brian.design
Milky Way above an Ancient Bristlecone Pine
We spent a few days exploring sites around the Eastern Sierra region during the recent new moon. After planning several locations for this night, we headed towards the Mobius Arch before sunset only to find thick smoke filling the valley in front of us. We turned around just in time to set up for our second location in Owens Valley, only to quickly realize the entire valley was inhabited nightly with millions of mosquitos. We’re still finding bites a week later. At this point smoke was rapidly moving north and filling the entire valley all the way to the mountain tops, right into our view, so most of our locations were smoked out .. except the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest at over 10,000 feet.
We’ve been to the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest once before, a year ago when we hiked the 4.5-mile Methuselah Trail in search of this tree. It’s a great trail and we found all sorts of amazing trees and information, however this tree is not on that trail. This time around we scouted the much shorter Discovery Trail earlier in the day, and found this photogenic tree.
When we parked at the Schulman Grove Visitor Center we could see the flashlight activity of photographers leaving along the trail. We made our way up to find another photographer in the process of packing up, leaving us alone with this ancient tree in front of the Milky Way. The air was clean, so I set a high ISO to record the intense airglow I saw with earlier images taken at the nearby view point.
The oldest known living tree on earth is located on this mountain, and many of the trees here are thousands of years old. Growth rings of trees in this area have been crossed-matched for a continuous growth history of well over 10,000 years.
This hobby started three years ago with a hacked point and shoot camera and my LEGO Barn Door Tracker Project.
EXIF
Canon 6D 15 sec f/2.8 ISO 12800 .. 6 sequential images
Canon EF 24mm f/2.8 IS USM .. Set to manual
Processed in PS
SOCIAL
instagram.com/brian.design.ig
flickr.com/22920269@N03
6/26/2017 12:32 AM
Milky Way above an Ancient Bristlecone Pine
We spent a few days exploring sites around the Eastern Sierra region during the recent new moon. After planning several locations for this night, we headed towards the Mobius Arch before sunset only to find thick smoke filling the valley in front of us. We turned around just in time to set up for our second location in Owens Valley, only to quickly realize the entire valley was inhabited nightly with millions of mosquitos. We’re still finding bites a week later. At this point smoke was rapidly moving north and filling the entire valley all the way to the mountain tops, right into our view, so most of our locations were smoked out .. except the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest at over 10,000 feet.
We’ve been to the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest once before, a year ago when we hiked the 4.5-mile Methuselah Trail in search of this tree. It’s a great trail and we found all sorts of amazing trees and information, however this tree is not on that trail. This time around we scouted the much shorter Discovery Trail earlier in the day, and found this photogenic tree.
When we parked at the Schulman Grove Visitor Center we could see the flashlight activity of photographers leaving along the trail. We made our way up to find another photographer in the process of packing up, leaving us alone with this ancient tree in front of the Milky Way. The air was clean, so I set a high ISO to record the intense airglow I saw with earlier images taken at the nearby view point.
The oldest known living tree on earth is located on this mountain, and many of the trees here are thousands of years old. Growth rings of trees in this area have been crossed-matched for a continuous growth history of well over 10,000 years.
This hobby started three years ago with a hacked point and shoot camera and my LEGO Barn Door Tracker Project.
EXIF
Canon 6D 15 sec f/2.8 ISO 12800 .. 6 sequential images
Canon EF 24mm f/2.8 IS USM .. Set to manual
Processed in PS
SOCIAL
instagram.com/brian.design.ig
flickr.com/22920269@N03
6/26/2017 12:32 AM