Star Gate

A photo composite of multiple exposures. From the photographer: “An image which I wanted to take since a long time: the milky way vertically aligned to the Pont d’en Gil arc, which seems to be a door to enter the Milky Way. The shot was carefully planned with photopills, and even though you can get a nice view of the arc from above the cliff with a simple and short hike, in order to get the shot I wanted, had to go down and reach the sea level (a rock less than half a meter from the water): this part was indeed a difficult one but finally I managed to get to the exact point from where I could have the alignment I was looking for.

In fact I had reached once the sea level but then I realized the point was not the exact one, and the milky way would not be perfectly aligned as I had planned. There was no way to reach the exact spot without going up again and then down again (except by swimming of course…). So indeed I went up again and down again, this time at the perfect spot: luckily I had arrived on location more than two hours before the shooting time!

Once on the exact spot, I had literally less than half of a square meter to setup my gear and shoot… The image was taken during the night between 14th and 15th of July at around 3 am. Despite the light pollution from la Ciutadella village and some low altitude clouds, I am happy with the shot.”

Technical details:
3 column pano for the foreground with the camera in vertical position, each of them at 16 mm, 120 s, f2.8, iso 800.
3 column pano for the sky with the camera in vertical position: 16 mm, f2.8, 15 s, iso 3200, stacking 5 images per column.
All of it from my less than a half square meter rock