I attended an astro-photography workshop held by Nikon School at Penwarn Lodge (penwarn.com) near Underberg in the southern Drakensberg area. The workshop was lead by Richard de Gouveia who gave plenty of tips to fine tune my star photography. Below are some of the star shots I got around the lodge during the workshop.
Nikon School had some fish eye lenses, that I got a play around with, interesting effect for star trails.
I stayed on an extra day after the workshop and found these wonderful dead trees, different experience standing in a field alone at night doing star trails instead of with the group wondering what every noise was.
Penwarn lodge has wonderful opportunities for landscape photographs with wetland and mountains. These dead trees near the dam gave me Sossusvlei in the Drakensberg, hope to visit the real thing one day.
What I love about this area is the opportunities of getting lots of layers on the landscape photographs with rolling hills and far mountains.
Being a working stud farm there are lot of opportunities to have some horses in the photo for same additional interest.
The twin trees were too good to just use in the night so I worked them again next morning.
A very good weekend where I learnt the importance of getting focus right for star trails among other tips and had a chance to experience the beautiful landscapes on the farm. The farm also is a bird lover’s paradise, even has a vulture restaurant. Unfortunately even though spending a couple of hours in the hide only sighting of vultures was in the far distance, gives a reason to go back someday 🙂
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