NZPhotographer Issue 11, Sept 2018

CAN YOU GIVE US A LITTLE BACKGROUND ON
YOURSELF AND YOUR PHOTOGRAPHY?
I am Mike MacKinven of Mack Photography and
Design Ltd. I am an Advertising Art Director, Designer,
and Retoucher. My photography journey started
in 2012 in Auckland – I’d always wanted to learn
photography but never really got to the point of
purchasing a camera until my beautiful wife bought
me a Canon 600D for my 28 th birthday. As most
enthusiasts know, it’s all downhill from there…
I was mostly interested in cityscapes, until one
night I noticed stars appearing in my photos. From
there I researched Astrophotography and made
it my mission to master that genre. I’m not quite
a pro photographer, more a semi-pro amateur
photographer once removed kind of thing, but now
hold workshops teaching other photographers about
the night sky and how to capture it.
TELL US ABOUT THIS SHOT...
32 images went into creating this shot. I hadn’t
planned on shooting at this famous location but after
a bit of encouragement from a few people I thought
‘Ok, let’s do this’. However just going out and shooting
it wasn’t going to work, a fair amount of planning was
required as the Milky Way was going to be above
the treeline looking back from the Wanaka Tree. This
meant I’d need to get wet to capture our Galaxy
above that tree!
So I ended up wading out into the chilly lake to get
the optimum composition, waist deep in leaky waders
from midnight until 01:40am with the temperature
hovering at about 1º, it being the middle of Winter.
After a while, my body temp warmed up the trapped
water but I had to be super careful as the stones on
the ground were very slippery, and the waders don’t
have grippy soles for these kinds of situations! My
biggest concern was keeping the dew heater battery
and camera dry but I managed to successfully
capture 2 x 240º panoramas, a series of tilt-shift style
images, and some timelapses.
My tripod is actually kitted out with a nifty beer holder
so, being in the South Island, it seemed rude not to
have a bottle of Speights ready, especially as my wife
was asleep on the shore in a green sleeping bag,
looking rather like a slug in my images!
WHAT WERE YOU SHOOTING WITH?
I was using my Canon EOS 6D and the trusty Samyang
24mm ƒ1.4 lens. I still use this setup today as it’s just
so good but now being sponsored by Samyang Lens
Global, I use this lens and the XP 14mm ƒ2.4 lens
combo, a killer setup with two cameras.
WHAT WAS YOUR POST-PROCESSING
PROCEDURE FOR THIS IMAGE?
I generally keep this as simple as I can. I do basic edits
in LR (White balance, sharpness, lens profiles etc) then
I export the files ready for stitching in either Hugin or
Autopano Giga. Photoshop and Lightroom aren’t
suited to multi-row panoramas where you need the
freedom to adjust composition, horizon angles and
projection settings. Once the panorama is stitched,
I fine tune it in Photoshop (fixing stitching areas if
any) and then global contrast is added (Brightness/
Contrast or Curves) and masked to mostly sit in the
sky. Once I’m happy with how it looks I’ll import the
panorama to LR so it’s added to the catalog, crop it,
and then export it as a final file.
WHAT ELSE SHOULD WE KNOW ABOUT THIS
IMAGE?
With most of my astro shots I strive to get away from
light pollution, however, to shoot this tree you cannot
get away from it, so I embraced it! Most of the lighting
is pretty antique, well, a few billion years old but still
shining bright! Other than natural starlight and the
light pollution from nearby towns, no other lighting
was used. I still get people confusing the floodlights as
sunset light!
WHERE CAN WE FIND YOU ONLINE?
www.instagram.com/mack_photography_nz
www.facebook.com/mackphotographynz
www.mackphotography.co.nz
www.zodimap.nz
32 NZPhotographer
September 2018
33