The weather has been very much overcast lately so I haven’t had a chance to try out my star 15 theory until tonight. Full moon is on Friday but there’s plenty enough light to go around already, I hardly needed my flashlight in the snow covered forest. It made composition easier as well because it was actually possible to see through the viewfinder, the only thing I was left wanting was a swivelling LCD because now I had to keep kneeling under the camera to look at the display… but that’s nothing. I had such a great time, the thermometre said 12 degrees below but I was warm and cosy as I kept walking around and pointing my camera up to the sky!

I found out that photographing Cassiopeia is easy enough. At this time of the evening, Cassiopeia is straight above your head so I was literally pointing the camera straight up for a bull’s eye composition. Unfortunately, there aren’t any other constellations of interest high up in the sky – Auriga, Cygnus, Gemini and Orion and even the Big Dipper are lower at this time of the year/evening. Photographing towards the horizon turned out to be a lot harder than straight up between the tree crowns. In a way though, I think it helps to have a fish-eye lens which exaggerates the convergence of the trees, so it becomes a feature in itself rather than an irritation.

The only thing left now is Orion, it had already risen when I was taking these pictures, but I just couldn’t find a suitable composition for it. So my beloved Orion will just have to wait for another evening…