NEW BOOK: Astro Photography, Photographing The Night Sky

If you watched Alyn Wallace’s video of the Geminids meteor shower in La Palma you’ll have some appreciation of the passion he has for astro photography, as well his knowledge and expertise in this field.

For over a year now, in-between his travels and workshops, Alyn has been working on Photographing The Night Sky to be published by fotoVUE in 2020.

Photographing The Night Sky will be large format, 25cm x 25cm, it’s a read, enjoy and study at home book. This format allows images to be used large in various orientations, crops and aspect ratios and it also allows flexibility in layout for sidebar explainers, additional information and diagrams.

If you are new to astro photography Alyn’s book will equip you with the skills to get up and running, but it will also dig deeper giving intermediate astro photographers a better understanding of the underlying principles behind photographing the night sky and in low light, as well as introducing a whole quiver of new skills and techniques, from capture to processing. Alyn’s writing style is clear and simple, explaining sometimes complex concepts in easily understood language.

A BOOK OF TWO PARTS

The first half of Photographing The Night Sky is about equipment, settings and technique, night sky wonders (astronomy), the all important planning, what to do once out there and processing your images, with the rest of the book a guide to the best locations for night photography around the world — all illustrated of course with the best astro images.

Alyn studied Physics and Astronomy at Cardiff University and Mechanical Engineering at Swansea University before going on to start a career as a CAD design engineer, working in the aerospace industry in Turkey , “before crawling back to the valleys of Wales and working a similar job in the automotive industry.”

However he has been a full-time professional photographer for over a year. After buying his first DSLR camera a few years back he…..

very quickly realised that this little device allowed me to channel all of my technical strengths and things I enjoyed doing and express them in a creative way. Everything from astronomy, mathematics, engineering, the great outdoors, planning and calculating, were all amalgamated into the pressing of a single button. Ever since then I’ve been on a quest to find the darkest skies and the most otherworldly landscapes and my passion is still burning as strongly as the day I realised that I’d found the right path.

Alyn is completing his book this year — he’s 30,000 words in! And has trips to Norway and Iceland coming up, with a summer trip to the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile for the solar eclipse in July, the Atacama Desert was described as a ‘An Astronomer’s Paradise’ by the Smithsonian magazine.

We’ll keep you updated with Alyn’s progress throughout the year, but make sure you subscribe to his newsletter and his YouTube channel to watch his monthly vlog, What’s In The Night Sky (#WITNS).

All images below © Alyn Wallace