Focus of Episode: Editing Night Sky and Astro Photos in Lightroom

In this episode of The FIX, I show you the editing behind a shot that was posted as Photo of the Week on April 30th, called Star Gazing in New Zealand. I took the photo in the summer of 2017 while Hilary and I were driving across the North Island of New Zealand during our 1 year adventure.

We were only about a week into the adventure, but every night I would stare up at the night sky when there were no clouds and try to figure out the constellations. They were all totally different from what I had grown used to in the Northern Hemisphere. One night, we were staying at a campsite beside the ocean in a really cool spot just north of Auckland. After making dinner on the camp stove, I walked over the hill to check out the beach. It was dark already and the stars were out in full. I planned to take some photos across the beach and out towards the ocean. When I turned around to look back at the way I had come, however, I liked that view better. The path through the sand and the milky way seemed to line up perfectly. So, I set up my tripod with an intervalometer on my camera and ran up the hill so that the photo would have a subject. I got lucky and the photo turned out a lot better than I had even expected.

This is the first astro-photography shot that I’ve featured on the Fix so far, but I do edit these types of photos a lot different than a typical photo so I think it’s an important one. I’ve always struggled with night photography, and part of that was getting things right in camera, but the other half of the equation is the editing. Some of the things that I’ve learned to do are a bit counter-intuitive but one you see how it works, you can apply it to your own shots. So have a look and get ready to brace the darkness and cold to get out to capture some night shots of your own!