We are all a part of it - The Milky Way

Friday night, somewhere in the province of Zeeland, the sun sets and the sky slowly turned black, pitch black.

For a while I wanted to capture the Milky Way. Not the easiest of tasks caused by the heavy light pollution we do have in our little country. But also not entirely impossible either as I’ve seen from other people's work.

With the help from various light pollution maps I was able to pick a few dark(er) spots relatively nearby.

To make the shot more staggering I used Google maps/street view, to scout for some interesting foreground object and finally settled on a seascape kind of image with this L-shaped jetty. As can be seen in the final image it sadly never made the picture. Reason being a big yacht docked at the said jetty, basically blocking my view and causing unwanted light. So far for preparation, ugh.

With only a little time left that night, there was actually only a 1 hour gap between sunset and moonrise during which the night was at it darkest, I abandoned the seascape idea completely and went landward while still keeping an eye out for any unwanted lights. After roughly 3 kilometers I left my car outside a nature park and went by foot to scout the area for anything interesting. Even with a flashlight that felt impossible. I knew I had to settle.

I set up my gear and pointed the lens in the direction of where the Milky Way should be. There is actually an app for finding the heading where it’s at on any given location,date, and time. Really handy since it takes the human eye quite some time to adjust to the darkness and unveil the Milky Way. A couple minutes in shooting I knew I took it!

Done