I just returned from three days of shooting at the Ladder Ranch in Wyoming for the documentary. The reason I went up was to cover lambing, which is in full swing right now. After a day that started at 5AM and ended with dinner in town at 8PM, I arrived back at the ranch headquarters at 9:30. I was physically and mentally exhausted but grateful for some wonderful still and motion images I had captured. A lamb, just a few minutes old, struggling to stand up, while her mother licked her clean. Day-old triplets nursing in the barn, almost completely blending into the hay they lay upon. Peruvian sheepherders skillfully putting a rejected lamb with a ewe that had lost her own lamb at birth. It was all so primal, and at the same time so very grounding.

Anyway, I pulled up to the ranch headquarters, thinking all I wanted to do was clean up and get into bed, but when I shut off the lights and opened the car door I was stunned by the sky above me. The stars were so bright I could feel my eyes straining to see deep into space to see all the little details. I knew immediately that I had to shoot something to capture the grandeur one only witnesses in the rural West, far away from city lights.

I set up my Canon 5D MkIII to shoot a time lapse sequence over the next couple of hours. I hope to have that series edited in the next few days, but this was the first frame from the sequence. It's rare that a image truly captures the feeling I have when I press the shutter. But when I look at this photograph, I'm right back there, feeling the wonder and connectedness to this glorious planet.