I just returned from 2 nights of Milky Way photography in Grand Teton National Park and 1 night in Yellowstone during a new moon.
Weather conditions were perfect for me with little clouds which provided a fantastic view of the night sky.
On my second evening out, I spent almost 5 hours at the famous Moulton barns in the Tetons. One shot I wanted to get was a very long exposure of the stars above the Tetons with one of the barns in the foreground.
This photo is the result of my efforts. It shows an elapsed time of one hour, and it is a combination of 15 photos each 4-minutes in duration from approx. 12:44am to 1:44am.
Here is how I photographed it
It took me a little over an an hour to choose my location, adjust camera settings, and adjust a light that I was using to add some light to the barn and tree. I was using a 96-light LED that was positioned far off-camera to my left that was placed about a foot off the ground.
Because there was no moon, the only light I had hitting the barn was from the stars and the occasional car headlights nearby that would add a touch of light to the scene. You can see just how dark it was in this photo:
Once I finalized the location and intensity of my light it was time for one last test shot before setting up my intervalometer for the fifteen 4-minute shots:
I was shooting with my Sony a7R and a Rokinon 24mm f1.4 lens. It was shot at 2500 ISO, 4 minute exposures, at f4. I processed my RAW files in Capture One Pro, combined all of the photos together using StarStaX, and finalized the look in ON1 Photo.
The orange glow you see in the photo is a result of light pollution on the other side of the Tetons in Idaho. The green color above the mountains is from airglow.
Want to learn more about photographing the night sky? Consider one of my photo workshops, including my 2017 Tetons Milky Way workshop.