The Milky Way

One of the special things to shoot in the Palouse is the night sky, and in mid-summer the Milky Way rises around 11pm and lays horizontally above the horizon. It is easy to capture sections of the Milky Way above a subject with a wide angle lens, but it's not possible to capture the entire arch of our galaxy even with an extreme wide angle such as a 14mm. It stretches across the entire sky. So, this shot is a panorama consisting of 9 separate vertically composed images. During the exposure, the abandoned 19th century home was painted with light. The exposure settings for each of the 9 images were 20 seconds, f/2.8, 2000 ISO, and I used a 15-30mm Tamron lens. I chose this lens because the edges are so sharp, plus the zoom gives me the ability to compose with flexibility. Using an f/2.8 lens for star photography is much better than a lens with a maximum aperture of f/4. For this panorama, I set the lens to 18mm. I assembled the images in Photoshop using File > automate > photomerge.