Little Wild Horse Cave
Up in the sandstone swell of central Utah is a massive cave, it's one of the only caves that I know of in this area where the mouth opens wide enough and in the direction of the Milky Way core region. I've shot here before and wanted to bring my girlfriend up to the cave, as a geologist she'd love it. Turns out she loved it so much she wanted to shoot there that night, after some convincing I agreed. It's a tough hike at night with 20+ pounds of camera gear, but (again) it was completely worth it. The frogs serenaded us on the way up, we got perfectly clear skies while shooting, and being in the cave at night is truly surreal. Also, I'm convinced that from a technical perspective doing tracked milky way nightscape imaging from within a cave is the most difficult and complex type of nightscape imaging possible.
26 exposures went into this image, shot with my Nikon Z7 and Sigma Art 40mm on a Sky Watcher Star Adventurer Mini tracking mount. Sky exposures are 1.5 minutes at ISO 800 and f1.8, foreground exposures are 1.5 minutes at ISO 800 and 1.4. The walls inside and outside the cave were lit with around a dozen single LED light balls, all the shots were taken consecutively from the same spot.
