Description
**Description**
Astrophotography looks technically intimidating from the outside, but this workshop strips away the complexity and gives you a clear, repeatable process for capturing beautiful night sky images with equipment you may already own. You will begin with a module on camera fundamentals for astrophotography, learning exactly what ISO, aperture, and shutter speed mean in the context of low-light sky photography and why the exposure triangle behaves differently when your subject is moving stars rather than a static scene. The workshop teaches you how to achieve critical focus on stars at night using live view zoom, the Bahtinov mask technique, and bright star focusing — the three methods that eliminate the single most common cause of blurry astro images. You will learn how to photograph the Milky Way, including planning your session around the galactic core’s seasonal visibility window, moon phase avoidance, and the use of apps like Stellarium and PhotoPills to preview your exact composition before you arrive at the location. A dedicated module covers wide-field constellation photography using a standard kit lens, teaching you to capture recognisable star patterns against landscape elements for compositionally strong images that work as both art and education. You will receive a downloadable camera settings reference card covering the recommended starting exposure for six common astrophotography targets — Milky Way core, star trails, Moon, star fields, aurora, and light-painted foreground composites — so you can begin every session with a proven baseline. The workshop walks you through star trail photography in detail, covering both single long-exposure and image-stacking methods using free software, with a step-by-step stacking tutorial included. You will be introduced to basic post-processing for astrophotos in Lightroom and free alternatives — adjusting white balance, reducing noise, pulling stars from the background, and correcting gradients caused by light pollution. A module on aurora photography covers what causes the northern and southern lights, how to forecast activity using Kp index apps, and the specific camera settings that preserve colour fidelity in aurora images. The workshop concludes with a critique-guided image improvement project where you apply every technique from the course to a single planned sky session and evaluate your results against a checklist.
**Format**
Digital workshop with video demonstrations, a downloadable camera settings reference card, stacking tutorial, and a session planning checklist.
**Duration**
3.5 hours of workshop video content across 9 sessions, with supplementary reference downloads.
**What You’ll Learn**
Camera settings for astrophotography; night focus techniques; Milky Way and constellation photography; star trail stacking; basic post-processing; aurora imaging.
**Target Audience**
DSLR and mirrorless camera owners who want to photograph the night sky, photography enthusiasts looking to expand into astrophotography, and astronomy students interested in the imaging side of the hobby.
