Milky Way reflections from Barker Dam

Astrophotography is some of the hardest to both shoot and edit but seeing the final image is always worth it. Even before you click the shutter; it takes finding a dark location, hiking out/shooting at odd hours of the night, setting up your comp and trying to focus in the dark. As soon as we saw a good amount of water here, all other plans were scrapped and we spent all night here shooting startrails and the MW. We both knew this was the money comp, but it took all night for the MW to move into position for this shot. I composed my shot and took 4 shots for the rocks at f/4, ISO-4000, 120 secs which were mean stacked, then I walked over to the rocks with my lantern and shot another exposure at f/2.8, 20 sec, ISO-6400, then when the MW slotted into position I shot the last 3 exposures for the sky at f/2.8, 20 sec, ISO-10,000 and mean stacked them. Everything was then blended manually. It wasn’t the darkest of nights so I knew I needed to push the ISO to really bring out the reflections in the water. While somewhat faint, the motionless water provided some awesome reflections which in itself is so cool to see in the middle of the desert. As we walked back to the car, the pre-sunrise light started glowing on the horizon capping off an epic but exhausting night.

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