Eagle Lake Majesty was taken at Eagle Lake in Acadia National Park.

I arrived at the park early to scout out some possible locations to shoot near Thunder Hole. I found I had some time still before sunset and thought I would check out Eagle Lake, a spot I had not been to before. I was thinking sunset on the lake might make some pretty pictures.
When I arrived I realized that the sun wouldn’t be setting across the lake, but the Milky Way would be rising. I decided there and than to stay where I was. I set up my tripod, star tracker, and camera.

The star tracker, when aligned with the North Star, will rotate the camera in the opposite direction the earth is rotating at. This allows the camera to focus on the stars for a longer time and not show the movement of the earth.

I took a few images after sunset during blue hour, without the tracker on. I used one of those photos for the foreground in this image. I still had a couple hours before the sky was truly dark and the stars visible. So I left my camera, within sight, and went back to my car where I could sit and get a respite from the mosquitoes.

It was about 2 hours before the sky was dark enough to shoot the stars. I took multiple images of the sky, turning on my tracker and experimenting with different exposures and settings. In the end I was able to take 4 minute long exposures.

I used 14 of these stacked together (to enhance the details and colors of the stars) to create the sky part of this image. I than took all my images and blended them together with the foreground photo from earlier to create this final piece.