Astrophotography on Location: New Zealand

While much of our three weeks in New Zealand was met with rain and clouds, we found a bit of luck when we arrived at Lake Tekapo. Situated in the largest dark sky reserve in the world, Lake Tekapo is one of the world’s premier places to view and photograph the night sky. Join me on a night out shooting astrophotography in New Zealand with my first ever “Astrophotography on Location” vlog.

About Our Trip

Places we went: Check out our full (unplanned) itinerary for campervanning New Zealand at North to South!
Observatory tours: Earth and Sky 
Our guide at Mt. John Observatory: Chris Murphy (instagram)

Credits

Video and photos by Ian Norman and Diana Southern.

Music Credit: Dexter Britain
Dexter Britain – “Lost in Light” (CC-BY-NC-SA)
Dexter Britain – “Ink” (CC-BY-NC-SA)
from the album “Creative Commons Volume. 7”

This video footage is copyright Ian Norman and/or Diana Southern, licensed under Creative Commons, Attribution, Non-Commerical, ShareAlike (CC-BY-NC-SA) per the ShareAlike stipulation on the license on Dexter’s musical work as a derivative work.
To use the video content of this work outside the scope of this license, please email us.

Learn Astrophotography

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Help us help you!

Believe it or not, Lonely Speck is a full-time job. It’s been an amazing experience for us to see a community develop around learning astrophotography and we’re so happy to be a small part of it. I have learned that amazing things happen when you ask for help so remember that we are always here for you. If you have any questions about photography or just want to share a story, contact us!

Thanks so much for being a part of our astrophotography adventure.

-Ian

11 Replies to “Astrophotography on Location: New Zealand”

  1. glad you had fun! wish i knew i would’ve loved to meet you and thank you for all the amazing info I got from lonelyspeck when I started astrophotography

  2. Thank you very much for your NZ video. As I´m going to visit this land of my dreams in a month timing of your video couldn´t be better 🙂

  3. Nicely produced video of your NZ adventure. A destination definitely on my bucket list! Question: are you using any high-end gear (e.g. pano gimbal head) when you create double-row stitched panos?

    1. I just use my regular travel tripod with a ballhead. No pano head at the moment but I’m looking to make a Nodal Ninja NN3 potentially part of my kit in the future.

  4. Incredible work, and as always, a great inspiration! My husband and I are visiting New Zealand later this year, and will certainly visit Lake Tekapo.

    Do you have any contacts you can recommend for a night-sky tour, or other locations that you missed due to weather?

    Thank you Ian!

  5. Thank you very much. A lot of my photography of New Zealand and Saariselka was a result of your incredible tutorials 🙂

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