Interesting Photo of the Day: Night Sky over Turtle Mountains

Interesting Photos  •  Night Photography

Photographing the Milky Way can be one of the most rewarding photography experiences. However, it’s equally challenging. For one, you really need to know what you’re doing. And then there’s the specialized equipment that’s usually needed for the process. Nonetheless, photographer Justin Anderson took the following image with no extra special equipment. He simply took a series of photos with his camera on a tripod and did some magic on post to achieve this phenomenal result:

“Milky Way Over Turtle Mountains” by Justin Anderson (Via Reddit. Click image to see full size.)

The image is a composite of different images that he took at Spray Lake reservoir in Alberta for the foreground, and Lake William, Manitoba for the sky. For the sky, he took 20 exposures, each exposed for 20 seconds with a Canon 6D Mark II and Samyang 24mm f/1.4 at f/2.2 and ISO 5000. He photographed the foreground with the Canon 6D Mark II and Canon 24-105mm f/4 lens at 1/640s, f/4, and ISO 500.

What’s really impressive about this image is that he managed to get this result without using a star tracker. While photos like these require a very long exposure and a tracker to avoid star trails, he was able to achieve this using a different approach. He stacked the 20 exposures each exposed for 20 seconds using Sequator and the result is pretty amazing.

“I used Sequator to stack, then edit in Photoshop. I generally do use a tracker, however, this is without a tracker.”

The gorgeous Milky Way makes for an amazing backdrop for the beautiful mountains. Ironically, even the majestic mountains appear puny with the Milky Way dominating the scene, but in a wonderful kind of way.