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Milky Way panorama over Castle Hill with fog and the swirl rock pond
TNR Protography - West Coast NZ

NOTHING
UP HERE IS
LUCK.

Astrophotography is planning, patience, and hours of work to pull out what the eye cannot see. Every frame is earned. Dean shoots the night sky from some of the darkest corners of New Zealand.

Interactive

STEP INSIDE
THE SHOT.

Some images have more behind them than a caption can hold. These ones are built out into their own experience, so you can walk through the night they came from and then open the photograph at full resolution and go looking through it yourself.

Interactive Milky Way arcing through the mouth of a sea cave at Truman Track, West Coast New Zealand
18 August 2026 · West Coast

TRUMAN TRACK
AT NIGHT.

Thirty two panels shot from a beach walled in by cliffs, on a tide that decided how long we had. Sixteen for the foreground from down on the sand, sixteen for the sky an hour later from the platform a hundred metres back. The star tracker picked that night to stop working, and somewhere in the middle of it we watched lights move over the western sky that were not satellites.

Panels
32
On site
7PM
To finish
24 HRS
Enter the experience →
How it started

THE AURORA
OPENED THE DOOR.

It started the way a lot of things start for Dean. Chasing the southern lights. Aurora photography taught him to read darkness, weather, and timing in a completely different way. But the more time he spent under dark skies, the more he noticed what was above the glow. The Milky Way. The detail. The sheer scale of what was up there, invisible to the naked eye but waiting to be pulled out of a long exposure.

Then came a workshop with astrophotographer Rachel Roberts, and everything changed. The technical precision, the stacking, the processing. It was a completely different discipline to anything Dean had done before. Not something you can stumble into a good result with. Every single part of the process is deliberate, from planning the shot weeks in advance to the many hours of editing that extract colour and detail you did not even know was there.

Astro week

SEVEN NIGHTS.
NO EXCUSES.

The week before Rachel's workshop, Dean went out every single night. No waiting for perfect conditions, no putting it off. Just shooting, trying to push as far as he could before learning how to do it properly. This shot from Punakaiki came out of one of those nights. A beautiful light fog sat over the sky and made the stars glow in a way he had not seen before.

Looking back, he could do a lot better now. But that is the point. Astro week was about building the discipline and putting in the reps. The workshop would teach the technique, but the habit of getting out there no matter what had to come first.

Stars glowing through light fog over Punakaiki Punakaiki
First multirow Milky Way panorama, Akaroa Akaroa
The first real test

SHARP STARS
IN THE WIND.

The first shoot after the workshop with Rachel was in Akaroa. Dean and Nicole had a trip away, and he wanted to put everything he had just learned to the test. This would be his first ever multirow panorama. Multiple rows of frames stitched together to capture the full arc of the Milky Way from horizon to horizon.

It was an incredibly windy night. The kind of wind that makes you question whether the tripod is going to hold. But Dean was thrilled to see the setup was stable enough to produce sharp stars across every panel. The result was proof that the workshop had landed. The technique worked. The planning worked. And the hours of processing pulled out a sky that no one standing in that wind could have seen with their own eyes.

The first comet

CHASING SOMETHING
HE HAD NEVER SEEN.

The first comet Dean ever photographed came with no guarantees. He had no idea if it would be visible to the eye, had never pointed a camera at one before, and only roughly knew where in the sky to look. He just went out and tried.

The result sits over the Cobden tiphead at sunset. Well composed, clean, and something Dean considers a bit of an icon in his collection. Not bad for pointing a camera at something you have never seen before and hoping for the best.

First comet capture over Cobden tiphead Cobden Tiphead
Full moon framed through trees Full Moon
The moon

BRIGHT ENOUGH
TO FIGHT YOU.

Dean's first real attempt at a moon shot. The composition came together nicely with the tree framing the right side of the frame, but the challenge was the exposure. A full moon is bright enough to blow out everything around it if you are not careful, and getting the balance right between the glow and the surrounding detail is harder than it looks.

It is a completely different problem to the rest of astrophotography. Instead of pulling faint detail out of darkness, you are trying to hold back something that wants to overpower the entire image. A different kind of fight, but just as satisfying to get right.

More than a photo

SOME NIGHTS
MEAN MORE.

The Tekapo panorama is one of the most technically accomplished shots in Dean's collection. His first single-row astro panorama, with even a hint of aurora creeping into the frame. But the photo matters for reasons that have nothing to do with technique.

This trip was to celebrate Nicole finishing her last round of chemotherapy. Dean took her and her parents to Tekapo, where they had a place with a hot tub under some of the darkest skies in New Zealand. He set up the camera and captured the Milky Way arching over the scene while the people he loves most were nearby.

Some photos are about what you can pull out of the sky. This one is about what was happening on the ground.

Milky Way over hot tub in Tekapo, celebrating end of chemotherapy Tekapo
Milky Way framed between two rock formations at Castle Hill, pointing toward a lone tree Castle Hill
Between the rocks

TIGHT SQUEEZE.
WORTH IT.

This was thirty minutes before the big panorama. Dean and Nicole found a spot wedged between two converging rock formations at Castle Hill, a natural frame that made the whole scene feel like peering out of a cave. The Milky Way lined up perfectly between the rocks, pointing straight toward a lone tree in the distance. He had tried a version of this shot during Matariki 2024 and knew he could do it better.

It was slightly sketchy. Sheets of rock had clearly peeled away from the formations above and shattered on the ground right beside them. Not the kind of place you want to spend more time than you need to. But the composition was too good to walk away from.

The full panorama

FOG ROLLED IN.
HE STAYED.

Thirty minutes after squeezing between the rocks, Dean set up for the shot he had come for. The swirl rock pond at Castle Hill, dead centre of the frame, with the Milky Way arching overhead. The composition was planned weeks in advance. The fog was not.

It rolled in and out so fast all night that getting a consistently foggy foreground across every panel of the panorama felt like a coin flip. Some frames had thick fog, others were clear, and the window between them was minutes at best. But it came together. Not a single soul in sight, just the rocks, the fog, and a sky that no one standing there could have seen with their own eyes. One of those nights where everything lined up.

Milky Way panorama over Castle Hill with fog and the swirl rock pond Castle Hill
The brightest one yet

TALL BLUE RAYS
OVER RAPAHOE.

This night had one of the brightest auroras Dean had ever seen, and something he had never really encountered before. Tall Blue Rays. Columns of blue light extending vertically through the display. A rare phenomenon for aurora this far north in New Zealand, and not something you want to sleep through.

The well known pier stumps at Rapahoe were the obvious choice for foreground, but it depended on where the river was running. Some nights the river sits right against the stumps and kills the composition. Dean pulled up, saw the aurora blazing and the river sitting well away from the stumps, and knew he had the shot. The brightest aurora he had ever seen, right on the Coast.

More aurora photography in the aurora section.

Aurora australis with Tall Blue Rays over Rapahoe pier stumps Rapahoe
Milky Way over the outdoor deck at Goldfield Suites, Rutherglen Road Goldfield Suites
Small business promo

UP RUTHERGLEN ROAD,
THE SKY OPENS UP.

Andy and Jolene have booked Dean in every single year since he started out, and this one came out of the Small Business Promo Package he puts together for them. Goldfield Suites sits up Rutherglen Road, where the darkness is a given. Genuinely beautiful, genuinely dark skies, exactly the kind of spot that nightscapes were made for.

Getting to shoot something like this for two people who have supported him from the very beginning made this one particularly satisfying to deliver.

Same night, a different frame

A CANDLE, A CUPPA,
AND THE MILKY WAY.

This one was deliberate from the start. Dean wanted to frame the shot as though someone was relaxing outside with a cuppa, watching the stars roll past through the ranch slider. He brought along a candle for a bit of ambient light, and it ended up doing most of the heavy lifting for the atmosphere.

The result is cosy and peaceful in a way that pure nightscapes rarely are. Less about the vastness of the sky, more about what it feels like to sit somewhere and simply look up at it.

Milky Way seen through a candlelit ranch slider window at Goldfield Suites Goldfield Suites
Milky Way arching over a dry ravine lit with tealight candles at Cowboys Paradise, Milltown near Lake Kaniere Cowboys Paradise, Milltown
Milltown, Lake Kaniere

TEALIGHTS DOWN
A DRY RIVERBED.

Down in Milltown by Lake Kaniere sits a ravine carved out over time by flood after flood. It is normally bone dry, a genuine oddity on the West Coast, and paired with proper dark skies it makes for a striking piece of ground to shoot into.

On the way down, Dean had the idea to grab a handful of tealight candles and use them to paint light through the ravine while the Milky Way arched overhead. It was a bit of a punt on the drive down, but it paid off. One of those small, spontaneous ideas that came together better than expected.

Truman Track

TIDE WAS UP.
PLATFORM IT IS.

The plan for the 15th of August 2026 was to get down onto the beach at Truman Track. The tide had other ideas. It was sitting higher than Dean would have liked, so he and his mate Nate and Nate's wife stayed up on the platform and shot from there instead. Nicole could not make this one.

This was not one of the big builds. Only a few frames, nothing like the sixty-odd panels that went into Castle Hill. What made it worth doing was that it was Dean's first proper crack at stacking images, and it worked. A good result out of a night that started with a change of plan.

Milky Way rising over the bay at Truman Track, shot from the viewing platform Truman Track
Why astro is different

YOU CAN'T
LUCK THIS.

Normal photography has room for happy accidents. A burst of light, a moment caught at just the right time, a composition that falls into place. Astrophotography does not work that way. The end result is built entirely on planning, technical precision, and the many hours of editing it takes to extract detail and colour that you did not even know was there. Every decision is deliberate. Every step matters. And when all of that hard work comes together into a single image, the feeling is unlike anything else in photography.

The collection

NIGHT
SKY.

Milky Way arcing through the mouth of a sea cave at Truman Track, West Coast New Zealand
Truman Track
Milky Way panorama Akaroa
Akaroa
Milky Way over Tekapo
Tekapo
Stars over Punakaiki
Punakaiki
Comet over Cobden tiphead
Comet - Cobden Tiphead
Full moon through the trees
Full Moon
Milky Way panorama over Castle Hill with fog
Castle Hill
Milky Way between rock formations at Castle Hill
Castle Hill
Aurora with Tall Blue Rays over Rapahoe pier stumps
Rapahoe
Milky Way over the outdoor deck at Goldfield Suites
Goldfield Suites
Milky Way through a candlelit ranch slider at Goldfield Suites
Goldfield Suites
Milky Way over a candlelit ravine at Cowboys Paradise, Milltown
Cowboys Paradise
Milky Way over the bay at Truman Track
Truman Track - From the platform
Get in touch

WANT SOMETHING
LIKE THIS?

If you are after astrophotography prints, want to learn how to shoot the night sky, or just want to talk about what is up there, get in touch.

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