4 a.m. at the lake. My favorite weather intelligence app Inverza had flagged the window the night before: clear, dry, sun and moon both well below the horizon, galactic core climbing to 12.7° in the south.

Walking out to the huts in pitch-black countryside is nontrivial. The path winds between hummocks of grass and damp ground, and once you're at the spot, he silhouette of the Karwendel ridge is the only reliable orientation point. You can use a flashlight, but only in short low pulses pointed straight down at your feet, because the moment the camera starts a 30-second exposure of the galactic core, any stray light bleeding sideways gets recorded. One careless sweep of the beam across the meadow and the foreground flares out of balance with the sky.

Once the framing was locked and the exposure was running, I gave the huts maybe two seconds of soft side-light from a low angle, well away from the lens, just enough to bring them out of the dark and let the eye anchor on something in the foreground.

Gear used: Hasselblad X2D, XCD 21mm, iPhone flashlight for light painting.