One afternoon, a couple of days before, I selected the place for the photo and marked it in my GPS. I also choose the lens (Nikkor 24mm 2.8 AIS). I took a quick photo [1], handheld.

That night I left my family at the hotel and drove back to the selected place. It is a one hour drive from sea level and 22oC to 2100m and -2oC. The sky seemed fine but just when I arrived there, I saw that it was covered with mist. So I decided to came back. The second night the weather was fins when I arrived so I prepared the tripod and the timer. But shortly after, the wind brought a thick cloud to the north of the place selected [2].

As the south was fine, I decided to shoot the rock from the other side [3]. As you can see, there is no polar star in the Southern sky. You can see the equator and a shooting star. (This is a set of photos merged and with increased contrast). When I went back to the original place, after some time spent trying in vane to take another photo, the cloud was reduced to a small area [4] so it seemed that at last I could take the photo originally planed.

I took a set of 8 photos at ISO 400, F2.8, with 4 minutes exposure each [5], to be merged afterwards. At the end, when I was almost leaving, a car arrived with the lights on. So I decided to use this free lighting [6].

You can see the combination of the 8x4 minutes exposures plus the light from the car, is photo [7]. This is almost exactly what would be in a single RAW file, I the shutter had been opened for 32 minutes + the exposure for the car. Only white balance and levels have been changed.

I personally prefer a darker sky, so I tried to darken and increase contrast only at the sky [8]. To me, this PP is applied only to a zone of the photo is too aggressive so I rarely use this approach.