I started doing night sky photography a few months ago. On the island of Oahu in Hawaii, probably Kaena Point is the best place to see a relatively clear night sky because it is the furthest location from the massive light pollution of Honolulu. Fortunately, there is a Laysan albatross colony at Kaena Point, which provided me a great opportunity to create the night pictures I envisioned. As a wildlife photographer, my aim was to show how animals spend their nights and the Laysan albatross seemed to be a perfect model for this. I chose to photograph the albatrosses in January, when they were incubating their eggs, therefore the birds spent the night in their nests. It helped me to plan the composition in advance. I wanted a Laysan albatross in the foreground and some other birds in the background and the starry sky above them. I didn’t want to use flashlight to avoid disturbing the birds so I created one image at twilight to expose the birds in the foreground and one another image of the sky about an hour later and blended them together. At that time, there were enough stars visible to create the photo I imagined.

Gear: Canon EOS 7D, Canon 17-40mm F/4 lens, Manfrotto tripod