p.1 #1 · Painted Hills - Spring blooms and a moon lit milky way
Last weekend I had the chance show a few friends one of my favorite spots, it turned out to be one of the best nights shoots of my life.
I was asked to help plan a night photography trip because a friend from work just started getting into photography and wanted to have a chance to photograph the milky way. We spent several months picking the exact time and location. I suggested the painted hills in spring during a first quarter moon since we would have a good selection of interesting subjects to photograph, natural foreground lighting and minimal light pollution. 4 of us went out that night; there was me, another experience photographer named Kevin, my friend Martin and his wife which were both new to night photography.
I also had the opportunity to put my new camera system to the test (an a7iii + a few lenses) which turned out to be a huge improvement over my old system (a canon 6d, rokinon 14mm, canon 50mm 1.8 and sigma 24-70 2.8). The new camera perform much better than I ever could have hoped for but I also learned a really important thing myself - that the moonset is every bit as special as the sunset.
The first picture posted was a pano taken when the moon (about 30% full) was on the horizon. The foreground lighting was sublime and the sky had a minimal amount of moonlight so the stars stood out nicely.
p.1 #8 · Painted Hills - Spring blooms and a moon lit milky way
Thank you so much for the positive feed back! I'm trying to decide which of these I want to print ....I have an art show coming up in September and it's time to start deciding which photos I want to present. I'm thinking one of these definately made the cut!
p.1 #10 · Painted Hills - Spring blooms and a moon lit milky way
michmich2 wrote:
Great looking photos! Is this the whole Painted Hills area or just a part of it?
This is just a few parts of it. There are 5 different trails that go through out that park with views of these kind of clay hills
Edit - I thought it might help to add to this response a little...
The park is a few miles long but the areas you can go are fairly compact. The main area is has the most recognized viewpoint but there are several other small trails scattered across the park were you can view some other similar hills much closer. I hiked most of the park that evening before sunset to find the most interesting dunes that could be viewed fairly close up from the north (looking south). It was the farthest path at the very edge of the park where I found the red hill - which was a single very isolated clay hill about three miles northwest of the main parking lot.
Here are a few shots showcasing the main section of the park for reference.
