Christine Kenyon remembers the first time she photographed a nightscape. It was July 4, 2016, and it took nine months of planning to iron out every detail before she snapped the shutter.
First, she picked the perfect location: Metate Arch, in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. Then, she used an app called PhotoPills to determine when the Milky Way would align over the arch in exactly the way she wanted. She researched the proper equipment and the tips and tricks of shooting photos at night. She decided she would want one of her dogs — Tuffy, but not Aspen — in the photo, gazing up at the stars.