Photographer Matt Suess was halfway through a 45-minute star trail exposure in Joshua Tree when he noticed a hazy band stretched across the sky. He had grown up in New England, where light pollution hid the Milky Way, so he didn’t know what he was looking at. He pointed his camera at it. It was Suess’s first time seeing the Milky Way, but the photos came back soft. Decades of night shooting later, understanding why is the kind of lesson only experience can teach.