Superbloom at Night
The forecast was for a "mostly cloudy" night. After discovering this location, I was trying to figure out how I could sneak away during the work week when the forecast became clear in order to capture a night image here. But, as I looked up at the sky in the evening it began to clear and I realized it was my chance. In the middle of the night I drove high up onto the Temblor Range ridge line to this spot and set up cameras at around 12:30 in the morning, exhausted. I set my A7iii for continuous eight minute exposures and went to bed. I wanted the lupines in the shot but didn't quite want the entire stone face on the mountain. You can see it peeking up from behind one of the bush lupines. In fact I had planned on shooting this at a different spot entirely but someone was camped there and they probably wouldn't have been enthusiastic about an after midnight intruder to their spot. By the time morning rolled around a lot of clouds had come in and I wasn't sure I captured much overnight. But, I was wrong. My camera and tripod, weighted down with 30 pounds of sand to ward off the wind, had managed to capture a fairly clear stretch of about 80 minutes. This image is a combination of 10 eight minute exposures added together for the sky and one 8 minute exposure for the foreground that was shot at ISO 1600 instead of ISO 500. There was no moon, but the light from civilization in California's Central Valley provided lots of ambient glow from the East as you can see in this view looking North.
Superbloom at Night
The forecast was for a "mostly cloudy" night. After discovering this location, I was trying to figure out how I could sneak away during the work week when the forecast became clear in order to capture a night image here. But, as I looked up at the sky in the evening it began to clear and I realized it was my chance. In the middle of the night I drove high up onto the Temblor Range ridge line to this spot and set up cameras at around 12:30 in the morning, exhausted. I set my A7iii for continuous eight minute exposures and went to bed. I wanted the lupines in the shot but didn't quite want the entire stone face on the mountain. You can see it peeking up from behind one of the bush lupines. In fact I had planned on shooting this at a different spot entirely but someone was camped there and they probably wouldn't have been enthusiastic about an after midnight intruder to their spot. By the time morning rolled around a lot of clouds had come in and I wasn't sure I captured much overnight. But, I was wrong. My camera and tripod, weighted down with 30 pounds of sand to ward off the wind, had managed to capture a fairly clear stretch of about 80 minutes. This image is a combination of 10 eight minute exposures added together for the sky and one 8 minute exposure for the foreground that was shot at ISO 1600 instead of ISO 500. There was no moon, but the light from civilization in California's Central Valley provided lots of ambient glow from the East as you can see in this view looking North.