Alright, I’m mixing things up a bit this week! I mentioned last week that I wasn’t quite sure where we were going this week for Picture of the Week – I was honestly thinking I’d have some fall colors images to start sharing by now. BUT, it seems the fall colors are running a bit late this year, and while I do have a couple images I *could* share, I’d rather keep shooting and only give y’all the best! 🙂 Sooooo… Milky Way it is! I’m also mixing things up by sharing an image (actually there will be two in this series) in portrait orientation, which I rarely ever do. I always joke with my friends that my camera doesn’t turn that way. It’s not that I don’t like portrait orientation, I just hate how it displays on my website. In light of that, and since the goal of my shooting is to share on my website, I don’t usually even bother turning my camera that way.
So why the change? Well, I was talking to my friend Zachery one day about Milky Way images and he was going on about how he loved the time of year where the Milky Way was oriented vertically in our skies. His very natural instinct was to shoot the sky with the camera oriented vertically to match the sky – whereas my self-programmed instinct was to do the opposite. Well, as a goof I decided to shoot that way one night while Holly and I were out in Utah, and I ended up doing it again while out in Arizona. I guess it’s obvious, but what I realized was that by changing the positioning of the camera this time of year, you essentially get more bang for your buck of the night sky by not wasting space (pun partially intended) in the frame with, well… SPACE!
As you’ve likely gathered from the title and the map, this week’s Picture of the Week is from Factory Butte, which is located in southern Utah in the general vicinity of Capital Reef National Park. If you take a peek at the map you’ll see it’s in the middle of no where, which is awesome. This trip was really my first go at doing Milky Way imaging under such great conditions with my new camera, and I had an absolute blast with it. I’ll talk more about that though, next week!
Dan
–Dan Thompson