Summer is getting closer, which also means that the galactic center is going to be visible again. I started chasing the country for some dark spots and interesting foregrounds.

The first try was by chance at a closed down hotel at the town of Asila, where we were on a surf trip. The surrounding villages made the horizon very bright, but the hotel made a good foreground. The picture has been taken in one shot with a 8 seconds (+/- I am not sure) exposure.

The second opportunity came when I traveled to Wadi Sahtan, a valley deep in the Hajar mountain range. I searched for a spot from where the milky way would set behind one of the mountains close to Jabal Shams. Unfortunately the air was quite hazy that day, due to recent dust storms that covered the whole region. Nevertheless I got the picture that I imagined out of the trip:

This shot is a composit of the foreground taken during dawn and a single exposure of the sky of around 5 seconds (faster because longer focal lenght). I am assuming that under less hazy conditions the light pollution from hamra – behind the mountains – would be less visible. I will be able to do the next attempts towards the end of the month, once the moon goes towards the end of its phase.

For the photography nerds: I used the sony A7iv for both of the pictures. In the case of the hotel with the 14mm f 1.8 lens, for the mountain shot with the 24-70mm f 2.8