Live Oak and Rocks, Milky Way Galaxy, Joshua Tree National Park
Milky Way Galaxy, Live Oak and Rocks, Joshua Tree National Park at Night
I have spent many evenings photographing the landscape and night sky at Joshua Tree National Park. The terrain is harsh and there are few trees other than Yucca and Joshua Tree. I did find one attractive live oak nestled up against some tall boulders, and made a point of photographing it when the Milky Way galaxy was high in the sky above it. This four image landscape astrophotography panorama, shot with the Nikon D800 and Nikon 14-24 f/2.8 lens, will print up to 100″ wide and 60″ and would make a great wall mural in your home or office! Cheers and thanks for looking.
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| Live Oak and Milky Way, rocks and stars, Joshua Tree National Park at night. Image ID: 28417 Location: Joshua Tree National Park, California, USA Pano dimensions: 4848 x 7431 |
The Fire Wave at Night, Milky Way and Stars, Valley of Fire State Park
The Milky Way and Stars at Night over the Fire Wave in Valley of Fire State Park, Nevada
The Fire Wave in Valley of Fire: an interesting striped expanse of sandstone, now commonly photographed. I wanted to make some uncommon images of the Fire Wave, so I set up my camera with an intervalometer to photograph it all night long. This image shows the Milky Way rising over the horizon with the Fire Wave in the foreground. Distant lights of Las Vegas and nearby urban communities can be seen but the sky above was surprising clear of light pollution. The Valley of Fire sure is a beautiful place!
Cheers and thanks for looking!
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| Milky Way galaxy rises above the Fire Wave, Valley of Fire State Park. Image ID: 28428 Location: Valley of Fire State Park, Nevada, USA |
Milky Way and Moon at Night, Shooting Star, Comet Panstarrs, Panorama, Joshua Tree National Park
Joshua Tree National Park, Milky Way and Moon, Shooting Star, Comet Panstarrs, Impending Dawn.
This panorama of Joshua Tree National Park was made at astronomical twilight during International Dark Sky Week recently (last week). Some slight blue color from the impending dawn appears behind and to the left of the moon. Comet Panstarrs appears tiny just above the horizon in the left half of the image. The moon is a 20% crescent and still nearly overwhelms the night sky with its brightness. A shooting star appears to the right of the moon. The orange glow on the horizon is light pollution from the distant cities of Joshua Tree (left) and Palm Desert (right). This image will print 30″ x 80″ with no uprezing. If you like this, please check out more Astrophotography Landscape photos, an area of photography I have been working on hard for the last few years. Cheers and thanks for looking!
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| Joshua Tree National Park, Milky Way and Moon, Shooting Star, Comet Panstarrs, Impending Dawn. Image ID: 28408 Location: Joshua Tree National Park, California, USA Pano dimensions: 4205 x 10821 |
Shooting Star over Delicate Arch at Night, Arches National Park, Utah
Delicate Arch at Night, Milky Way and Shooting Star, Arches National Park, Utah
This is spectacular Delicate Arch, the most iconic and popular of the arches in Arches National Park in Utah. Looking back on 2012 I realize I made a strong series of Landscape Astrophotography photos in 2012 — and this image is one of my favorites. It combines Delicate Arch, the Milky Way galaxy, just a tad of blue in the sky from the sunset earlier, and a shooting star crossing the sky directly above Delicate Arch. That last element was sheer luck of course, but luck favors the prepared and I was certainly prepared on this evening, shooting three cameras aided by special lights and remote triggers for my camera. Cheers and thanks for looking!
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| Milky Way and Shooting Star over Delicate Arch, as stars cover the night sky. Image ID: 27854 Location: Arches National Park, Utah, USA |
Landscape Astrophotography
New: check out my website for Landscape Astrophotography!
What is Landscape Astrophotography? Here is my take on it!
Landscape Astrophotography is the discipline of photographing scenes that include both astronomical elements and terrestrial landscape elements. The motivation for landscape astrophotography is a desire to depict the night sky, including stars, planets, comets, meteors, the Milky Way galaxy, space dust and our Moon among other elements, along with some recognizable piece of planet Earth. This approach differs from the classic “deep space” images that, for instance, NASA produces, since those typically show nothing of the Earth and are thus disconnected from the type of scenes we experience when we view the night sky ourselves. In my landscape astrophotography, I choose to use lenses and compositional choices that produce an image similar to what the viewer would experience with his own eyes. A few details that characterize landscape astrophotography, both mine and the way I believe most photographers practice it today. Landscape astrophotographs:
- are made at night, or at the edge of night (dawn and dusk).
- use exposures “long enough” to record relatively dim objects in the night sky. Almost all landscape astrophotography involves the use of a tripod.
- sometimes employ artificial light on foreground elements in a technique known as “light painting”.
- sometimes will combine, or “stack”, multiple images to produce a final image. Naturally, in this case the resulting image is not what one would have been able to see in person, but the image can serve to illustrate the passage of time (e.g., star trails) or a relatively infrequent phenomenon (e.g., meteor shower).
- often use relatively high ISO settings. This is made possible by the recent technological improvements in the sensitivity and noise characteristics of digital camera sensor.
- often will use lenses “wide open”, or at or near their maximum aperture, in order to capture as much light as possible.
- use focus that is typically near or at infinity so depth of field is not an issue.
- benefit from maximum corner sharpness and minimal coma distortion, at or near “wide open” aperture — two highly desirable lens characteristics for landscape astrophotography.
- require considerable post-processing techniques in software such as Photoshop, Lightroom and Starstax to adjust white balance, contrast, exposure and especially noise.
- often will push a digital camera to the edge of what it is capable of recording. This means that as the technological capabilities of our cameras continue to improve, new possibilities in landscape astrophotography continue to emerge.
Below are few of my favorite landscape astrophotographs, made during the last two years with both Canon and Nikon equipment, all in California, Nevada and Utah. If you like these, please see my gallery of landscape astrophotography for others. All of my astrophotography landscape images are available as prints for display in your home or office, up to 30″ x 45″ in size, and have been some of my best sellers recently. Cheers, and thanks for looking!
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| Yosemite Falls and star trails, at night, viewed from Cook’s Meadow, illuminated by the light of the full moon. Image ID: 27733 Location: Yosemite Falls, Yosemite National Park, California, USA |
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| Panorama of the Milky Way over Mesa Arch. Image ID: 27824 Location: Mesa Arch, Canyonlands National Park, Utah, USA Pano dimensions: 4790 x 7815 |
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| Milky Way arches over Delicate Arch, as stars cover the night sky. Image ID: 27850 Location: Arches National Park, Utah, USA |
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| The moon sets over the Fire Wave, a beautiful sandstone formation exhibiting dramatic striations, striped layers in the geologic historical record. Image ID: 26511 Location: Valley of Fire State Park, Nevada, USA |
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| The Milky Way galaxy above Arch Rock, Joshua Tree National Park, night star field exposure. Image ID: 26862 Location: Joshua Tree National Park, California, USA |
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| Star Trails over the San Diego Downtown City Skyline. In this 60 minute exposure, stars create trails through the night sky over downtown San Diego. Image ID: 28383 Location: San Diego, California, USA |
Night Star Trails over the Downtown San Diego City Skyline
San Diego City Skyline Night Photograph with Star Trails
I met friend and photographer Garry McCarthy at 0-dark-30 yesterday morning, with the goal of photographing the downtown San Diego city skyline with star trails circling above. Exceptionally clear skies are required for this sort of photograph since any moisture or dust in the air serves to capture the ugly glow of the city lights below and obscure the stars. We had nearly ideal conditions for our attempt. I used three cameras with lenses of differing focal lengths to make several compositions. These trails are created with a long exposure (e.g., 60 minutes) as the Earth turns. The star that appears to be a dot is Polaris, the North Star; it lies almost exactly on the axis of Earth’s rotation so has very little apparent movement in these images. Note that in the bottom image, shot with a very wide lens, a meteor appears as a streak above and to the left of Polaris. If you like this, check out my other Night Photographs and Astrophotography Landscapes. Thanks for looking!
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| Star Trails over the San Diego Downtown City Skyline. In this 60 minute exposure, stars create trails through the night sky over downtown San Diego. Image ID: 28383 Location: San Diego, California, USA |
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| Star Trails over the San Diego Downtown City Skyline. In this 60 minute exposure, stars create trails through the night sky over downtown San Diego. Image ID: 28385 Location: San Diego, California, USA |
False Kiva at Sunset, Canyonlands National Park, Utah
False Kiva Photo, Sunset Canyonlands National Park, Utah
One afternoon in Canyonlands National Park I came up with an ambitious plan: to hike to False Kiva on the edge of the Island in the Sky mesa, photograph the dusk and early evening there, hike out and then shoot Mesa Arch immediately thereafter. I had not originally planned to see False Kiva but decided to give it a try, and treated it as a speedy hike workout. Although I had not been to False Kiva before, the hike turned out to be much easier than I thought it would be and a short while after leaving my car I was relaxing, alone, in the cool shade of the alcove with a spectacular view of the dramatic river-carved Canyonlands expanse far below. You know that hollow sound, almost the echo of an echo, that you hear when on the edge of precipice? That is the sound one hears while at False Kiva. Occasionally a raptor would keen or a bird would glide by and I could hear the rush of the air over its wings. Otherwise, there was no sound but what I made. It was quite moving being there, doing nothing but watching the light change, listening and thinking. The sunset itself was unremarkable, but as dusk passed and evening came on I was able to match the light of my flashlight with that of the dimming sky and painted the ring of rocks for which False Kiva is famous to produce this image. The scene has a great deal of red and magenta in it, the actual hue of the fading dusk. In truth I reduced the saturation a little since it seemed so strong to my eye, but that happens sometimes when shooting in the deepest, most richly colored twilight about 45 minutes after sunset. I was working in what seemed to be pitch dark when I shot this, and the great sensitivity of my camera allowed me to pull out color and detail. Thanks for looking, and cheers!
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Delicate Arch and Milky Way Stars at Night, Arches National Park, Utah
Delicate Arch at Night, Milky Way and Stars Overhead. Arches National Park, Utah.
I spent a wonderful evening photographing Delicate Arch in Arches National Park. It was warm and dry, with a clear star-filled sky overhead and just a speck of breeze. I photographed Delicate Arch and the moon at sunset, then kicked back and ate my dinner while I waited for Milky Way to rise in the sky. Eventually the Earth rotated enough for the Milky Way to be centered through Delicate Arch, and I made this photograph, one of my personal favorites of 2012. Thanks for looking, and cheers!
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| Milky Way arches over Delicate Arch, as stars cover the night sky. Image ID: 27850 Location: Arches National Park, Utah, USA |
Delicate Arch is found at the end of an easy 1.5 mile trail. 65-feet (20m) tall, this beautiful freestanding arch was once a “fin” of Entrada sandstone. Erosion and weathering eventually groomed the fin into its current arch shape, a natural visual frame for the La Sal mountains that lie to the southeast.
Pillar of Stone, Milky Way, Stars and Clouds, Arches National Park, Utah
This sandstone pillar in Arches National Park, which probably has an official name, looks to me like an enormous totem pole. I photographed it at night with a short enough exposure to freeze the stars but long enough that the quick moving clouds blurred across the sky. Lighting was tough on this one since the pillar was quite a distance away and very tall (hundreds of feet I estimate). The glow at lower left was produced by the nearby citizens of Moab, all tucked in bed while visions of mountain bikes danced in their heads. If you like this, please see more of my night astrophotography landscape photos. Cheers!
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| Stone columns rising in the night sky, milky way and stars and clouds filling the night sky overhead. Image ID: 27848 Location: Arches National Park, Utah, USA |
Balanced Rock and Milky Way at Night, Arches National Park, Utah
Balanced Rock at Night, Arches National Park
Balanced Rock rises 128′ (39m) above the surrounding land, just off the main road in Arches National Park. It is an outstanding example of erosion and sandstone layering. The precariously perched capstone rock is made of harder sandstone than the layers beneath. As the softer sandstone eroded, a neck formed in the column. Eventually the capstone will topple off and sightly Balanced Rock will be no more. Until that time, I will wander about it at night, pondering the heavens above, whistling strange tunes and conjuring the odd saying that only the lonely midnight desert wanderer is prone to utter.
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| Balanced Rock and Milky Way stars at night. Image ID: 27835 Location: Balanced Rock, Arches National Park, Utah, USA |
Photo of Delicate Arch and Milky Way, Hiker, Light Painting
Photo of Delicate Arch At Night and The Milky Way Galaxy, Arches National Park, Utah
I recently made a short trip to Arches National Park to do some photography. One of the photos I made is a self-portrait, showing me light painting Delicate Arch at dusk with the Milky Way galaxy rising in the sky. I took this photo of Delicate Arch almost as an afterthought, but I am sure glad I did since I suspect it may end up being the most popular image I made on the trip! Since I posted it in June it has had over 16 million views. (16 million! That is more than any other photo of mine, I am certain.) Over the years I have often put myself in my photos, primarily because I want a souvenir for my personal scrapbook rather than because I intend to market the image for publication. However, two self portraits I have made, both of which curiously involve natural stone arches, have been well received so I think I should do more of them in the future: “Mesa Arch Sunrise“, which won the landscape category of the National Wildlife Federation’s photography competition a few years ago, and “Heavenly Arch” which appeared as the photo of the day last year on Earthshots.org.
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| Delicate Arch and Milky Way, lit by quarter moon, hiker’s flashlight and the fading blue sky one hour after sunset. Arches National Park, Utah. Image ID: 27855 Location: Arches National Park, Utah, USA |
At least four light sources are mixed in this image: fading dusk (sometimes called blue hour), quarter moon at camera right, starlight and milky way glow, and my uber-mondo handheld light. Everyone else had left at this point. After I made this image I sat down and ate my dinner in the quiet while waiting for the moon to set so that I could expose for the milky way properly. It was pleasant some hours later hiking back to the car in the dark with only the noise of my boots, bird chirps and darting rabbits to hear — no voices. I used the super-clean Canon 5D Mark III and the very sharp Nikon 14-24 to make this image, along with a few other tricky pieces of night photography equipment. Cheers and thanks for looking!
Here is another image, which is the one I set out to make, photographed a short while later:
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| Milky Way arches over Delicate Arch, as stars cover the night sky. Image ID: 27850 Location: Arches National Park, Utah, USA |
Milky Way Over Mesa Arch, Panorama, Canyonlands National Park
Panoramic Photo of the Milky Way Arcing Over Mesa Arch, Canyonlands National Park, Utah
Earlier this year I spent an evening photographing Mesa Arch, the famous and oft-pictured natural stone arch at the precipice of Canyonlands National Park. I photographed Mesa Arch at sunrise twice previously — quite fortunately alone both times — but that was years ago before the explosion of photography interest on the internet. Based on the many reports I have read during the intervening years of elbow-to-elbow photographers and workshops going postal at sunrise when the sun lights the underside of the arch, I had essentially given up on ever photographing Mesa Arch again. This year I decided to try for an image I have wanted to make there for some time and which might allow me to enjoy the arch in solitude again — the Milky Way arcing over Mesa Arch. Photographer buddy Garry McCarthy and I have executed versions of this idea with other arches. It is surprisingly tough to do well, since lighting must be consistent across the many frames that are blended to make the final image. The result must be flawless with no blending artifacts if one wishes to print the image for display. Using hard-earned uber-secret lighting and processing techniques from past night photography efforts, combined with several different compositions and attempts at lighting the arch in various ways, I ultimately decided upon this highly detailed 50″ x 80″ panoramic photo of Mesa Arch as the final result of my efforts.
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| Panorama of the Milky Way over Mesa Arch. Image ID: 27824 Location: Mesa Arch, Canyonlands National Park, Utah, USA |
Stars Over Half Dome and Glacier Point, Yosemite National Park
Stars Over Half Dome and Glacier Point, Yosemite National Park
If you want to be alone at Glacier Point, the popular overlook in Yosemite National Park, there are two ways to have the place to yourself: visit in the depths of winter, or visit in the wee hours of the night. Earlier this year I chose the latter, and enjoyed a warm, still evening alone on Glacier Point making a night panorama of Yosemite Valley and Half Dome underneath a spread of stars and a brilliant moon.
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| Half Dome and nighttime stars, viewed from Glacier Point. Image ID: 27951 Location: Glacier Point, Yosemite National Park, California, USA Pano dimensions: 4761 x 10519 |
Be sure to see more nightscapes, star trails and milky way photos.
Milky Way Rising Over Joshua Trees
Joshua Tree National Park is the closest National Park to my home, so I visit it several times each year. It is a desert park, arid and sometimes quite hot, and given its proximity to Los Angeles it can be crowded on weekends which makes exploring Joshua Tree National Park at night an appealing option. Summer and fall evenings are usually quiet, still and warm, making night photography in shorts and sandals a piece of cake. I have taken thousands of photographs (many of them quite bad) of the bizarre and charming Joshua Tree (Yucca brevifolia) forests that span the park. This image is one of my favorites, showing the trees reaching toward the Milky Way galaxy far above. Thanks for looking, and cheers!
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| The Milky Way Galaxy shines in the night sky with a Joshua Tree silhouetted in the foreground. Image ID: 27805 Location: Joshua Tree National Park, California, USA |
Tower of Babel and Starry Night, Arches National Park, Utah
Stars over the Tower of Babel, Arches National Park, Utah
The Tower of Babel is one of the most imposing and distinctive sandstone structures in Arches National Park. An enormous narrow freestanding wall or “fin” of Entrada sandstone, the Tower of Babel may, over the course of eons, erode into a arch. It is very near the main road through Arches National Park so few photographers who visit the park do not at least take a snapshot of this icon. I allocated a few hours one night trying to figure out how to photograph it against a sea of stars. It is such a tall and long expanse of sandstone that I was not even sure I wanted to try it, assuming there is no way I could effectively light paint the beast in the 30 seconds of exposure I was using. It took me some time but, after trying a number of different lighting angles and even resorting to mixing my own car’s headlights and those of another passing vehicle in some experimental images, I managed to produce this one image. Thanks for looking!
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| Stars over the Tower of Babel, starry night, Arches National Park, Utah. Image ID: 27847 Location: Arches National Park, Utah, USA |
See more dramatic and different photos of nighttime landscapes or of Arches National Park.
Landscape Arch and Milky Way at Night, Arches National Park, Utah
Landscape Arch and Milky Way at Night, Arches National Park, Utah
Landscape Arch in Arches National Park, Utah, is considered to be the longest natural arch in the world, having a span of 290 feet (89m) . Landscape Arch is gradually falling apart, with at least three sections of the arch known to have fallen since 1991. I set out to photograph this amazing arch under the star-filled Utah sky and it turned out to be one of the most technically challenging nightscapes (nighttime landscape photos) I have made. Because the trail the formerly went under the arch is now closed (National Park lawyers know what is good for us better than we do), viewing of the arch is from several hundred feet away. That is a long distance to light at night. Furthermore, in order to use side lighting as a way of illustrating detail in the rock, I had to use remotely controlled equipment since I was working alone. After two nights of experimentation, I managed to make four keeper images, of which this is my favorite. This image was shot with the technically excellent combination of Canon 5D Mark III and Nikon 14-24 lens so it is very sharp and clean while still freezing the glorious Milky Way galaxy (the galaxy in which we live) in the sky above the arch. Thanks for looking!
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| Landscape Arch and Milky Way galaxy. Stars rise over Landscape arch at night, filling the Utah sky, while the arch is gently lit by a hiker’s light. Image ID: 27869 Location: Arches National Park, Utah, USA |
Yosemite Falls and Star Trails at Night
Yosemite Falls at Night, with Star Trails and Polaris
Yosemite Falls is easily the one waterfall near which I have spent the most time over the course of my life. I am in Yosemite often, especially in spring which is my favorite season to be in Yosemite National Park, and after 40+ years of admiring Yosemite Falls I find it a challenge to photograph it in new and inspiring ways. This image was taken on an evening with a nearly full moon so the lighting is comparable to that found during the day (moonlight is nothing more than reflected sunlight!) but the exposure time is sufficiently long that the waterfall is blurred nicely and the stars above trace arcs as the Earth rotates below. The cumulative exposure was about 60 minutes, and I made sure to include Polaris (the “North Star”) in the composition for interest. If this image interests you, check out my growing collection of astrophotography landscapes, nightscapes and noctural photography!
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| Yosemite Falls and star trails, at night, viewed from Cook’s Meadow, illuminated by the light of the full moon. Image ID: 27733 Location: Yosemite Falls, Yosemite National Park, California, USA |
Juniper, Rock and Star Trails, Joshua Tree National Park
I made a brief trip up to Joshua Tree National Park recently with Garry McCarthy to do some night photography. In Southern California it is difficult to find night skies that are clear enough for productive night photography and heading east to the desert with its dry air and relative lack of light pollution is usually the answer. We arrived about midnight. We had previously decided upon this composition of a standing rock and small juniper, so the challenge was not where to go in the dark park but rather to figure out how to compose the two elements in such a way that the passage of the stars across the night sky would be revealed in the image. I elected to combine several elements: the foreground tree and rock painted with a small light, trails created by stars transiting the sky above, a faint static star field illustrating some of the countless stars over us, and a bit of lightening blue in the sky hinting at the coming dawn. If you liked this, please take a look at more photographs of Joshua Tree National Park as well as my growing collection of nightscapes and astrophotography landscape photographs. Thanks for looking!
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| Juniper and star trails. Image ID: 27720 Location: Joshua Tree National Park, California, USA |
Yosemite Falls and Star Trails
Stock Photos of Yosemite National Park.
I’ve updated my collection of Yosemite photos, including the one below which I made at 2am a few evenings before the last new moon. One of the spring lunar rainbows that form in upper and lower Yosemite Falls — which are a lot of fun to see but which attract considerable crowd of people and cars that remain throughout the night — took place on the full moon a few weeks prior. I was not able to get up to the Valley for the lunar rainbow event, so instead took my daughter on a Sierra roadtrip a few weeks later to hike the Mist Trail as we try to do each spring. She elected to stay with Grandma at Bass Lake while I went into Yosemite Valley for some night and sunrise photography. On this night, with a nearly new moon, I did not encounter a single person in Cook’s Meadow between 11pm and 4am. The light that the crescent moon shed onto the upper waterfall was quite thin, but I was still able to make a clean image by using a 40-minute time exposure which rendered the stars as arcs in the night sky. Polaris, the “North Star”, is the bright star that lies nearly at the center of those arcs at upper right. My main interest interest in photographing in the valley was in making a few very high resolution reflection panoramas of the flooding Merced River, for potential printing 10′ wide or more. In several places I waded into the Merced to find perfectly still water and the composition I was looking for, since my 6′ tripod allows me to work waist deep or more if needed. The water was not as cold as I expected so I did not even bother with waders. Boy how I love Yosemite in early summer, so green with cool shadows and crisp water contrasting the warm dry air and blue skies! After a sunrise and morning of landscape photography I (mostly) put away the camera, spending the remainder of the trip hiking a couple favorite trails with Sarah and making iPhone panoramas with her. She really likes the immediacy of iPhone photography and enjoys seeing how in-phone panoramas turn out just moments after making them. I can’t blame her as the results are often surprisingly good. Anyway, back to my stock photography: if you like the image below, be sure to see more Yosemite National Park photos. Thanks for looking!
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| Yosemite Falls and star trails, night sky time exposure of Yosemite Falls waterfall in full spring flow, with star trails arcing through the night sky. Image ID: 26853 Location: Yosemite National Park, California, USA |
The above image is a single image, not a composition. There is no masking or blending used, just a judicious choice of exposure along with curves, saturation and white balance in Lightroom. What looks sort of like a halo just above the cliffs is actually the faintest hint of sunrise I believe, since I ended this exposure just as astronomical twilight was beginning in order to obtain a true blue sky (rather than natural black sky, or a blue sky created by manipulating the colors of the sky). The Photographer’s Ephemeris app on the iPhone is a great help in determining such times, if you like apps.
Milky Way Rising Over Hoodoos
The first morning of my recent roadtrip around northern Arizona and southern Utah with a few old diving buddies found us at the Toadstool Hoodoos a few hours before dawn. Garry McCarthy is always thinking of ways to creatively photograph the night sky, and on this trip he suggested photographing the Milky Way above these hoodoos. Garry led us stumbling up the sandy wash that leads to these sandstone spires in pitch darkness. The trail is quite short and is physically easy, but I was half asleep and had no idea where I was relative to, well, anything, so I was grumbling a bit along the way. As it happens, we were just within the southern edge of Grand Staircase - Escalante National Monument, a place I had wanted to visit for years. Eventually Garry and Don, who had both been to the Toadstool Hoodoos before, announced “we’re here.” Huh? I was baffled, standing in the dark able to see only the dirt at my feet. After a while my eyes adjusted so that I could discern large forms jutting into the night sky. We used our tiny hiking headlamps to illuminate the surrounding sandstone relief. I then understood what Garry had envisioned and planned for: a sublime scene in which the Milky Way was arching over a family of sandstone spires, one taller than the rest. Wow! We spent 45 minutes photographing the view, experimenting with compositions and lighting before the approaching sunrise overwhelmed the pale light of our galaxy. The air was quite still and cold and the only sound to be heard was us fumbling around in the dark with our cameras and blinding one another with our lamps. Naturally, the occasional swear word was said but gradually we figured out what worked as far as exposure settings and lighting. When we first arrived at the hoodoos I had no sense of what the larger surrounding area was like but the location — a variety of hoodoos and tortuously eroded sandstone formations situated below the line of Rimrock Cliffs looking down on us from the north — was gradually revealed to us over the next 90 minutes as starlight gave way to clear skies and one of those keen, brilliant sunrises that one gets in the desert southwest. It was a great beginning to a productive and fun trip.
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| The Milky Way rises in the sky above the Toadstool Hoodoos near the Paria Rimrocks. Rimrock Hoodoos. Image ID: 26616 Location: Grand Staircase - Escalante National Monument, Utah, USA |
As I used to do in the film days, I bracketed exposures as much as possible since it was difficult to judge the accuracy of such an extreme exposure with just the histograms on our cameras. Out of the many exposures I took I found two that I was happy with, including this one.
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Updated: May 21, 2013
