The stars pass over the hills next to Boggy Hole, in the Finke Gorge National Park (Northern Territory).
More a proof-of concept than a great photograph: we were experimenting with the technique to capture star trails. This photo is the blend of 255 thirty-second exposures (70â200mm f/2.8 lens @ 70mm, f/2.8) automatically fired (motor drive) over the course of two hours. Each photo was imported into a separate layer in Photoshop (resulting in a Photoshop file of 8.6GB), and the layer blending mode was set to ‘Darken’. In fact this resulted in the star trails appearing as a series of blocks, and not as continuous lines: evidently the stars moved far enough during the short interval between each exposure to leave a gap. this was corrected with a selective mask and a motion-blur effect.
Next time, I would try to improve the focus on the foreground interest (as well as have a more interesting foreground). Trying to focus in the dark is very difficult, however.