This is a composite view of the Kamzang trekking camp on the night of August 20, 2014 at Zangla Doksa, a pasture at 3410m on the banks of the Zanskar River in northwest India. The Zanskar mountains on either side of the valley reach up to 5700m and are northeast of the Great Himalaya Range. The valley is accessible by road for only a few months each summer due to the mountain terrain and severe climate.
I was on a 23 day trek with Kamzang Journeys (kamzang.com) across the ancient kingdom of Zanskar. The villagers from Zangla, 2 km away and far left of this photograph, graze their animals at this site. The lights in Zangla and further south in the valley are supplied by a local solar power plant. The ancient fortress of Zangla is visible above the village. The horses in the foreground were some of our trekking ponies.
The image is a composite of 31 photographs: 5 of the campsite and valley and 26 of the sky. All were captured with a Canon 6D and Sigma 35mm f/1.4. I used an AstroTrac for the sky photographs. Exposures for the camp and valley were 240s, f/2.0 at ISO 6400 and for the sky 30s, f/1.4 at ISO 1600. The pasture was soft and marshy which made getting a stable tripod difficult.
RAW files of the sky were processed using Adobe Bridge and Photoshop CS6 using settings recommended by Roger N. Clark (
www.clarkvision.com) who also gave me great advice on gear. Land and sky panoramas were assembled with PTGui Pro then combined using Photoshop. The full size image is approximately 13,000 x 12,000 pixels.
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