, with clarity my beloved point and shoot Panasonic Lumix could not provide.
I was too busy to even unbox my Canon until the pandemic hit and our home renovation business was shuttered for six weeks. I enrolled in an online class that taught a little bit of everything and was in the middle of experimenting in July of 2020 when I saw my first photo of the comet Neowise with its flowing tail illuminated between skyscrapers in New York City.
If it was shining bright in the big city, I thought surely I’d be able to see it in my small town. I began researching, and learned for the first time about long exposures, and the ways cameras can make visible what is invisible to our night vision, and I was able to record several images of the comet on several nights in the next few days. To put it bluntly, what I saw astounded me.
A week later, I took my first Milky Way photo from the waterfront deck at my house. The composition is nothing to write home about, as they say. But the exceptional aspect for me was that I was at home. The Milky Way isn’t only visible in exceptional exotic settings, but even in my own night sky in the suburban/rural interface.
My husband bought me the PhotoPills app for my (July) birthday that year to help me locate the Milky Way in the sky. With the app, I could find it, but I didn’t know how to expose my images or edit them with any skill. All that changed in March 2022 when a Facebook ad came into my feed. I will confess that I have always spent way too much time on Facebook, but it’s the primary way I find out about great writing from my many writer acquaintances. And now, I’m plugged into a number of photography groups.
The ad was for an online class titled “Your First Milky Way Photo” taught by Kristine Richer, a woman who lives in Nova Scotia. She was offering three Facebook live sessions with Q&A and a Facebook group for questions and networking. I signed up and that was the beginning of my love affair with nightscape photography.
Kristine has continued to offer this free training each year, and has improved on it with each go around so that now in the final session of the class she is shooting live on location, so that what’s been taught verbally and in workbooks, becomes real before our eyes.
Kristine is offering this incredible free training just once this year, beginning next week on April 1st, and I wanted to do my part to spread the word to any of you who might be interested in photographing the night sky, or who would like to let others know about this opportunity.
Here’s the first Milky Way photo I took after taking Kristine’s free training.
Why am I writing an entire post to recommend this training? Because Kristine is inspiring and invitational. Through her courses (free and paid) and her “After Dark Photography Podcast” (find it wherever you listen to podcasts) I’ve found my photography mentor. It’s so refreshing to have a wise woman’s voice and the domestic perspective in the conversation about night photography. Kristine is a mom to two young children and an entrepreneur her re-invented her career during the pandemic. Her content is technical, yet accessible to everyone, and her down-to-earth perspective of being where you are with what you have, is a welcome contrast to the Milky Way chasers traveling to exotic and exclusive locations with premium gear to capture once-in-a-lifetime photos. She also approaches photography from the big picture, encouraging people to embrace their inherent creativity, and to think about the “why” behind what we’re doing out under the stars.
Here in the northern hemisphere, the Milky Way core is not visible year around. It makes an appearance at my latitude at 47 degrees in mid-March visible as a rainbow shaped arch arcing from North to East, and its last hurrah of the year in late October when it’s vertical in the Southwest. I can’t see it from my house until mid-June, and have yet to photograph it in 2024, though I tried camping with views to the North and East but got rained out twice.
Last fall, thoroughly bitten by the night sky bug, I invested in a full-frame mirrorless camera, a (used) lens with a wider aperture, and additional editing software to allow me to capture more light and definition in my night sky photos. I’ll leave you with my last image of 2023 and another nudge to sign up for Kristine’s training.
My husband has nicknamed me “Astra” and I’d love to convert some friends to my nocturnal hobby. Here’s to seeing you under the night sky.