Tim O'Brien, Race to the Stars (LANDSCAPE & ENVIRONMENT 2025)

On a recent trip to the outback I really wanted to photograph the milky way. Using the PhotoPills app I location scouted several locations in Birdsville I thought would be suitable for a foreground element away from the town lights. I knew I wanted to do light painting to illuminate the foreground and when I saw the entrance to the Bridsville Races, I knew that was the shot I wanted! It took me several rounds to get the light painting just how I wanted using a 10 sec exposure at f2.8 ISO 100. The milky way was also photographed at 10sec f2.8 ISO 3200. Post-processed in Lightroom and layer composited in Photoshop.

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