On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.
From the exotic to the familiar, whether youâre traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
BillinGlendaleCA
This week’s nocturnal excursions takes us to two valleys, one close to home and very familiar(I grew up there) and the other further away with some really dark skies that I visit when I can. Closer to home is the Conejo Valley whose western end is about 7 miles from the coast. It features Boney Mountain and Sandstone Peak, which we’ve seen closeup previously in these pages, as a nice foreground. But could you see and photograph the Milky Way from there? I don’t remember seeing the Milky Way while I was growing up in the area even with LA area being smaller in size and light pollution. So I ventured out after I finished work at 12am one Monday morning. To the naked eye, the Milky Way galactic core is barely visible amid the light pollution, but can be made out if you know what to look for. I took two set of photos in the Conejo Valley, one with my NX1 and one with my cellphone(S22 Ultra). The results were somewhat surprising.
My next chance to shoot came when I had two consecutive days off from my duties at the Home of the Orange Apron, with a new moon and clear skies, I headed off to the Owens Valley. I had identified two locations near the town of Keeler on what was once the eastern shore of Owens Lake. I visited the cemetery there in the daytime and could see the ruins of the old smelter during a trip up there about 2 years ago. These were my two sites to shoot this trip with using a light panel a co-worker gave me to light up the foreground. I headed to the Alabama Hills at the foot of Mt. Whitney for a bonus shot at a location that was the foreground for some of my Orion shots during the winter. As the night turned to dawn Venus, Jupiter, Mars and Saturn rose to the east over the Inyo Mountains. I stayed around for the sunrise before driving back to Glendale.
The Milky Way over Boney Mountain, just left on center and Sandstone Peak, at the center of the foreground. A trail from here heads 7 miles south through Big Sycamore Canyon to the coast. This was shot with my NX1.
Pretty much the same shot, but this time taken with my cellphone on a tripod. It’s not near the quality of the shot taken with my mirrorless camera with a larger sensor.
Keeler Cemetery dates from 1887, when Keeler was a boom town and where they loaded ore from the local silver mines and shipped it by boat across Owens Lake to Cartago to load on rail to Los Angeles. I’ve lightpainted the foreground to highlight the cemetery.
The Keeler smelter is up the hill from town to the east. It features a long stone wall that faces the southwest. The bright lights you see in the valley are from a LA Dept. of Water and Power facility.
The Milky Way over the entrance to a canyon that was the production location for the temple scene for Gunga Din.
The four planets rising over the Inyo Mountains, this was taken with my cellphone.
The sun rises over the Alabama Hills. I shot this with my NX1 with a very narrow aperture to get the starburst effect from the Sun.
Baud
I first read that as nocturnal emissions.
That first photo is to die for.
eclare
Love the sunrise photo, so peaceful.
JPL
Bill, Wow!  The first photo is my favorite.
There go two miscreants
Nice! The cemetary shot could be the opening scene in a Twilight Zone episode. Love the picture of the four planets rising too.
Wanderer
Beautiful photos.
Rusty
What a nice way to start the day with these photos. Thank you.
J.
Great photos! Wow!
YY_Sima Qian
Always enjoy your stay night photos!
p.a.
Excellent as always. Â Thanks.
Professor Bigfoot
@Baud: well, i am happy to know I was not the only one.
Wag
All the shots are excellent. Â Iâm impressed with the cellphone shots. Â What phone do you use, and what is your exposure time?
JR in WV
Nice work, Bill !! Always love the Milky Way photos!
Kevin
If not for the internet and photos like this a lot of us would never know you could see so much galaxy at night in the right (dark) conditions. Thanks for sharing.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: It gets lonely out in the desert…
I’ll probably head back there again when the Milky Way is a bit more to the south and vertical, I should be able to avoid the light pollution from LA that way.
@eclare: I’ve been trying to get good sunrises with the starburst effect for a while and was getting really bad flaring(bright patches), turned out my lens had dust on it.
@JPL: Thanks, I’ll shoot there again.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Wanderer: Thanks.
@There go two miscreants: It was a bit creepy, though I was worried a bit more of someone calling the local LEO and getting arrested.
@Rusty: Always good to bright the day with a bit of distant starlight.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@J.: Thanks much.
@YY_Sima Qian: Thanks, it was a whole night of shooting, I didn’t include the zodiacal light shots from just after sunset, I’m not done with them yet.
@p.a.: Glad you like them.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Professor Bigfoot: Not sure I’d be too quick to volunteer that. //
@Wag: Thanks, I use a Samsung S22 Ultra with their Expert RAW app. It produces higher quality RAW shots that are good for further processing. My settings for the sky were 8 seconds and ISO 250, for the foreground 30 seconds at ISO 400.
@JR in WV: Thanks, I wish I could shoot more.
@Kevin: The interesting thing is that the first two photos are from a relatively light polluted area. With the naked eye, it was really hard to see the galactic core and you’d miss it if you didn’t know where to look. That’s probably why I never saw it growing up there.
Jager
I’m looking out my little “office” window at the collapsed rim of Mt Conejo, thinking if I take the fire road, and walk a little over a mile I’d be in ancient California. Thanks for your photographs, Bill.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Jager: You’re welcome, the top shots were taken less than 5 miles from your “office window”.
SkyBluePink
Majestic!
BigJimSlade
Great work, Bill! How much work in Photoshop did you have to do to get the 3 wise men out of that first shot? ;-)
JustRuss
Fantastic shots.
Used to hike that area quite a bit when I lived down that way. But not at night, nice to see a new perspective.
Interstadial
Really nice shots, and enjoyed the contextual info as well.
Yutsano
?Sunrise…Sunset…?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@SkyBluePink: Thanks much.
@BigJimSlade: Not much work, content aware fill. :)
@JustRuss: I hiked trail down Big Sycamore Canyon a few months ago trying to get to La Jolla Valley. I’d not hiked it in about 45 years. I’ve never hiked all the way to the ocean.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Interstadial: Glad you like them.
@Yutsano: It was more of a Sunset…Sunrise trip.