The Milky Way Galaxy, shining from the light of billions of stars hangs over the shining light of the Cape Leveque Lighthouse, in the beautiful Kimberley region of north west Australia.

If there’s one person I can thank for this photo, it’s Cheryl – our guide from Kimberley Wild. Without her, this photo wouldn’t have been possible.

On the first night of our stay at Cape Leveque, I saw the potential of this type of shot, however there was a big fence with a locked gate around the whole lighthouse area and as much as I tried to poke my camera under, through and around the fence and gate, I couldn’t compose my shot without getting part of the gate in the shot.

So I issued a challenge to our amazing guide Cheryl, to see if she could find the key and get permission to open the locked gate so I could get inside to get the shot. The next night, she came through! She had to wait with me so I had to be quick, but I spent the next 10 minutes walking around the lighthouse trying different compositions to get the lighthouse with the Milky Way above. And this shot above is my favourite from the night.

It’s a single 30 second exposure, captured with a Canon 5D Mk II and Samyang 14mm lens, f/2.8 @ ISO3200.

Here’s a few other compositions. Which one is your favourite?

I like this one above too because of the Milky Way coming ‘out of’ the lighthouse. It would’ve been my favourite to fit the theme, but the branch sitting in front of the lighthouse annoyed me

This one is similar to the first, but a slightly different composition. I preferred the first one because it captured more of the Milky Way, including the Southern Cross.

All photos were captured using the same settings as above.

It’s so rewarding when you see an idea for a shot in your head, and it actually comes out as planned.

Cape Leveque is an absolutely breathtaking place – so remote, incredibly dark skies and beautiful scenery for a photographer. If you get a chance to visit, take it!

Thanks for looking. Find all my Kimberley adventure photos using the Kimberley tag, and you can subscribe via email to receive notifications when I publish a new blog post. You can also friend me on Facebook or Google+.