I thought I had figured out.
Actually, I hoped that I had it figured out, but I wasn’t sure. I thought it would be close.
It wasn’t.
I went to Dephi Falls before the blue hour in hopes of capturing images at various stages of the evening and blending a blue hour image of the falls with the milky way above, but I quickly learned as the sky grew darker that the milky way was too low on the horizon and my hopes were dashed.
The weather was perfect. The skies were clear. The temperature was comfortable, if not a bit cool. The air was calm. But the milky was would not be in view and (now that I have seen more clearly what things look like on the app and in real life) the milky way over the falls is an unrealistic get. Yes, there are times in the early morning certain days of the year when the milky way will be over the falls, but the brightest and prettiest portion of the milky way be obscured even on the best day and even in the most perfect of conditions.
On my way home, I stopped in Cazenovia to briefly capture an image of the milky way just to prove that it was there and that I could photograph it, but the light pollution from the village is too excessive to allow for a nice image.
Even though I didn’t have a milky exposure to work with, I still elected to practice blending exposures together of the blue hour and starlight captures at Delphi Falls and I am as pleased as I could be with the result. The sky is uninteresting and adds nothing to the composition, but I was at least pleased with my ability to get from the images what I had imagined and conceptualized when I was photographing the scene.
I don’t know when or where I will capture that elusive image of the milky way with foreground interest and no light pollution, but it will happen one day. I have the skills, I just need to find myself at the right place at the right time. One day …