This past Saturday I drove out to Leo Carrillo with my wife for some cave exploration, star gazing and a chance at catching some beauty from the Orionid meteor shower. We arrived at our location around sunset and I set up to capture my foreground during blue hour. After being swarmed by sand flies for what seemed like eternity, the dark horse nebula starting to show up against the dark sky as I set my camera to time-lapse and let it fire for about 20 minutes.
My wife doesn’t join me on most of these late night missions but I assured her we wouldn’t be out all night. She’s adventurous but very cautious when it comes to maneuvering around in the night. It seemed like every 2 minutes she would say to me “I think the tide is coming in too close. Will we be able to get out?” I couldn’t help but laugh at her nervousness which helped her settle down a bit. Last night ended my Milky Way season this year, which is perfect timing as our anniversary was Tuesday.
This image is made up of 40 exposures. 34 for the night sky stacked in Starry Landscape Stacker. 4 foreground shots focus stacked during blue hour, and 2 short exposures of my wife and I during blue hour as well. All layers blended in Photoshop.
⌁ Location: Malibu, CA
⌁ Camera: Canon 6D
⌁ Lens: Sigma Corporation of America 14mm f/1.8 ART
⌁ Filter: N/A
⌁ Tripod: Manfrotto 055 & 410 Geared Head
⌁ f/2.0
⌁ 13 seconds
⌁ ISO 5000
You can follow my work on Instagram http://www.instagram.com/stevenjmagner
