Y’all, I can be a little dense sometimes.
I have shot almost every historical structure in Cades Cover at night at least once, if not multiple times. I’ve even shot the Carter Shields cabin at night a number of times, but I’ve been convinced that you’d never be able to see the Milky Way from the cabin because the trees are so tight around it. So convinced, in fact, that I never even attempted it. Welp, seeing is believing. Earlier in the summer my buddy Ryan sends me a text message with an image of the Milky Way over the Carter Shields cabin that he had taken, complete with fireflies (you can see his image here)! After seeing his image, I couldn’t help but go set it up myself. By the time I had clear skies again it was the next lunar cycle, and gone were the fireflies (which is well enough, I didn’t want my image to be a *complete* ripoff of his), but the Milky Way still shown bright in the sky above the iconic little cabin.
Thanks for showing me it could be done Ryan!
Well the Milky Way season for 2020 has come and gone, and unfortunately I’ll have to wait till late February to photograph it again. The good news though is that I do have one more Milky Way image to share from this year, along with some other night sky images, BUT those will have to wait a little while longer because next week we’re going to travel a little bit! 🙂
–Dan Thompson