Muddy Excursions in the Dark!

Where I live in the UK, we've been blessed with some lovely clear nights the last few days, even weeks, so I've had a few opportunities to get out and shoot some stars.

So last night we started out with a plan!

There's a small village only about 5 miles from me called Lound, and @fastchrisuk and I have been shooting there before on a metal bridge where we'd spun wire wool and shot star trails. So I had it in mind to go out there, setup on the far side of the bridge at a low angle and shoot an image of myself pointing at Polaris and then leavingthe camera for an hour while it caught the star trails.

I spoke with Chris and we agreed to meet there.

I knew the road / track in was a little bumpy so I'd take it steady!

This is where the plan began to unravel!

The track, cos there's no way in the Oxford English Dictionary that this could be described as a road, was full of holes and puddles. I could hear water splashing and literally thought something had broken on my car and water was gushing out! Thankfully that was not the case. We then turned onto a smaller track that seemed a little better, but I could see Chris, who I was following further up the road stop. So I pulled up behind him and immediately stood on a really muddy wet track when I got out of the car. Chris mentioned there was no way we could go on with our 2 wheel drive cars, and so we a little assistance we turned the cars carefully and slowly around a thought on Plan B!

I knew of a bird watching spot a little further back and this is where we ended up. There were great views over the wetland where we were and a a wood and metal siding that the bird watchers stood behind. After some deliberation Chris setup his shot, and I setup mine. I was shooting with an 8mm fish-eye to get the scale of the sky in, but couldn't lose the metal posts, so decided to make them a part of the shot.

I had the bright but rather dangerous idea to stand on these and point to Polaris. I was dangerou as there was a drop on the other side, but the wooden beam was wide so I proceeded with caution. After stacking the images this morning, this is what I got..

I did feel like I spent a lot of time deliberating my shot last night, sorry Chris! And I had a very bight moon to contend with which seemed to want to get into all of my shots with the fisheye! Here are some raw unedited test shots. Not inspiring but part of the process..

Also I wanted to show some of my previous shots from the bridge at Lound, the original destination. The shot with the sign in the bottom corner was one of my first star trail shots and where I got the bug. The others are shot on the bridge and more LP images spinning wire wool..

And finally another example of star trails, this one shot at North Wheatly church, again not too far away from where I live..

As a photographer I try to mix what I do in my shots, I've done still life, some macro work, lightpainting and I enjoy a good model shoot. If you'd like to check out any of my other work I'm on Facebook, or you can find me on Instagram under neilru75

Thanks very much for looking

Kind Regards, Neil