Milky Way Photography In The Bisti Badlands

[Music] absolutely nowhere hi I'm Walt and this is Delta astrophotography it's spring and that means it's the beginning of Milky Way core season one of my favorites cuz it's a more artistic way of going about astrophotography but unfortunately it's always raining I never get a break just recently found out that right here the state of Mississippi is the third rainiest state in the United States and that will not do so it's time for another Milky Way Adventure let's [Music] go since the year 2020 I've been shooting Milky Way nightscapes with some form of a Tamron 24 to70 f2.8 zoom lens well this year I've decided to do something a little bit different different and go ahead and buy my first 24 mm prime lens it cannot zoom it's a 24 mm f1.4 lens that means it can let in a lot more light than my Tamron and this is what I got right here this is the Ranon 24 mm f1.4 it's a full manual lens that means you have to manually change your aperture and you have to manually focus there's no autofocus and there's no electronic aperture adjustments now I haven't used this lens yet so I'm still going to take the Tamron with me but I'm hoping that I can get some good results and I don't think I'm going to get as good results as L say a sigma or a Sony but I still have High Hopes I've read really good things about this lens I should also note that the camera body is a Canon 6D it's a full-frame camera it's very well known for being extremely good with Milky Way nightscapes mine is not asro modified in any way it's really my my only like do all camera I use this for everyday photography nightscape so I I don't want to get this one modified I do have a modified Canon Rebel T5i and I'm taking that to just in case but this is probably going to be my main shooting camera of course I'm going to be taking my star tracker the ioptron sky guider Pro and I thought about taking the big rig as well but I just don't think there's going to be enough room or time for that and when you break this thing down into its individual components it leaves a tiny little footprint in the vehicle so where am I going I have no idea I usually never know until like day two of my trip so how do I figure out where to go well I use two different apps one's called Astros spheric and one's called campendium let's go ahead and jump on the phone and let me show you exactly how I find a place to go shoot out west or anywhere first we'll look in the app astrospheres till we find an area we want to go to an area that looks clear put the bull tie where we want to go and hit get new forecast at the bottom and now we get a 3-day forecast of that area the very top line if that's dark blue that means there's no clouds the middle line the darker the blue the less Haze humidity smog anything like that and the bottom line that pretty much means atmospheric turbulence or super high winds in the upper atmosphere once we find an area that looks like it's not cloudy at all let's tap on the map again and hit the light bulb that's the light pollution map and we just need to make sure we're in a dark area dark blue to Black is typically what I'm going for especially since I'm going all this way I might as well try to go to a black area a portal one or two area once I found a general area that I want to travel to then I'll open up the app campendium and find where I want to camp so this is campendium and we're going to kind of scroll on over to the area that we might want to be camping in zoom into that area and I'm going to go to the top to the filters icon right here and I'm going to pull this price slider down to zero I want free campsites I want dispersed campsites because I don't want to be camping in an actual campsite where there's people right next door I'm going to be up all night with a camera and I don't want to be bothering people with headlamps and walking around and making noise and potentially talking to the camera for a YouTube video I like disperse camping wild camping things like that so that's normally what I try to shoot for so this shows a list of free campsites areas that I can just tap on and read reviews about see disperse camping is kind of what I'm all about another thing we can do is we can come to the layers at the top and select BLM land now this feature is not free I have to pay something like $50 a year for it but it's worth it for me cuz I like to travel a lot select BLM land that's Bureau of Land Management I can camp there for free for up to 14 days and a lot of it's pretty wild like I could just drive out there and just find a place to settle down so as you can see anything in the yellow that's BLM land and I could if I can get out there I can camp there for free for 14 days so that's basically how I'm going to find my spot I'm just going to start driving West on day one and once I get to where I stay that night then I'll figure out where I'm actually going to end up so I think I'm going to go ahead and get the ridle car and we're going to get ready to get out of here all right guys let's do this I'll see you out west south nor I'll see you somewhere [Music] that was very [Music] graceful well good morning yesterday I drove 13 hours and got here in the middle of the night in this beautiful Texas rest stop yeah I got a long way to go guys um going to go ahead and get out Astros sperical eventually but I will not be able to make it there before dark but at least I can start trying to get close so I'm kind of looking at this area right here I can get there before dark and set up camp and let's just look at the forecast of that area it's looking very clear looks like some high atmospheric turbulence on that bottom line right there tonight let's see what the wind's going to be like that could be an indicator of heavy winds 25 mph oh my god well that's 3:00 in the afternoon let's check about 2:00 in the morning when the Milky Way comes out 13 I think that could be doable especially if I set up my St tracker by my car or I could just do non-tracked images for about 11 seconds and not have to worry about that wind uh looks like the wind gets even better closer to Sunrise so I'm glad the Milky Way comes up really late let's check Utah for the next day and see what that's going to look like and it looks cloudy as can be all the way up through Friday afternoon so this is not looking good guys we might have to find somewhere else to go but for now we're going to open up the campendium M head over into Northwest New Mexico and I've actually camped kind of in this area before it was called the Valley of Dreams and I actually got lost and I was told I was in Skinwalker country it was horrifying and I'm not going to go to that exact spot but this looks nice right here the bisti Badlands or the bisy BLM Wilderness I've heard that it looks like another planet so if I leave right now I should be getting there around 6:30 that should give me enough time to just kind of explore the area a little bit and find a place to shoot of course I'm going to want to stop along the way and film and let the dog out and just enjoy the scenery on the drive that's kind of the best part is just getting there and seeing all the beautiful sits so I'll see you in the bis ey Badlands [Music] welcome to the bisy Badlands got here yesterday afternoon at just in time for sunet and set up camp and last night I got to try out the new lens on the Milky Way and it was more than I ever expected let me show you a little bit of how that happened all right guys I'm about to take my first Milky Way photo with this new lens uh we're going to try to look at the camera settings all it says is ISO 800 I hope you can see that um I've dialed in my manual aperture to f2.0 I've never shot with an aperture that fast before so I'm really excited I'm going to use my intervalometer this right here and we're about to take a 3-minute exposure with the star tracker on so here we go really hope this turns out okay right here we go it's shooting holy crap this is how it turned out you can even see the foreground lit up just like it was Daylight I had no idea I really had no idea that that much aperture would make a difference this is a complete Game Cher and you might not be able to see this on the screen so I'm just going to go ahead and show you the photo of course the foreground is blurred cuz I'm using a tracker but this is [Music] insane of course I was just testing the lens out on the Milky Way I didn't shoot a foreground or anything so that's what we're going to work on for the next few days this area is well known for these bizarre alien-like rock formations very similar to the Valley of Dreams that I was at last year these rock formations are called hudos and they're out there somewhere and I got to go find them now there is a risk that once again I could get lost out there so I'm going to spend today just exploring the area trying to find the hoodo and maybe seeing if I could find some path or some kind of marker to help me get back here so I won't get completely lost in the desert so I'm going to go out and explore now [Music] wow well today was quite the productive day we spent about four to 5 hours hiking out there in the bisty bad lands trying to find a place to shoot and I finally found one now the problem is it takes about two miles to get there and it's a pretty rough desert terrain and then the Milky Way doesn't come up till like 1:00 in the morning that means I'm going to have to go out there tomorrow and set up while it's still light outside maybe shoot a foreground right at Blue hour but then wait till 1 or 2 in the morning to shoot and then try to come back in the middle of the night in the desert that sounds like a recipe for disaster so I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do yet but it's going to be cloudy tonight so I'm going to go to bed pretty early and we'll work this problem out in the morning so see you in the morning takan get get away from there come on come on buddies you don't need to be over there a crazy dog this is really pretty by the way [Music] hi oh let me take this hat off so you can actually see me can't do this for long I've already gotten sunburn even with sunscreen and a hat it's starting to get blazing out here today so I've made up my mind and it's not going to be walking back from my shoot at 2:00 in the morning through the desert there's a whole lot of you can't get there from here your situations out there you're like that's where I need to be but how the how the hell do that work so I've packed up my entire campsite and I put the Bare Bones minimum into a camping pack and I'm going to go camp out in the wilderness where you can't drive a car right next to where I'm shooting I think that's my only option the Pack's a bit heavy but I got to do what I got to do there's no way I'm going to risk getting lost out in the desert tripping and falling down a big cliff or something so all right we're going to go into the nearest town get something cold and refreshing to drink and not sit in the direct sunlight until about 5:00 this afternoon and then I'm going to start my journey back out into the bisy Wilderness and we're finally going to get a Milky Way shot out of this so I'm in the parking lot of the bisti Wilderness Area I've been kind of camping back there kind of up on a ridge but this is the parking lot that gets you access to the Wilderness Area which we're about to go through right now my God it's windy so right back here there's a fence and I I'll show you in just a second but once you go through that fence there's no vehicles no drones or anything it's just Wilderness and that's where we're going [Music] [Music] so I've walked about a mile now and honestly I have no idea where I am I tried to take the same path that as I did last time but just nothing looks familiar or everything looks the same I don't know I don't know how to describe it so if I just have to stop at some point and set up where I am that's just going to be how it is but I'm going to try still got another hour or so of daylight I think I can make it let me flip this camera around and show you where I am [Music] [Music] absolutely nowhere all right we're going to keep going I just came over a ridge and I finally see where I'm trying to get to it's about another mile that way oh I think I could make it but man this pack is heavy [Music] well I never found the place as a matter of fact I have no idea where I am it's really freaking scary nothing not even a little bit was familiar I can't believe it like I did this hike yesterday how am I this lost oh well I'm setting up the tent now it's it's right at dusk I'm missing the blue hour but at least with this new lens I don't have to worry about taking shots at Blue hour I think I can take them at night but that's almost the last of my concern right now I hope I make it back tomorrow um I do know that if I just go south I'll end up at a fence so yeah I'm going to get up first thing in the morning and head south but while I'm here I might as well shoot even if I end up dead wish me [Music] luck okay guys I just saw a light in the distance a few minutes ago it was a flashlight there's actually people roaming around out here at 2:00 in the morning it kind of spooked me but I think I spooked them too because I got back to work turned on my red headlamp and instantly that flashlight in the distance went off and I hadn't seen him since that was pretty good all right guys I just shot my foreground and oh my God so I've got an ISO of 800 and the aperture is wide open at f1.4 and I took a thre minute test shot and here's what it looks like that is absolutely insan insane it almost looks like daylight I've never ever ever done anything like this at 2:00 in the morning before now I'm not a very big fan of this composition so I'm just going to walk around and try different foreground shots all right y'all I think I found the composition I like so let's check it out there we go I think that's going to work much better for [Music] me check it out you can see the Milky Way right there but unfortunately I can't use this because the tars are really Trail because of this is a thre minute exposure so what I think I'm going to do is try to walk around maybe the other side of the Rocks trying to find a spot where I get an un unobstructed sky and then shoot the Milky Way with the star tracker on from there but I do like this uh composition right here so I'm going to take this same photo you know maybe five times so I can stack and remove maybe any kind of hot pixels or noise that might be in there especially in the darker areas so yeah I'm going to get to work doing all that all right y'all I want to show you what a single Milky Way shot looks like and the only thing I've done different is I've stopped the aperture down to f2.0 and turn the star tracker on that is just magnificent it covers the whole screen and there's so much detail in that one [Music] shot so I'm going to go ahead and take about 10 more of these and then some dark frames well good morning again I just don't even know how to properly explain or describe last night I mean the stars were as bright and beautiful as I've ever seen them they sometimes say that when you get out to these really dark locations you can see your own shadow cast by the Milky Way and I actually saw that now I didn't get to shoot the foreground that I wanted because I got lost and never did find it so I had to make do with what I had I I just had to stop here when it got dark but I'm I'm still happy I got to try out this this new lens and I can shoot forrs now without having to do it at Blue hour and that is such a game changer or at least I could do that out here I highly doubt I could do this at home in a bort 3 spot because there's so much light pollution on the horizon at f1.4 I think that would completely blow out the Horizon but out here in the dark a foreground looks just like it's daytime I don't know why I didn't get one of these lenses a long time ago I'm so excited but now it's time to pack up and try to find my way back to the parking lot all I know is I walked Northeast to get here so if I walked Southwest I should be able to see the parking lot it's it's big you can actually see it from a mile out and I'm about 2 miles out so I can just find Northwest which it's a lot harder than it sounds I mean I know it's that way but I don't know how to get that way from here this is a serious problem out here and I'm so glad I didn't decide to walk back in in the dark so I'll let you know when I get back safe here we go oh my God guys so I just started walking around um scouting the place out before I put that heavy pack on to leave and the place I wanted to shoot is right there I mean you can't see it because the the bright Sun but it's just a few feet that way I just couldn't tell because it was getting dark and everything looks alike out here but I was literally sleeping next to it oh man and this form behind me I climbed that multiple times the other day and I was looking for it as a a marker to know where I was I slept under it wow it just goes to show that things really look different when it gets dark outside but I'm very happy that this worked out at all I'm so grateful to be here oh my gosh this is a beautiful beautiful area and I hope to come back someday I would probably like to come back with somebody else so I won't freak out alone but yeah [Music] stupid wow the rest of the month of May has been absolutely insane but that trip that that was the best moment of the whole year so far for me and uh my biggest takeaway from it was not just getting lost or anything like that it was that lens oh my God it's such a GameChanger for me used to I would have to go out set up my camera at Blue hour this is right after the sun went down take my foreground then and then leave the camera alone until the it got completely dark and the Milky Way came out then shoot the Milky Way and I was limited to usually about one photo per night but this really opens up the possibilities of taking multiple shots in the same night and that's just mindblowing to me that that I haven't been doing that for a long time so next time I go out west which hopefully is in a month from now I get to really really see what I can do in a single night and over multiple nights well if you like the video got anything out of it let me know in the comments below leave me a like and definitely subscribe more I'm definitely going to go back out west and shoot some more Milky Way but I'm going to get into some deep Sky stuff tonight as well can't wait to do that but I'm so exhausted I'm about to pass out I've got to go to work before I shoot and then I have to go to work in the morning too it's going to be crazy oh I want to say thank you once again to all my patrons on patreon definitely enjoy chatting with you guys and for my Patron that's about to go out to the desert and do your own Milky Way shooting out there I hope this video helped you inspired you in some kind of way and good luck I cannot wait to see what you get out there all right guys I'm going to go ahead and get out of here as always stay Spacey clear skies watch out for snakes and we'll see you in the next one [Music] all [Music] [Music]

Channel: Delta Astrophotography

Views: 3,452

Keywords: astrophotography, road trip, travel vlog, milky way photography

Id: EQZzFnJaRKk

Length: 25min 3sec (1503 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 16 2024