From more than one vertical mile above, a vast ephemeral mirror stretches out across the lowest land in North America. Over the course of 77 minutes the stars streak across the sky. A tiny bit of warm light from a rising moon just touches the tops of the mountains. Looking almost due west the stars streak in a nearly uniform diagonal pattern across the sky. The reflection reveals the hidden textures of tributaries and channels of water still feeding into the evaporating lake 75 days after the remnants of Hurricane Hillary dumped more than a year’s precipitation in a single day here. That measurement of precipitation came from the valley floor below. While it might have been enough to conjure the initial lake, satellite imagery shows the lake did not reach a maximum size for perhaps two more weeks with the lake on September 5th being vastly larger than the lake on August 26th, and the storm having come through on August 20th. The precipitation in the mountains was surely greater, but it took time for that water to make its way miles and miles to get to Badwater Basin, flowing down the boulders and gravels of eroded mountains to reach the vast salt flat and recreate the lake.

In an effort to capture the maximum number of reflected stars possible, I shot wide open at f/1.4 with a high ISO. Even so the loss of light from the imperfect mirror revealed only the brighter stars whose trails were interrupted by islands of reflection disrupting ripples caused by pockets of wind in an otherwise calm night. In the sky some thin clouds on the horizon just above the greater than two mile high wall of the Panamint Mountains also caused gaps in the trails. What the reflection truly did bring out was the color of the stars, as the stars are indeed a vast array of different color temperatures, from super hot blue to cool reds and oranges. I was truly shocked at the extent of the reflected stars as they revealed water all over the valley floor. The way the reflections were broken up along the shorelines and where pockets of water could be seen by the reflection of a single trail was truly a surprise.

Airplane, car, and people light trails were painstakingly removed from the image to reflect only the wilderness. One hundred fifty-five 30-second exposures stacked with StarStaX. Lots of imperfections and things I might try differently if I attempted this one again, but that’s how we learn.

You can now see the frames that make up this image in the time lapse video here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzLI5exyv-A

Tags:   california death death valley deathvalleynationalpark ephemeral hilary lake manly mirror mountains national night panamint park reflection star trails valley YBS23Landscape

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March marked 10 years since I upgraded my ride from a dependable little Toyota Corolla to this Nissan Xterra which could take me to places the little Corolla couldn't imagine. It helped propel my photography forward, and has been a loved travel companion since day one. To mark the occasion I visited a very windy Death Valley National Park, where I explored canyons the previous car could never reach. Weary of other people during this time, I camped in the backcountry where to my surprise there was very little wind compared to elsewhere in the park. I shot this 64 minute shot of the star trails above me in the Xterra with eight eight-minute exposures during one of which I held still. I couldn't be happier with the places this ride takes me and look forward to many more adventures ahead.

Tags:   death desert greenwater national nissan park portrait self star trails valley xterra

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For Griff Joyce’s 50th birthday party, his group of intrepid hikers shine their headlamps at me on the other side of the valley late at night. Above, the summer night sky spins in a combination of 38 minutes of star travel from 76 15-second exposures. Yosemite’s iconic “half” a dome looks as if it has a crown of light. It is, after all, one of the most iconic mountains anywhere. I never get tired of gazing upon it, and the light show from the crew was incredible to watch from 2 miles away.

Tags:   cable route cables dome dusk granite half half dome national nevada park sierra star summit sunset trails twilight yosemite

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It’s crazy the paths that life can take you. One things leads to another and then to another. From my photo of the 97 Switchbacks At Night came a friendship with Matthews Saville and Sean Goebel . From that sprung many adventures including the The Cable Route of Half Dome at Night with our late friend Wade Meade. From that came a contact with an Half Dome enthusiast named Griff Joyce, who purchased a print and said to save this date in 2020 for his 50th birthday on top of Half Dome. For this adventure he wanted me and my cohorts to shoot stills and time lapse of an ascent of Half Dome with 50 people, at sunset and into the night. This July in Yosemite, despite all that 2020 mustered to throw at us, everything worked. I repeated the 2016 angle from Mount Watkins, this time armed with three cameras and lenses up to 400mm shown here. Here part of Griff’s team descends the cables just after sunset with the sun’s last glow still lighting the huge granite face with twilight. In the sky the brightest stars begin to streak in the growing darkness, and the party of over 20 people who remained into the night on the summit can be seen shining their headlamps to and fro. This image is a stack of fifty-nine 30 second exposures added together. The light show was incredible and I wondered what people all throughout the park must have thought at the spectacle. Were you in the park that day?

Check out our time lapse video:
vimeo.com/453073583

Tags:   cable route cables dome dusk granite half half dome national nevada park sierra star summit sunset trails twilight yosemite

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This is the second star trail image I shot looking at Yosemite Falls this spring. 20 minutes shorter in exposure length and at 35mm as opposed to 12mm for a tighter view, the rest of the description from this wonderful evening follows copied from the other image.

On a windless spring night in Yosemite Valley lit by half a moon, I sat on the boardwalk in Cook’s Meadow in the dark and just listened to the roar of the falls and the symphony of frogs inhabiting the flood waters around me. Aside from a few people that passed by on foot and on bike very briefly, I had the whole meadow to myself. The roar of Yosemite Falls was definite, and drowned out completely the murmur of a car here and there that lit up Northside Drive with their lights as they passed by. Over the course of ten five minute exposures, the Earth silently turned on its axis, rendered visible in the sky by the pinpoints of old light swirling around to the north. The waxing moon that provided light for the valley below had just achieved First Quarter a few hours earlier and lit up some of the Sierra’s finest granite wonderfully. Spring flooding like this is an annual ritual as the vast snowpack hidden from the view here begins to go into melting overdrive with the seasonal onslaught of impending summer. The ten five minute exposures were added together to get 50 minutes worth of the Earth’s rotation. A few airplane trails were removed.

Tags:   california falls flooding granite moonlight moonlit mountains national nevada night north park puddle reflection sierra sierra nevada spring stacked stacking star star trails trails trees valley water waterfall yosemite

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