Mile High Photographer

Mile High Photographer Full service photographer located in Rockwall, Texas. Portraits, weddings, senior photos and more.
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This Pelican Doesn’t Fish 🐦🌍 Rockwall County, Texas, USAThe Pelican Nebula (IC 5070) and a portion of the North America ...
06/03/2026

This Pelican Doesn’t Fish 🐦

🌍 Rockwall County, Texas, USA

The Pelican Nebula (IC 5070) and a portion of the North America Nebula (NGC 7000) captured in Hydrogen-Alpha and Oxygen-III narrowband using the HOO palette. The Pelican Nebula is an active star-forming region located approximately 2,000 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus, separated from its larger neighbor the North America Nebula by a dark molecular cloud. The region is known for its striking pillar-like structures and Herbig-Haro objects — jets of gas ejected by newly forming stars. The dramatic dark dust lanes and intricate filamentary structure of the Pelican are visible alongside the sweeping emission of the North America Nebula in the upper right. Imaged over multiple sessions from the light-polluted skies of Rockwall, Texas.

EXIF:

• Camera: Player One Uranus-M (Sony IMX585)
• Telescope: SVBONY SV555
• Focal Length: 243mm
• Pixel Size: 2.90µm
• Filters: Hydrogen-Alpha, Oxygen-III
• Ha: 61 frames × 300s — Gain 210, Bin 1×1
• OIII: 17 frames × 300s — Gain 210, Bin 1×1
• Total Integration: ~6.6 hours
• Processing: Siril, ASMP, GraXpert, VeraLux Alchemy, HyperMetric Stretch, SyQon Prism, VeraLux Revela & Curves

Pinwheel Galaxy (M101)🌎 Ursa Major Constellation, Northern SkyMessier 101 is a face-on grand-design spiral galaxy about ...
04/26/2026

Pinwheel Galaxy (M101)

🌎 Ursa Major Constellation, Northern Sky

Messier 101 is a face-on grand-design spiral galaxy about 21 million light-years away in the direction of Ursa Major. Its sweeping arms are rich with young blue star clusters and glowing hydrogen regions where new stars are still being born. The warmer central bulge is dominated by older stars, creating the contrast between a golden core and cooler outer arms. Several tiny background galaxies also hide in the field, reminders of just how deep this patch of sky really is.

This image was captured from Rockwall, Texas where suburban light pollution makes faint targets work for every photon. I gathered 100 two-minute exposures, then used darks, flats, and bias frames to calibrate the data before stacking and processing in Siril. What appears effortless in the final frame is really 200 minutes of persistence and careful extraction from a bright sky.

EXIF
Camera: ASI533MC Pro
Lens: ZWO FF80 APO
Filter: UV/IR Cut
Exposure: 100 × 120 sec
Calibration Frames: 20 Darks, 20 Biases, 20 Flats
Sky Quality: Bortle 7/8
Total Integration: 200 min
Processing: Stacked and processed in Siril

Artemis II on its way to the dark side of the moon.
04/02/2026

Artemis II on its way to the dark side of the moon.

Liftoff!For the first time in over fifty years we are sending astronauts beyond low earth orbit. I had the privilege of...
04/01/2026

Liftoff!

For the first time in over fifty years we are sending astronauts beyond low earth orbit. I had the privilege of photographing this histroical event.

M42 Orion NebulaThis is my second attempt at shooting a deep space object and I returned to the Orion Nebula, the same t...
03/24/2026

M42 Orion Nebula

This is my second attempt at shooting a deep space object and I returned to the Orion Nebula, the same targer I tried before. But this time we went a different route. Shot at 600mm in APSC mode on my camera for an effective focal length of 900mm, the Orion and Running Man nebulas filled more of the frame. 180 second exposures were used in stead of 20 second to draw out more detail in the dust lanes of the nebulas. This was possible because i drove from a Bortle 7 sky to a Bortle 2 sky and enjoyed those stars at night Texans have been signing about for decades.

"The stars are the same as they were back when we started. They don't change none, even if we do." — Augustus McCrae, Lo...
03/23/2026

"The stars are the same as they were back when we started. They don't change none, even if we do." — Augustus McCrae, Lonesome Dove

🌍 Foard County, Texas, USA

There is a specific kind of silence in North Texas where history and the heavens meet. Captured here is a building with a soul—etched in stone with the dates 1888–1939.

This is the former Truscott United Methodist Church. While the maps place this sanctuary in Knox County, its spirit belongs to the nearby community of Thalia. To fans of Larry McMurtry, Thalia is the fictionalized heartbeat of the Texas plains he immortalized in The Last Picture Show and the Lonesome Dove saga.

But under this canopy of light, another set of words rings out across the prairie:

“When we’ve been there ten thousand years,
Bright shining as the sun,
We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise
Than when we’d first begun.”

That first date, 1888, marks the era of the legendary cattle drives and the rugged frontier spirit McMurtry wrote about. The second, 1939, is when this brick sanctuary was raised to stand against the North Texas wind. Today, reborn as the Amazing Grace venue, these walls have traded old hymns for wedding vows.

Under the glow of the Milky Way, the legend of Thalia feels closer than ever—a place of new beginnings anchored by red Texas dirt and crowned by the very stars that have watched over it for "ten thousand years." ✨

Date Taken: March 21, 2026
Camera: Sony a7R IV
Lens: Sony 24mm f/1.4 GM
Focal Length: 24mm
Aperture (Sky): f/1.6
Aperture (Foreground): f/11
Shutter Speed (Sky): 90 seconds
Shutter Speed (Foreground): 31 seconds
ISO: 320
Category: Track, Stacked, and Blended (15 sky frames and 1 foreground frame)

Amazing Grace

Silent Vespers at Bomarton🌎 Baylor County, Texas, USAIn the heart of the rolling West Texas plains stands a skeleton of ...
03/20/2026

Silent Vespers at Bomarton
🌎 Baylor County, Texas, USA

In the heart of the rolling West Texas plains stands a skeleton of brick and faith. Established in 1908 and built in its current form in 1936, St. John Catholic Church was once the beating heart of the community in Bomarton. Today, it stands as a Recorded Texas Historical Landmark, though its pews have long been empty. As the local agricultural boom faded and the Wichita Valley Railroad went quiet, the town followed—leaving this Gothic-style beauty to face the elements alone.

There is a haunting beauty in its decay. The windows are gone, the plaster is peeling, and the winds of the prairie now whistle through the nave where hymns once soared. But on a clear night, the church finds a different kind of glory.

Under the arch of the Milky Way, the passage of time feels small. I wanted to capture the cross standing out against the cosmos—a final, luminous sentinel watching over the remains of a town that time nearly forgot.

Date Taken: March 20, 2026
Camera: Sony a7R IV
Lens: Sony 50mm f/1.4 GM
Focal Length: 50mm
Aperture: f/1.4
Shutter Speed: 120 seconds
ISO: 320
Category: Tracked and Stacked

I know this screen won’t mean much to most of the people that see this photo, but it has me giddier than a schoolgirl ri...
03/20/2026

I know this screen won’t mean much to most of the people that see this photo, but it has me giddier than a schoolgirl right now.

El Capitan and the Lunar EclipseI talk a lot about having a vision when I go to shoot photos. This vision stems from pl...
03/06/2026

El Capitan and the Lunar Eclipse

I talk a lot about having a vision when I go to shoot photos. This vision stems from planning long before I put RAMBO in drive. This shot was no exception. Knowing the lunar eclipse was coming, I put hours in to researching locations to determine where I wanted to be. My goal was to be able to capture the eclipse from start to finish. But I also wanted a strong foreground to go with the eclipse.

To be able to capture from start to finish, I had to go west. Some of my first ideas were not far enough west, forcing me to keep looking. But, I didn't want to go too far west and I really had a desire to stay in Texas for this shot. I spent three days scoping out locations in West Texas until I landed on Guadalupe Mountains National Park. I felt that El Capitan towering over the land would break up the large swath of sky that I would need to shoot in order to be able to get the full sequence.

The morning of the eclipse I ran three cameras. One was mounted to my star tracker in lunar mode and took a photo every five minutes until total eclipse. Then I was manually firing away shots. The tracker allowed me to drop my ISO and get as clean of a moon shot as I wanted without having to worry about a slow shutter speed. A second camera was on a tripod with a gimbal head and was back up. I wanted to make sure that I had pictures of this event no matter what! The third camera was set on a tripod and also took photos every five minutes, but did so of the foreground and was stationary.

I used the third camera to track where the moon was in the night sky throughout the entire eclipse. This was important for my processing of the image. I layered these images of the foreground in photoshop and had a discreet path of the moon across my landscape. I then took my tracked shots of the moon as it went through the eclipse and layered those moons in place of the moons that were in the landscape photos. This was done to ensure that the exposure of the moons would not compete with the exposure of the foreground.

This is the culmination of all of the planning. All of the stress over picking the right location. And the work to execute my vision. I am happy with the result. I hope you like it too.

*SighI saw a clip where someone said that if you aren't taking bad photos then you aren't growing. The bad photos are h...
03/05/2026

*Sigh

I saw a clip where someone said that if you aren't taking bad photos then you aren't growing. The bad photos are how you learn new things and push yourself to be better. That statement hit home as I was editing this photo.

I had a vision that I wanted to execute. After sorting out my struggles with the GTI I thought I was ready to do so. But my vision came up short for a couple of reasons. The first being that I overlooked a piece of equipment that I needed to capture the grandeur of the Milky Way that I was hoping for. The second being that my location became a disappointment when the sun went down. Those two facets led to an image that I am not happy with.

But, i learned. I know what I did wrong on the Milky Way and have that piece corrected. I also know what went wrong with the location and will have a better target next time.

Now for the technical for those that are curious.....

The location is the Terlingua Ghost Town outside of t Big Bend National Park. The Bortle 1 skies there are inviting to say the least. Although it is called a ghost town, there is plenty of activity there to make me question it!

The foreground was shot during blue hour with an 85mm lens in portrait orientation. A total of 29 image to make a 180 degree pano. You seem I thought I was going to create something magical with that Milky Way. Now, if you have ever tried to stitch 29 photos from a 61MP camera, you know how taxing that can be on a computer. LRC and PS were out. Several trials of other programs were used until I got to this image.

The sky is a stitch of 20 photos shot at 50mm. Each exposure was 90 seconds in length at a low ISO. Working after the moon set and before the sun rose limited what I could do so I chose to track only and not track and stack. Early season Milky Way shoots don't give a lot of time to work with. The two panos, sky and foreground were merged in PS for the final image. I opted to crop and move away from the goal of a 180 degree pano or the scene and focus on where the image mattered.

Looking at the end result, I see the flaws. But those flaws prepared me for later this month when I don't have to wait for a setting moon and I have more time to work. Until then I will wait for clear nights and focus on deep space object before the moon rises int the evenings.

In the end, not bad for the first Milky Way shot of my 2026 season.

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Rockwall, TX

Telephone

+14177704019

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