How long did it take to make this photograph? About two hours last night to get it just right, plus several trips over the past year to find the right location and perspective, four evenings in the past two weeks waiting for the sky to be perfectly clear, and several months waiting for the above to coincide with an evening of no moonlight to veil the Milky Way.
If you want to count the many early mornings of practice with exposure and settings for astral DSLR photography, that’s fine, too. Oh, and the workshop with Dave Black on Lightpainting, plus several sessions learning for myself the basics of how to do it, which kinds of lights to use, angle of the lighting, how added light affects exposure for the background, finding a light source that isn’t too cool or too warm or too bright or too dark, etc etc.
But it was all worth it! I don’t often make a photograph that doesn’t have some element I wish were different. This one is just right. Of course, I had to wait until almost 2AM for the Milky Way to line up just where I wanted it. And I got very lucky that with everything else cooperating, the wind was also still enough to grant some nice reflections of the snow covered rocks on the water. Last night was magical. I wish you all could’ve been there!
