06/24/2026
Photography is a form of art. All art requires a vision before it can happen. Most of my images are done with a lot of planning. The one below required a lot of planning and also a lot luck. I have been wanting to capture a Milky Way panoramic for a long time. I have tried several times, but I have not been satisfied with any of them. I am truly happy with this one. It is probably the most involved image that I have ever captured and put together. The foreground is a single image shot handheld from my kayak. I used a tripod the last time I tried this, but the water levels were too high for the tripod on this night. The sky was a series of 8 images put together in order to capture the entire Milky Way. I have mentioned this before, but for those who are wondering, the colors in the sky come for hydrogen gas in space that we cannot see with our eyes. It has to be captured with an astromodified camera. The really pink areas in the Milky Way are called nebulae. This was the darkest sky that I have ever seen in Alabama. I could easily see the Milky Way arch and the dust that makes it up. It was a privilege to witness and to capture.
