Last night's meeting was a presentation from Alyn Wallace from S. Wales entitled 'Night Sky Wonders'.

I think we all left this presentation with stars in our eyes as what we saw was literally out of this world. If you had thought beforehand that this was just going to be a collection of images of the night sky, then from the very start it was clear that here was a very knowledgeable photographer who lived and breathed his work and one who could creatively show the wonders of the universe. 'Stunning' doesn't even come close to describing Alyn's images which covered the whole range of astral bodies, including planets, stars, constellations, the Milky Way, the aurora and the international space station. And how amazing that having tweeted his space station image that no other than astronaut Tim Peake tweets back from space how much he likes it!

Alyn's presentation also contained several audio visuals and whilst the images themselves were fantastic, it was the background noises off of excited spectators witnessing comets and the aurora, that made us feel we were there too. The same could be said of Alyn's description of how he enlisted a friend to perform a yoga pose in the distance against the backdrop of a full Moon in the middle of military manoeuvres. The resulting ET- type images captured creatively the scale of man in the universe.

At the heart of all of the images though was Alyn's knowledge of the night sky and the need for careful planning to ensure journeys were not wasted as a result of poor weather. This didn't always work out but Alyn's persistence, especially for an image of moonlight on a waterfall eventually led to something out of this world despite the fact that it was probably his most land-based shot. Except, of course for his final images of bioluminescent plankton!

There were many tips provided for taking good night photographs and Alyn's You Tube site is a good place to see what he has achieved. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKxQ3Dx6K95hpLpdJjTRIlg