Palouse Falls at night

Here is one more Milky Way shot, this time over Palouse Falls near LaCrosse, Washington. To make these kinds of shots have visual impact, post-processing is needed. I add contrast, clarity, and I adjust the color to my taste. The rocks on the top of the bluff came out too red/yellow, and that seemed to draw attention away from the stars so I darkened that area and desaturated it as well. The Milky Way doesn't look this intense and this bright to our eyes, but all astro photography relies on long exposures to accumulate light so the celestial bodies appear brighter and more dynamic. This is true when doing deep sky astrophotography, such as filling the frame with the horsehead nebula, when when shooting the Milky Way. My settings for the waterfall shot were 30 seconds, f/11, 400 ISO. My settings for the sky were 20 seconds, f/2.8, 3200 ISO. I used a 16mm focal length for the stars and a 24mm focal length for the waterfall and then assembled the two images in Photoshop.