I used to think wide field shots were boring until I tried one at Joshua Tree

I was camping there last fall and just pointed my camera at the sky for a 30 second exposure. The photo caught the whole Milky Way arc over the rocks, plus a surprise meteor streak. It made me see that a single, detailed nebula shot doesn't always tell the whole story of a night. Now I plan my trips to get at least one super wide angle shot to set the scene. What's a location that completely changed your mind about a type of astro photo?

2 comments

2 Comments

derekp701mo ago

Honestly, I still find most wide field shots pretty boring. They often just look like a generic starry sky with some dark shapes at the bottom. You get one interesting meteor streak in a thousand tries. I'd rather spend the night getting a really clean, deep image of a specific object, like the Horsehead Nebula. That shows me something I can't see with my eyes. A wide shot of the Milky Way just tells me I was in a dark place, which is nice, but it's not much of a photo achievement.

rivera.susan1mo ago

But have you ever tried to actually frame a great wide field shot? It's not just pointing up. You're working with the whole landscape, waiting for the right light, maybe catching some airglow. That clean deep space shot is amazing, but it's a different kind of skill. Isn't the whole point to capture a feeling you had standing out there under all that sky?