Eagle Lake Milky Way

I’ve been making night photos again after a long hiatus. I love being out at night and thinking about the extreme vastness, forces, and time scales at play over me.

When we look up in a dark sky and see the Milky Way, we’re staring into our own barred spiral galaxy. We’re looking from one of it’s arms, known as the Orion Arm, somewhere around halfway between the galactic core and the outer edge, into a drama of dust lanes and embedded nebulae, the building blocks of future stars, against billions of older stars, which give the appearance of the ‘milk’ in the Milky Way. It’s really hard to put in perspective how crazy this is!

These were taken in July during a family getaway to Mount Desert Island. After we got the kids to bed, I ventured over to Eagle Lake and took in the incredibly clear sky over the very calm lake. I had a blast walking around and setting up different compositions. The appearance of the night sky doesn’t change much. If it did, we should be very worried. The constancy can feel limiting, but it also appeals to me. The challenge is building frames to creatively showcase it.

I have learned a lot about night photography from my friend, the wizard Adam Woodworth. If you are interested in this type of photography, I highly recommend purchasing his book, Night Sky Photography.