The Night at Waerebo
So as I said in the previous post, as the rain subsided I went out the hut and looked up into the night sky. Now growing up in the city, every time I looked up the night sky I would only see one or just a few stars, but here, clusters of clusters of stars were visible to the naked eye. Not just stars, but also the Milky way! Yes, the andromeda galaxy. So after getting back my breath, I quickly went back in the hut to take my tripod, camera and one of the mats outside.
I was in good luck, the timing of our trip was perfect. It was around June-July, where the milky way is positioned above the horizon, where we are.
So quickly I set my camera for long exposure shots(a technique where photographers use to gather more light by having the shutter of the camera open for a much longer time).
Shutter Speed : 25seconds
F : 3.5
ISO : 3200
At 15mm and RAW format
The RAW format was to ensure I can save my photos when I get back to my computer if I do happen to mess up. Unlike jpeg where the camera still processes the image, a RAW file is a pure file filled with information of the scene which makes editing RAW files the easiest. Yet despite the flexibility it has, 1 RAW file can be pretty large in memory, my camera’s RAW files were about 20-30mb per photo.
Shot after shot, I kept clicking the shutter button on my camera without end, turning to the left and right upwards capturing this rare view. I still remember vividly my sister saying “Damn, I wish I could like, screenshot this vision I have of the night sky!” Because it truly was mesmerizing, just with our naked eyes we witnessed what I call “The Eye of the Night Sky”
Isn’t it truly breath taking, the unseen world the modernization has covered up. This is right above our heads, just that we can’t see it in the city due to the light and air pollution. The millions of stars glimmering, shinning in the night sky, these are the landscapes, or views that I love finding. So after a few dozen shots of the sky, in hope of any of them are good, I just laid on the mattress, admiring the glamourous view as if it were the last time that I’d be able to see it.
This is also another shot that I really like, the light from the hut and the stars in the background, I barely did any editing on this photo compared to the others. It’s just kind of unlucky that the milky way or the galaxy isn’t visible in frame, yet it’s still a really nice picture in my opinion.
After a solid two hours maybe, I went in the hut and got a nights rest, as I planned to wake up early for the sunrise the next morning. So in the hut in a circular manor, about 20 of us slept.
This is what the inside of the hut looked like. The next morning came, and I woke up to capture the sunrise. But what I didn’t realize was that we were surrounded by mountain tops that were higher than the village, so they were kind a blocking the sun and I ended up with this shot.
After this the day ended pretty quick, we made our descend after having breakfast and went back the same way we went up. Took the 3hr hike down, the 15 minutes motorbike ride and then the 30 minute bus to the lodge.
As we continued our way down from the lodge it turns out that the road we were stuck on the day before was just right by the ocean. It just wasn’t visible due to the lack of light. We arrived in town at about 6pm, so we went out to find dinner and check in a hotel to rest up before continuing on our adventure. Long story short that was the story of how I stared into the Eye of the Night Sky, aside that back in the hotel I just backed up my files to my laptop and went to sleep. As the next day we were going on board a boat to set sail into the sea!