We'll be counting stars

For as long as I can remember the night skies have fascinated me, even as a young teenager I remember getting in trouble for climbing on the roof of our house in the middle of the night to watch a meteor shower.

I grew up in a military family, which meant we moved cities fairly often (3 schools in 3 different states just in my first year of school), but "home" for us was Adelaide in South Australia. With air travel being quite prohibitively expensive in Australia in the 1980s we would drive across the country to go to Adelaide for Christmas or Easter with our extended family. This drive wasn't a short drive, usually around 2300kms (about 1400 miles), we would often be driving through the Australian "outback" at night, we would stop for a break to be mesmerised by the stars.

When I first started exploring my photography I had a day job, often the only times I could get out to take photos was at night. I would photograph from sunset through to the early hours of the morning, get a few hours sleep and then head back to work. I took my first decent Milky Way photo in 2004, but had many star trail photos prior to that.

Exploring areas at night became a habit and then an obsession, I started scouting places during daylight with the sole intention of coming back at night to photograph them. Early on I formed a theory on how to have my photography stand out, it was to photograph things other people weren't photographing, or to photograph them in a way that nobody else had thought of or attempted. Show people something they haven't seen before or something familiar in a way they've never seen before and they have a better chance of remembering it. Night photography afforded me that opportunity to show things that most people don't see. That has changed somewhat as technology has advanced and social media has made us a bit numb with a barrage of amazing content.

For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream - Vincent Van Gogh

Creativity, seeing the world differently and trying show what I see and experience is something that runs deep within me. When I was in high school we studied Aristotle and in passing he mentions a prevailing myth that you can see stars during the day if you were at the bottom of a deep enough well. It is completely untrue, but it did get me to wondering what the night skies would look like from a deep gorge. Several years of planning and research to find the right gorge and the right time of year, then two years of attempts resulted in the following image:

While the majority of my images I've managed to get on my first attempt, there are many in my portfolio that have taken serious planning and then many years of repeated attempts. With the way the stars move and the moon cycle works some times there is only a window of a few days in any given year where I can attempt to capture something that I have in my head. For example the following photo was imagined long before it ever came to fruition. The "research" involved driving around and around exploring forest tracks at night, trying to work out which one would line up perfectly for the shot. Most of the online tools were fairly useless in this quest as the forestry tracks on most maps are suggestions at best, plus they don't indicate what stage of growth the trees are at.

Over the course of 5 years I made many attempts to get the next photo, the tree is only red for about 2-3 weeks and the rain usually hasn't started for the season so the pond doesn't always have water in it and I needed that to line up with the new moon so it would be dark enough. The first year the pond was completely dry, the second year the area was flooded and inaccessible, third year the area was too foggy on every attempt. The fourth year we had a storm come through and remove all the leaves from the tree early.

The fifth year I nearly didn't bother as the nights I planned for it were very foggy.. like pea soup, can't see the road in front of my car type fog. I drove the 1.5 hours to this spot anyway... except this time it took nearly 3 hours due to the fog. I got to the area and couldn't see the park, decided to get my camera gear out anyway. Just as I'd finished setting up my camera a wind came through and cleared the fog away, the skies were perfectly clear and I started taking photos. I lit the tree up with my headlamp, made several exposures and then the wind died, the fog came back in even thicker than before. Some people say "oh wow, you were so lucky", which is partially true, but I still put myself in the right place at the right time with the right equipment and knowledge to get the shot. I find the more effort I put in, the "luckier" I get.

Over the years I've travelled all over Australia and the world taking photos, in most places I've taken night photos (Iceland and Norway excepted, it never got dark enough to see any stars the whole time I was there). The Western Australian Outback is possibly the best place in the world for viewing the night skies as there is zero light pollution and many places to camp.

In 2014 I travelled to Jordan with The Giving Lens, we visited Petra at night and it was incredible:

Bioluminescence under the night skies in Tasmania, Australia

Lately my night photography has been more about challenging myself by putting myself into non-ideal conditions and seeing if I can get photos that I'm happy with. Some have worked, most have not. For the following photo I used a neutral density grad filter with the dark part over the lower third of the photo, so that I could capture the stars without blowing out the lights in the foreground.

I'll leave you with some more photos, I'm in the process of writing a guide to photographing the night skies, would love to know if that is something you'd be interested in reading?

Thanks for checking out my photos.

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All photos posted are copyright Paul Pichugin unless otherwise stated.