about 2 degrees—essentially, true north.
In daylight, I wandered around among
the bizarre hoodoos dotting the floor of
Goblin Valley with a compass in my hand
until I found a location where the galactic
center would fall between two interesting
goblins and the rest of the Milky Way
would arch over more sandstone spires. I
returned that night and shot the image as
a stitched panorama.
Nighttime landscapes, even more than
daylight ones, benefit from careful plan-
ning. Master the techniques described
here, and you’ll soon be making stunning
Milky Way images.
The Basics of Shooting
the Milky Way
The easiest way to shoot the Milky Way
is to use an ultra-wide-angle lens with a
fast maximum aperture. A 16-35mm or
14-24mm f/2.8 is ideal. Set the lens to
its shortest focal length. Focus at infinity
in daylight if possible, then tape the lens
to secure the focus ring; if you can’t
focus in daylight, you’ll have to use Live
View, magnified to 10x, to focus manu-
ally on a bright star or planet. An expo-
sure of 30 seconds, f/2.8, ISO 6400 will
give you a bright Milky Way straight out
of the camera, without having to adjustexposure in software. Some cameras
will deliver less noise if you lower the
ISO, then increase exposure in software.
Test yours before committing to this
technique for an entire shoot.
If your focal length is 16mm or shorter,
a 30-second exposure will render stars
as reasonably round in a normal-size
print. (The stars will be rendered as short
streaks if you view the image at 100 per-
cent.) I use a daylight white balance to
preserve star colors, then shift the color
of the sky toward blue in Lightroom. If
you want good detail in the land, you’ll
probably need to shoot a second exposure
that’s about two stops brighter than the
sky exposure. I typically use 2 minutes,
ƒ/2.8, ISO 6400. You’ll need Photoshop
to combine the two images using layers
and layer masks.
Composition is a matter of guess-and-
check. Shoot a test frame, check the com-
position on your LCD, adjust the tripod
head and test again. I turn off in-camera
long-exposure noise reduction (helpful
but time-consuming) and high-ISO noise
reduction (ignored by all software except
the camera manufacturer’s) and reduce
noise in Lightroom. Newer cameras gen-
erally produce less noise than older ones,
so bring the newest model you have.
A solid tripod is a must. An intervalom-
eter, which allows exposures longer than
30 seconds, is helpful. A red headlamp
that can be set to a very dim output will
help preserve your night vision. A com-
panion will increase safety and reduce the
irrational but all-too-human fear of things
that go bump in the night. Scouting your
shooting location in daylight will make
it easier to achieve the best composition
when you return at night. opGlenn Randall’s most recent book is Dusk
to Dawn: a Guide to Landscape Photog-
raphy at Night, published by Rocky Nook.
See more of his work at glennrandall.com.Left: Milky Way over dunes at Great
Sand Dunes National Park, Colorado.
Shot at 8:56 p.m. on Sept. 25, 2016,
when the azimuth of the galactic
center was 213 degrees and the
altitude was 15 degrees.