While driving across the country on a whirlwind four-day trip, I decided to take an all night photograph of Devil's Tower, a monumental volcanic formation in Wyoming. Unfortunately, I arrived after sundown, so I had to find a place to take my photograph on a jet black moonless night. I finally found a viewpoint that I thought would work and set up the camera to record the stars from 8 p.m. until I returned at 5 a.m. the next morning. Composing the image was extremely difficult because I could barely see the tower through the viewfinder; I also dreaded the possibility that car headlights or the rising moon would spoil the photo. Miraculously, everything went right, and this image is the result.

As the earth turns, the stars are rendered as streaks, with colors varying from faint red to clear blue.

This basalt tower was featured in the late '70s film, "Close Encounters of the Third Kind;" it will always be associated with that alien encounter story in the minds of several generations.

Lee Rentz