Starry night in Deadvlei

I haven't had the Internet for 3 days here in Namibia, but my group and I are back in civilization at the moment. The biggest attraction for photographers in this south African country is the largest sand dunes in the world and a place called Deadvlei. This is a dried lake bed with trees that died 500 years ago. You've probably seen pictures of it. It's quite dramatic. The rules of the national park prohibit us from staying in Deadvlei more than 30 minutes after sunset or driving to this area before six o'clock in the morning. This means star photography is not possible here. If you know me and my work, you know I don't let rules like that stop me from getting the pictures I see in my mind. So, my photo tour group and I photographed the Milky Way from the terrace of our lodge at 5am. We had to do it at this time because that's when the moon set and the light pollution was gone. I took this shot of Deadvlei with the sun backlighting the trees, thus the side of the trees that faced the camera was in shadow. That was the key. I then selected the sky with the magic wand tool and expanded the selection two pixels with Select > modify > expand, then feathered the selection with Select > modify > feather by one pixel. Then I pasted the stars and the Milky Way into the sky. Finally, I darkened the landscape to look like night. This is exactly how the scene would have looked had we been able to shoot from there.