We had a full day of photography with shoots at Dead Horse Point, some petroglyphs along the Colorado River, a stroll down Park Avenue in Arches and finally a sunset at Balanced Rock. Very beautiful weather and lots of things to photograph.

Both our instructors are very experienced with shooting stars. One of them did star trails on Mount Kilimanjaro. It was going to be a new moon and a crystal clear night, so I spent quite a while talking to these guys about methodology. After we returned to the hotel I headed back to Balanced Rock to try my hand at it. I got lucky with it once at Mount Cook in New Zealand. I wanted to use some well tried techniques this time.

When I got back to Balanced Rock, is was incredible the number of stars you could see. The Milky Way made an arch overhead that was just stunning. Dave has had the experience I am sure. So I set up and started shooting. The result you see is a composite of a sequence 22 exposures each of 30 seconds. I was using ISO 1600 and f/2.8 on my 16-35 lens. I used the 16mm focal length. I piled them up in Photoshop and used additive blending and this is the result. Not bad for the first try.