August 21, 2017
Being that Joshua Tree is a bit of a drive(almost 200 miles to the shooting locations), I decided to see if there was a location that was a bit closer to the cave that would provide enough darkness to photograph the Milky Way. So after consulting the DarkSkyFinder.com light pollution map, I settled on a location about 90 miles northwest(as the crow flies) of Downtown Los Angeles in Lockwood Valley at the foot of Mt. Pinos. I was somewhat familiar with the area since the Boy Scout Camp(Camp Three Falls) is in the valley and I ended up setting up my gear on the Boy Scout Camp Road. Also since my last trip to Joshua Tree, I’d purchased a “Red Intensifier” filter, which is said to reduce some of the yellow cast you see from light pollution. The first 5 pictures are from this shooting session. The last two pictures are from Joshua Tree since I noticed something in one of the picture that I thought was interesting and I acquired some new software to do panorama stitching that made some panorama shots that I’d take usable.
Read More
Fisheye!
I can’t post a set of pics without one with my favorite lens, my 10mm fisheye. It’s not a fast lens and I can’t use any filters on it, but I love, love my fisheye. You can see the lights of LA in the center and to the left you can see some lights from a gravel extraction operation as well as light trails from cars on the main road.
A processing note: When I first processed this photo, I went with a more contrasty look and a bluer sky. I decided to back it off a bit just before I wrote this post.
