Dusk, Moraine Park, Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado. Photo © Jim Doty Jr.

Don’t put your camera away at sunset. There can still be some beautiful light long after sunset (or before sunrise).

It was a beautiful evening in Rocky Mountain National Park. I choose a 15mm semi-fisheye lens for a wide sweep of sky. The semi-fisheye lens has a 180 degree angle of view from corner to diagonal corner and causes curvature of straight lines that don’t run through the center of the frame (bowing the horizon in this photo). A 15mm semi-fisheye lens has a lot of depth of field so I could use a fairly wide aperture. I set the ISO at 400 to get a shutter speed of 32 seconds to minimize trailing of the stars.

The constellation Orion is in the middle of the largest cloud. Sirius, the “Dog Star” (in the constellation Canis Major), is below and to the left of Orion and just to the left of the largest cloud. Sirius is the brightest star in the night sky.

Data: Canon 5D camera, Canon 15mm lens. Aperture: f/4.5, Shutter: 32 seconds, ISO: 400.