About this limited edition photograph:

The blended/stacked photograph “St. John’s Galaxy” was created at St. John’s Lutheran Church (aka- old stone church) near Ridgeway, Iowa.

Comprised of (7) 30-second exposures for the foreground and (20) 30-second exposures for the sky to reduce noise, this blended/stacked photograph was my first attempt at photographing the Milky Way. 

St. John’s Lutheran Church is a beautiful stone structure located on a remote gravel road in rural Iowa. The roof is long gone, but the stone structure is intact, making for the perfect foreground subject for an astrophotograph. I created this composite light painted photograph by placing my Canon 80d camera with a Tokina AT-X 116 PRO DX II lens on my tripod. I used my ElSpeleo Rescue 2200 caving headlamp and various colored gel filters to light paint the stone structure. I skimmed my light across the surface of each wall to bring out the texture in the stone. It took many attempts to get the lighting just right, but to date this is one of my personal favorite photographs that I have created. This photograph session taught me a lot about the limitations of my Canon 80d ‘s sensor sensitivity for capturing the detail in the Milky Way, and I look forward to creating many more Milky Way photographs in the future.

Nocturnal Designs © 2017.