File:Lover of Light - My First Star Trail Attempt (24698942956).jpg

I'm a lover of light. Two of my hobbies may seem different, but they are very similar and both revolve around the capturing of light: Astronomy and photography. I began my fascination with light through astronomy, but I have recently became extremely interested in photography. I'm looking forward to combining both as soon as possible and give a try at deep sky astrophotography. This night's unusually warm weather and clear skies for winter allowed for me to enjoy both where photography recorded astronomy.

This location has very dark skies which is great for astronomy. The stars pop in the night sky like a million diamonds scattered across black velvet. At this abandoned farmhouse, several of my friends and I love to come here to observe the night skies with our telescopes. Unfortunately, the vehicles obstruct the telescopes from being easily viewed in this image. One can slightly be seen over the hood of the truck on the right.

This image was taken in what seemed to be almost complete darkness. The only visible light to the eyes were from the stars above and the dim red astronomy lights used to give a soft red glow just enough to see, but yet still preserve the eyes' sensitivity to light for viewing faint celestial objects in deep space with the aid of our telescopes.

Capturing The Image: Camera: Nikon D5500 Lens: Nikon 18-140mm f/3.5-5.6 Settings: f/3.5, 18mm, 2402 secs (40mins, 2secs), ISO 100

Processing: I initially began processing this image a great deal, but later decided I liked it better with very little processing. - Imported image into Adobe Lightroom - Custom White Balance (Selected a neutral grey with dropper). - Highlights: -24 - Shadows: +88 - Whites: +65 - Blacks: +3 - Lens Distortion Corrected - Lens Vignetting Not Corrected