What was once a creek is Highway 94 aka. Campo Road these days. I'm not sure how long ago the creek dried up (or was possibly dammed up?) and converted to a highway. I've been wanting to do this shot for a while, but didn't want to bother with the drive. The other evening, however, I had a twilight real estate shoot in Chula Vista and this was only about a 45 minute drive from there. This location is pretty close to the USA-Mexico border. While wandering around in the dark here, I got buzzed at least three times by what I will assume were Border Patrol or other law enforcement helicopters. They flew by in total the dark with no exterior lights on each time. I'm fairly certainly they used night vision, zoomed in on me, and determined I wasn't an illegal border crosser and not a smuggler. This steel railroad trestle is in Campo, California - a community in southeastern San Diego County. Shot on August 22, 2019. For the sky, I did a tracked exposure at 240 sec f/4 ISO 400 with a Canon 6D and Canon 17-40mm f/4L lens. For the foreground, I shot six exposures each at 60 sec f/4 ISO 2000. The structure is illuminated by passing traffic below. This bridge is part of the San Diego & Arizona Eastern (SD&AE) railroad. Originally founded in 1906 as the San Diego & Arizona Railway (SD&A) by sugar heir, developer, and entrepreneur John D. Spreckels. Dubbed "The Impossible Railroad" by many engineers of its day due to the immense logistical challenges involved, the line was established in part to provide San Diego with a direct rail link to the east by connecting with the Southern Pacific Railroad lines in El Centro, California. Spreckels donated the organ pavilion in Balboa Park in San Diego and built the Spreckels Theater building in downtown San Diego. He's one of San Diego's premiere philanthropists. Some interesting trivia: In 1908, Adolph Spreckels, heir to the Spreckels’ sugar fortune (along with his brother John), married a woman 24 years his junior. Alma was apparently quite a babe. She called her husband Adolph her “Sugar Daddy.”
I shot this the other night up on Palomar Mountain. Though there's lots of pond scum here, I was still able to get a nice reflection of the sky in the water. The orangish glow is from several low-pressure sodium lights nearby. For the sky, I shot and stacked 7 frames each at 20 sec f/2.8 ISO 3200 with a Canon 6D and Sigma 15mm EX DG lens. The foreground was shot at 50 sec f/2.8 ISO 3200 with the same gear. I originally tried stacking the foreground and doing a median blend for noise reduction, but that process eliminated the star reflections, so I decided to just use a single foreground frame. After chatting with another photographer, I learned how I can have a stacked foreground AND star reflections for future shots though. As for blending the foreground and background exposures, everything is where it was at the time. Palomar Mountain (Spanish: Monte Palomar) is a mountain ridge in the Peninsular Ranges in northern San Diego County. It is famous as the location of the Palomar Observatory and Hale Telescope, and known for the Palomar Mountain State Park. The name "Palomar" is Spanish for "Dovecote" or "pigeon roost". This comes from the Spanish colonial era in Alta California when Palomar Mountain was known as the home of band-tailed pigeons.
This was originally an attempt to capture a bright fireball Perseid meteor or two, but that didn't happen. I shot this the same night as the Perseids star trails photo I posted the other day, but this was earlier in the night. Though the nearly full moon was quite bright, I hoped to *maybe* capture a rare bright fireball Perseid over the urban lights in the background. Well, no fireballs, so I decided to salvage these frames and make some star trails instead. This is 147 frames each shot at 20 sec f/4.4 ISO 800 29mm with a Canon 6D and Canon 17-40mm f/4L lens. Total exposure time is 49 minutes. Processed in StarStaX using the "Comet Mode" option. This was shot from a vista point atop Palomar Mountain facing southwest. The urban light pollution is from Valley Center, San Marcos, Escondido, Carlsbad, and Del Mar.
