After dealing with some minor health issues until mid-April this year, I've finally started getting out again. This weekend I had arranged an exclusive photographer access to the Tonto Natural Bridge State Park near Payson, Arizona, but decided to cancel it due to predicted inclement weather. Instead, I headed to the Chiricahua National Monument in southeast Arizona, which was predicted to have cool but dry, cloud free weather.
Some Planning
I was hoping to get a Milky Way and/or other star shots. By checking out the Photographer's Ephemeris, I found that the moon was also cooperative, being a waxing crescent one day after the new moon, and with a moon set at about 8:30PM. That means no bright moonlight to contend with. If you haven't used the Photographer's Ephemeris, it's available online (and as a download). Here's a screenshot of the information available from Massai Point for 5/7/2016. Note that the pin can be moved by dragging and dropping to any location. It shows not only the sun and moon rise and set times, but the angle for the actions:
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| Photographer's Ephemeris |
Using the Stellarium application, I found that the Milky Way should be pretty visible by 1:30AM on Saturday morning, through until a bit before sunrise, approximately 4:30 AM. If you haven't used Stellarium, it's a free app that shows you space objects at selected date and times. It's free and available for multiple operating systems. I use it on my Windows 7 desktop and my Kindle Fire. Here's a shot using the Massai Point location at about 2:30 AM on 5/7/2016, clearly showing the orientation of the Milky Way:
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| Stellarium |
Wilcox, Arizona
Friday night, 5/6/2016, I packed my Exploder, got my dog, and headed to Massai Point. We left home in Phoenix, AZ at about 11PM. We drove straight through to Wilcox, AZ, arriving at about 1:30 AM. I wasn't sure if I was going to spend the entire day and following night there so when I fueled up at the Circle K, I picked up some jerky, Doritos, and another gallon of water (I already had a couple of gallons of water with me). I tried to go through the McDonald's drive through but they were closed (no 24 hour service there if you're passing through and relying on them to be open!).
I ended up stopping at the Shell station in Wilcox to get some coffee. The station was attended by a man who was hosing down the parking and fueling lot. I asked him if he had some coffee and he said he did. He had to unlock the door for me to enter, and I bought a large coffee. I was skeptical about how it was going to be - it didn't look like he'd been brewing coffee recently and the streets of Wilcox were pretty much empty. It turned out to be okay; I'd had worse in the Navy at 1:30 AM!
It's about 36 miles from Wilcox to the Chiricahua National Monument, and then about another 12 miles or so to Massai Point, or almost 50 miles beyond Wilcox. I drove a tad slow along the way because there were a lot of mice, desert rats, and cotton tail rabbits running across the highway and I didn't want to ruin their morning.
There's also a bit of that road that has some alarming hills, at least to me. There are blind hills that have curves right after the summit and I've been surprised by them in the past when I drove faster (the speed limit varies from 45 to 65 MPH along the highway). When I got to the park gate there was a fox crossing the road near the cemetery.
The road up to Massai Point only recently opened up to traffic. It had been closed for road work. There were a number of places where the pavement has not been replaced as the culverts had been repaired or upgraded. I even had to dodge a tree that apparently had just fallen down that night and was jutting out into the road, blocking the east bound lane! I believe it had just fallen that night because in the morning, when I went back down from Massai Point, it had been removed.
Massai Point
I arrived at Massai Point at about 2:40 AM. It was dark! When I shut off the Exploder's lights, I was engulfed in darkness. There were some city lights on the horizon in spots, but the parking lot was pretty dark. (Here's a link to the aerial view of Massai Point in Microsoft Bing Maps - better than I could get from Google for some reason.)
Massai Point is at the end of Bonita Canyon road in the park. It's a bit over 6,000 feet in elevation. The parking lot area is oriented sort of south west to north east. It overlooks the wonderful hoodoos but I couldn't see them at all in the basically moonless night. I did find a couple of trees that I could place in the foreground of my shot of the Milky Way that was obvious to the naked eye and stretched from horizon to horizon.
I took in the view a bit before worrying about the photograph. I'm getting close to 60 years old and it's only been since taking up photography in the last few years that I've even had a desire to notice the Milky Way. However, I spent time camping in my youth in remote places and I would have thought I'd have noticed it before. But apparently I didn't nor was it pointed out to me. Perhaps it was never visible because my youth years were spent mainly in Washington and Oregon and it may not be very visible there. I think that's sad and amazing at the same time, but I'm thankful now that I live in a place where there are some remote areas such as the Chiricahua's and near Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument that it is very visible.
After letting my dog Elmer do his business, I put him back in the Exploder with the windows rolled down. I set up the Nikon D610 with my wide angle Nikkor 16-35mm f/4 on my Manfrotto 055XPROB tripod.
Shooting the Milky Way
I had a hard time focusing for some reason. Normally I use live view to focus night shots but it took me a while to get it configured. I guess it was just too out of focus.
I had the camera pretty low to the ground since I wanted to include the trees in the shot and they weren't that tall. That meant sitting on the pavement in the middle of the parking lot. That's okay at that time of day - no one else was up there and since they'd have to have their headlights on to drive up the side of the mountain, I'd see anyone approaching. But in the dark I got startled a few times when I turned my head and saw a dark patch on the pavement. This is rattlesnake, mountain lion, and bear country and the park has many warnings about that to remind you (and make you nervous if you're alone in the dark).
I really wanted to take some shots and get back in my vehicle!
I zoomed in with the live view, found Saturn which was very bright, and focused on the planet. I still had a hard time seeing the trees on the LCD so eventually I took shots and re-composed as necessary to get the trees in the shot.
I also used a number of shots to adjust my exposure. The shot below ended up at 16mm focal length, f/4, 25 seconds at ISO 1600. I wish I'd used more of a 17mm focal length; the images are generally a bit sharper if you don't have the lens into either stop. I also wish I'd tried bumping up the ISO another stop and shortened the shutter speed. The stars have some elongation and I really wanted more of a pin-point star shot. But it's still pretty cool and after being in the pitch black for an hour or so, I had enough of tempting fate.
The shots remind me of one of my photography books recommendations - you really need to get to know your camera so you can adjust it in the dark. Turning on a flashlight really makes you loose your night vision (and if you're with someone else, it can ruin theirs or their shots!). While I can adjust my camera in the dark, I couldn't get the text on the LCD to be dim enough. And how do you adjust that? By using the camera menu which was also brighter than heck. It points out to me that if you're going night shooting, if you can, it makes sense to make any adjustments during the daylight before you start the night shots so that you can hopefully avoid using the menu or other bright lights.
Here's the best of the shots I got, processed in Adobe Photoshop. This time I used some processing tips from a YouTube video from Kenneth Brandon. The bright orange/yellow object on the right edge is Saturn.
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| Milky Way from Massai Point, Chiricahua National Monument, 5/7/2016 Nikon D610 with Nikkor 16-35mm @ 16mm, f/4, 25.0 seconds, ISO 1600 |
