She’s a hard road to the perfect night sky

She’s a hard road to the perfect night sky – Paul Le Comte

Sometimes locations & shots are popular cliches because of their stunning beauty, the lighthouse at Nugget Point on the Catlins coast being one of those locations.

It may seem strange to include an image with so many clouds covering the Milky Way, but I think this image perfectly illustrates just how hard we have to work to get the perfect shot, & ultimately nature isn’t perfect, despite what you see on Instagram.

We all know this shot, the galactic core of the Milky Way rising above the lighthouse, cool blue tones & crisp sharp stars. However this night, after a 90min drive from Dunedin, within minutes of climbing the precarious track up the cliff & setting up my gear the clouds came in fast from the west. I rushed to get at least one super wide panorama in before I lost the view.

The sky was actually glowing this warm light due to the effect of the cloud cover and a decent sea mist off the coast, & I feel it would be disingenuous to ‘correct’ the white balance to the familiar cooler night sky blues.

As much as I’d love to capture the ‘perfect’ lighthouse astro image, not sure what that actually is & I’m super happy with this image.