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Early in the morning, just before the start of astronomical twilight when the sky starts to brighten to the east, is one of the most wonderful times of the day for me.
I'm blessed by living close the the Clwydian Range Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty in North Wales, and although it's not a dark skies reserve (I wish it was!) you can still make out the milky way when the sky is free of cloud and haze.
On this morning, in mid March, the milky way formed an arch, low in the sky to the east, sweeping between the slopes of Moel Famau on the left, and Foel Fenlli on the right.
Below the arch of the milky way the horizon glowed yellow the the lights of Mold and Chester in the far distance.
I stood entranced in the Pen Barras car park for a couple of minutes just drinking in the beauty laid out before me before the good old protestant work ethic kicked in and I set about capturing as fine a RAW file as I could to give me as much room for post-processing enhancements as possible.
A lot of colour corrections were needed to bring the very orange original capture back to something that resembled the scene in front of me that morning, and I'm very pleased with the final result, showing off the lovely symmetry of the valley, capped with stars.
Filename - milky way 03.jpg
Camera - Canon 6D
Lens - 14mm prime
Exposure - 15 secs @ f3.5, ISO3200
Location - Clwydian Range AONB, North Wales
This image - 800x533px JPEG
Conversion - Adobe Lightroom
Comments - High ISO used to capture faint detail
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