Astro gone wrong

'Gone wrong' because there wasn't many stars visible out there!
This was an interesting night, for many reasons.
So, this is Wainuiomata Coast, close to Wellington. I was out some night, to shoot the milkyway, because it's a pretty cool area for that. When I finally arrived, sometime around midnight, there was a full Moon out, top center right (well, bad planning). There were also clouds (Wellington weather, changing at every hill).
The light above the hill in the first image is actually Wellington's city lights (ok, there IS actual light pollution in that area).
The over all lighting comes entirely from the Moon, in both pictures, remember this was around midnight. In fact, I didn't even need a torch to set up camera and tripod - It was like a badly overcast early evening, but didn't feel like midnight at all!
I thought I'll shoot anyway. I used a 15mm Sigma diagonal fisheye lens for my shots, which covers some 175 degrees diagonally (no internal compensation). Importing such an image into Lightroom etc, would cause the software to correct the distortion and crop the image to a normal 3 by 2 ratio - which looked rather boring in this image. I 'told' Lightroom, just for fun, to correct the distortion, but NOT to crop it, resulting in these 2 panoramas. This effect seems to be drawing the onlooker in.
The exposure time was 30 seconds, on ISO 100, F2.8, on a Canon 6d mark 1, for both images.
Personally I like the first one best, it looks more dramatic. But the second one shows the sheer amount of light coming from the Moon.
​If you are interested in my artwork, please let me know via email:
photos@wernerkaffl.com