Hall of Public Audiences

This design of archways is very common in northern parts of India, especially in Rajasthan, but this particular hall, know as the Hall of public audiences (Diwan I Am) in the Agra Fort is especially beautiful.

Starry Starry Night

On my recent trip to the Cederberg I planned to try out some astrophotography. This is something I'm very unfamiliar with, and have never tried before. The landscape of the Cederberg is a series of strange rock formations formed over millions of years by the battering winds. One of the most distinctive features of the Cederberg is the Wolfberg Arch, a 30 meter (100ft) high rock wall, with a massive hole straight through the middle.

With this as a subject I experimented with star photography. With essentially one hour to snap away before the moon came up I decided I would try some deep-space photography, as star-trail photography would just be too time consuming. It was a challenge finding the correct settings to get enough light with as little star-trail as possible and as little noise as possible. With my Canon 50D and Sigma 10-20 lens I ended up getting this shot on a 78 second bulb release, at f/5 with an ISO of 1600. I then post-processed it in Photoshop in order to bring out the light of the Milky Way. For those interested I followed an excellent YouTube tutorial by Kenneth Brandon on how to post-process Milky Way shots.

This was a fun experiment, and something I'm sure in time I'll improve on, but for the moment I'm very happy with the result.

I hope you enjoy it!

And please feel free to comment on this and any other of my posts and pictures.

Wolfberg Arch and Milky Way