A Little House on the Prairie

Hey y’all, Dan here! Thanks for joining me for another blog post. I want to share the story behind this week’s photograph and tell you how I took this shot.

The Story Behind the Camera.

I feel blessed to live in southeast Kansas. This is home to many good people; small towns folks, country folks, people who work with their hands, and farmers. I am comfortable here, having been raised in the country myself. I admire these people, many are descendants of the pioneering settlers that came west in the nineteenth century, or north in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

There are stories and legends about this land and the generations past who carved out their lives in it. Some are romantic tales of Osage princesses who fell in love with a neighboring warrior. Stories reminiscent to Romeo and Juliet. Other stories are dark and disturbing like the Bender family who ran a roadside an inn along the Osage Mission Trail. They used their business as a front to murder and rob unsuspecting travelers. There were stories of family who settled on these plains and built a “Little House on the Prairie.”

 Laura Ingalls-Wilder’s homestead is only a few miles from my own home. Many of her books told of her young life here. The television show with Michael Landon made her writings even more popular to future generations.

If you travel near Independence, Kansas, you should visit the museum that sits on the Ingalls’ homestead. There is a replica cabin of their home, a one-room schoolhouse, and old post office, and a beautiful farmhouse converted into the museum store. The people here are friendly, knowledgeable, and helpful to visitors.

I stopped to as if I could return at 2am on a clear night and take photographs of the Milky Way stretching across the southern sky. It was one of the most amazing opportunities.

Geek Speak

This was a challenging photograph. The greatest challenge was how to compose the shot an tell a story of travel across these plains. There are many subjects that make an interesting foreground. However, trees are tall and block a clear view of the south sky. I settled on this old wagon that sits pointing southward, as if it’s recalling where it had come from. Perhaps it is looking forward to where it wants to go.

The folks at the museum put the bows on the wagon for me. This gave the subject more character and interest. The wood looks aged and weathered from the winters and summers on the prairie. The wheels also appear worn, but eager to continue to explore what is to be discovered over the horizon.

The sky is divided by a low line of clouds reflecting light in the far distance and the stars above the clouds that surround and accent the Milky Way. It’s a beautiful image. I used my Sony a6700 camera and Viltrox 27mm, f/1.2 lens. The 27mm lens helped to compress and make the sky appear closer to the wagon. I used manual focus to focus separately on the wagon and the stars.

This is comprised of two photographs from the same place on my tripod. The first image focused on the wagon. I set the camera shutter speed to 15 seconds, aperture to f/8, and the ISO to 800. This gave me the exposure I wanted to light paint the wagon and grass in the foreground. The aperture offered a depth of field to keep everything sharp and in focus. I was able to lower the ISO because I used my headlamp to illuminate the wagon and grass during the long shutter speed. I wasn’t worried about the star trails in this image.

After taking the foreground picture, I focused my camera on the brightest star in the sky. Camera settings were adjusted to 8 seconds for the shutter speed, f/1.8 aperture, and ISO 3200. This larger aperture and ISO allowed me to capture the galactic core of the Milky Way.

Merging these two images gave me this photograph of the scene. I hope you enjoy it. I call this “A Little House on the Prairie.” You can purchase a copy from my on-line prints store on this website (www.wanderingmonkhikes.com/store).