The stars literally aligned to allow me to capture this wonderful image of Michelle and Mark during their wedding weekend at the Black Rock Resort in Ucluelet.
Several factors had to come together for this to work; a very dark clear sky (rare in Ucluelet!) with no moon, later in the year so the Milky way was up in the night sky. A wedding in the right place at the right time, and most importantly, a bride and groom who were up for standing around in the pitch darkness for a couple of hours slowly freezing while I did my thing.
Technically this was very challenging. Despite the finished image, it was basically pitch black to the human eye, so everything had to be done by flashlight. This made it very difficult to move around, or frame and focus the camera. For fellow photographers the technical details were; Nikon D3s, on a tripod, 30 sec exposure, F2.8, ISO 1600. The couple were pre-posed in a position they could hold perfectly still for 30 seconds without moving. And an off camera strobe fired at the start of the exposure. The ‘piece de resistance’ was that the camera was mounted on an iOptron ‘Sky tracker’, which is an astronomical piece of equipment which counters the earth’s rotation and stops any star trails forming during the long exposure. This resulted in wonderful exquisite detail in the Milky Way behind the couple.
Thanks goes to my friend/colleague Tony Puerzer from Bright Idea Photography who tagged along, for his tech support, and loan of the Sky tracker. He posted a pull back ‘Behind the scenes’ shot of one of my setup’s during this shoot.
100 Billion Stars…
Amazing shot. Well done.