Rodney Campbell's Blog

When we first drove by this location earlier in the day I just knew it would be perfect for a shot like this. The haunted house, the creepy spooky trees, the open field – just perfect. I’d been on the lookout for locations which had these sorts of conditions. Something for a nice uninterrupted milky way arch across the sky above something interesting in my foreground.

The Haunted

NIKON D750 + 14.0 mm f/2.8 @ 14 mm, 25 sec at f/2.8, ISO 6400 x 12 Frames

Note: These photographs (especially the wider shots) look much better when larger. To see larger versions in an inline overlay slideshow gallery viewer click any of the images.

I’d already determined that time wise it was roughly ideal – within days of the new moon. Secondly we were out in a relatively remote area of country New South Wales. This gives me access to reasonably dark skies away from populated areas.

I’d also determined that the milky way would start higher in the sky in the early evening and would lay over to the west towards the horizon as the night progressed. I’d also have the core of the milky way nicely visible in the sky. An app like PhotoPills on the phone is an ideal tool for this type of planning.

All I needed was a good location facing west with clear views to the north and south and something interesting to put under my arch to the west. Ohhh and I needed the clouds to go away :)…

Cue sunset and the clouds were still around but soon afterwards the skies cleared nicely and all the clouds went away.

With the conditions just about ideal my daughter and I just had to place ourselves in the field. Moving to a spot so that the grove of trees surrounding the haunted house 🙂 would sit nicely under the arch.

This image is a panorama stitch of twelve (12) vertical frames taken with the Samyang 14mm. It’s composed of two horizontal rows of six frames – one taken directly level and one taken 45˚ upwards. The field of view would be roughly 200˚ and encompasses the full milky way arch looking south to north.

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