Me and this Pandanus go way back, over the years we have chilled out, shot some sunrises, shot some sunsets, watched some stars, lamented world issues and solved world issues. We are available for consulting and problem solving 😉

No matter how many times I head out into the night there is always that slight trepidation that comes with it – I got thinking about this, particularly so since my middle daughter is going thru a time when she is quite afraid of the dark. It does appear that the fear of the dark is actually hardwired into humans, only in recent times have humans had little need to be afraid of the dark since we have pretty well become the apex predator on the planet, mainly due to the eradication of most animal species. This turn has really only occured late in our evolution cycle and hence we still have that fear , which drives the fight or flight response, this was so key for us since not too many generations ago becoming a snack for the next hungry lion was a real reality. So, if your like me and occasionally look over your shoulder as you trudge down that lonely dark path, remember… there could be a lion there 🙂 if not, all good, systems working normally.

Sitting out here watching the stars and taking a few photos requires quite a bit of time sitting in the dark, it’s actually pretty neat to see how much your eyes do adapt and what you can see with no torch light. That said when a f-off big wallaby came to hang out with me i don’t think I could get that headlamp back on fast enough 🙂

This shot is taken with a 20mm f1.4 lens that I won the other year, it’s pretty well the first time I have really used it in anger, its pretty amazing to be able to shoot at f1.4 with the milkyway since you can suck in so much light in a short exposure with a low ISO which means the noise is really reduced. On the flip side, as you can see in this image, focus is super critical, i messed up the frames on the left side and they were slightly out of focus, enough to be really annoying. At f1.4 when the foreground, (tree) is in focus the sky is pretty well slightly out of focus and the rocks on the ground in front of the camera definitely blurry. This image is a panorama using 3 rows of 6 images, noting that I could probably get away with just 2 rows and still get the top of the milkyway in the frame, i do find having plenty of sky above the milkway arch helps in reducing that effect of a flattened top of the milkyway. The shot covers 180 degree field of view (horizontal) and probably about 90 degrees vertically.

(C) 2020 Gerard Blacklock, all rights reserved