Shooting stars burst through space like fireworks over rural Victoria

AN INTERNATIONALLY acclaimed Australian astrophotographer has released a stunning series of new pics showing stars bursting through space.

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AN INTERNATIONALLY acclaimed Australian astrophotographer has released a stunning series of new pics showing stars bursting through space.

Lincoln Harrison’s original star trails photographs went viral around the world after being featured here last year.

Now he is back with a spectacularly original new series, shot near Bendigo in rural Victoria.

Created using an innovative new photography technique explained below, Harrison’s new images show stars apparently bursting across the sky.

Spectacular starbursts

How did you capture the images?
They were done by zooming the lens out & changing focus during a 30 second exposure to get the comet effect on the stars. The foreground was taken as a normal image and the two layers combined in post.

Where did the inspiration come from?
I was doing a night shoot and adjusted the zoom and focus on my lens not realizing the camera was still exposing, as soon as I saw the result I knew I could fine tune it to get something unique.

Where are the images shot? Why do you like working there?
These ones were shot at Ravenswood, near Bendigo. I shoot there a bit because it’s not too far from home and far enough away from town to avoid light pollution. I prefer to shoot along the Great Ocean Road or Phillip Island but its a long way to travel.

Spectacular starbursts

Can you tell us a little bit about your process: how long do you spend outdoors?
Unlike the circular trails which can take anywhere from 6 to 12 hours to shoot, these ones can be done in around 15 minutes. The exposure time is only 30 seconds, but adjusting the zoom and focus by hand without wobbling the tripod can be tricky so it usually takes quite a few attempts to get it right.

And how much work do you do in post-production?
I do quite a bit of post production work on my images. For the circular trails I need to combine up to 1000 images so that takes a while. The starburst images only require two images to be combined so they are easy in comparison. I also do a lot of work on colour and contrast to get the results I’m after.

Your original startrails images went around the world: were you surprised?
Yes, I was surprised. At the time I’d only been doing photography for less than a year, I opened up the newspaper one morning and there were my photos, I nearly fell off my chair.

How many articles have been written about you?
I stopped counting a long time ago.

How did you get into photography?
I needed a camera to photograph some items I was elling on eBay, I was planning on grabbing a compact but came home with a DSLR because it looked better. I decided to try a landscape shot to use as a desktop background on my PC, the results weren’t very good so I kept trying and got hooked along the way.

What is your camera of choice?
I’m using a Nikon D800E and Nikkor 14-24 lens now. It gives me the ability to do huge prints and still maintain high image quality.

Spectacular starbursts

What is it about the night sky that so inspires you?
I don’t really know, it’s a nice change of pace from shooting seascapes at sunrise or sunset, which require a lot of travelling and a lot of luck with the weather conditions and timing. When shooting at night I don’t have to worry about any of that, and I have all night to do it.

Are urban Australians missing out by not spending nights outdoors away from the city?
Yes. I know people that have never seen the Milky Way, they assume my Milky Way shots are a landscape combined with an image from the Hubble space telescope. On a clear night during the new moon phase, well away from the city lights the view of the sky is spectacular.

Spectacular starbursts

You photos have 1.1m views on 500px.com: has the site been a good platform?
500px has been great, it’s opened up a lot of opportunities. Within a few days of uploading my first images I was receiving emails from all over the world..

What’s next?
I’ve been working on another technique that combines the circular trails with the zooming technique, resulting in a spiral effect. This was a lot harder to do as rather than zoom the lens out over a 30 second period it is being zoomed over four hours, which cannot be done by hand so I’ve had to design and build a machine to handle the zooming. So far I only have one image using this technique, the weather hasn’t been very cooperative lately.

Simon Crerar is News Corp’s Visual Story Editor. Follow him at twitter.com/simoncrerar | See more photos at www.lincolnharrison.com