Runner-Up: Milky Way Images

I used to think of Milky Way images as all about the Milky Way, with perhaps something of passable interest in front. And of course the Milky Way IS amazingly beautiful! But, other than the angle from the horizon and possible distant clouds on the horizon, it really doesn't change from year to year - or even millennium to millennium!

Thus the foreground is more important than I initially thought. It plays a major role setting the mood of the image, whether the grand red-rock cliffs of Capitol Reef National Park 

or the Hornbeck Homestead lit by starlight.

I think these first two (quite popular) images are excellent. In the Capitol Reef image the Milky Way plays a supporting role to the dramatic cliffs lit by moonlight: for me the image conveys peace and wonder at the beauty of creation. In the second image with the Hornbeck homestead, the Milky Way is the prime focus. Here I feel awe at the beauty of the Milky Way, but also nostalgia for simpler times past.

The third image of the Milky Way with the old barn

is, to my mind, a definite runner-up. It has the Milky Way in a starring role, but it is hard to say the barn is even supporting the image: it is just a black blob with minimal detail. Even the path of snow leading into the distance is hard to see. I should have told more of a story by bringing out the weathered wood of the barn and the snow leading through the pasture to the copse of trees and the vast sky. But as it is, to me the image doesn't convey nearly the feeling or mood as the other two. (The image also has some technical problems: the treeline is fuzzy and the sky has unnatural color.)