Sometimes You Just Get Lucky

[JimFox]

I went out camping with the 6 grandkids and my daughter to Dowdy Lake in Northern Colorado. It's a lake by an area called Red Feather Lakes. I had never been there before so it was all new to me. We were able to get a campsite right next to the lake and I found that it had this very cool rock structure with a little spit of land reaching out to it. I thought that might make for some cool foreground interest.

My biggest complication was going to be the 80% moon rising at 10:30pm. So with the sunset at about 8:30, I had a short window where I could capture the tail of the Milky Way before the moon would wash it out. I used a head lamp on low setting, and set it about 100 yards away to add some light to the rocks.

This image here was only my 2nd or 3rd image as I was still testing my settings and the composition, so hence the lucky feeling as I was reviewing the histogram and saw I had caught a meteor streaking.

Nikon D850
Sigma 14mm f1.8
25 secs
ISO 1600
f2

This is a single image.

All comments are welcome,

Jim

 

[AlanLichty]

Lucky indeed - this worked out quite well. The little spit of land makes a great compositional element.

Is the glow on the horizon from an urban area or is that the moonrise?

 

[JimFox]

Lucky indeed - this worked out quite well. The little spit of land makes a great compositional element.

Is the glow on the horizon from an urban area or is that the moonrise?

Thanks Alan!

The light has to be of human origin, though I am not sure exactly what. The moon when it did rise was out of the frame to the right.

 

[Ben Egbert]

This is a nice Milky Way Jim. The amount of foreground light is perfect and does not look painted at all.

 

[Jameel Hyder]

Nice location for a. MW shot. The ground light isn’t distracting. The reflection in the water is a nice addition.