Usually trips to the cabin in the middle of summer are not in the cards due to high temps, 90s -100, but Lisa and I had our eye on the forecast as it was for high 70s and 60s at night. Perfect! We had to get creative to get by the typical holiday traffic jam through the Santa Barbara corridor which actually made the drive enjoyable. We were happy to see an out of town fire crew finally clearing the minefield of dead trees along Figueroa Mountain Rd as we drove towards our driveway and expressed our gratitude for their efforts. Us cabin owners were beginning to wonder if we would have to pay to have the deadwood cleared ourselves.

After settling in and taking care of some cleaning and maintenance, we headed up the road, Me with my camera gear and Lisa with the dogs. It was an athletic hike as I was chasing the last light to my planned vantage point and got there with only a few minutes to set-up to shoot the last rays. The Panorama is stitched together from four images making for close to a 200mp file that would print up to several feet in case any of you have a large wall space :). This place is full of beauty and wonder.

The moon set some time after 1 am but I was much more inclined to climb into bed than wait or get up to capture the Milky Way with dark skies. I did however get inspired, after stepping out on the stoop to look at the sky at 10 pm, to walk over to the meadow to see what the camera could see despite the light pollution from the moon. I positioned the lens in the shadow of a dead oak and framed the Milky Way amongst the trees and the meadow that were nicely lit by the half moon still high in the sky. It was so quiet and peaceful and I like the photo that I got.

We are heading out later to scope out a location to shoot the ‘Hurricane Ridge’ at some future opportunity. We will then stop at a good sunset vantage point to see what the days end has to offer.

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Enjoy the photographs!

Hover over to change photos or even better, click to view larger photos or a full screen slide show.

If you are interested in prints please contact me.

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Feeling a little like a zombie right now. It was a late night last night for a school night, but the opportunity to shoot the Milky Way was too good to ignore.  I joined follow photog, Ormond Beach expert and guide, Carla Cahill. While not the pure darkness that we get on Figueroa Mountain on a moonless night, it was still a great chance as there was no marine layer and after the moon set around 10:30, the only light pollution came from the Port Hueneme naval base and a fishing boat or two. There are three photographs with this post. One, a square crop, was shot with the GFX 50s medium format with a TSE 17mm at f4 (effective focal length was a little under 14mm) exposed for 30sec. The moon photo and the other Milky Way photo were shot with the canon 1dx with a Sigma 20mm 1.4. It is pretty cool how much more these cameras can see than the human eye. It was an extraordinary session and it makes me a little hungry for a go at the Milky Way on the next moonless night or two from the cabin where it is so dark that Ben and I have walked into trees that are right in front of our noses. That may or may not be entirely attributable to the darkness. Please feel free to leave your comments or questions below or just let me know your favorites.

Enjoy the photographs!

Hover over to change photos or even better, click to view larger photos or a full screen slide show.

If you are interested in prints please contact me.

The post Milky Way from Ormond Beach appeared first on .