I do not believe in God, but it is moments like this when I seriously start to doubt that disbelief.

The night started off at 2am, waking up and getting out of bed not long after I had gotten in. I looked out the window and the sky was coated with low hanging, thick cloud. I got back into bed, I lay there a moment. The weather forecast had been for clear, beautiful skies over Durdle Door – my eyes argued the opposite. Eventually, against my better judgement, I got out of bed and headed for the coast.

Half an hour later I arrived to find my friend Matt already there. Durdle Door is a pain in the arse sometimes, as they lock the gates to the dark park so that you cannot pay for parking and then fine you £90 when you park somewhere close. Still, we knew we would be gone before the place opened up so we left the cars there, put on as many layers as we could and then sauntered down towards Durdle Door.

When shooting the Milky Way (and I am no expert from a photography sense) you need to first let your eyes adapt to the darkness. Once you have been in complete darkness for a around 20 minutes, when you look in the direction of our galactic core, you can slowly start to see the dust and clouds that form the band you see in the image above. As for taking the image, I find that shooting with a large aperture lens, such as an F/1.4 is best and setting your ISO no higher than 3200.

Anyway, it was freezing at Durdle Door this morning, I mean really freezing. Matt and I lasted there until about 5.30am, when we realised it wasn’t going to be the best sunset and we packed up and headed for McDonalds. For once, he even paid!