Night Sky Photography - Milky Way and Star Trails

Are you fascinated with the night sky and wondered how they get those Milky Way and Star Trail images?

Looked outside and all you see is an orange, light polluted sky? Where are all the stars?

The night sky is one of the most awe inspiring sights that we have the privilege of witnessing.

We’ve been photographing the night sky since moving out to California from rainy England in 2012. The skies literally opened up with possibilities now that we could count on good weather most of the time, but learning how to photograph the night sky could be challenging and confusing. We've traveled all around California, Nevada, Utah and Arizona, going through many nights of trial and error to pinpoint the best and easiest steps to get great results and we are going to share them with you in this course.

It’s estimated that 80% of the US population cannot see the Milky Way due to light pollution. This is a sight that should not be missed for the world - but it will need some planning and some traveling. How much traveling is really down to your proximity to a big city.

After this course, you will be able to know how to take images of the Milky Way and star trails by following a clear set of guidelines. You will get outdoors, capture the wonder of the universe and create great memories at the same time.

Note - this course is from a Northern Hemisphere perspective, but the principles are still applicable everywhere!

In this course you will learn:

How to find the perfect location for photographing the Milky Way and Star Trails
Understand the best times of year and how to work around the Moon cycles
The equipment and settings needed for surefire results
The retouching process to bring out the best in your images.
A bonus: create a Timelapse at the same time
And more.

This course is for the photographer who wants to take images of the amazing Milky Way but has either tried and not gotten far yet, or who wants to get fully prepared before heading out and not to waste time. No special equipment is needed besides your camera, tripod and a few accessories

Go ahead and enroll to start on you way - I promise you will never look back and the night sky is an addictive place to photograph!

• Introduction and Course Overview
• Preparation is Everything! Location, Direction, Light Pollution
• Night Sky Compositions: Milky Way
• Night Sky Compositions: Star Trails
• Night Sky Compositions: Full Moon
• The Big 3 - Aperture, Shutter Speed, ISO
• How To Plan a Timelapse Movie
• Equipment - Your Camera, Lens, Tripod and Accessories
• Camera Settings 1
• Camera Settings 2
• How to Change Settings on your DSLR (Based on Canon)
• A Star Trail Primer
• The Shoot Itself
• Intro To Using Adobe Bridge CC
• Organizing Your Folders in Bridge
• Rating and Labeling in Bridge
• Rating and Labeling in View Mode
• Edit Your Milky Way Images with ACR - White Balance, Clipping & Contrast
• Changing Exposure, Highlights and Clarity
• Sharpening
• Color Adjustments on the Airstream
• Toning the Image and Finding the Ideal Crop
• Enhancing the Overall Image & the Milky Way Even Further
• Vignette with the Radial Filter
• Cloning out Distracting Elements with Content Aware Fill and the Clone Stamp Tool
• Changing the Color of the Night Sky with Color Lookup
• Changing the Milkyway with Curves
• Final Adjustments
• Speed Up Your Workflow With Presets
• Sync Settings to Speed Up Your ACR Workflow
• Workflow For Star Trails
• Preset and Sync up for Star Trail
• Manual Adjustments for Star Trails
• Timelapse preparation
• Panorama Introduction
• Why to Blend Multiple Exposures to Get the Best Panorama
• Blending Images In Photoshop
• Panorama Edit in ACR
• Panorama Edit in Photoshop
• Developing the Image in Lightroom
• Opening Image from Lightroom into Photoshop
• Creating A Star Trail Image
• Creating The Timelapse Movie
• Thank You And More Example Images