It seems like my short trips come in clusters. I got back from my Moss Landing excursion on Tuesday, and here I am, posting about another day (evening actually) trip on Thursday. Anything to stay busy I guess.
I had signed up for a photography club outing for the 23rd, a nighttime photo shoot of the Milky Way, up in the Sierra. I have never done any serious night time photography – I have tried photographing a full moon a few times but never seem to get the settings right. I figured with a new camera, and tons of YouTube videos on star photography to browse through, I might want to give it a try again.
The location the trip organizer had selected was Wrights Lake, which is up a ways in the Sierra, at about 7K elevation. It is only a 90 minute drive from my house, mostly on highway (US-50 on the way to Lake Tahoe), with an 8 mile stretch on a paved mountain road. Narrow, winding, mountain road. There is a state campground along one end of the lake, with private cabins and property around the rest of it. There are a couple of other lakes near it and some nice hiking trails – great place to visit one of these days.
The night that the organizer selected was a new moon, perfect for a dark sky, and also around the peak time for seeing the center of the Milky Way. But on Thursday, the weather forecast seemed to indicate that there would be a cloud cover on Saturday. Grrrr. Well, I had nothing better to do that evening (I rarely do), so I decided to go it alone. I got my camera gear together, read up on camera settings for my new Sony 7 IV, tossed the GoPro in the bag for the fun of it, and headed off to parts unknown. I did remember to put some warmer clothing in and a couple of blankets. It does get a a bir nippy at night.
I set off at about 5PM, planning to get there with plenty of time to find a good place to setup for the evening. The trip organizer had never been there either, so I was really winging it. All I knew about the area was what I could see on Google satellite maps or on the state parks Website. The ride up US 50 was uneventful – I had been hiking in that area a few years ago and was familiar with the twists and turns. The turnoff on to the Wrights Lake Road is where the fun begins. The road is well maintained and paved all the way, but is narrow with a lot of hairpin turns. Not a big deal in daylight, but I knew that heading back down at 1AM will be a lot of fun. After a relatively quick ride, I turned into the Wrights Lake campground, which is quite large, and drove around looking for a good place to set up my gear. I wanted a spot that looked out over the lake – adds to the overall composition. The Milky Way stretches SE to NW, so ideally a spot on the NW corner of the lake would be best. Unfortunately, that is all private property reached by a rough dirt road. Not something I wanted to drive on late at night. There were some trails heading off to other lakes, but I was not interested in hiking either, especially in the dark. So I settled in near the small jetty they use to launch kayaks and canoes. Overnight parking was not permitted, but I was not planning on sleeping overnight in my car.
The view from the little jetty was impressive – it is a beautiful, serene setting with low granite peaks to the North, surrounded by a thick pine forest.
So now it was about 7:00PM, not even that close to sunset, and many hours before it was really dark enough to see the stars. Crap – I should have brought a book and a camp chair. And more to eat. Bad planning.
Talk about being bored…I played with the cameras for a while, took some sunset photos from the jetty, and dozed in the car, listened to the radio. And looked at my watch every 3 minutes. Boring.
Finally around 9:30, I looked up through the moon roof and there they were….stars! It was pitch black out there, so I drove the car over to the loading area by the jetty, and carefully carried my gear out to the end. I was not alone – a couple or two were heading there to star gaze as well. They owned a cabin on the lake – I should have gotten to know them.
And now for a brief interlude of photographic techno babble. Photographing stars can be a challenge for non-experts like myself. First of all, it’s really dark, especially in designated dark sky locations. This was not a designated site, but I could not see anything in front of me without my headlight. For cameras, that means you need 1) a fast lens, meaning it can open up to let a lot of light in 2)a camera that can adjust the ISO to a relatively high number. You lose quality (graininess), but gain light sensitivity for an image. But even then, you are going to be shooting at VERY slow shutter speeds – 8 to 20 seconds. 3)So a good, sturdy tripod is a must. And setting a few second delay on the shutter is a good idea too. And (there’s always one more), cameras have a hard time focusing on stars. They are really far away. So it’s best to do manual focusing as well. And one more thing to watch for….airplanes and satellites. With a slow speed, you will get streaks across the image. Meteorites are fun though – a bright one flashed across the sky while I was setting up.
OK, enough on the technical side. I had all of the above. I also brought my GoPro camera along to shoot some video, but it was too dark to fumble around with it. I was afraid I might drop in the lake. I carefully wandered down the jetty to the end, where there was a nice tree stump to sit on, got the camera set up on the tripod (no easy task in the dark), and spent about 2 hours snapping away, pointing at different spots above and around the lake. I was hoping the Milky Way would get brighter as the night moved along, but there were no discernible changes after 2 hours, and I was cold and tired. Time to head home.
The ride down to US-50 was a little scary, but not too bad – I just drove slow and carefully, especially around the curves. I made it home by 1:30AM. Not too bad. Now I have a ton of photos to work on with Photoshop – that will keep me busy for a while. And are a few that I have started working on which desperately need some editing.
Finally, hard to believe, but I may be going back again this weekend with the club group. I’d like to try a few different things, like a lower ISO so the images will be sharper. And I’ll bring a chair and food this time.
And if you are interested in visiting this place:
https://www.recreation.gov/camping/campgrounds/231954
The Traveling Widower 