In last week’s Picture of the Week, I mentioned having been in a creative slump and having no new ideas for images. This week’s image is a continuation on that theme actually. Earlier in the summer I was just desperate for ideas (I kind of still am actually), but the forecast was showing clear skies coming, which means it would be one of my few opportunities this Milky Way season to put something together. I was driving up the road one day, having a total “think Dan, think!” moment, when I passed the Kyker farm, which had just been freshly bailed. Ah ha! How about hay bales and the Milky Way!?
In previous posts I’ve mentioned experimenting with taking pictures of the Milky Way at different focal lengths. Last week’s Picture of the Week was shot at 50mm, and this week’s was shot at 40mm. I’ve been interested in doing this because it adds extra drama to the night sky by essentially filling up the sky with the body of the Milky Way. The challenge with these images, however, is finding a foreground that fits all this in. As you get tighter on the Milky Way, you’ve got less room for foreground, unless you want to go covering up that beautiful sky! After wandering all over the Kyker’s field I finally found some hay bales that lined up correctly with the night sky and the nice thing about having a big open field like that is I had room to scoot back to fit it all in!
Special thanks to the nice folks at Kyker’s tax service for letting me shoot on their property!
More next week!
–Dan Thompson