(If interested in shooting details, please see info at the end).
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EYE OF THE DRAGON: The water beyond the trees belongs to a beautiful, secluded bay on the Kassandra “first leg” in Chalkidiki, Greece. Many times, while swimming there, I saw the curving body of a sleeping dragon half submerged, a tail formed by the undulating hills covered with trees, a head at the end of the promontory, just above the bay, and then a small opening in the trees exactly where the eye of the beast should be (quite an imagination!). There is a small chapel just at the eye opening, at the end of a sinuous downward road among the trees, just a few meters above the small bay. So, I decided to visit this place a hot summer night last year, hoping for clear skies and a nice foreground to the backdrop of the Milky Way Galaxy at the south.
My main concern was the lights beyond the bay at the south and that there might be people driving their cars at night with for night swimming and camping, and that therefore I would not be able to get a long enough exposure for the Milky Way, without being interrupted by car lights. I knew that many boats go to that bay at daytime all summer long, since it’s a very popular place. Well, it turned out that there was another more annoying factor, that I had not expected.
A DUSTY ROAD: This could of course refer to the fine dust particles that are part of the interstellar space between the stars and that in many places obscure the continuity of the gases (mostly hydrogen) that comprise the Milky Way, giving it the characteristic dark lanes. If you look carefully at the photo, you will spot the Dark Horse feature in the Milky Way, just above the center of the photo.
But in this case, I am talking about the dust on the road that leading from the top of the hill down to the small chapel, a narrow sinuous soil road among tall trees. In every step, I felt that I was going to sink below the dust, and I had to wear a face mask to protect my lungs from swallowing all the fine dust particles. I did leave my car at the top, since the road is also very rough and difficult, unless you had an SUV or similar vehicle. I kept thinking that if indeed some cars did come up or down the road while I had set up my camera to take the shots, my main concern would not be the lights, but how on earth I was going to clean my gear later.
Well, as it turned out, over the whole period I spend taking the shots, only one car did pass by, just as was setting up my tripod, bur the driver was very careful and going slowly. There were certainly more people down at the beach that night, but I managed to finish the session without any other interruption.
Apart from the insane amount of dust and the distant lights that distract from the beauty of the sky, the night sky was close to excellent, especially near the zenith, and I could not resist spending more time after the shots, to marvel at the wonderful summer constellations and the Milky Way above, with the sound of the water breaking on the rocks below and the soft whisper of the trees around me, as the sea breeze caressed their leaves.
While going up the road on my return, I was wondering whether any of the hundreds of people coming to that bay every day, enjoying the beautiful sea all summer long, had ever seen such a glorious night sky, filled with thousands of sparkling lights and invisible, infinitesimal dust grains, ancient heroes and wild beasts, among which most certainly lies a huge sleeping dragon.
Technical info:
Date: August 7th, 2023
Location: Kassandra, Chalkidiki, Greece
Camera: CANON EOS 6D
Lens: Tokina AT-X 11-16 F2.8 Pro DX II@16mm
SKY: 10 exposures x 12 seconds each, ISO 4000, f/3.2, calibrated with darks and stacked in Sequator.
FOREGROUND: 5 exposures x 1 min each, ISO 2500, f/4.5, stacked in Photoshop.
All images were taken from the same place without moving the tripod and in quick succession.
