This scene is an incredibly popular Colorado astrophotography shot, but I hadn't managed to capture it until this spring. I headed up to this viewpoint on Cottonwood Pass the weekend after the pass opened up, and the weather looked promising.

The first half of the night was relatively uninspiring, as clouds moved across the sky, offering only short glimpses of the Milky Way hidden behind. Around 1 a.m., the clouds finally cleared up enough to reveal the stars in their full expanse.

To create this image, I combined two photos taken from the same tripod location: one photo with a star tracker turned on to allow me to use a 3-minute exposure for the Milky Way at an extremely low ISO, and another with the tracker turned off and the camera running another 3-minute exposure while I drove my truck down the road with the running lights turned on. Both photos were blended together to create one cohesive long-exposure image.