I took this photo during Milky Way week in June at Mills Lake, Rocky Mountain National Park. It’s a blend of a blue hour shot and a Milky Way Shot. To do this I photographed the scene at 8:45 pm during the last remnant of light, left my camera in place for about 3.5 hours, then made a second photo of the same scene at 12:30 am. I then blended the foreground and sky together. The result of this technique is an evenly exposed scene where the foreground is visible and detailed. Without this technique the foreground is nothing but a black silhouette with no detail. Though it’s possible to add exposure to the foreground artificially by moving the shadows slider in Adobe, this results in such extreme noise, and extreme measures to reduce it, that the photo isn’t usable. An alternative to blue hour shooting would have been light painting. Though useful, the disadvantage is that the mountains would have been dark. The entire process including hiking, waiting and photographing took about 8 hours, much longer than just shooting the Milky Way without the blue hour frame. You also have to plan correctly so the Milky Way rises precisely in the photo where you planned it to because you can’t reposition the camera after blue hour. The result was worth it.
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