July 8, 2020 PM
Ryan Mountain Trail(After Dark)
Three years ago I had just joined the local photography group meetup and was excited to see a meetup scheduled at Joshua Tree National Park for some dark sky photography. The organizer of the meetup, Hami, had scouted locations in the park during the day prior to meeting at a location outside the park. He chose a location with ample parking for the trail that lead up to Ryan Mountain. Ryan Mountain is in the center of the northwestern portion of park and affords a pretty good view of the park and even Mts. San Jacinto and San Gorgonio on clear days. The area around the trailhead has some nice rock formation that would make for good foregrounds and isn't one of the more popular locations in the park for astro photography so it wouldn't be too crowded. The area around the trailhead also has a nice rocks that frame the sunset which I made use of then as well as last year. Most of us had never shot in a dark location before, so the concepts of shooting foregrounds separately or light(though difficult if not impossible with a group) were still foreign. When I revisited my shots from that visit last year I discovered that I'd shot some photos of the area before dark that I could use for the foreground.
Joshua Tree has been closed for several months due to the pandemic. Once the park had reopened, I asked my wife if she'd like to join me on a trip to the park and she expressed interest. I decided that the Ryan Mountain trailhead would be a good location to revisit since it has a large parking lot for out "base camp" and nearby interesting foregrounds. I planned to shoot 3 shots: a multirow panorama, a startrail and a recreation of the shot from 3 years ago. I managed to get 2 out of 3; the startrail failed because when I moved the camera to where I wanted to shoot the startrail the lens moved from 16mm to 20mm, so the entire set was out of focus. While waiting for the startrail(fail) to finish shooting(I shot for a hour and a half), I shot some other shots of the Milky Way from along the Ryan Mountain trail and then moved to the Indian Cave trail where we'd shot 3 years earlier. This time I had some lighting that I could employ to bring out the foregrounds a bit better.
Read MoreThree years ago I had just joined the local photography group meetup and was excited to see a meetup scheduled at Joshua Tree National Park for some dark sky photography. The organizer of the meetup, Hami, had scouted locations in the park during the day prior to meeting at a location outside the park. He chose a location with ample parking for the trail that lead up to Ryan Mountain. Ryan Mountain is in the center of the northwestern portion of park and affords a pretty good view of the park and even Mts. San Jacinto and San Gorgonio on clear days. The area around the trailhead has some nice rock formation that would make for good foregrounds and isn't one of the more popular locations in the park for astro photography so it wouldn't be too crowded. The area around the trailhead also has a nice rocks that frame the sunset which I made use of then as well as last year. Most of us had never shot in a dark location before, so the concepts of shooting foregrounds separately or light(though difficult if not impossible with a group) were still foreign. When I revisited my shots from that visit last year I discovered that I'd shot some photos of the area before dark that I could use for the foreground.
Joshua Tree has been closed for several months due to the pandemic. Once the park had reopened, I asked my wife if she'd like to join me on a trip to the park and she expressed interest. I decided that the Ryan Mountain trailhead would be a good location to revisit since it has a large parking lot for out "base camp" and nearby interesting foregrounds. I planned to shoot 3 shots: a multirow panorama, a startrail and a recreation of the shot from 3 years ago. I managed to get 2 out of 3; the startrail failed because when I moved the camera to where I wanted to shoot the startrail the lens moved from 16mm to 20mm, so the entire set was out of focus. While waiting for the startrail(fail) to finish shooting(I shot for a hour and a half), I shot some other shots of the Milky Way from along the Ryan Mountain trail and then moved to the Indian Cave trail where we'd shot 3 years earlier. This time I had some lighting that I could employ to bring out the foregrounds a bit better.
Milky Way at Ryan Mountain Trailhead
Shooting panoramas in the dark is a pretty difficult task since it's difficult to make sure you're properly overlapping the frames. I recently purchased a device(MIOPS Capsule 360) to automate shooting panoramas. You program in the angle, overlap, and lens information on your smartphone and it takes care of the movement and triggering the shutter. I used an L-bracket with a manual pano head to move from one row to the next.
