This picture was taken in Luxembourg at the Schießentümpel. It is a very beautiful area, especially for hiking. I decided to do a time-blending for the picture because it was a very stormy night and the trees and plants were completely blurred due to the movement.

Long exposure photos of cars traveling along a road are nothing new. Many of these photos are taken at night when the lights from the cars are easily captured by the camera. It is much harder to capture those lights around dusk and dawn. The lights are not as bright and the shutter speeds in the brighter ambient light are usually much shorter unless you are using a Neutral Density filter to block additional light. When I set out to capture a long exposure photograph at this location, I did not want to wait until the sky had turned dark to take my photo. It was important to me that I incorporate the colors of the sunset into the photo. But, to do so I needed to overcome that challenge of the car lights not being bright. The solution was to take multiple photos.

Working with a focal length of 85mm was exciting and promising while the first test shoots revealed some extraordinary details of the galaxy’s dust lanes and nebulae. But if you work with such a sensitive and unprotected setup you never know how far you will get. With such a narrow lens you need many images to get a balanced good-looking Panorama - so there are many chances to mess up the whole project and go home empty-handed.

The objective for this image was to capture the curved leading lines of the road through Cottonwood Pass, bringing the viewer's eye up towards the mountains and the Milky Way overhead. The smoke from nearby forest fires covered the sky in a thick haze during the day, making it seem like the shot wouldn’t be possible. Luckily, the smoke settled into the valleys below the mountains as night fell, revealing a cloudless, starry sky. With the weather conditions looking perfect, we parked alongside the road and set up the tripod and star tracker. Every few minutes a car or two would come by and glide down into the growing darkness on the mountain pass.

Night photography has its allure, as well as its challenges. There is something restorative about spending a quiet evening in the mountains or desert under the stars. Likewise, capturing light trails on a busy city street can be energizing and cause the creative juices to flow. A proposed night shoot at the Motor Transport Museum in Campo, California really piqued my interest, as it combined a bit of both worlds. Over two-hundred old cars, trucks, and buses are there—some over a century old—scattered haphazardly on the grounds of an abandoned feldspar mill. The shoot was also to be a fond farewell to this year’s Milky Way season.