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I had only days before broken my multi-decade streak of not ever trying to do astrophotography, and I was riding some nightly momentum acclimatizing myself to doing weird things like going out alone in the dark with a camera. The past couple of nights I had just tried taking some shots around my front yard and in a field in my neighborhood, and I wanted to see the difference in an area removed from most of the light pollution. With google and light pollution maps I found a place to drive out to – about an hour from my house and down some farm roads. About a half mile from the planned destination the road was torn up to repair a bridge. I figured that was actually a good thing since “there won’t be traffic coming through” so I parked my car and went out to set up my camera deeper into the road construction.
It turned out I was wrong about there not being traffic since apparently a bridge being out is not considered an impedance to people out in the country. They just drive their trucks around the barriers, through the construction, down a bluff, through the river, and across to the other side. And they are happy to do this at 3 in the morning. Who even decided they needed a bridge there in the first place? Some city slicker probably…
I had heard tell that capturing foreground in your astrophotography images was “the thing to do” to add interest to them, although these days (in my view) that would actually disqualify it from even being called astrophotography vs a “nightscape”. I wasn’t under the false notion this would be a particularly beautiful foreground but I was trying out the process. I’m glad I did this since it’s the only image I have to remember this first dark site, which I went to several times before eventually the road work was finished and I found better places to go. Not that sentiment about a location qualifies something to be in an astrogallery, but it’s also My First Nightscape™.