Picture of the Year: 2017

There has been a lot of debate over at Grabamile about what the best picture of the year ended up being.

Based on social media response levels and comments, it looks like you guys think this was the best picture I have captured in 2017. If you don’t recall seeing the other great shots, check out the 17 best pictures of the past year in my previous post.

a house and stars in the sky

A little background on the picture: This picture was captured on a summer night in New Zealand, on the banks of Lake Tekapo, and in front of the Church of the Good Shepherd.

So how hard was it to capture this?

Getting there is easy because it is located right next to the town of Tekapo and an easy to access parking lot. However, standing out there wasn’t so easy. I was manually focussing this scene in pitch black conditions, while being half eaten by sandflies. So just remember to take your camera and lots of bug spray 🙂

Here are the full details on equipment and camera settings: 

Sony Alpha a7 II
Sony Vario-Tessar T* FE 16-35mm f/4 ZA OSS
16mm/ƒ4/30s/ISO 1000


It’s not often that you get to capture a clear night’s sky like this, especially if you live in a city like Dallas where light pollution (and air pollution for that matter) is astronomically high. And so I was quite ecstatic when the stars perfectly aligned for me to take this shot on my very first night and only completely clear night in New Zealand. On a side note: I haven’t quite recovered yet from all those sand fly bites. Darn you New Zealand! Why do you have to be so beautiful?

Have you been to Lake Tekapo? When was the last time you were able to clearly see the Milky Way?

Stay tuned for my trip report about my second trip to Middle Earth….

Instagram: @pvtejasvi

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