Earlier in the first lockdown I attended an astrophotography online lecture given by Robert Harvey and hosted by Lacock Photography. Being on Robert’s mailing list I was by invited him and 5 others to go for the late evening workshop to Wilton Windmill in Wiltshire.
The evening promised the chance to photograph:
- the core of the Milky Way,
- a once in 20-year grand conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn,
- the International Space Station passing overhead, and
- the comet NEOWISE
I parked in the lay-by opposite the lane that leads to the windmill.
This was my first workshop under the then lockdown social distancing rules. We set up our tripods at least 6 feet apart for the shots. Here is my first ‘keeper’ of the windmill in silhouette.
My images of the grand conjunction were not very good unfortunately. While we waited for the next event we did light painting exercises on the windmill.
When it was around 11.15 pm we set up to catch the ISS pass overhead.
ISO3200 24mm at f/2 for 5 seconds.
Then it was the turn to try and capture an image of comet NEOWISE.
ISO1600 24 mm at f/2 for 20 seconds.
More light painting of the windmill.
My images of the Milky Way were made difficult by my camera coming loose on the tripod head – lesson learnt was to make sure I had a a means of tightening everything in future workshops!
ISO3200 24mm at f/2 for 20 seconds
ISO2000 24mm at f/2 for 20 seconds
We rounded the evening off taking images every 30 seconds of the windmill to generate an image of star trails. I was not happy with my resulting image more lessons learnt.
Robert’s book on photographing Wiltshire has a number of pages dedicated to the Wilton Windmill starting on page 164.