Night Photography, Joshua Tree National Park, California

I was thinking about setting up to make just this shot when I noticed that my fellow camper Josh (or was it Michael?) had already put a lantern in his tent and set up his tripod. So, since he already had the best spot, and the constellation Orion is my favorite, I just hitched a shot, so to speak.

I did contribute a bit to the process, however, because I knew that starlight is a certain color temperature–3700K or so, so we were able to manually set that in camera and get it right.

I made several exposures, both with my 24-70 lens as wide as it would go. But if I wanted to get the moon in the shot, I had to go wider, and so got out the 14-24, and the moon shot was the result.

Here's another exposure that I like, without the moon. I like the foreground better in this one. Unfortunately, even with the wide angle lens set as wide as possible, I couldn't get the foreground the way I liked it and the moon in the same shot.

But, as Ansel Adams once said, a series of photos of essentially the same subject with minor variations is not necessarily a bad thing. Or something like that.

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