Beacons Reservoir Stars, Merthyr Tydfil

“Beyond this Island”

My first attempt and making a well-composed, “graphical” astrophotography image. I like the clean lines and how the Milky Way mirrors the sweep of the shore in the foreground. The glow from Merthyr Tydfil leads your eye past the island through the image. I went for a blue tone in the image. Partly, this was a practical choice: the light pollution meant I couldn’t bring any purples and reds out of the Milky Way Core. But the blue colour balance was also a narrative device: it was minus four degrees centigrade while I took this; by the end of the shoot, dew from the bog had frosted all my gear, and my shoelaces were frozen solid; blue tones get across the experience of being there in the cold. Furthermore, although we only experience the night as blue during a full moon or shortly after sunset or before sunrise, in our psyches, the night is the inky blue of the unknown.