Here's a view of the Milky Way that people in many parts of the world don't get to see. In the Southern Hemisphere, at this time of year, we see the starry & dusty stretch of the Milky Way parallel to the western horizon an hour or so before midnight. I captured this photo with an 8mm fisheye lens, resulting in the Milky Way's presence not dominating the scene.

Two of the Milky Way's companion galaxies, the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, are showing as fuzzy patches of light in the top-left quarter of my photo. At the edge of the pond, on the right, you can see two red lights, showing the position of a second camera that was shooting a time-lapse sequence that I will use to create a star-trails image sometime soon (or so I hope). Up to the left of those red orbs, and above the Milky Way, the gas-giant planets Jupiter and Saturn glow steadily as they, too, make their way to the western horizon.

This photo was taken by me last Saturday night, 10th October, which was a month to the day since my previous visit to this site southwest of Nowra, Australia. I shot the single-frame photo with my Canon EOS 6D Mk II camera, a Samyang 8mm f/3.5 fisheye lens @ f/5.6, using an exposure time of 30 seconds @ ISO 6400.

The beauty of the night sky was laid out above me as I sat in this field near the Princes Highway at Tuross Head, Australia, a few weeks ago, so I made use of my 8 mm “fisheye” lens to try to capture the entire view in one photo. A location with skies as dark as Tuross Head offers means that you’re able to see & photograph far more detail in the Milky Way than you can in more built-up areas.

It’s a soul-refreshing and humbling thing to lay back and ponder the universe as I did on this night. I hope that you all get to do the same at least once in your life.

This image is a single-frame photo, shot with my Canon EOS 6D Mk II camera, a Samyang 8mm f/3.5 fisheye lens @ f/4.0, using an exposure time of 30 seconds @ ISO 6400.

Here's a fisheye lens view of the Milky Way heading for the southwestern horizon over the Shoalhaven River in New South Wales, Australia. The tide was flowing out, but with the river being so wide and deep at this part of its seaward journey and the total absence of wind, the surface provided an almost perfect mirror.

I captured the photo with Canon EOS 6D camera, a Samyang 8mm f/3.5 fisheye lens @ f/4.0, using an exposure time of 25 seconds @ ISO 12800.

It's almost cliché to say that seeing the world through another's eyes can help you to understand a point of view that's different to your own. In my experience, the advice is worthwhile, and I challenge myself to keep on doing that every day. Therefore today's photo is a look at the night through the eyes of another–those of a fish! Well, a fisheye lens at least.

The first fisheye lens was created by placing a photographic glass plate at the bottom of a bucket of water, using a "pinhole" aperture to let the light through. The first such photo was taken in 1905 by American physicist and inventor Robert W Wood. Photographers used the bucket-of-water method until 1922. That's not the kind of lens you could carry in your pocket!

I used a more conventional fisheye lens to shoot this photo of the Milky Way standing almost vertical over the 160-year-old Merrilla Uniting Church west of Goulburn, Australia. The Southern Cross is not too far above the tip of the church's finial piece, and the Magellanic Clouds seem to be hanging in the sky to the left of the building. The white glow shining from behind the church is light-spill from Australia's capital city, Canberra. At the upper left-hand corner, you can see the light from the nearby Goulburn city centre.

I shot this single-frame photo with my Canon EOS 6D Mk II camera, a Samyang 8mm f/3.5 fisheye lens @ f/4.0, using an exposure time of 25 seconds @ ISO 6400.

With intra-state travel restrictions lifted in New South Wales (my state in Australia) and a weather forecast that included a cloudless night, Sunday night (14th June) was shaping up to be a good night for some photography. I had planned for a slightly late start to my workday on Monday, so with Mrs Nightscapades' permission, I set off for some hours under the stars.

The two locations that I visited proved to be just the ticket for a frustrated nightscape photographer, and this one, at a picnic area in the Seven Mile Beach National Park, has an almost-circular aperture of trees that open up to reveal the view overhead. My 8 mm "fisheye" lens was able to capture the vista in a single shot, albeit with some of the foreground objects cut off a little. You can see the Milky Way stretched across the image, running from roughly northeast at the bottom to the southwest near the top. The planets Jupiter and Saturn are conspicuous in the sky at the lower right-hand corner of the frame. Upside down at the top-left is the little bush toilet that I featured in a recent post.

This photo is a single-frame image that I shot with my Canon EOS 6D Mk II camera, a Samyang 8mm f/3.5 fisheye lens @ f/4.0, using an exposure time of 30 seconds @ ISO 12800.