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You are here: Home / Open Threads / On the Road and In Your Backyard

On the Road and In Your Backyard

by Alain Chamot (1971-2020)|  July 4, 20186:15 am| 14 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads

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Good Morning All,

This weekday feature is for Juicers who are are on the road, traveling, or just want to share a little bit of their world via stories and pictures. So many of us rise each morning, eager for something beautiful, inspiring, amazing, subtle, of note, and our community delivers – a view into their world, whether they’re far away or close to home – pictures with a story, with context, with meaning, sometimes just beauty. By concentrating travel updates and tips here, it’s easier for all of us to keep up or find them later.

So please, speak up and share some of your adventures and travel news here, and submit your pictures using our speedy, secure form. You can submit up to 7 pictures at a time, with an overall description and one for each picture.

You can, of course, send an email with pictures if the form gives you trouble, or if you are trying to submit something special, like a zipped archive or a movie. If your pictures are already hosted online, then please email the links with your descriptions.

For each picture, it’s best to provide your commenter screenname, description, where it was taken, and date. It’s tough to keep everyone’s email address and screenname straight, so don’t assume that I remember it “from last time”. More and more, the first photo before the fold will be from a commenter, so making it easy to locate the screenname when I’ve found a compelling photo is crucial.

Have a wonderful day, and enjoy the pictures!

 

Sorry for the late publish, folks. Have a great 4th!

Today, pictures from valued commenter ?BillinGlendaleCA.

Milky Way Revisited…

So you find a nice dark place to shoot the stars and think you’ve got some really nice shots and get home and they’re all really dark and you can barely make out that bright star cloud that is the Milky Way that you saw in the sky. Not only is it difficult to see the stars but they may have an ugly yellow tint to them. Well, ya gotta do some additional work to correct for a few things; exposure, white balance… Also as you get more experienced with the software that you use to process the photos you can get a better understanding of what you need to do to make a better photo. Also sometimes there are new features in the software that you used to process the photos that you can integrate into your processing. So the following photos are not new, they’ve been revisited.

Milky Way rising over Ryan Mountain

Taken on 2017-06-24

Ryan Mountain Trailhead, Joshua Tree National Park, CA

This is from my first trip to Joshua Tree last year, it’s the Milky Way rising early in the evening over Ryan Mountain and the large rock that we were shooting next to.

A couple of things were changed here: I changed the white balence(warmed the image and adjusted the tint to be less red) and found that I’d taken a picture of the foreground before it’d really gotten dark. I’ve also reduced the saturation.

Milky Way rising over Ryan Mountain

Taken on 2017-06-24

Ryan Mountain Trailhead, Joshua Tree National Park, CA

This is the same location as the previous shot, but shot in landscape. Again the white balance has been changed, the saturation has been reduced and the improved foreground has been added with Photoshop.

Experimenting with light painting.

Taken on 2017-06-25

Ryan Mountain Trailhead, Joshua Tree National Park, CA

After shooting right by the trailhead, several of us decided to move away from the main group and try some light painting(illuminating the foreground with flashlights). Again the white balance and saturation have been adjusted to give the Milky Way a more realistic color.

Milky Way from the Boy Scout Camp Road.

Taken on 2017-08-12

Lockwood Valley, CA

Again, I’ve reduced the saturation and adjusted the white balance. I’ve also improved the reduction in light pollution from LA.

Milky Way from the Boy Scout Camp Road.

Taken on 2017-08-19

Lockwood Valley, CA

If this location looks familiar, it should; I’ve shot at this location this year as well. Again, I’ve reduced the saturation and adjusted the white balance. I’ve also improved the reduction in light pollution from LA.

Milky Way with a flare from the Hubble Space Telescope at Twin Bush.

Taken on 2018-04-18

Twin Bush, Pt. Mugu, CA

The main change I’ve made here is reducing the light pollution from LA, mainly to make the flare from the HST more visible. It’s one of my favorite recent photos and it’s hanging in the cave(I also submitted it to NASA’s Astronomy Pic of the Day).

Milky Way at Twin Bush

Taken on 2018-06-09

Twin Bush, Pt. Mugu, CA

This was shot on my first trip with Madame for her to view the Milky Way. We were headed to Lockwood Valley, but a fire en route caused a change of plans. The smoke from the fire even made viewing at Twin Bush a bit problematic(increasing light pollution).

 

Thank you so much ?BillinGlendaleCA, do send us more when you can.

 

Travel safely everybody, and do share some stories in the comments, even if you’re joining the conversation late. Many folks confide that they go back and read old threads, one reason these are available on the Quick Links menu.

 

One again, to submit pictures: Use the Form or Send an Email

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Reader Interactions

14Comments

  1. 1.

    SiubhanDuinne

    July 4, 2018 at 6:34 am

    I never tire of looking at your beautiful Milky Way photos, Billin. Each one is more spectacular than the last.

  2. 2.

    Barbara

    July 4, 2018 at 6:40 am

    You are nothing if not obsessed! If I look closely I might have a favorite but they are all remarkable and even more so because you are in So Cal, which probably has peak light pollution.

  3. 3.

    satby

    July 4, 2018 at 7:29 am

    So glad I am a proud owner of my very own Billin Milky Way print.
    But now I’m wondering if I need another one.

  4. 4.

    HinTN

    July 4, 2018 at 7:32 am

    @Bill – I do love the HST flare and how APOD gives it wider dissemination but the first shot from Boy Scout Road is SPECTACULAR. Thanks for sharing.

  5. 5.

    arrieve

    July 4, 2018 at 8:31 am

    In awe as always, Bill. Amazing shots.

  6. 6.

    debbie

    July 4, 2018 at 8:33 am

    Thanks for reminding me this universe really is an awesome place!

  7. 7.

    rikyrah

    July 4, 2018 at 8:44 am

    The ones at Twin Bush…oh my???
    Beautiful pictures ?

  8. 8.

    Lapassionara

    July 4, 2018 at 9:23 am

    Wonderful! Thanks

  9. 9.

    stinger

    July 4, 2018 at 9:29 am

    That top image — I feel as if I’m standing there, neck craned, mouth open, trying not to say, a la Joseph II, “Too many stars!” Amazing.

  10. 10.

    Miss Bianca

    July 4, 2018 at 10:00 am

    Pretty dazzling, Billin.

    You should come out to my part of CO. The Milky Way display in the dark skies we have here is…fucking amazing, I have to say.

  11. 11.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    July 4, 2018 at 12:02 pm

    @SiubhanDuinne: With these pics, I’m just getting better at processing them.

    @Barbara: LA does have peak light pollution, but the mountains(Lockwood Valley) and the desert(Joshua Tree) provide some nice dark skies. The further you get from LA(particularly towards the northeast) you go the better the dark skies.

    @satby: And thank you. You can never have too many, I’ll be putting some more up later this week or early next week. Of course for the rest of the class, just click on my nym to get to my site.

  12. 12.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    July 4, 2018 at 12:08 pm

    @HinTN: That’s a good shot that has the rare meteor in it, here’s one that I was working on last night that has two! The HST was the reason I sent that one to APOD, they get lots of shots of the Milky Way and it needed something different.

    @arrieve: Thanks, the moon is going to start cooperating again, so I’ll have more shots soon.

    @debbie: The skies are amazing and this is only our galaxy, there are billions more.

  13. 13.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    July 4, 2018 at 12:13 pm

    @rikyrah: I like Twin Bush because the ocean, but the light pollution from LA makes it less that optimal. I’m going to try to shoot from a location north of Santa Barbara this week for some better skies. The problem with shooting at the coast is your opportunities are rather limited due to the marine layer.

    @Lapassionara: Thanks.

    @stinger: That’s one of my very first Milky Way shots.

  14. 14.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    July 4, 2018 at 12:21 pm

    @Miss Bianca: I’m still working on the places here in Southern California(and we have some really dark places). The Owens Valley and the eastern Mojave is pretty dark and the northern part of Death Valley is as dark as it gets.

    I’m taking the kid out this weekend to teach her how to shoot and find the correct exposure setting for her camera before her trip to New Zealand in early October and I have a new camera(the NX1 which is the big brother of my NX500) with a nice fast zoom lens arriving tomorrow.

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