?BillinGlendaleCA
Before I headed down to the Cholla Cactus Garden for sunrise shots, I stopped at Belle Campground for some Milky Way shots. I chose Belle Campground since it was on the eastern side of the portion of the park with Joshua Trees and interesting rocks and would provide for a darker location than those sites further west in the park. The plan was to shoot a tracked/stacked Milky Way shot and then a full arch panorama.
The campground itself was full of sleeping campers so I setup just off the access road to the camp. I found a couple of Joshua Trees to serve as the subject and due to the wind, decided that tracking wouldn’t work so I went with stacking instead (shorter exposure time for the individual shots). After shooting the first set of shots, I thought the focus was a bit soft(the first shot presented here) and I preceded to shoot the panorama, but time was running short before astronomical twilight so I decided to shoot half a panorama.
I then shot the foreground and as I panned to shoot each set of the panorama, I noticed that they were getting lighter and lighter as the Sun got closer to the horizon. As I finished the foreground panorama, I could see Jupiter and Saturn rising in the east just proceeding the arrival of the Sun and got a shot of the Joshua Tree with each planet on either side of one of its branches.
First Milky Way set with the soft focus. I applied light painting to both the Joshua Tree in the foreground and the one in the background.
On The Road – ?BillinGlendaleCA – Before Dawn at Joshua TreePost + Comments (19)