Last weekend, I headed out to Phoenix to meet up with my good friends Mike Olbinski, Heath O’Fee, Jesse Pafundi, and Brian Furbush. The aforementioned photographers were shooting a wedding with plans to head up to Page, AZ to see Antelope Canyon and Horseshoe Bend with a side trip to Flagstaff. The week before, we changed our plans and decided to head to Sedona instead of Flagstaff and figured that we would head out nice and early to shoot the Milky Way.
I had done a bit of astrophotography work on my trip with Mike and Heath to Joshua Tree last year and I used my MagLite or iPhone to illuminate foreground elements in my shots. This time, I packed my flash, just in case an opportunity like this arose. The trick to star photography is using the widest, fastest lens possible which for me is my 15mm fisheye. The Milky Way was rising over this mountain, framed right between the 2 sets of trees, so I thought a portrait orientation would work well to capture the whole scene. During the long exposure, I popped my flash at 1/64 power (ish) to get a little detail in the foreground. If I did this again, I would have gelled the flash to warm it up a bit, but I really liked the effect that it added!
(Click to view large in the light box)
Canon 5D Mark II, Sigma 15mm Fisheye, f/2.8, ISO 5000, 30 seconds