Spirit Sands Hiking Trail: Under The Stars
It has long been a dream of mine to photograph the Milky Way over the Spirit Sands in Spruce Woods Provincial Park. The Spirit Sands Hiking Trail has long been a favourite trail of mine in Manitoba. Aside from being one of the most unique landscapes Manitoba has to offer, there are quite a few points of interest for me there at pretty well any time of the year.
I have been planning to shoot the Milky Way here for at least three years. On my previous attempt in the spring, I made the effort to go, but there was a G2 aurora storm causing the northern lights to dance overhead all night, drowning out the Milky Way. Hard to complain about that, I know. Still, it meant I would have to go back and try again.
Getting the shot definitely takes a bit of planning, and before you go, there are a few things to consider:
March and September are the best times of year to view the Milky Way
In March, the Milky Way rises around 4:00 am, so you’ll have a long night ahead. The Milky Way will arch more across the sky this time of year
In September, the Milky Way core is visible as soon as its dark, but the position is straight up
In summer, there is scarcely enough hours of night. In winter, snow covers the unique desert landscape
Within one week either side of the new moon is the best time to visit as you will have the least light pollution
That’s just the planning. Once you get there, you need to make sure everything is perfect. In this case, I was very familiar with the area and already had several compositions in mind. It was just a matter of finding them in the dark. I hiked in with perhaps 10-15 kg of gear. I set up my star tracker to take the best quality images of the sky that I could. I took several long exposures of the foreground that I could later blend in Photoshop to reduce the noise in the image, making it look cleaner.
I ended up with three shots from the night. They may all go in my portfolio. It’s hard to go through all the effort to walk away with just one picture. You’re already there, may as well take a few more.
Special thanks to my good friend Justin, who by the way is also an amazing night sky photographer, for joining me and keeping those wily coyotes at bay. When I saw him setting up for a self portrait under the stars, I just had to try one too!