Mark Appleton, Dark Reflections (May theme: The night sky)

Taken at Yenyenning Lakes, Western Australia. Yenyenning Lakes is located in the West Australia Wheatbelt region near the country town of Beverley and is around 2 hour’s drive east of Perth. At the time of taking this image, the moon had just set over the horizon behind me and therefore the night was very dark and due to the location, the light pollution was minimal. The moonless night coupled with low light pollution meant that the milky way and the stars in the sky reflect very clearly over the lake. I illuminated the branch with my torch to add some more foreground interest. This image is made up of 3 images vertically stitched, each image captured on a 14mm lens at 15 seconds, f2.8 at ISO 8000.

Images have been resized for web display, which may cause some loss of image quality. Note: Original high-resolution images are used for judging.