Trip Report - More Joshua Tree Camping
Headed out to Joshua Tree for the Perseid Meteor Shower this past Friday and Saturday night with Leah and a few of my friends for some camping, stargazing, and a little milky way shooting for me. My personal goal for the trip was to focus on finding good compositions, as that’s something that I’ve been struggling with lately.
We stayed at the Ryan Campground and set up camp before roaming around the area to the Ryan Ranch Ruins where I found a composition I would later use.
After making some hot dawgs for dinner, Leah and I waited for it to get dark and went for another walk up a new trail to watch the sunset.
Camp setup for the weekend
The stars started to come out and after messing around on the telescope and finding Saturn (and wowing our camp neighbors in the process), I packed up the star tracker and headed out for some shooting at the ruins.
Not ten feet outside of camp, I spotted two red eyes staring at me, which turned out to be a curious coyote, checking out what I was doing. He quickly scattered off and I did the same.
I only got one composition I was really happy with this night out at the ruins, but this was a good starting point for my nights of shooting. Two minutes tracked sky, two minutes untracked foreground. Looks like I got some help with the foreground lighting from a distant car.
I got back to camp and set up for a little deep space shooting. Got 15 minutes of exposure time on Andromeda, which is a 10 minute step up from the last attempt. Love the progress here, cant wait to get more exposure time in future shooting sessions.
The next day all our friends arrived and we had a great day just chillin in the desert air. It didnt get too hot and there was a nice breeze throughout the day.
Before it started to get dark we went on a nice hike to the ruins and we caught this little lizard and took in the sunset.
After sunset, I ventured back out to a new spot that I had scouted out during the day and started shooting. My whole goal for this trip was to take one picture that I just loved, and I think I finally did that with what turned out below.
I only had a couple minutes to snap this as the clouds started rolling in, and my timing couldnt have been better. I made my way back to camp after this and joined the party to check out the meteor shower. Truly a great night.
Before leaving the next day, I walked out and took some shots of the local birds, and I’ll leave you with those shots. Thanks for reading.
