At about 10,000 feet elevation the mosquitos were ferocious. They swarmed in great clouds, buzzing their way through any minute gaps in my defences. Even lotion purportedly made of 100% DEET seemed to hold them off only briefly.

So I set my camera up in the forest and let it stack stars on autopilot. This is a composite of 111 four minute exposures, each one shot at f/2.8 and ISO 320. I used my 10.5mm digital fisheye. The total elapsed exposure time is about 7 1/2 hours, combined in Photoshop using stacking via the Statistics script, with the mode set to Maximum.

While the camera did all the work, I cowered in my tent behind the mosquito netting and did my best to ignore the whine of myriad little wings.

The results are not quite as dramatic as those captured in Star Trails over Half Dome—but do show the visual opportunities that are all around us, even when our lenses are trained on a modest slice of the earth.