Astronomy Photographer of the Year, which this year included a retrospective of the ten years the award had been running.
Of immediate interest to me: a lot of
the photographs are fundamentally of The Same Thing (the Milky Way; the sun; the moon), so quite a lot of everything is in the composition and -- and this really surprised me -- the processing. Because it is absolutely accepted that post-processing is
necessary for a bunch of these (not simply compositing exposures but straight-up colourising them, and of course having to process different
types of exposure (infra-red; H-alpha and HII; ...). This is in stark contrast to the rules for Wildlife Photographer of the Year, where in addition to the final image the raw files off the camera have to be submitted and enhancement is right out -- and, of course, to some extent WPY has a much greater range of subjects.
I'm glad I went to see this, to be clear, but especially given that it featured highlights from the last decade I doubt I'm likely to make regular trips to Greenwich for this (in the way that I'm happy to take a minor detour to the NHM on my way to work for the sake of WPY). Nevertheless, some favourites! From the
People and Space category I particularly enjoyed
Me versus the Galaxy and
Expedition to Infinity (this is one A & I disagreed about re the merits of humans for scale); looking at the online gallery, I am also very taken by
Keeper of the Light, which was not on display. From
Skyscapes:
Eclipsed Moon Trail,
Holding Due North,
Circles and Spirals (not on display!).
And also Galaxy Curtain Call,
Speeding on the Aurorae Lane.
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