Milky Way Photography: Lightroom Tutorial – Basic Workflow




This week I’m showing you my basic Lightroom workflow with a few photographs submitted by some of you. In particular I will do some astrophotography. I also got a lot of shots from a ton of you, including BackBurner, David Mikic, Francesco Paggiaro, Fraser Harrison, Rob Nelson, Lasse Grotwinkel, Marc Frederiksen, Shannon Hill, Jessie Jim, and Simon Patterson. Big thanks to all of you. I will be using more of these, so stay tuned. You are helping the entire community.

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The shot I pulled was (ironically) from what appears to be my Canadian doppelganger, Rob Nelson. He is a photographer up north who is also and ecologist/geologist. He had some amazing night photography that he submitted. I thought I’d pull one of his to show the basic process you might use to pull out the milky way in a photo. Learn more about Rob’s photography at: http://www.robnelson.ca/ and follow him on IG and Twitter – @robnelson4

When shooting the milky way, there are a few things to think about. First, you want to get as much of the milky way exposed as possible without blurring the stars. This a little bit depends on your lens. Many fotographers use the 500 rule to determine their shutter speed. You divide your lens into 500. So, if you had a 50mm lens (500/50), you couldn’t expose longer than 10 seconds. If you had a 25mm lens, you could expose for 20 seconds – etc. In this case, Rob had a 16mm lens with a shutter speed of 15 seconds. I think he could have even exposed longer, which may have given a better histogram. However, with the people in the shot, you risk them blurring as they stand their. The truth is, there is a lot to work with in this photo.

A lot of photo manipulation is personal preference. Keep in mind that I’m doing a lot of manipulation based on my preferences. For much of what I do, I like the surreal look. I often add vibrant colors that may look unnatural to what you had in the environment. I’m not a purist. However, the few things that you have to keep in mind are:

1. Don’t over-do the grain. It will look bad.
2. Milky Way shots are best if your eye is drawn to it.
3. Always remember your distribution. If you’re making photos for a giant wall, work hard to eliminate any noise.

I have more I’d love to share if you’re interested. Leave your comments below on how your workflow is different. Feel free to give me tips. That not only helps me, but it helps the entire community.

Make sure to watch Jonas’ retouching video in a future episode…

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26 responses to “Milky Way Photography: Lightroom Tutorial – Basic Workflow”

  1. Good but there's a line you cross with processing, beyond which it ceases to be photography, and you crossed that line here. Not one of the people in that photograph would recognise the scene, despite being in it, which is to say you have adapted it beyond recognition.

  2. Nice tutorial. A lot of people don't understand that Tutorials are made to show you a technique. I really don't get it all those bad comments about the results, guys, he is just showing how to do it, you should explore the possibilities and make what you think is better.

  3. While some of his photo edits are a bit extreme, I think for someone like me who's not familiar with using lightroom its still a great tutorial. The concepts and how to get more out of your photos is what I'm here for. Whether you prefer natural looking pics or colorful unnatural looking ones is a matter of preference really, so I would say still great job with the tutorials, keep it up!

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