Road to the Milky Way
I have been wanting to photograph the milky way since I picked up the camera. I have always seen all the cool images of the milky way and the many compositions from houses to landscapes to deep sky objects within the milky way. The idea of having my own image of the milky way and seeing it in person with my own eyes has always excited me. And finally, the opportunity would come during my first backpacking trip with my friend. However, it wouldn’t come as easily as expected.
I arrived at my friend’s place early Saturday morning. We took our time to make sure everything in our bags were packed and ready. It was our first time backpacking so we really wanted to make sure everything goes well. You may be wondering: what is the difference between camping and backpacking? Well, with camping, you can bring all your things with you in your car and drive to a campsite. This means, you don’t physically have to carry your things to your campsite. With backpacking, you hike your entire way with all your gear and whatnot to the location and find a place to set up. It is completely up to you where you stay, which can be dangerous, especially if you set up at the wrong spot. This is the reason why we took our time to ensure we brought everything.
After a hour, we took off to head to the Southern part of Joshua Tree to hike “The Lost Palms Oasis” trail. It wasn’t recommended to go on that hike by the front office there, but we reassured them we wouldn’t push ourselves and we would be okay. Well, we were right and wrong…
Our hike started right before peak afternoon at around 11 A.M. At the beginning of the hike, the wind felt nice and it didn’t seem too bad honestly. I thought 3 miles or so would be tough, but doable. An hour into the hike had me thinking other thoughts. We were huffing and puffing throughout the entire hike and the sun shining right at us throughout the entire time definitely did not help on the 100 degree day. The hike had no shade since there weren’t any big trees along the way so we were finding any type of shade we could find including sitting under dead plants. We found out why the office didn’t recommend the hike to people coming into the park. It was literally an oven.
We hiked a little longer and finally settled along a dried up riverbed and set up our tent there. We quickly got in the tent and just decided to wait it out until the sun got lower and cooler. Inside the tent was another type of monster though. It definitely beat being in the sun, but the tent acted as a sort of microwave, trapping the heat inside. The occasional breeze would breathe life into us followed by a rush of heat coming into the tent once it was gone. Attempting to nap it out, we finally survived the heat and decided to set up everything at around 5. We set up where our bathroom would be and where our bear canister (food source) would be. According to all backpackers, your tent, food source, and bathroom should be around 50 feet apart and be in a triangle like shape from each other just incase an animal is able to locate your bathroom or food. With this, your tent shouldn’t be in danger.
After setting everything up, we decided to then try to finish the rest of the hike and return before sunset at around 7:30 p.m. We had around 2 1/2 miles left of the trip which would mean, it would be a total of 5 miles or so to go and come back. Long story short, we didn’t make it to the end, but we ended up seeing many cool things including the mountain scape throughout the desert, cool rock formations, and plants found everywhere throughout that part of the desert.
Making it back to camp at around 7:45 p.m, we quickly made dinner and waited for nightfall to come. I was so ecstatic for the milky way to appear. I was looking at the sky, waiting for the milky way to appear. I used PhotoPills to help me locate the milky way. That also helped me plan out some shots during the day, but I still also had to improvise since I didn’t really know the landscape around the area. I wanted to scout before nightfall, but with the hike right before sunset and the heat during midday, I didn’t have that opportunity.
At around 8:15 p.m or so, I noticed little makings of the milky way. I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me, but 15 minutes later, I saw a clear define milky way core. I was in shock and started getting shots quickly. I didn’t care about composition at all at that point. I just wanted to get photos of it. It was as beautiful as I imagined seeing it in person. I didn’t want to take my eyes off it. I started looking for compositions with plants on the floor, our tent, and the mini slopes we had in the foreground. I had actually planned on stacking the photos then focus stacking them after, but photoshop was unable to recognize them because they were too dark so I definitely have to learn how to do that for next time. My camera also had a significant amount of hot pixels in my photos so I had to clone a lot of them out, but I decided it was a lot of trouble for some of the other photos so I’ll get to it as the days go on. Until then, the edited photos with the hot pixels will be here.
At around 10 p.m, I decided to stop photographing the milky way core. I took one last glance at the sky and went into the tent to get ready for an early morning. We wanted to leave the park early before the sun got really hot to avoid what happened earlier. We definitely learned out lesson and didn’t want to get stuck in that hell again.
We woke up at 5:30 a.m and started our hike back at around 7 a.m. The walk back was way more relaxed and easier with the sun barely making it over some of the mountain peaks and shining on us. We could already feel the heat midway through the hike, but that motivated us even more to get the hell out of the park even quicker. We made it back at around 8 a.m and got into the car. We turned on the A.C and never looked back. Now there was one task left… to see what the results of my milky way photos were.
Looking back at the trip, there were a couple of things to look back on, both photography wise and backpacking wise.
1: Don’t backpack in the summer. If possible, I would say avoid backpacking in the summer. Unless you’re able to backpack in a forest where the sun isn’t too strong, the heat is bearable, and there is a water source, then DO NOT backpack. Wait until a different season. Without a water source during our hike, we had to carry all our water for the day, which was around 50 lbs total. That was one of the reasons why we were so exhausted so quickly.
2: Learn how to stack photos in lightroom and photoshop. I know programs specifically for astrophotography to stack photos, but I want to research and see if I can do that in lightroom and/or photoshop. I’d rather keep my editing programs for photography to a minimum as I like to stick to a certain program for everything. It makes my workflow a lot less complicated.
3: Hot Pixels with the Sony A7IV specifically. I don’t know if my camera was just very hot that day or if I’m shooting my photos incorrectly, but my long exposure was only about 4 seconds or so and there were a lot of hot pixels. I looked at my old photos where I had 30 second exposures, but there were no hot pixels then. So that makes me believe that it was just a hot day and it’s not something to be concerned about, but I will keep my eye on it. Besides that, the camera has been a real pleasure to shoot with and I’ve loved every moment.
After everything, I felt quite pleased with the photos. There were definitely things I could’ve done better to get better images, but that can always be attained after more experience and learning. I was just happy to get somewhat good images of the milky way core that I could call my own!