In Seach of the Milky Way - From Dusk 'Til Dawn in the Allgäu

At the end of May I scouted a possible location for an astro shoot in the Allgäu mountains come next new moon. A good milky way photos lives and dies by the foreground and I wanted somewhere with a good view over the alps. The middle of June arrived and the forecast for Friday and Saturday was awful; clouds, rain, the lot. Nothing doing. The next weather window was going to be Tuesday night. To make matters worse, the initiator of the whole idea - my friend Matthias - couldn't make it as he was stuck up at work in northern Bavaria. But an old school friend who happens to live in Munich was interested enough to bite when I announced my intentions on Facebook and so Martin and I ended up heading down to Fischen im Allgäu early Tuesday evening to see what we could see. Meteorologically we were on a rising tide - there were still some clouds around but the weather was definitely clearing from the north and so we were optimistic.

The Shoot

Waiting For The Moon To Set || Huawei P30 Pro

Dusk

Driving down there were still cloud remnants lurking in all the wrong places, but the northerly wind was driving them deeper into the alps and so we weren't too concerned. We set off from the car-park in the early evening light. Normally, like most people, I spend most of my time in the mountains during the day. Unless I'm staying in one of the mountain huts, I'm generally back down in the valley for dinner. This evening's experience may get me to revisit that schedule. There's a good reason why landscape photographers choose to shoot at the ends of the day; the light quality is very different. It's softer, gentler and less blue. Watching the pastel colours changing on the Vorarlberg mountains in the gathering dusk made me start rethinking how I plan my days in the Alps.

As the Sun Goes Down || Olympus f/7.1, 1/80 s, ISO 200

It was great to see that not all of the snow had disappeared in the intervening weeks; I find the last snowfields really make a photo like this and I don't shy back from exaggerating them in post-processing like  here (above).

The Pastel Colours of Evening || Olympus f/7.1, 1/160 s, ISO 200

All the Layers || Olympus f/7.1, 1/30 s, ISO 200

Moonset

I'd promised my school chum a relatively easy hike up to the first mountain top that I'd identified. Unfortunately we didn't make it all the way and ended up about 100 m below the summit on a slight shoulder. The location was optimal for the first spectacle of the evening - the fresh new moon was due to set behind the peak above us and our location appeared to be optimal for that. My smartphone app (Sky View) was showing me where the moon should be in the sky, but for the life of me I couldn't find it. I was beginning to fret that either (a) the app was playing up, or (b) there wasn't going to be enough moon to see. As the sky darkened and I still couldn't see it Martin spotted it - why we hadn't seen it before was a complete mystery as it was so clear at this point.

Well It's Obvious Now! || Olympus f/8, 1/5 s, ISO 200

Setting Moon || Olympus 100 mm f/5.6, 0.6 s, ISO 400

Before we turned our attention to the stars that were beginning to appear in twos and threes there was one more dusk photo to grab before the technical stuff began:

When Purple Comes Out To Play || Olympus f/5.6, 40 s, ISO 200

As fun as it was to shoot the setting moon, it cost me my first milky way shots as I wasn't set up to get a good foreground photo during the blue hour that I could use to blend into the final image in post. The shot I ended up getting was ok, probably one of my better photos of the Milky Way per se, but the foreground is lacklustre. I don't know whether it would have been any better 100 m higher up either, but the lesson is that you need to be in position early, you need to get your foreground shots in in good time and you can only recon on about two good astro shots per night, one after the sun goes down and one before it rises, unless you're shooting with multiple cameras.

Collision Imminent || Olympus 300 mm f/5.6, 0.6 s, ISO 1600, Composite Image

Milky Way

The challenge with astrophography is the low light levels. You need an open aperture and relatively high ISO with a wide angle lens to get enough light to the sensor before the earth's rotation turns the star points into lines - the so-called star trails. As a rule of thumb, the maximum exposure time before this happens is 500/focal length* (400 if you're being conservative). So for my 16 mm equivalent wide angle lens, I can shoot for 25 s. In order to further increase light-sensitivity, we need to increase the ISO. Small sensor cameras (I shoot with an Olympus micro four-thirds crop sensor, technically a small sensor camera) are notorious for being sensitive to high ISO, the images tend to have a lot of unsightly noise - a random phenomenon that causes an unsightly buzz in the image. But being random, there's a solution: If you take multiple shots and then take the average of those shots, the noise is diminished. The challenge is that the software performing the calculations needs to take into account the fact that the stars are moving - if it didn't you'd end up with the trails again. All in all quite a technical feat, especially when there's a foreground involved. Fortunately the free Windows software Sequator can do all of this - it's what it was written for. It's not the most user-friendly app, but if you know what you're doing (or in my case if you know someone who knows what they're doing), it's extremely powerful. The trick seems to be not using too many of the features, but more of that below.

*25 mm equivalent, so with my micro four-thirds sensor I need to double my focal length

First Starlight - Stacked but Unprocessed || Olympus 8 mm, f/2.8, 25 s, ISO 6400, Stacked

We could just about make out the trail of the Milky Way in the Allgäu sky. From our vantage point I tried several series of shots, with and without my Haida Clear Light filter and Tiffen Fog filter and with the new 7Artisans 7.5 mm fish-eye. In the end I liked the unfiltered images through the Panasonic Leica 8-18 mm the best. The above image is stacked to reduce noise but otherwise unprocessed. The sheer clarity of the image just blows me away. The detail in the Milky Way is amazing. But I don't think this is a good Milky Way photo. It's a good photo of the Milky Way, but like I said earlier, a good Milky Way photo stands or falls by the foreground and I wasn't satisfied with what I was getting here, so after a cup of tea  and a pasty (thanks Martin, those were life-savers) I lay down for a 45 min shut-eye before heading up to the ridge, where I knew just the spot.

With Haido Clear Sky Filter, Unprocessed

7Artisans 7.5 mm Fish-eye Lens, Unprocessed

One of the greatest challenges with astro photography is finding infinity on the focus dial. Looking through the viewfinder you're confronted with an almost completely black image - finding something to focus on can be extremely difficult. If there's a bright light a couple of miles off this works relatively well, as at this distance there's effectively no focal change between 2 miles and infinity. It was quite a challenge in the dark though, and I had to hunt through the magnified viewfinder on the Olympus to locate Jupiter (bright spot in the middle of the images above) and twiddle the focus ring of the lens to render the tiny fuzzy light as tight and small as possible. Then it's shoot and hope. You can examine the images on the camera display, but you're never entirely sure whether your photo is sharp or not until you get the image on the computer screen.

Despite being pitch dark, it was easy enough to find my way by the light of my head-torch, having scouted the area less than a month before. I located the second spot relatively easily and set up the tripod again. A few ultra-high-ISO shots helped me frame the photo correctly. I also tried some low ISO long exposures with a bit of light painting so that I would have a foreground to go with it. This is a separate image that is blended with the processed astro image in post processing (see last image). This final photo here has to be my favourite image of the year so far. I didn't get a huge number of finished shots that I was happy with, but at the end of the day, if you come away with at least one, that's a win.

Milky Way Over The Allgäu || Olympus 8 mm, f/2.8, 25 s ISO 6400, Stacked

I carried on shooting for a while after this into the blue light of pre-dawn before giving up and catching a few more minutes sleep lent against my rucksack. It was a mild night with little wind and the ground was comfortable and dry beneath me, not a sound to be heard.

Birdsong and a yipping fox in the valley below alerted me to the coming dawn. By the light of the red band of cloud to the east I could just make out a small peat pond nearby that I'd just avoided in the dark. In retrospect I should have taken a lower vantage point for this shot. This is two images blended in ON1 Photo Raw, one for the sky, one for the foreground. I took the liberty of brightening the tufts of cotton grass to emphasise them in the pre-dawn light.

Mountain Tarn at Dawn || Olympus f/5.6, 1/6 s, ISO 200

Then it was down to find Martin and head down to the car. I found him warming himself over his camping stove and ready to return to the valley. As I waited for him to pack his things there was time for one last shot of the sun rising on the mountain escarpment opposite us. 

The Red Light Of Dawn || Olympus f/5.6, 1/30 s, ISO 200

Processing the Images

If you're not interested in the nitty-gritty of processing astro photography you can probably stop reading here and scan to the last images. It's very easy to over-process Milky Way photos: I spent two evenings working on this last shot only to have Sharon (correctly) tell me that it was too speckled and she didn't like the foreground. I've left this technical bit to the end for my techie friends who'll be interested in this stuff (hi Matthias!). 

Before the images can be 'stacked' (averaged), they need to be in tiff format. ON1 Photo Raw, my post-processing software can export tiffs, but they're the wrong format for my stacking software, Sequator. The images have to be opened in Olympus Workspace and exported as tiffs from there. For each image I used 10 star images and two control images with the lens cap on (lights and darks respectively).

Crop of main image

Unprocessed image OOC	Stacked in Sequator 10 Star images, 2 Noise images (with lens cap on), Align stars, Freeze ground, Sky region: Partial, otherwise all default settings	Processed in ON1 Photo Raw 2020 Develop: Contrast +24, Highlights +18, Midtones +15, Shadows -20, Whites +45, Temperature +40, Tint -3 Effects: Sharpening, Noise Reduction (Moderate), Tone Enhancer (Shadows Lighter on foreground; Midtone Contrast Boost, 50%), LUTs (1983, 35%), Sunshine (Sunglow, 50%), Curves (mild S-curve), Dynamic contrast on Milky Way

I also tried a blend of my favourite image with the light-painted foreground in ON1 Photo Raw. It's not perfect as I seem to have adjusted the camera between frames and had to stretch the resulting images to fit. I'd be interested to hear which image you prefer, this one with more detail in the foreground trees, or the original "Milky Way Over The Allgäu" above. My jury is still out on this one.

Milky Way Over The Allgäu II || Olympus 8 mm, f/2.8, 25 s ISO 6400, Stacked and Blended

Location Scouting for Astrophotography

A couple of weeks ago, one of my photography pals texted me asking me if I wanted to join him on a Milky Way hunt some time since his summer plans had been scratched due to Corona (Matthias, you really need to set up a website so I can link to your photos!). He mentioned a couple of possible locations, which got me thinking; where would _I_ shoot the Milky Way from. I came up with an idea (that I won't share here yet, I haven't seen any other astro shots from here and I'd like to have a crack at it before someone else gets in first, so if you recognise any of the spots in this post, plesase keep them to yourself for now - hopefully in a month or so we'll be able to pull this off). I knew that I wanted to include some 'civilisation glow' in the shot if possible - the night glow from a human habitation and I opened up Google Earth to look for a possible mountainside that would give me the angle that I wanted.

Watching the Sun Go Down || Olympus f/16, 1/60, ISO 1250

It's not as easy as I'd thought to find a deforested slope facing the right direction in the lower alps. Despite my local knowledge, it took quite a bit of playing around before I found a peak that would work, and even then it was only on paper. At the end of May I headed down there for an evening to catch the sunset and the blue hour to see whether the angles matched up. Even a couple of days beforehand I wasn't too sure about the trip, no-one wanted to join me and I was a little wary of being on my own in the mountains at night - even in familiar territory there are plenty of things that can go wrong. And the forecast wasn't playing ball. Until Friday morning that is. All of a sudden the evening forecast was opening up - a green light.

It's a Sign! || Olympus f/8, 1/80 s, ISO 200

With sunset projected to be 21.05, I set off from home just after 18.00 to allow myself enough time to get down there, get up onto the ridge and find a couple of spots whilst the light was still good. Climbing up from the car park the light was gorgeous. A few high clouds might have been nice to complete the scene, but I wasn't going to complain. The few people still on the hills but coming down gave me some strange looks and I had a quick chat with one bloke who was interested to know what I was doing going up at that time of day before he got pulled to heal by his wife. And then I was on the ridge.

At the Ridge || Olympus f/8, 1/500 s, ISO 200

The views were beautiful, clear air with some mountain cloud hanging around the peaks. It was all I had hoped for from my virtual tour planning and more. There is some lovely rock around, and the peaks still have significant patches of snow on them despite the non-winter of 2019/20. From the ridge its a broad path leading to one of the peaks that had looked promising and so after taking a couple of smartphone shots I headed out, warm setting sun on my left, valley on my right. The light was catching the fir trees along the ridge, especially the skeletal branches of dead trees that had long since lost their bark to the elements. The orange light picked out the highlights nicely.

Catching the Last Rays || Olympus f/8, 1/80 s, ISO 250

Just before the potential spot that I'd looked out there's a broad shoulder that looked promising, the spot itself had a lot more trees and was a lot narrower than it had looked on the computer, pretty much ruling it out. By this time, the sky was beginning to turn orange in the west and I was desperate to find an open piece of hillside facing westwards. East wasn't a problem, I could get to a treeless spot there any time, but the other side was light forest. In the end I had to settle for a gap between the trees. I say settle, I think the silhouettes work quite nicely, but it wasn't the picture I had first envisioned. Dropping the aperture to f/16 helped with the sunburst.

And Down She Goes || Olympus f/16, 1/100 s, ISO 200

In the immediate aftermath of the sunset I headed back along the ridge to where I had first hit it to wait for the first stars. The path back offered a couple of nice shots too, and I particularly like this one with the roots on the path. This is a composite of two exposures, one for the foreground and one for the background. After mixed experience with ON1 Photo Raw's HDR assembling, I've gone over to using layers to assemble these shots, it gives me a deal more flexibility when I can control precisely which elements of the photo I use from each exposure. I'll write a separate blog entry on this some time.

The Path Goes On || Olympus f/6.3, 1/50 s, ISO 1600

Up until this point I'd had my go-to lens on the camera, the Zuiko f4 12-100 mm, getting back to the top of the ridge it was time to get the wide-angle zoom out, the Leica f2.8 8-18 mm. The wider aperture and wider field of view make this a great astro-landscape lens, although I wouldn't complain if there was a convenient lens with an even wider aperture for night shots. The optical quality is second to none though, provided I can focus it properly. During the daytime this isn't an issue, I just leave it on autofocus normally, but focusing on pin-pricks of light at night to get the infinity focus right is tricky, even with glasses.

Golden to Blue || Olympus f/4, 1/60 s, ISO 500

I set up the tripod with my Benro Geared Head to allow me good control over the level and direction and started shooting the blue hour. When hiking, I rarely wear more than t-shirt and shorts, but even setting out from the car I was wearing long sleeves and trousers. Despite my soft-shell jacket it was beginning to get quite cool in the late evening breeze. Wooly hat and gloves time, though putting the gloves on and off was a pain. I was glad of the tripod net that I'd bought for the occasion to store bits of camera in the low light, it made keeping kit under control in the dark a lot easier. 

Waiting for the Stars || Olympus f/2.8, 1/6 s, ISO 200

And so I sat and waited for the first stars to appear, the half-moon high in the sky away to my right, the dew beginning to fall. Taking a shot every five minutes or so, exposure bracketing just to be on the safe side. I was watching the clock too, I didn't want to be out too late on my own - there was still a trek down to the car in the dark. Even with the half-moon and my head-torch, stumbling around in the dark in the mountains shouldn't be taken lightly. And then there was the 90 min drive home.

Gibbous Moon over the Allgäu || Olympus f/3.3, 10 sec, ISO 200

The descent proved easier than I had feared and I was soon back on the tarmac. Definitely worth the evening's trek. Oh, and remember the SD card that went through the washing machine? It seems to have finally given up the ghost. Fortunately after I transferred the photos to the PC and not before. Sometimes you've gotta have a bit of luck!

End of the Day || Olympus f/4, 0.8 s, ISO 800

Waterfalls and Wildflowers - The Power of Separation

It won't come as a surprise to some of you to know that our medium-term plan is to up-roots here in Bavaria and settle in Austria. The intention is to semi-retire, earning a little bit on the side with photo safaris and workshops in the border area between Lienz and Cortina d'Ampezzo, between the main chain of the Alps and the majestic Dolomites. I've been working on my photography a lot over the last 18 months. I've come a long way in that time. I still have a way to go, but if I review my photos of the last few years, I can see definite progress. The Mike of 18 months ago would have a lot to learn from the Mike of now. I know that I've still got a ways to go, but in the near future I hope to start offering tuition on a 1:1 or 1:2 basis. The tuition can be in English or German, though preferably not both in the same session.

After the Rain || Olympus f4.5, 1/160 s, ISO 200

This won't be on a monetary basis, which doesn't mean the tuition will be free. Instead of remuneration, I will be asking for detailed feedback from you in order that I can hone my skills as an instructor. So, if you're in the Munich area and find yourself looking at my photos and saying "Wow, I wish I could take photos like that!", get in touch and we'll see what we can work out.

It would be useful for me to understand a bit about your current level of expertise as well as your aspirations before we start out so that I don't end up boring you with stuff you already know and so that I can plan the excursion to give you a chance of learning what you want to learn.

Dewy Needles || Olympus f6.3, 1/200, ISO 1600

Unless you have a specific plan in mind, my recommendation would be that we head down to the mountains to somewhere like Hinterstein here and simply head up the trail. Tuition would involve a whole day spent in the wilds, so you'll need to be at least a little bit fit, though we will be stopping regularly for photos. Rather than classroom tuition, it will all be out in the field (or forest😉) showing you optimal camera settings as we go for the compositions as we find them. We'll discuss what makes good photos, what constitutes good and bad lighting (and why bright sunlight isn't always the best), how to separate subject matter from its environment to draw the viewer's eye to where you want it and how to use lines in a photo to do the same.

Zipfelsbach Waterfall || Olympus f22, 1/2 s, ISO 125

One of the first compositions on this particular tour, for example, is the Zipflesbach waterfall, where we could play with how the exposure time affects the appearance of the water and how to convey a sense of motion through slow shutter speeds. A tripod is a must for such shots on most cameras, and a neutral density (ND) filter can be very helpful to prevent over-exposure. At the very least, a variable ND filter, with two layered polarising filters that can be twisted independently in order to adjust how much you decrease the amount of light hitting the lens. Professional photographers frown on them because they can cause unsightly patterns on plain subjects such as the sky, but they're great on waterfalls. There are several schools of thought - or preference - concerning the optimal exposure time for moving water, varying from about 1/5 s, enough to convey a sense of movement without overdoing it, to 2 s for that real silky motion. Personally, I like the effect that can be obtained with a 1/2 s exposure, though I have been known to go to as long as 10 s for some of my shots of the Stuiben Falls and Pöllat Gorge.

Alpine forests are a treasure-trove of wild flowers in early summer (and mushrooms in the autumn if it hasn't been too dry), and there would be plenty of time to get up close and personal with orchids, wolfsbane and the like. Early summer is also great for fresh pine growth, which traps dew-drops and rain-drops beautifully. 

Fresh Pine Growth || Olympus f11, 1/60 s, ISO 1600

Wolfsbane (German: Arnika) presents a great object lesson on how to photograph flowers with a little bit of imagination. There's a temptation to simply shoot flowers from head height - in my opinion, one of the worst perspectives to shoot from. It can work if done well, but it rarely has real impact. Get down low for a more oblique angle. In steep woodland it's relatively easy to get this sort of angle without breaking your back, it's common that plants are at waist height on the uphill side. 

Top Down || Olympus f4, 1/400 ISO 200

Classical Aspect || Olympus f4, 1/200, ISO 200

Here I took the spontaneous decision to take the unusual side-on shot. Depth of field is always a consideration for shots like these, you want it to be shallow enough to isolate the flower from the background without making the focal plane so narrow that virtually nothing is in focus. I got away with f4 here, though in retrospect I should have gone for a smaller aperture to get more of the flower head in focus. I'm still learning too.

Wolfsbane, Side On || Olympus f4, 1/250, ISO 200

Above the tree-line there are more wild flowers to be had and maybe even some bona fide landscapes. We were stunned by the number of wild gentians growing as we left the forest, together with marsh marigolds (a challenge for any camera due to the intensity of the yellow) and oxslips. Focus isn't the only way to get separation on subject matter, here I used light. With the sun shining on the pale yellow flowers it wasn't difficult to set the exposure so that they were well lit whilst the shadowy stream behind them was almost completely black. 

Oxslip || Olympus f5,6, 1/250 s, ISO 200

Electric-blue Gentians || Olympus f11, 1/80 s, ISO 640

The Zipfelsbach Alm has a small alpinarium with a lovely variety of mountain flowers including perennial cornflowers amongst others.

Perennial Cornflower || Olympus f13, 1/125, ISO 1600

The path back down from the Alm follows the Zipfelsbach over a series of small falls before the trail drops back into the forest and then down along the side of the high waterfalls. There are multiple opportunities to stop and shoot the upper falls on the way down.

Zipfelsbach || Olympus f22, 1/2 s, ISO 80

Interested? Drop me an email via the About Me at the bottom of the column to the right. Think I'm overstepping the mark and offering my services too soon? Let me know in the comments below.

Down the throat of a giant yellow gentian || Olympus, f13, 1/80 s, ISO 1600

Getting up-close and personal with a Burgundy Snail || Olympus f16, 1/60 s, ISO 1600

Trumpet Gentians || Olympus f13, 1/200 s, ISO 1600

QUICK SUMMARY

Best Conditions	Early summer for the wild flowers, best early in the morning to avoid the crowds and catch the dew
Challenges	Steep trek up to the Zipfelsalpe
Parking	€4 at Parkplatz "Festhalle" just behind the church
Where to Stop	Zipfelsalpe from June to October
Links	Zipfelsalpe (German)