Buying My DSLR

I always loved landscape photos and wanted to shoot great landscape photos myself. I was always trying to take nice photos with my phone but I wasn't really taking it seriously. Two years ago I decided to get my first DSLR since I had some money saved. I had about €450 saved from when I was working for my dad so I went and bought the Canon 1200D (Rebel T5 for you Americans). I bought a kit for ‎€400 that included a carrying case, an SD card, the camera body and a 18-55mm lens. I spent the rest of my money to buy a cheap tripod and an intervalometer.

As I mentioned above, I love landscape photography; however I bought a DSLR because I really wanted to photograph the Milky Way. Of course I was planning to take different kinds of photos, but my main reason for choosing to buy a DSLR was astrophotography. I could buy other cameras like point-and-shoot but most of them didn't have a manual settings option neither did they allow me to change lenses.

My First Astrophotography Trip

After a week or two from when I bought the camera I had experimented enough with it to know how to use it in Manual mode, so I decided to try to photograph the Milky Way. Now to be clear, I wasn't expecting to take a photo with the Milky Way shining bright and clear. I knew that this would take time and effort. At the time I was 17 years old and I didn't have a driver's license so I had to persuade my dad to take me in the middle of nowhere at 3am to photograph the Milky Way. After a lot of talking we agreed that we would go at 12am.

When we arrived, I used my smart phone to locate the Milky Way and I setup my tripod and camera. I tried different settings with longer exposure times, shorter exposure times, higher ISO and lower ISO. From the camera screen the photos looked kinda... ugly. I went home and imported the photos into Lightroom. Most of the photos were out of focus and the ones that were in focus were bad. There were only some stars visible, not even close of the Milky Way showing.
This was one of the photos of the trip

I wasn't bummed because I knew that it was only the beginning and that I could photograph the Milky Way, but after one or two months of constantly trying to photograph the Milky Way and failing I decided that I would try landscape photography for some time.

My Photography Journey

Since then I was taking photos of sunsets, sunrises and landscapes in general. It's not that I didn't take any night long exposure photos, it's just that I wasn't really trying to photograph the Milky Way. In this time I believe I have taken some really nice photos.
I believe this is one of my best

Finally!

A week ago I headed out with a friend on a mission to photograph the Milky Way after two years of not trying. I wasn't expecting much since Cyprus is a small island and there is light pollution almost everywhere. All this time I wasn't able to see the Milky Way with my eyes, not even once!

When we arrived, I got out of the car and I was AMAZED! I could finally see the Milky Way with my own eyes. I started taking photos immediately. I was the most excited person in the world! We stayed for around two hours taking photos and then we went home.

When I arrived home and saw the photos, I was both happy and sad. I was happy that I could finally see the Milky Way in my photos but I was sad because it wasn't as clear and bright as I though it would be. I wasn't disappointed though. I edited my photos and they are ready to post to Instagram.
Below you can see a photo from that night.

As you can see, there is a lot of noise and the Milky Way is barely showing but at least it's showing.

Conclusion

I believe I have A LOT to learn until I can finally say that I take great photos. I'm still 19 years old and I have time to learn. I have already learned a lot from the last two years.

You can follow me on Instagram @smems if you like my photos. If you don't at least take a look at my Instagram since I have a lot more photos there than those posted here.

Thank you :)