Milky Way Astro over Lake Panorama National GC #15

Equipment Used: Nikon D750, Tamron 24-70 mm f2.8 G2 lense, Nikon SB-700 Speedlights, Vello Flash triggers Vanguard Abel Plus 363CT tripod, Lightroom & Photoshop CC

The new moon in September wraps up the season to capture the Milky Way so when the sky was clear one night, I headed to Lake Panorama National GC and walked out to hole #15.

I set up the D750 with the 24-70mm lense on it with the Vanguard tripod near the cart path facing the green and pond. I positioned the SB-700 speedlights on poles near the pond to expose the pond and green via triggering them with the VelloFlash receiver. ISO 3200 or 6400, Aperture of f2.8, RAW and 8-12 second exposure were the settings along with using the self timer set at 2 seconds. I took images to expose the sky and then the green/pond and later combined them in post. Images to make panoramic also were taken.

Lightroom presets were used to edit these images using my milky way II and golf course I preset. The milky preset brings out the detail and exposure of the milky way and stores while the golf course preset gives the grass a nice green color. I used the radial filter to brighten up the green area of the image as well. To create the panoramic image, I combined the multiple images in LR.

In Photoshop, the healing and clone brush were used to get rid of unwanted objects such water hazard stakes. I took the different sky and hole images and combined them using layer masks and the paint brush to blend them together to create one image.

With hole #15 looking great underneath the stars, my next project will hopefully be fall colors on LPN. 

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