The Live Oak tank (named after the Coastal Live Oak you see in the photos), is on the west side of a large group of rocks dominated with a rock informally known as the popehat with a small dam on the south side. The wash continues down to the even larger Ivenpah Tank whose dam is about the size of Barker Dam. When they were actually using the tank for cattle they would clean out the sand that would wash into the tanks, since the park service doesn’t do that, they tanks are filled with sand.
I set up and shot the vertical panorama with the tree along with light painting. I then shot the arch panorama and attempted to light paint the foreground with some success. By the time I was done, I only had about a 1/2 hour before the beginning of astronomical twilight, so I packed my stuff up and headed back to the car (only about 600 yards).
While I was shooting the arch panorama I looked up to the sky and it really struck me how the skies at Joshua Tree are not all that dark (this is a continuing discussion on the local photography FB page). It’s certainly darker than here in the city, but compared to Red Rock, Amboy, Zzyzx, or Fossil Falls, it’s really not very dark. So while Joshua Tree has some compelling foreground features and somewhat dark skies which can make for a compelling astrophotograph, it’s not the best, especially for shooting photos of galaxy or nebula. While I really liked Live Oak as a compelling foreground, I won’t be rushing back to Joshua Tree to shoot it again.
After loading my gear in the car, I decided to try something different for my departure from the park. Normally, I enter and leave the park via the two northern entrances at Joshua Tree and Twentynine Palms; this time I decided to leave via the southern entrance to the park by the 10 at Cottenwood. This route would take me though the Pinto Basin area of the park which I first visited back in March. As I drove the 30 miles from Park Blvd. to Cottenwood, the eastern horizon lightened from the Sun getting closer to the horizon. I pulled at one of the parking areas along Pinto Basin road to capture the horizon lighting up against the stark desert landscape.
The Milky Way core arches over the Coastal Live Oak in Live Oak Tank.
On The Road – ?BillinGlendaleCA – In the TankPost + Comments (22)