The Milky Way Rising Over The Walkway At Bodie Island Lighthouse, Nags Head, NC 7/22/20

While on vacation in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, the weather cooperated so I decided to head down to Bodie Island Lighthouse to shoot the Milky Way in the dark skies there.

The bugs at Bodie are notoriously vicious so I wore pants, long sleeve shirt and a bug net to protect myself. Upon stepping out of the car, I realized that thankfully the wind was keeping the bugs away, although it made shooting long exposures a little more challenging. I walked down the concrete sidewalk to the wooden walkway and past the “Beware of Poisonous Snakes” sign and found a nice composition to shoot.

Here is a shot of the Milky Way rising over the walkway at Bodie Island Lighthouse, Outer Banks, Nags Head, NC. Jupiter and Saturn can also be seen to the left of the Milky Way. The beams of light emanating from the lighthouse are real and look this way because of the long exposure used.

The sky consists of 15 shots (13 second exposures, f/2.8, ISO 6400 with 14 mm lens) stacked in Sequator to reduce noise. The foreground was a single 120 second exposure. The sky and foreground were then blended in Photoshop and edited in Lightroom.

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