Our year-long trip to New Zealand started with a 6 week roadtrip across the North Island in our van Ernie (all of the stories and details are in the New Zealand trip report). During the first week of the road trip we stopped in a place called Matapouri that is on the east coast of New Zealand’s North Island. There were a lot of changes that we were still getting used to including van life in general, driving on the left side of the road, and the summer/winter reversal. Another thing that was different from home was the night sky. I could only identify a few constellations that were familiar, and most of the constellations that I was used to seeing we no longer there when I looked up.

But, on one clear night while we were in Matapouri, I headed out after it was dark to get some photos of this strange new sky. I was planning to take photos of a rock formation out in the water, but instead preferred the photo looking back up the trail that I walked down to get to the beach.

The settings for night photography are often quite tricky, but in general you want to open up your aperture as much as possible (lowest f-stop number) use a wide lens, and keep your shutter speed somewhere around 20 to 25 seconds. Your ISO is then usually quite high to make this possible.

Also, just a reminder that if you’re ever curious to see how I edit any of my Photo’s of the Week, leave a comment on the photo or send me an email and I will try to cover it in a new episode of The Fix.