I've been practicing as often as I can and as weather allows me too on night exposures. My next hurdle is noise reduction. What are your thoughts on these images?
1st Image - July 7th, 2018. Third night out. I'm starting to understand my camera a little better. I edited in Lightroom. (Most recent)
2nd Image - June 9th, 2018. First Milky Way captures ever. I tried a selfie.
3rd Image - June 10th, 2018. With yard & tree. Second night.
I've been dying to do milky way photography myself. However, the summer weather in Japan is just awful.
I think you've made some big improvements. For your foreground interest, you could try light painting a tree or something and then merging the photos in photoshop, if you have it.
As for the noise, it's always a challenge. Your best bet may be to try a lens with a wider aperture. If you're still using a D3400 (as noted in your profile), you may be limited to what you're able to do (as am I with my D5500). I know how it feels to see all of these amazing pro photos taken with $10,000 gear and wanting to match that quality, but don't worry about them, focus on yourself. So just keep working on finding interesting compositions, that way, if you're able to upgrade your gear, you'll be good to go!
Keep up the good work!
Looking great so far! remember, we all have to start somewhere, and are all at different points of our journey. Colder weather is always clearer as far as humidity goes unless you are in a dry area. I live in South Ga so during the day the Humidity on summer days seems like 100% even when it isn't raining. The noise can also be worked on in post. The main thing is just keep shooting and trying different things. Definitely add something in the foreground to make it a bit more interesting. An old barn, a dead tree or something of interest will make it even better.