Position of the Milky Way and special lantern: see behind the scenes photo at Chapada dos Veadeiros that won international awards

The photo of Chapada dos Veadeiros that won international awards and conquered the world with the perfect framing of this "impossible night". To g1, Brazilian photographer Márcio Cabral told details about the planning necessary to achieve this result, such as the position of the Milky Way and the use of special techniques.

Named 'Pandora', the photograph shows the night sky in Alto Paraíso de Goiás, in Jardim de Maytreia, with traditional shower heads, a characteristic plant of the region, illuminated by starlight.

Fábio says that the image was made with a sequence of 9 long exposure photographs, which were later "stitched" together on the computer, to capture the entire Milky Way at a 180º angle.

To ensure that the stars would be well positioned, the photographer explains that he calculated the alignment of the Milky Way.

"In addition to the technique, there is a lot of prior planning and the challenge of bringing together several rare conditions at the same time: the Milky Way needs to be perfectly aligned, the sky without any clouds, zero wind so the flowers don't shake during the long exposure and also the luck of catching a year of intense flowering, since they don't bloom with this force every year", he said.

Furthermore, he explains that shower heads do not naturally glow in the dark. To achieve this effect in the photo, he used a special "optical flashlight" during the long exposure to gently illuminate the flowers in the dark without interfering with the brightness of the stars.

The most recent award won by 'Pandora' was the Global Grand Prize at the 17th Greenstorm Photography Festival. The work competed with more than 14 thousand photographs from 116 countries. The official award of the prize, worth R$55 thousand, took place at the end of August, during the 17th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP17) of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), in Mongolia.

To g1, Márcio spoke about the importance of the award and the symbolism of winning with a photo that exalts the Cerrado, a biome that suffers from degradation and deforestation.

"The Cerrado faces immense pressure from deforestation, loss of biodiversity, and seeing this species of chuveirinho, which is an emblematic species of Chapada dos Veadeiros, being recognized globally at the UN summit, brings international visibility to the urgency of preserving our biome", he said in an interview with g1.

According to Márcio, the photograph is considered the most awarded nature photo of recent times. In total, Pandora has already won 10 international awards, in addition to editorial recognition, such as when it was chosen Photo of the Month by National Geographic, in the United States, and selected to be part of the book “The Photographs: Iconic Images”, which brings together 250 photographs from the institution's history.