Simple Milky Way Tracking & Blending

Today we'll be taking a look from start to finish on a tracked sky blended with a light painted foreground. My desire is to keep to the process as simple and straight forward as possible. So we'll look at the capture procedure in the field and then go through the complete edit and post production of both the tracked sky shot and light painted foreground images.
A lot of people are quite daunted by the whole concept of tracking and I wanted to bring to you a simple milky way tracking and blending video to hopefully bring some clarity to the subject.
I'll be keen to chat further in the comments section below.

Equipment I use:

Photography
Laowa 15mm f2
ioptron Sky Guider Pro Tracker

Video Equipment:

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[thebeardedgeordiephotography]

Now I'm sitting comfortably for this one Rich!!

[thunderpup]

Absolutely brilliant. Such an insight into the process. Not everyone would allow us to see "behind the curtain" like this. Thank you.

[MosyCott]

Just watched it again Richard, several time ... Going to go through a couple of my pics and see what happens .. :)

[spid]

Thank you Richard, that was very interesting and now all I have to do is go shoot and have a go at that editing.

[lesladbrook]

Another brilliant tutorial Richard, fully detailed, nice speed and easy to understand. Thank you, my friend, 🙂

[RTSFoto]

Nice tutorial Richard, only took a couple of night shots so far, but I cannot justify spending £350.00 on a Sky Tracker. Cheers mate..

[AntonioPena]

Richard, you are very lucky with the dark sky’s down there, thanks for sharing steps, you always do a great job!

[frankoley]

Richard, thank you for sharing your extensive knowledge, I have learned so much watching your channel.

[Martin-omob]

Fantastic tutorial, Richard!!! Fired up to go for my own first tracked and blended MW shot. Will be referencing this for editing, for sure. Thank You!

[carmelthomson]

Richard, that is absolutely mind boggling....you might have convinced me to get a tracker!!

[nickholt]

Thanks Richard, very well explained and just what I was hoping to see, now all I need is for the rain gods to go elsewhere then I can get out and practice

[mikekorpa]

Brilliant! I spend weeks editing an astro photo and in the end, all the pushing and pulling on the stars has ruined the image. What a great workflow, both in the field and in post.

[sbuchan]

Brilliant video as always Richard, looking forward to trying out my (move shoot move) when the darker skies return in Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

[paidasumankumar]

super work and tutorial. thank you so much Richard

[Henry_Churches]

Wonderfull tutorial! I took a bunch of notes and now I feel more confident to get out and get more milky way shots. You’re a gift for many of us amateur photographers, thank you!

[nielsdandanell]

Again a fantastic and inspiring video :-)

[andythomas]

Really informative video Richard, many thanks. I will be watching this a few times to get to grips with the techniques and reprocessing a few of my images 😀

[mariuszf]

Great video as usual Richard!! Amazing edit and tutorial, will be coming back to it

[BR-uznj]

All I can say is "thank you". I took notes going through your tutorial. There were some important tips you provided. Several that I picked up is to group the foreground layers and work on them separately before bringing in the adjusted sky layer. Another is to have an ambient image to help with the process. The final key tip was using the blend mode for the stars. Some of that I have been doing but your tutorial was so clear and simple on how to approach it. Much appreciated!

[dennisblack]

Great tutorial Richard, I always pick up something new with your videos. Fantastic image too by the way.
Thank you again 👍