Last year when my buddy Mark and I were wandering around in the desert, he showed me Shadow Arch, and I played around with multiple compositions. I ended up landing on one that I like, which faced Cygnus instead of the main body of the Milky Way, but there were compositions for both. After I got back home, though, I really fell in love with another composition I got of it when I was playing around, so I decided to revisit it this year. Now that I’ve shot them both, I have to say, I really like this little arch looking either direction!
For the lighting, rather than just doing a simple, one-sided approach like I did last year, I decided to light it up from multiple angles. This took a lot of trial and error, but sometimes that’s how it goes to get the vision I have in my head into the camera. What I originally liked about this composition were the layers involved, and I think / hope I was able to capture those here.
More next week!
–Dan Thompson