Call it Dreaming

The Milky Way sets in Australia's Red Centre.

My last morning of the trip was spent much like the rest of it - standing in the freezing cold staring up in awe at the majestic beauty that is the Milky Way.

We had spent the previous few days hunting for dead trees to capture outside of the park, and this one was a prime candidate. So well before the crack of dawn we were up and out the door on the way to this location to catch the Milky Way setting for the night.

We originally hit up a tree further into the scrub, but it wasn't working for us in terms of compositions, so we moved down to this one instead, and man are we glad we did.

This is actually my final shot of the night (and also my final shot of the Milky Way from this trip), and is one of my favourites.

It was taken at around 6:20am when the lightening of the sky due to the arriving dawn softly exposed the foreground, whilst still being dark enough to capture the core of the Milky Way.

This beautiful transition period is such a special time to capture these sorts of images, and I'm glad I crawled out of bed for one final hit.

The details for this image are:

• NikonD750 with Tamron 24-70mm f/2.8 G2

• Sirui W-1204 tripod with K-20x Ball Head⁣

• 15s

• f/2.8

• ISO4000