Joshua Tree National Park is obviously famous for the trees it was named after, but among rock climbers and artists, it is also known for its giant rocks and piles of rocks. Some of them have been named by the rock climbers (hall of horrors), others for their attributes (skull rock, heart rock, split rock, etc) – but honestly, there are so many, I would guess most aren’t named. As best we could determine, these pinnacles near Paac Kü_vü_hü_’k have no specific name, so I’m just referring to them as the Joshua Tree Pinnacles, though there are probably many places within the park that could wear that name.
Anyway, while exploring around, my buddy Mark and I worked out that from a particular vantage point, the Milky Way would rise directly behind them, but the whole scene required a tighter focal length to really make work because the place to stand was a 50 yards or so away the ledge that the rocks were piled behind. I decided on 40mm for the scene, which as you can see, essentially means the sky is completely full of Milky Way.
This is one of those scenes where it is really nice to have a second person while doing the foreground lighting. It took a little maneuvering to get from where the cameras were to where I needed to be to get a decent amount of light on the rocks, and running back and forth to see what worked and what didn’t would have taken forever and been extremely tiresome. Having Mark looking at the cameras and telling me what needed more light and what needed less makes it go so much better (and faster!). As I was downrange of the cameras, I ended up taking a bit of a self portrait, which I kind of liked because it gave scale to the scene.
I will concede, however, that it was somewhat reminiscent of the scenario last year when we saw the mountain lion, which definitely gave me the heebee geebees. No cats this year though – thank goodness!
More next week!
–Dan Thompson