Dylan Knight Photography

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Sunshine Coast, QLD
Dylan Knight Photography

Fine Art Landscape and Astrophotographer located on the Sunshine Coast QLD.

05/09/2026

The Sculptor Galaxy with the DWARF Mini

NGC 253, better known as the Sculptor Galaxy, is one of the brightest spiral galaxies in the night sky and sits roughly 11 million light-years away in the constellation Sculptor.

Seen almost edge-on, its disc is full of huge dark dust lanes, while intense star formation throughout the galaxy gives NGC 253 its classification as a starburst galaxy.

This is my first galaxy with the DWARF Mini and I honestly wasn’t expecting to pull this much structure out of it.

Captured from my Sunshine Coast backyard using two DWARF Mini smart telescopes running simultaneously in broadband.

260 × 120 seconds
8 hours 40 minutes combined broadband integration
Gain 60
EQ mode

This is only a quick stack and edit using Stacking Wizard and AstroWizard, with the diffraction spikes added afterwards in PixInsight, but I’m seriously happy with how it has come together.

It’s not finished yet either.

I also captured some narrowband data for NGC 253 and want to go back through everything properly with APP and PixInsight to see how much more I can get out of the data, including whether adding the H-alpha improves the star-forming regions through the galaxy.

So I’m treating this as my broadband reference image before the proper re-edit.

For a single night of broadband and my first galaxy with the Mini though, I’m very happy with this result.

Save on Tiny Scope products through the link in my bio.

03/09/2026

Broadband is finally back

After weeks of bright moonlight and mostly capturing Duo-Band data, the Moon is finally moving out of the evening sky. My first finished broadband target with the DWARF Mini is the R Coronae Australis Molecular Cloud Complex, including Caldwell 68.

Often shortened to R CrA, this is one of the closest star-forming regions to Earth at roughly 430 light-years away. Caldwell 68, or C68, specifically refers to NGC 6729, the compact fan-shaped nebula illuminated by the young variable star R Coronae Australis.

Light from young stars reflects through the surrounding dust to create the blue nebulosity, while dense clouds block the background Milky Way and form the enormous dark lanes running through the image.

The bright cluster at the upper left is NGC 6723, the Chandelier Cluster. It appears close to the cloud but is actually around 27,000 light-years away.

Captured from my Sunshine Coast backyard across two nights using two DWARF Mini smart telescopes:

46 × 30 seconds
24 × 60 seconds
461 × 120 seconds
531 frames
16 hours 09 minutes combined broadband integration

Stacked in AstroWizard using Stacking Wizard, with the final star corrections and vertical composition completed in Photoshop.

I’m genuinely happy with how this came together. The sweeping dust lanes, blue reflection nebulae and mixture of warm gold and cool blue stars make this one of my favourite targets so far.

Save on Tiny Scope products through the link in my bio.

24/08/2026

M8 — The Lagoon Nebula

It’s only been a week, but I’ve gone completely down the astrophotography rabbit hole.

Probably 50 hours relearning PixInsight, testing new techniques, writing workflow guides, researching, and producing somewhere between five and ten different edits of M8—while also working on M17 and C63.

This is the result: just 2 hours and 28 minutes of accepted integration from the DWARF Mini, captured from my Bortle 4 backyard on the Sunshine Coast.

I’m honestly blown away by how much detail and colour was hiding in such a small dataset. Next month I’ll try to add several more hours without the Moon and see what else I can pull out, but until then, M8 is finished and I’m extremely happy with both the Mini and how far my processing has come in one fairly unhinged week.

A massive shout-out to Luke Newbould for creating AstroWizard and sharing his PixInsight workflows on YouTube. This edit is based largely on his OSC narrowband-to-SHO workflow, followed by some additional adjustments in AstroWizard and Photoshop. His tools and tutorials have made advanced astrophotography processing far easier to understand and apply.

Thanks again to Tiny Scope for sending me the DWARF Mini to test. It has already exceeded my expectations, and now it’s time to move on and see what else this tiny telescope can do.

Clear skies!

Image details:

• Target: M8 — Lagoon Nebula
• Telescope: DWARF Mini
• Location: Sunshine Coast, Queensland
• Sky: Bortle 4
• Capture: 296 × 30 seconds
• Accepted integration: 2 h 28 m
• Gain: 60
• Filter: Duo-Band
• Tracking: EQ
• Calibration: Darks, flats and bias frames
• Processing: PixInsight, GraXpert, BlurXTerminator, NoiseXTerminator, StarXTerminator, AstroWizard and Adobe Photoshop

19/07/2026

Sometimes the best shots come from the plans that go completely sideways.

I was meant to head through the pass to Lake Tekapo, but I couldn’t get through, so I ended up at the Moeraki Boulders instead.

It was raining, around -3°C, and honestly I thought I was going to get completely skunked. The water was too deep to use the tripod for this composition, so I had to stand knee-deep in freezing water, shoot handheld and time each frame between the waves while they splashed all over me.

My toes were numb for a good 30–60 minutes afterwards 😂

But then the light finally broke through, and this was the result.

I always say you’re not really shooting seascapes unless you’re getting wet.

13/07/2026

Standing in –8°C beside Tasman Lake, listening to the icy water rushing through the darkness as the Galactic Core rose above the Southern Alps in front of me.

No city lights. No noise. Just fresh snow, Bortle 1 skies, and more stars than I could ever capture in a single frame.

This image is a 49-photo panorama—the closest I’ve come to recreating what that night actually felt like.

11/07/2026

Crown of Aoraki

There are few places that make you feel as small as the Southern Alps.

At midnight, in −8°C conditions, the Milky Way arched above the snow-covered mountains and opened up a scene that felt almost unreal. Every trip here reveals another composition, another weather pattern and another reason to return.

That endless potential is exactly why I’ve spent the past six months planning next year’s New Zealand photography workshop. I’ll be bringing just four guests with me to photograph Aoraki/Mount Cook and the surrounding landscapes, guiding them through the planning, fieldwork and editing needed to create their own images from this incredible part of New Zealand.

https://dylanknight.com.au/new-zealand-photography-workshop

10/07/2026

Standing knee-deep in snow within New Zealand’s Southern Alps, looking across to Aoraki / Mount Cook, was one of the most mind-blowing photography experiences I’ve ever had.

If photographing a true New Zealand winter wonderland has been on your bucket list, join me next year.

https://dylanknight.com.au/new-zealand-photography-workshop

01/07/2026

Frozen sunrise over Utah Lake.

After living in warmer climates for the last six years, I’ve missed scenes like this — ice, snow, still water and mountains catching first light.

Next week I’m heading to New Zealand’s South Island to scout Tekapo and Aoraki / Mount Cook for a small-group winter landscape and astrophotography workshop planned for 30 June – 7 July 2027.

Think snow-capped mountains, alpine lakes, dramatic winter light, moody weather, frozen details, dark skies and Milky Way season — built for landscape and astro, with a maximum of 4 participants.

The New Zealand 2027 priority list is now open, with first access before the newsletter and public release.

Read the details and join via the link in my bio.
https://dylanknight.com.au/new-zealand-photography-workshop

30/06/2026

Rainforest waterfall photography near O’Reilly’s, in the Green Mountains section of Lamington National Park. This is one of the locations we shoot on my Gold Coast Hinterland photography workshop, buried deep in the rainforest where it takes a bit of local knowledge to find.

Long-exposure waterfall work looks simple from the outside, but rainforest conditions throw a lot at you. Wet leaves bounce glare everywhere, ferns shift in the lightest breeze, and dark volcanic rock loses detail fast. A solid tripod, a circular polariser to cut the glare, careful composition and patience for the wind to settle make all the difference.

My August Gold Coast Hinterland workshop sold out, but I’ll be running future dates here soon.
Future Gold Coast Hinterland workshop dates go to my priority list first. Join via my newsletter: https://dylanknight.com.au/photography-newsletter.

02/06/2026

Some of the best landscape photos don’t come from luck.

They come from persistence.

Going back to the same place again and again.

In different light.

Different weather.

Different seasons.

Different moods.

Anyone can visit a famous location once and hope it turns on. Sometimes it does. But most of the time, the stronger images come from learning how a place behaves.

Where the light lands.

What the clouds do.

Which compositions only work in certain conditions.

When the obvious shot is worth taking, and when it’s better to look for something else.
snow_photo, Mesa Arch, Dead Horse Point and the Canyonlands region taught me this better than almost anywhere.

Same broader area. Completely different photographs.

Sunrise. Astro. Snow. Fog. Colour. Stillness.

Sure, luck matters in landscape photography. But persistence puts you in position for that luck to actually find you.

A guide can tell you where to stand. A map can tell you where the trail starts. But the relationship you build with a location only comes from returning.

Keep going back.

Sometimes the landscape hasn’t shown you its best side yet.

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Sunshine Coast, QLD

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https://dylanknight.com.au/

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