The Proof in 40000 seconds

Namibia is one of those rare spots on earth where you can still watch the milky way in the way it was meant to be seen. There is no industry around for hundreds of miles, making it the ideal place for star observation, far away from disturbing lights. This picture has been taken from Guest farm Niedersachsen, an insider tip for people interested in astronomy.

My camera was steadily headed to the south pole and I had a laptop controlling the camera body through a USB cable. During all night, every 3 minutes, I heard the camera shooting. I was laying there, the eyes towards the sky, and my only job was to replace batteries every 2 hours to keep the camera going. That night I asked myself why the sky shows its movements only to those who take the time to look and compare over the time. This picture is arithmetically computed from more than 230 pictures that have been shot every 3 minutes from 7pm to 7am during the night from sunset to sunrise. It is a result of a ‘highest intensity pixel wins’ comparison between all pictures, in other words some kind of mathematical addition over the time. A kind of movie inside that very picture, for me somehow my goal of achievement in photography: a comprehensive capture of movement, evolution and time.