{"id":662,"date":"2010-10-17T17:48:05","date_gmt":"2010-10-18T00:48:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.kurtlawson.com\/?p=662"},"modified":"2010-10-17T17:48:58","modified_gmt":"2010-10-18T00:48:58","slug":"joshua-tree-by-fire-light-and-moonlight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.kurtlawson.com\/?p=662","title":{"rendered":"Joshua Tree by firelight and moonlight"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last night I was in Joshua Tree National Park again. This time it was not a backpacking \/ photography expedition. However, as I am compelled to do, I brought my camera gear along. At one point I realized that I might be able to take some photos of our camp. I also realized that our huge camp fire was lighting up the surrounding rock walls. So, I set the camera on my tripod and let it go to work. I was blown away when I saw the results!<\/p>\n

\"Firelight
Firelight and the half moon<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

“Wow!” is what I thought when I viewed this on the tiny LCD monitor. Blown away, I did a second exposure with far less desirable results. Despite the identical exposure, the fire died down significantly and there just wasn’t enough light. So, I decided to try something else. I set the camera up again, knowing that the moon was soon to disappear behind the rocks. This time after I clicked the shutter I beefed up the fire with the help of a fellow camper and spent the next 12 minutes painting the rocks with the fire as I constantly added bits of bright burning cardboard and additional wood.<\/p>\n

The result? The starburst effect of the moon shot with a small aperture (f\/16) just as it dipped behind the rocks.<\/p>\n

\"Moonburst
Moonburst and firelight<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After this I gave up on this composition and tried a few others near the fire. These shots combine some moon light (as the moon was still visible from the other side of the campground) with the fire light.<\/p>\n

\"Red
Red rocks and star trails I<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Red
Red rocks and star trails II<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Shortly after this last one I the last bit of moonlight faded from the foreground rocks. I elected to head for my sleeping bag, but discovered there was enough light (and I had just enough energy) to try one more purely moonlit shot from a few hundred feet away from camp.<\/p>\n

\"Moonlit
Moonlit star trails at Joshua Tree<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And finally, here are the two best shots of camp that led to all other night shots from the trip.<\/p>\n

\"10
10 Seconds at camp<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"8
8 Minutes at camp<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Yours truly can be seen in the second one, semi blurred, somewhere in there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last night I was in Joshua Tree National Park again. This time it was not a backpacking \/ photography expedition. However, as I am compelled to do, I brought my camera gear along. At one point I realized that I might be able to take some photos of our camp. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,27,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-662","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-desert","category-joshua-tree","category-night"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kurtlawson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kurtlawson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kurtlawson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kurtlawson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kurtlawson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=662"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kurtlawson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":672,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kurtlawson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662\/revisions\/672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kurtlawson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kurtlawson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kurtlawson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}