You can even make an ugly foreground look beautiful in the right light

Sometimes you have to work with what you've got, in this case these electricity cables were the perfect foreground for my semi-urban night scene.

Ok, so it might not be as urban as New York City but it's as urban as it gets for me with the few cars passing by San Pedro de Atacama at night. You probably think electricity cables and utility posts are the most ugly thing to have in your photo and you might be right, but I had a different idea! I thought they would make a really cool foreground element with the milky way as the backdrop and the cars passing by in the distance to add another layer of light. I also wanted to try a star trail photo and timelapse to see how it would come out. These electricity posts were only meters away from my house in the sand dunes that back onto my garden so I thought it would be a good location.

150 photos make this star trail

I worked out roughly where the celestial south pole was using my calculations of the southern cross and set up my tripod and camera to start shooting. I went back inside and left the camera shooting for a couple of hours. It wasn't until the next day that I got stuck into the editing and stitching together the 200 plus photos I took. Here's a little collaboration of the results