Come and join Jay for an exciting Blue Mountains Astrophotography workshop.
Our workshop will provide you will all the coaching and tuition you will need to capture the night sky, and, weather permitting, our evening session in the Blue Mountains will leave you with some stunning images to take home.
On this workshop, we will travel together from Katoomba in our dedicated 4WD tour vehicle and visit 3-4 different Astro Locations through the night. We suggest you arrive well rested as we will likely continue to shoot through to the early hours. As the Milky Way transits through the night sky, we will move from east to west facing compositions and find ourselves visiting some locations unknown to many.
Once we conclude our on-location component, and everyone has had the chance to travel home or to their accommodation for some rest, we will organise an appropriate time for us to reconvene the next day to go through our online post-processing tutorials via online Zoom video conference. If you miss the Zoom session, you will still get access to our online post processing video content.
Photographing the night sky in the Blue Mountains
Less than 2 hours drive from Sydney, the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage area comprises over 1 million hectares of protected landscape containing vast sandstone lined valleys with some truly epic vistas, vast Eucalypt forests with many bushwalking tracks and trails. And for Night photographers, provides a clear and dark sky location where it is easy to capture the Milky Way and stars away from the intense light pollution of the city. While you are on one of our Blue Mountains Astrophotography Workshops, we will find a location where we can capture the incredible night skies juxtaposed with the natural landscape finding features to photograph that will leave you with stunning imagery.
On location photography coaching & tuition
Before we setup at our location, we will go through some Astro planning tips, the equipment you need and how to set it up for nightscaping. Once darkness falls, you will be tutored on the night sky, how to locate the Milky Way, how to find the Southern celestial pole, and how to setup your camera to capture the Galactic Core or Star Trail images and the settings to use for the different types of nightscape and astro images. We will also go through plenty of tips and guides for your nightscaping including headlamp etiquette, low-level lighting, managing lens fog, using filters, capturing panoramas and timelapse.
Online post processing tutorials live via Zoom
Once we have finished capturing the night sky, and after a good night sleep, we will reconvene the next evening via a Zoom conference to go through Post Processing of your images, teach you our quick and easy nightscape workflows, and answer any questions you have. We will set the timing for the post processing session based on agreement with the group.
If you are unable to access the Zoom conference live, it will be made available to you via a streaming service so you can watch through at your leisure at a later time.
Licensed Parks EcoPass & Accredited Guide
Jay is licensed to operate Photography tours and Bushwalk Activities in NSW National Parks under an Eco Pass License # LIC20/116.
We wish to ackonwledge the Traditional Owners and Custodians of the country we visit during our tours, the Gundungurra, Dharug, Wiradjuri, Darkinjung and Thawawal people and pay our respects to elders past, future and ongoing.
Example Itinerary
Day 1 - Astro Shoot
6PM – Meet at Katoomba Railway Station
6:30PM – Depart for Astro Shoot
6:30PM – 4AM – Travel between Astro Locations with on-location tutoring
4AM – Return to Katoomba
4:30AM – On-location Workshop closes
Day 2 - Post Processing & Tutorials
We will organise a suitable time to host our online post processing session with the group to ensure everyone is available. These times are just a guide.
7PM – Post Processing via Zoom Conference
9PM – Ask any questions
9:30PM – Workshop Closeout
*Bad Weather Policy for Astrophotography Workshops
Try as we might, we just can’t control the weather (and we have tried to build an app to do it for us!). Our workshop dates are planned around the best times in the moon cycle to capture the night skies. In order to build a calendar for each year, we have to specify dates at a time where there is no visible or accurate forecast for weather conditions on those dates.
As a consequence, by booking you place on this workshop, you will be agreeing to our Bad Weather Policy for Astrophotography Workshops as outlined below:
Apart from Astro photography coaching & tuition from your highly experienced photography guide and tutor, your fee covers my business costs for hosting such tours in NSW National Parks, Council Reserves and Crown Lands which includes:
