Polly’s Cove by Jason Dain

The image exudes serenity.

With its gorgeous composition, Jason Dain won the Photo of the Week April 24, 2020 with his stunning image of Polly’s Cove.

“This is just a spectacular photo,” wrote one of the judges. “Composition-wise, the Milky Way running parallel to the rocky shoreline, with the softening of the water due to the long exposure — everything is just right here.”

From Stillwater Lake, Nova Scotia, Dain said he used a Nikon D850 and a Nikon 20mm f/1.8 lens for the shot. Shooting at f/2.8 for eight minutes total, he grabbed the image of nearby Polly’s Cove on March 28.

“This is tracked sky / long exposure foreground Milky Way shot, taken about five kilometres east of Peggy’s Cove,” he wrote.

This week was so competitive, the judges decided to award two honourable mentions.

First, we’ll take a look at Barry Burgess’ “Milky Way Reflections.” As one of the judges said, it “begs for a story to be told.”

Another fantastic Nova Scotia shot, Burgess said he captured the Milky Way over abandoned boat in East Port Medway, Nova Scotia on April 17, 2020.

He said he used a Canon 6D camera, a Carl Zeiss 25mm f/2.0 Distagon lens set to f/2.4. His exposure was 30 seconds at ISO 3200.

Next up is Oleg Bouevitch’s Jellyfish Nebula (IC 443).

“Impressive detail and sharpness,” one judge noted. “I’m very impressed he can do 30-minute exposures with a 10-inch Newtonian mounted on a Losmandy G11 — that’s some delicate guiding!”

Bouevitch said he captured the supernova remnant with a FLI ML16200 CCD camera with a custom-made 10” f/4.6 imaging Newtonian telescope.

He took 20 30-minute exposures using the Ha filter, 18 30-min exposures with the Oiii filter, and 17 30-min exposures Sii filter (that’s a total of 1,650 minutes, or 27.5 hours).

Bouevitch captured the image in April in Nepean, Ontario. He said he processed the image — registering, stacking, stretching, de-noising and sharpening — in PixInsight. He said Photoshop was used for curves, levels and digimarc.