Night

I don’t know if I’ll ever get tired or shooting the night skies when I visit Maui, or anywhere other than our home near Chicago with decent visibility.

About 2 years ago, I started reading more about Astrophotography, and not only did that help me pick up a few pointers on how to make these images come out better, but it also gave me a sense of what’s next if I want to continue down that path.

I’m referring to is shooting the skies and deep space with the aide of a telescope. Now, since I’m only about 15 minutes from downtown Chicago, I haven’t decided to spend the money on a decent telescope for this seeing as clear skies here show about 2% of what you see above.

Should the time come where we take up a more permanent residence elsewhere, like say Maui, it will definitely be something I want to look into more.

My week at the Maui Photo Festival was more than amazing. More on that soon, as I still have a good number of photos to post online.

As luck would have it, the week also happened to fall during a new moon and the skies were clear almost every night. On our last night there, I took the chance to shoot those amazing skies with one of the many new friends I made on the trip.

Taking advantage of a great spot near the Hyatt, I decided to setup a shot of me sitting at the edge of the lawn looking up at the Milky Way. I thought it came out nice.

Another view of the grounds of the Hyatt Regency Maui at night.

There’s something about a nighttime stroll over dinner while listening to the ocean 15 feet away that will put anyone in a euphoric mood.

Most photographers and practically all book authors will talk about the best, or only, time to shoot is during the golden hours. Those are the first and last hours of sunlight during the day, which of course correspond to sunrise and sunset.

Well, ever since I first shot the Milky Way over Maui, I have grown rather fond of shooting long exposures at night. Many of them initially have been of the heavens, such as this one of Venus, but I’ve recently started to look for things more down to Earth to shoot as well. Back here on Maui for a week, there’s been great night skies and no shortage of things around me to shoot after dark. Not to mention the help of some of the new gear I picked up for this trip, too.

Here’s a quick sampling, with more being uploaded soon.

And of course, the primary reason I love shooting at night in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

See more at my Stars Over Maui photoset on Flickr, and if you happen to have starry photos from Hawaii to share, I invite you to join us at the Stars Over Hawaii group on Flickr as well.

Thanks.

After a long day of travel to Maui from Chicago, the stars and the Milky Way above us drew enough energy out of me to setup my gear on the balcony of our 20th floor suite. Not soon after I started, the clouds started rolling in, so I turned my tripod downwards and started shooting the grounds of the resort from above.