ETTR Experiment
2014.12.13
Day Two Hundred and Six. I was inspired to attempt a new technique for nighttime long exposure in a heavily light polluted environment, i.e. downtown, by an article I read on PetaPixel,
How I Photograph the Milky Way in the Light-Polluted Skies of Singapore.
December is the wrong time of year to see the Milky Way in the Northern Hemisphere, but I figured I could use the technique to at least see more stars than usual.
I followed his instructions, but all I got was lens flare and blown highlights. I also have no idea how he managed to keep his skies as dark as he did while getting the stars to pop. I could either have over exposed skies with bright stars, or dark skies with dark stars ... or dark skies with bright stars and enough grain to completely ruin the exposure, even when viewing the image at web size. I'm pretty sure Singapore has more light pollution than here, so, at this point, I'm pretty convinced that he's a magician, not a photographer.
I would like to see how his images look printed at full resolution, because I'm pretty sure you can't pull that much detail out of a single exposure without a ridiculous amount of grain. But, for now, I'll simply remain impressed with his work and continue to improve my own technique ... and by that, I mean hunting for the Milky Way in non-light polluted environments :)
