Slideshow: 2023 Milky Way Photographer of the Year winners

Kudos to these guys, as I feel it's probably the hardest photography category after the underwater one. To be out there in the night for hours, sometimes in the cold with heavy and expensive equipment and hours of stitching, postprocessing etc.
Just wow!

Wow those are pretty fancy lookin'! The guy who taught me to edit sagely said that when you find an effect you like and you think it is looking cool, turn it down 70%. Not that I could edit as well as these folks. lol

They are all technically spectacular, extremely high skill level on display. However, aesthetically, many of them are over the top, to contrasty, too in-your-face IMHO.

All of these Milky Way "photo's" would make good book covers for science-fiction novels. While I do appreciate the artsy side of our craft, when it comes to photographing our galaxy, add my names to those that favor a more natural looking sky.

That Sigma 40mm Art is something special, by the looks of it.

Take a look at #9 and #12. Both have some extra super colored stuff that is not in the milky way. They are not visible in other pictures of the milky way. Why? What is it? That looks just weird. I guess that there are some stuff in those places and that it is super enhanced in visibility.

Just one image here you may still call "Astrophotography", all the others are just Photoshop/Fantasy art.

the world does not look like this, this is not photography, but art, or fake reality

Photography is both a document of reality as well as an art form. Anyone can like or dislike it's product in which ever form. If you want a "real" view of the Milky Way get out your sleeping bag on a clear night and lay under the stars and witness the magnificent reality in person.

Average dpreview comment section

Depending on how heavily these images were processed after their initial exposures/captures, it might be better to call them either 'photo illustrations' or 'photography-based artworks'.

20th century paintings were sometimes described as being 'photo realistic'. Those were paintings that, based on the expectations of the observer, seemed more like photos than paintings — they had the 'look' of photographs (realism, depth of field, and other visual cues usually found in photographs). Most of the images presented in this article seem to be headed in the other direction — photographs that resemble paintings or illustrations.

It's a difficult line to draw — as any heavily processed photograph reaches a point when the processing is more evident than the original light or scene captured. When I clicked on the link to this article, I was expecting to see more typically captured and rendered photos. I wasn't expecting the 'candy' quality that many of these images contain.

Before I started talking out of turn, I looked up more info on the contest. The article I found says there were more than 3000 entries & these were selected from 25 finalists. In the article on a white page or even on the contest site on a brown page, the saturation doesn't come across as intense as with DPR's black. The host of the contest, CaptureTheAtlas, seems to have been more focused on Travel & where the photo was taken, & giving a perspective with local flavor, than being a rigid astro photo project. So, with that said, I can see why these types of pics were selected. Looking at Exif, many of the cameras were modified for Astro, so that may be where some colors are coming from also. Credit where due, I think the photographers did a fine job of representing the different areas and kudos to them for getting off their butts and going out there and making some ART. Now, if NASA was holding the contest with a more traditional criteria, then yeah, I'd expect a different result.

I'd like to see these photographers take the same photo of the Milky Way without all the 'trickery'. Just so we can compare.

Whether or not it is "real photography" doesn't really matter. I think it looks fake and I don't like that kind of aesthetics. Just a personal taste, obviously.

Hmmmm --- I have mixed feelings about something that seems to have become fashion. And that is to post process the milky way images into gaudy strong colors. Several of images I have seen have it, and one example is #12 "La Palma". It looks very dramatic even impressive. But, to me it looks wrong. I get no sense of a night sky.

Everyone that have been out in a pitch dark environment and looked at the milky way knows how it looks. It is not colorful. It is not that "dirty" look.

I then like #2, #5, #8, #10, #11, #13 and #14 better, with a more starry looking star field.

Stunningly beautiful photos, but are they photos or mostly made in the photo editor?
I feel most of them are a result of heavy post processing in Ps or other editors. Combining several photos, enhancing color etc. etc.

Anyway, the results are stunning great pictures!

Wow, really enthralling to see how far this form of photography has come the last decade with modified cameras, imagestacking, mutlilayering, astro tracking and so on. Pretty surreal,but still beautiful.

I like how they mention the mount used to capture the sky, good buyers advice in disguise. And one that comes up often is pretty affordable too

I just think there ought to be a rule against combining shots even from different cameras. I can see multiple shots from the same camera with an exposure for the foreground and another for the sky. But some of these are almost fakery with the way exposures have been combined.

All of these photos are genuinely spectacular and skillful. And yet... I can't help thinking about people who grow up in big cities where it never gets really dark. If they ever do get the chance to see the real night sky, will they look up and be disappointed that it looks nothing like these images? Will the Milky Way be a letdown for them?

I live in Nebraska, where some of the darkest, clearest skies in North America are within an easy drive. I've pulled off the road late at night between Halsey (pop. 64) and Thedford (pop. 211), and stretched out on the hood of my car, listening to the rustle of the Middle Loup River until my eyes adapted. The view of the night sky you get this way is indescribably beautiful, but incredibly subtle -- not at all like the astronomical fireworks shows depicted in these images.

In a way I'm glad there are still a few experiences that can't be interpreted through photography, but sad that so many people will never know what they're missing...

Nice photos. Many of them would even work without the Mily Way in the background.

First one was shot at f/2.4 with an f/2.8 lens. How?

All fabulous. Thanks to all for putting up with all that lost sleep. We are so lucky to live in such a photogenic galaxy.

11 & 14 still look quite natural

Impressive. My favorites are #1, #5 and #12. These photos are not grab shots. They have more than the normal skill involved.
Very effective use of distortion in #1.
Lot of comments from "purist" photographers. Photography has moved on from realism some time ago. It just shows how far ahead Pete Turner was thinking in the 1970's.

Beautiful captures, brilliant done by the photographers, very dedicated folks! I really love these colorful nightsky pictures!

A competition in wide angle, over-saturation and hyped contrast ... well, some might like this kind of tone mapping.

As an owner of some Hydrogen alpha sensitive cameras, what is shown here is just way over the top.

I see the trend now is desaturaing colors and making natural looking images, directly out of the camera.

Jokes aside, while being aware that aesthetics is subjective and being in favor of everybody doing whatever they like with their cameras, I personally find these images (with a couple exceptions) grossly distasteful.

They have amazing technical skills for photoediting and there is a lot of field work as well, but if they would present the pictures as they were captured I'm almost certain I'd like them.

These guys are like cooks who do great dishes but ruin them by adding a pound of salt, another pound of pepper and similar amounts of every species known to humanity, flambe it with gasoline and put a cherry on top.

All these photos show great technical skill but almost all (except 11 and 14) are just too "overcooked"

Beautiful photos

This is photo art and like all other genres of art it's highly subjective. Much of photography is and has been manipulated. Bokeh as so many crave for is a product of lenses & sensors in digital photography is not what the human eye can see. Sharpness which so many crave for is often enhanced many times more than the human eye can resolve in nature and if not then it's labeled soft. Colors are craved for and enhanced in camera & post which do not exist in nature etc., etc., etc. The same people labeling these photos "AI like" are probably the same that demand Bokeh, oversaturated colors, over sharpened images. Pick your own poison. Personally I like all of these for what they are and that is they a represent a creative effort which is notably absent with most in these forums.

I'm surely no astro photo expert, and I would love to see comments from some of the real astro photo experts here, but to my eye many of these images have colors that look unrealistic. They sort of remind me of the early days of HDR where the colors were so vivid and oversaturated they were unreal. So: are these award winning images truly the way all my milky way colors ought to look?

I thought they were pretty well done. Surprised the experts here were less than enthused.
Is it my viewing on a small phone?
Is it my lack of knowledge?

Stunning images!

I find these shots impressive.
Can anyone explain to me what means "astro modified" exactly?

It looks like everyone just typed into an AI chat box " Create a photo with stars and galaxies with trees and mountains around the stars." Oh, that's right, we no longer have to do that with the latest version of Photoshop. The decline of real photography continues.

To those saying these are AI or just editing, have a look at the equipment used. Nearly all were done with astro-modified cameras and/or sky tracking gear. I think the recent advent of AI imagery has made us a bit overly sensitive to it.

Gallery screams "1960ies SciFi painting" and Syntography¹ all over.

The experience of going there and seeing a pitch black night sky for real is better than the pics that come out of it.

¹) AI generated pictures