This image is the functional equivalent of me throwing my hands up in the air and walking away because I can't settle on an edit that I like.
Wednesday night, the skies cleared and I made a quick run out to Bull Creek Wildlife Management Area to stalk the Milky Way. I took 23 shots over the course of maybe 30 minutes and headed home, feeling pretty satisfied with what I got, at least based on what I saw on the camera LCD screen. At home, the stacks and panoramas weren't coming out well, and even the single frame edits weren't working, so I let the images sit, thinking I'd try to make sense of them tonight, Thursday. But, tonight I'm not feeling any better about them. The more I fuss with them, the ickier it gets.
I think there was more haziness in the air than I realized, and going earlier in the night (10 pm or so) meant there were a zillion more planes and more horizon light than I'm accustomed. (I bet it didn't help that low on the horizon to the southwest were occasional lightning flashes from distant lightning).
So, in quasi- defeat, I offer a frame directly from the memory card, a test image taken with the 12mm fish-eye lens as I waved a flashlight around. No edits, no adjustments in Lightroom, just a direct export to jpeg.
Details:
ISO2500, f2.8 and 25-seconds with a Canon 5D4 and a Rokinon 12mm full-frame fish-eye lens.
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