Deserted – 2019

I had a shot planned that included this region (Cygnus) of the sky as it was quite low along the horizon around midnight. I had driven past a really nice old tree on the edge of a pond about an hour north of my place two years back and sent myself the coordinates at the time. Something brought it back to mind and I researched the spot and found it would be a perfect place to photograph with this region behind it. The night of April 9th, 2019 called for clear skies with possibility of aurora borealis and I planned to head out to grab my photo.

I took the hour long drive to the spot only to find that the location had been torn to pieces by the farmer looking to add a few hundred square feet of usable farm land. The tree that stood for years and years was in about 80 splinters along the shoreline and their were bucket fulls of dirt filling the now dry pond. Disappointed I determined to not come home empty handed. I set up my tracker and tracked this region and got 4 clean exposures of Cygnus as it rose just above the horizon before clouds rolled in. Aurora showed up as you can see but it was very faint and along the horizon so it didn’t really intrude into my shot. The next day I composited that sky onto a foreground I took last year that has the same alignment. I took it with this purpose in mind (but at a longer focal length) last year but I ended up getting clouded out come nightfall. The sky aligns at this height and at this direction. Images were taken a year apart.

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