Reflecting On A Day Trip To Anza-Borrego. At around noon today I first headed to the mountains in hopes of catching and photographing some lightning. I started out by heading to Mount Laguna, but then moved on to Ranchita and into in the middle of a storm that had lots of strikes, but they were difficult to see - much less photograph - since it was in the middle of the day. I then headed down the Montezuma Grade to Hellhole Palms where the center of the lightning action was occuring. It was raining, but not windy, so I set up my folding table to protect my camera rig from the rain. Well, I had just finished setting up when the storm decided to move on. The lightning relocated to northeast of Borrego Springs. Meanwhile, there was a decent thunderstorm taking off between Ocotillo (the town with the windmills - NOT the offroad park) and Shelter Valley. I then headed over there. Unfortunately the lightning stopped while I was heading over there. The day was not lost, however, as I got this nice sunset reflection shot at Blair Valley and then later shot some reflection Milky Way shots as well. I'll be posting them later, but enjoy this after-sunset shot for now.
Self-portrait of me standing on top of a hill with the Milky Way behind me. I shot this in the Borrego Badlands in Anza-Borrego Desert State Park in the wee hours of the morning on June 2, 2019. This is among my very first few shoot with my new Omegon MiniTrack LX2 low-cost mechanical astro tracking mount. The background containing the Milky Way was shot with a Canon 6D and Canon 17-40mm f/4L lens at 244 sec f/4 ISO 1000 and tracked to minimize motion blur and star trails. The foreground containing the silhouette of myself and the hill was shot at 20 sec f/4 ISO 6400. I then blended the images in Photoshop. Note that I did not move or resize anything in the blending process. I prefer to work this way with my nature shots. Everyone has their own style and some will move things around from where they really were. That's fine and some people do so as an artistic expression. I prefer to present a realistic representation of nature as it is, however.
Martians are about to beam me up to their spaceship. Shot in the badlands of the Anza-Borrego Desert with a Canon 6D and Sigma 15mm EX DG lens at f/2.8 6 sec ISO 6400. Foreground softly illuminated using the display of my mobile phone and a color picker app. Spent two nights camping in Anza-Borrego Desert State Park and enjoyed every minute of it. This was my first time camping at this location. One of many things I love about this park is that it's huge and there's always something new to be discovered and new places to camp.
