Nighttime Sky and Star Photos (And Fabric Designs)

This past month I’ve been very productive in my sewing, but I’m afraid nothing is finished enough to allow me to blog about. (I’m trying to finish the whole entire project, then talk about how I made it in one big post) Because of this, I was looking for something else to talk about as a filler.

A few days ago, I received my order of swatches and fabric yardage from Spoonflower. Among the swatches is a series of fabric designs using photos I took this past June of the night sky. Since I’m awfully pleased with how the designs turned out, I decided to talk about the photos I took and then the fabric designs.

One night in June of this year, I was wide awake at midnight and was bored. Since I live outside town limits and far enough away from the town’s lights, I can see the stars fairly easily on a clear, cloudless night. On this particular night, I decided that since I had nothing more productive to do anyway, it was a good time to try to take photos of the stars. I tried this before years ago, but with a different camera. Although my new camera, a Sony Cybershot, will be 4 years old this September, it is far more powerful than my old camera and I find it a fairly reliable camera. (Sans those “temper tantrums” at the Phoenix Comicon in 2013) Because of this, I thought it was about time I tried taking star photographs again.

After taking the photos, I was (And still am) very impressed with how they turned out. Here is are the photos I took…

They aren’t as great as ones I’ve seen online, I’m very pleased my 4 year old camera was able to capture such clear photos of the stars! The unfortunate part of these photos is the clouds or those yellow blobs in the photos. There were clouds moving overhead when I took these photos and, thanks to the nearby town’s lights, they looked yellow in the photos. I don’t live super close to the nearby town, but in recent years the lights from the town became brighter and brighter. Not sure why, but I’m assuming it’s due to the addition of more street lights and making those lights brighter. (I used to see the stars over the town, but not anymore!)

I edited the photos in Photoshop. I tried to use auto color correct, but that didn’t work. So, I ended up using auto contrast and, for some of the photos, I manually adjusted the levels so they would have the right contrast and not make the stars get washed out.

On a whim, I uploaded one photo to see how they would look as fabric. Once I uploaded one photo and liked the way it looked, I got carried away and I uploaded more and more until I had about 9 designs. Although I didn’t have 9 photos, I cropped and edited the photos I took until I had 9 designs. I’m a sucker for sky and outer space designs so I knew I’d have fun making the designs, but I didn’t know I could squeeze 9 different designs from 5 photos. XD

In addition to the sky photos, I also took some photos of the desert at night…

Still, not as great as the photos I’ve seen online, but much better than what the photos I took a few years ago looked like!

Although I liked the way the desert photos turned out, I decided not to turn them into Spoonflower fabric designs.

If you would like to see the photos I took as fabric, wallpaper, and wrapping paper designs, here’s the link to the collection on Spoonflower. The photos from this post are the designs with numbers 1 through 9 at the end. I took other photos of the night sky in July and August that I plan on added to Spoonflower, but the ones I talked about in this post have number 1 through 9 while the other designs will be numbers 10 and up.

Since I have many photos to blog about, I might blog about them for a while until I’m finished with my sewing projects and/or a new drawing. 🙂

Well, that’s all for now! Thank you for reading!