An evening at Hurst Castle

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I never know how to start these posts.
I think I need to start them with some sort of banner that sets your(the reader's) expectations.

Ta-Dah! There we go!

Okay... I think I need a sort of set of notes for every astrophotography type run I do to help me get things rolling.
So, let's try that... now:

The Plan!Date: 23rd of July 2014

Location: Hurst Castle
Weather: Mostly clear skies to the south.
Temperature: Pleasantly warm (Didn't even need a jumper)
Wind: Very slight
Logistics: Estimated 40 minute walk along a shingle spit to get to and return from location.
Plan/Objectives:

• Arrive early to use of dusk-light to on approach to castle
• Shoot the Milkyway over the Isle of Wight
• Capture something interesting using the castle itself 
• Get a star trail shot making use of the lighthouse that is there(If it is accessible)
• Explore and have fun

Potential Concerns:

• I've not scouted the location at night before and it's been years since I visited during the day.
• Not sure how much light pollution the Isle of Wight will kick off. (Vaguely aware there are towns/villages on north-facing(my) side of the island.)
• Whilst the castle is potentially a great site there is no interior access at night so only steep plain walls are available to shoot. (Will need to look for interesting features, first consideration would be the main entrance/gate.)

Okay so we arrived on time. The sun had just finished setting and we set straight off down the shingle spit towards the castle.
I stopped once about halfway down to shoot the fishermen.

The entire length of the spit was littered with fishermen taking advantage of the warm evening.


At the end of the spit we sat down and re-hydrated, it was still too light for star photography so I just mucked about for a while. This shot is the first one of the castle.

As you can see it's mostly tall walls. I immediately got distracted by coastal features however so expect the next set of shots to not include the castle that much as I proceeded to spend the next hour, whilst it was still getting dark, trying to take shots of the sea-defenses.

You can faintly see a smear in this shot of the Milkyway coming down diagonally from the upper left corner.

A lot of traffic in the sky.

A bit of clambering was involved but I really wanted to play with the wooden structures that led into the water and now the sky was about as dark as it was going to get.

We then started to move round the castle a bit towards the lighthouse.

The Lighthouse

So turning round the last bit of castle wall we come up on the light house.

I wasn't quite sure what to expect, certainly wasn't expecting a single solid beam of light pointing out over the castle wall and the main lighthouse flashes weren't even so bright as to cause hideous over-exposure in the shots.

I tried various different angles and moved around to get different angles.
Two key compositions would involve
1. The light house with Polaris
2. The Lighthouse with the milkyway.
The exact positioning of each within the shot would be dependant on where I could get to and my creativity.

So... as per the plan, I tried to get a nice circular star trail over the lighthouse. (Ideally with Polaris centred on or behind the lighthouse.)
I tried an experiment of limiting my sequence of shots to 15 minutes to see if that was enough to get a good circular trail. It's not until I got to post-processing that I could see it wasn't really enough for what I wanted and, unfortunately, there was another problem... i'd been having trouble with my tripod in portrait mode all night and was thinking I was shaking the camera but, as the stacked images from the 15 minute sequence shows, my tripod was slipping. The camera was sinking throughout the 15 minutes, creating an unintended spiral effect with the trail. (I composited the lighthouse back in manually so it wasn't blurred.)

Castle Gate and the road home

So, with the lighthouse and sea defences bagged and the night sky truly dark we turned on the castle itself once more.

Again you can see the tall walls with minimal features.
In truth there is lots do with creatively with the walls of the castle I just was easily distracted by other subjects. (And my tripod problem.)

I tried to get a shot of the milkyway over the gate for the castle but couldn't quite find the right composition. This was the best of the bunch.

This is the jetty that is used, within normal hours, to get to and from the castle. It points directly into the light pollution of the main land unfortunately.

One last shot of the Milkyway over the Isle of Wight half-way back along the shingle-spit as we headed home.

Sunsets and Milky Ways over the Durdle Dor

It's been very wet lately with some very cloudy weather so oppurtunities to get out and about have been elusive.
However a convenient friday night was forecast to have minimal clouds during sunset where it was going to clear up around midnight and cloud over again between 01:00 and 04:00. It would've been a waste not to take advantage and so we(Shaun and I) opted to return to Durdle Door to make up for the previous semi-failure.

It became apparent shortly after arriving that Durdle Door, whilst beautiful at sunset, at this time of year at least, was limited by having the sunset behind the cliffs as opposed to over the horizon. I Should have checked stellarium. As it happens Shaun had checked Stellarium and mentioned that the Milky Way should be in view tonight, I was pessimistic about the weather but you'll see how that turns out later.

Here's some photos of a sunset.

Look the sun is setting! You can see it! There are rays breaking out over the cliff-top and everything.

... and then it was gone...

The old way down to the beach. Fenced off and no longer used since the land slipped.

We moved down to the beach to get some angles on the door itself whilst there was still some colour in the sky.

Now the weather was windy and the waves were rough, I rather in advisably tried to capture the waves, up close and, failed really to get what I wanted. Some of the images are quite nice but not what I was after.

Also my attempts at shooting the waves had some regrettable but considered consequences.

This is a shot of some seagulls floating on the updraught by the cliffs.

Here is the consequence of my attempts at shooting the waves.

A completely spattered and filthy lens which had a direct impact on the following shots where you can see the light is glaring through the misted areas. (Around the cliff edges on the right most noticeably.)

I gave the lens a clean down and decided, as the sky was still quite bright, to try some long exposures with a high f/stop, a low ISO and a very long shutter speed with a mind to getting the water to go a bit creamier. It was windy so I knew the foreground grass would be affected but still.

Shaun's camera in the foreground for this shot. You can see quite clearly some of the brighter stars are starting to appear in the darker patches of sky.

I then set the camera rolling for a time-lapse facing vaguely in the direction of where the Milky Way would be over the door. It was still too light when I started it and I couldn't see it on camera either at the end but on review in post-processing it's quite clear.
The following shot is the last frame in the time-lapse.

Once I was finished with the timelapse I started playing around with different angles. The following shot shows the torch lights of some other late night photographers, they came and went after spending a short time in the surf. I'd be interested to see what results they got.

A bit later/darker still and the Milky Way is visible to the naked-eye it is so dark.

I played around with my camera settings further and got this following shot of the Milky Way contrasted by the harsh light pollution from Portland!

We then packed up to leave but because we were so happy with our shots so far and the weather, whilst still uncomfortably cold/windy, was fairly clear we decided to move up the cliff and shoot the other-side of the door where there are some large rock formations jutting out of the sea.

By the time we got there I believe the sky was properly and fully dark, this was when I got the following shots.

This last shot, with Shaun's foot and back-of-camera-preview-glare is probably among my favourites for the night and it was also my last. The Milky Way is just so very clear and having the human element in the foreground sort of tells a story, puts things in perspective.
For further perspective why not read Shaun's version of events where he talks about using his Nikon D90 and doing HDR for the first time.

Anyway with that we packed up and commenced the long hike back up the cliffs and to the car on the far side of the camp-site.

Sunrise at Stone Henge 2014

Every year I hear about folks going down to Stonehenge for the solstice and I kick myself both for forgetting it was coming up and simply for not going.

This year, I vowed, would be different!

This year, I swore, I would be there!

I was!

I had a few problems.
I was mostly stood up at the last minute by everyone who said they were interested in going*.
* - Whilst they all had perfectly reasonable and understandable explanations for not being able to go I will be visiting each of them individually in the dead of night and reproducing the summer solstice to their inconvenience by gradually shining a tablelamp in their sleeping faces.

By the time I'd given up on people joining me and got myself ready to go I was set to arrive at around 01:00am.
On arrival I was directed to a parking spot to the side of one of the fields towards the rear. A great number of people had already arrived, a significant number of which were loitering around their vehicles rather than heading down to the stones. (Sunrise being at 04:43'ish, I guess there was no rush)

Not sure what it was going to be like I decided to minimize my gear, carrying only my camera and a second lens. I can't imagine what I was thinking but somehow I reached the rationale that I should leave the tripod behind.

"If i need it..." I thought "... I can just come get it."
It was the most regrettable decision I made, with no stabilisation I had to pump my ISO quite far and I could only do so much to avoid hand-shaken shots. I could have done so much better but what I didn't realise was that the stones themselves were over a mile and a half away from where they had me park. The path was quite indirect and not uncomfortably hilly, I think it took somewhere along the lines of 30-40 minutes to walk.

Once in, I proceeded to clamber over all the sleeping solstice goers, carefully pick my way through the crowds and just get as up and close to the stones as I could, making sure to take full advantage of the fact that I could be so close.
As I did so I snapped away as best I could.

I was happy that in some of these shots, even though they are handheld, I did still manage to get some stars in the background, something I wasn't sure would be possible with all the floodlighting.

I decided to leave before sunrise as I had responsibilities at home to deal with for the remainder of that day and have a couple of hours sleep would be needed and I didn't want to get stuck behind a queue of several thousand people trying to lave the carpark. Overall though the evening was very nice. Not quite what I expected with there being food vans there with flashing signs and everything was floodlit(for safety).
There were a lot of people there when I was there 01:00am-3:30am and the numbers were steadily growing as I left. The atmosphere though was friendly and even though I was nervous about my gear before leaving the car I was more than comfortable once I started snapping.

If the weather is promising I'll be back next year, if not again this year for the winter solstice... fully equipped this time though.