This place called KKB (Kuala Kubu Bharu) dam is quite well known for photographers to shoot astrophotography. A few of us decided to try out luck shooting milky way in the KKB dam. Here’s the map below for reference.
As we planned for the shot, we wanted to include a human model element in the photo as a foreground, with a drone flying on top to complete the light painting (drone making a full small circle on top of the model)… and lastly the milky way as the background. Well, at least that’s what we “planned”.
Of course things didn’t go according to what we planned… at all! The location itself (KKB dam) does not allow drone flying (there goes our hope of light painting a circle on top of the model). Weather was terrible as it rained hours before and was cloudy throughout the whole night. But since we were all there, we might as well just proceed with the shoot… with some major changes.
So instead of using the drone for light painting, we setup our angle to include the highway next to us (since the highway has an S-curve) and use the passing cars as our source of light trail instead. Here’s the initial test shot I took to preview the angle.
Seemed decent enough for this angle. I can see the S-curve is pretty obvious and it’s a good start for a leading line.
Next is to have the model stand next to the highway. As for the model, I used a Godox AD-200 to manually flash the light from her back. Here’s a sample of the model lighted up with Godox flash and light trail below.
After that, we waited for a few cars to pass by while the model posed for us. Here on, there were lots of trial and error for the light trails by passing cars. Some of the problems we encountered are as below.
- Some cars had bright headlights, rendering some shots overexposed.
- Sometimes there were 2 to 3 cars passing by at once, making the shots even more overexposed.
- Sometimes we have car coming from opposite side (which is not so ideal).
From all the light trails, I chose the one with 2 motorbikes passing by instead. Reason being, motorbike headlights were not as strong and intense as cars and trucks headlights. So, the image below here will be my base layer of composite in Photoshop.
Now that I’ve got my base layer selected, next I will have to tackle the dark shadows on the hills on the right and left. As you can see on my base layer, there is virtually no details at all (almost pure black) on both the hills on the right and left. Anticipating this, I used my torch light to light paint the hills for a good 20 seconds. Below is the first layer of composite, combining the base layer + light painted hills layer.
Now that the foreground is roughly complete, time to tackle the background… which is the milky way. Milky way? What milky way? I can’t even see a single star that night. Bruh! Knowing that we have been trolled by the weather god, I shall “implant” my own milky way inside this shot. So, I chose the milky way I shot last week in Mersing and combined it into this shot. Here’s the result below.
While still in Photoshop after combining all the layers, it’s time to adjust the color and bring up the brightness and contrast. I did this by mainly using Color Efex Pro 4 (CEP4) in Nik Software. Pro contrast in CEP4 played a very important role here in brightening the photo and adding contrast.
After all the editing, here’s the final result below.
Foreground shot with XT4 + 14mm F2.8 @ F4, ISO 400, 20sec
Sky shot with XT4 + 10-24mm F4 @ 24mm, F4, ISO 6400, 10photos x 30sec