D750/Z6II - Jefferson Milky Way
Equipment Used: Nikon D750 & Tamron 24-70mm f2.8, Nikon Z6II & Nikon Z 24-70mm f4 , VanGuard Abel Plus 363CT & Silk Pro tripod , Nikon SB-700 Speedlight, Lightroom & Photoshop CC
The second week of June was a new moon which during the summer means a good time to capture the Milky Way so I headed west of Jefferson to take pictures of two bridges. I decided to take pictures of just one and wait on the other one until July or August. I had to walk across the river so carried my two Nikon cameras and a pair of tripods. I found a nice piece of drift wood that happened to point towards the bridge and where the Milky Way was going to be.
The D750 settings were aperture of f2.8, 8 second shutter and ISO ranged from 3200-8000. While the Z6II were aperture of f4.0, 8 second shutter and ISO ranged from 4000-12800. I used a self timer on both cameras while they were on the tripods. While out capturing the images, a few vehicles traveled across the bridge which turned out to light the bridge and even give me a few brake light lines.
In Lightroom, I adjusted the files by using two presets that I have for Milky Way and then used radial filters, graduated filters, exposure adjustment, brush strokes and a few other adjustments to get the images the way I like them to look. I had images for both the Milky Way and than for the bridge as well so I adjusted both of them. I than opened them has layers in PhotoShop.
Using layer masks in PhotoShop, I used the brush tool to blend the Milky Way image into a foreground image of the drift wood and river shoreline. To help give the foreground more warmth, I used a warming photo filter as well.
North of this bridge is a higher bridge that the train goes over that I plan to take nighttime photographs as well. Using PhotoPills app, the next two new moons I should be able to capture the Milky Way behind the bridge.
