Day 4 Addendum: Spooky

As I mentioned in the previous post, I was hoping to do some night photography my last night.  Specifically I wanted to capture the Milky Way in Death Valley.  However, because of the position/timing of the Milky Way and the fact I was going to get up early, this simply wasn't going to work out.  So, I decided to just go to Rhyolite where the Goodwell museum is located and see what I could capture.  Rhyolite is only about 10 minutes from Beatty where I was staying, so it was worth a shot.

When I walked out of my hotel room and first looked up into the sky, I was amazed at how bright and crisp the stars were.  I had never seen them like this.  Death Valley is a designated International Dark Sky Park, which means there is limited light pollution, and celestial objects like stars, planets, nebulae, etc. can be seen more clearly.  Beatty and Rhyolite not being far from Death Valley meant they would also benefit from minimal light pollution.

I wasn't out long because the wind was still blowing strong, and it was cold.  But I did manage to capture some pretty interesting shots.  (If you haven't read my blog post that talks about the Goodwell museum, I suggest you take a look at this to help understand the subject of a couple of these photos.)

The Last Supper sculpture.  The bright object in the sky is the moon.  While it was only a crescent, the camera settings caused it to look more like a bright star or even the sun.  There was no artificial illumination used, and the shadows are strictly from the moon!  By the way, the orange glow at extreme left horizon is light pollution from Los Angeles, over 120 miles away!!

The Ghost Rider at night.  Spooky, right?

A junk car at the museum.  I did some light painting to illuminate the interior and front of the car.

This is an old building in Rhyolite.  I used some minimal light painting to brighten up the face of the building but it is largely natural.  The white & red streak in the upper left is probably a helicopter with a rotating light.