For the sake of clarity, these images have had quite a lot of work done in post to bring out the Milky way and remove a few problems like the dozens of plane trails. They were shot at f2 and high iso (3200 to 6400) to overexpose the sky (it was pitch black down there without a torch) and then the contrast was adjusted / heavy NR performed in DXO. Each shot was around 20 seconds to minimise any star trails but I had to remove a lot of plane lights
I live about 40 miles from this beach and gave it several goes but its very weather dependent - no matter what the weather forecast / app I used to predict things like cloud cover, by the time I drove down there it had changed - the first night was the best for cloud cover but I hadn't quite mastered the settings, on the second attempt I mastered sitting in the deck chair perfectly still for 20 secs with a radio trigger in my hand but the clouds came in and messed up the milky way .First night - the 'sunset' glow is a couple of bouys out in the channel
Here I tried to light the foreground with an LED torch but it just looks too unnatural
Second night - ambient lighting only and more foreground interest but by the time I was set up, too much cloud cover - plus slowly expanding plane exhaust trails
