The Milky Way is one of my favorite subjects to photograph. I'm fascinated by the vastness of space, and every year, starting in late February, I begin looking forward to "Milky Way season." Yes, there really is a season for it. In North America, it runs from late February to late October, the months when the galactic core, the brightest and most detailed part of the Milky Way, is above the horizon at night.
From November through January, the core sits below the horizon at night for most of the Northern Hemisphere, because of where Earth is in its orbit around the Sun. You can still see fainter parts of the Milky Way in winter, just not that bright core. And here's the part that still amazes me: our Sun is about 26,000 light-years from the center of the galaxy. That means the light I photograph in the core left those stars about 26,000 years ago.
A lot has to line up before a Milky Way shoot. Living in Houston, I have to drive about an hour and a half outside the city to escape the light pollution. I need a clear night, since clouds hide the Milky Way. I have to watch the moon, too: either a new moon, when there's no moonlight at all, or a night when the moon stays below the horizon. I use an app called PhotoPills to plan around it. And since I have a day job, all of this has to happen on a weekend.
This is a shot I call the "stinky silos." My photography partner and I scouted the location near Eagle Lake, Texas, during the day. We liked the look of the old silos and worked out that the Milky Way would rise right above them. What we didn't plan for was the small pond next to the silos, full of stagnant water. The smell was pungent, and there was no escaping it. We decided to fight through it to get the shot. All of that for this image of the stinky silos, lit by starlight that took 26,000 years to reach our cameras.