I headed up to one of my favorite overlooks in the Smoky's about 3 hours after the sun set. One of my favorite lenses for nightscape photography is a fixed 35mm f1.8 lens and it's really sharp. I didn't share the overlook with anyone, mainly because it was raining off and on. Once the rain let up I set my tripod up and began focusing my shot. There are many tricks to focusing in the dark and I use a bunch of different ones. I noticed the cars rolling through and their headlamps were more than enough to focus on. Once they got about half way through my subject I auto focused on the lights and switched to manual. I took a test shot and zoomed in to see how sharp it was. Once focused I took this shot over a 3 minute exposure as the clouds ran through. The yellow light in the distance is the light pollution put off by the nearby town of Gatlinburg, the clouds seem to magnify it as if it was a sunset.

Camera: Nikon D7000
Lens: Nikkor 35mm f1.8
Tripod: yes
Shutter Release: Nikon
No Filter
ISO: 1,250
Aperture: f7.1
202 Second Exposure