Photographer Brad Goldpaint started his journey in photography just three years ago, but you’d never guess that from watching this impressive time-lapse effort, titled “Within Two Worlds.” Goldpaint writes,
Within Two Worlds depicts an alternate perspective by giving us the illusion of times movement, signifying a beginning and end within a world of constant contradiction. It appears you are traveling in the midst of a dream, half-sleeping, half-waking, and touching the arch connecting heaven and earth.
I discovered my passion for photography shortly after my mother’s passing while hiking the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) 3 years ago. This time-lapse video is my visual representation of how the night sky and landscapes co-exist within a world of contradictions. I hope this connection between heaven and earth inspires you to discover and create your own opportunities, to reach your rightful place within two worlds.
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Astronomers at the European Southern Observatory’s Paranal Observatory in Chile have released a breathtaking new photograph showing the central area of our Milky Way galaxy. The photograph shows a whopping 84 million stars in an image measuring 108500×81500, which contains nearly 9 billion pixels.
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Melbourne, Australia-based wedding photographer Lakshal Perera shot this stunning wedding photograph a few days ago showing the newlywed couple in the foreground and the Milky Way floating in the night sky. The scene was extremely dim, allowing for a clear view of the sky. Perera captured it in a single exposure using a Canon 5D Mark III and 16-35 f/2.8L lens at 17mm, 71 seconds of exposure, f/5.6, and ISO boosted up to 4000 (wow). The couple is relatively sharp given that they had to stand still for 71 seconds!
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The next time you’re out in a non-light polluted place with your family and your camera, try using our galaxy as a backdrop. Hawaii-based photographer John Hook shot this ridiculously awesome photograph of him, his wife, and his daughter staring up at the Milky Way. As if that weren’t perfect enough, there’s also a shooting star photobombing the portrait in the lower right hand corner!
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Time-lapse photographer Randy Halverson (whose time-lapse of lightning storms we featured last year) is back again with another epic time-lapse film. This one is packed with shots of some of the most beautiful things you can point your camera at in the night sky: the Milky Way, auroras, and shooting stars. It’s composed of thousands of 15-30 second exposures captured with a Canon 5D Mark II and Canon 60D at ISO 1600-6400, f/2.8, and 3 second intervals. Keep your eyes peeled at 53 seconds: you get to see a shooting star with a Persistent Train, which is the ionized gas left behind as the meteor burns up in our atmosphere!
Babak Tafreshi of The World at Night created this beautiful time-lapse video of star gazers looking into the heavens while the stars sweep across the night sky. Check out Tafreshi’s beautiful astrophotography here.

Photographer Yasuaki Segawa captured this incredible photograph of the Milky Way rising above the ocean, as seen from Taketomi Island, Japan. In addition to the uber-sharp stars, reflections of two bright stars can be seen in the waters. Segawa used a Canon 5D Mark II with a 24mm f/1.4 lens, and composited 5 separate photos to make this image (allowing him to expose the sky and the foreground separately). He also compensated for star rotation to sharpen the sky and prevent star trails. A higher-res version can be found here.
Time-lapse guru Dustin Farrell recently released this epic video showing the stunning landscapes of Arizona and Utah. Every single frame in the video was a still photo captured with a Canon 5D Mark II.
(via planet5D)
Time-lapse photographer Randy Halverson spent three months hunting thunderstorms at night in central South Dakota using a Canon 5D Mark II, Canon 60D, and Canon T2i. Capturing both the storms and the Milky Way in the same shots proved to be a difficult task:
One of the challenges in making this video, was trying to get good storm and star shots. The opportunity doesn’t come along very often, the storm has to be moving the right speed and the lightning can overexpose the long exposures. I had several opportunities this summer to get storm and star shots. In one instance, within a minute of picking up the camera and dolly, 70mph winds hit. One storm was perfect, it came straight towards the setup, then died right before it reached it. [#]
In the end, he captured enough photographs to create this 3-minute-long time-lapse video showing the galaxy floating overhead while storm clouds roll in. Lightning photos are one thing, but seeing storms sweep across the scene at night is incredible.
(via Laughing Squid)
Astronomy and photography enthusiast Alex Cherney spent 31 hours over six nights shooting photographs of the Milky Way over the Southern Ocean using a Nikon D700 and Nikkor 14-24mm lens. The resulting 2.5 minute time-lapse video was named the overall winner of this year’s STARMUS astro-photography competition.
(via NOTCOT.ORG)