Ladee's Travels

 The park was full. Absolutely full with RVs, camp grounds and the cabins.  I love the cabin location and the fact that there is a warm or cool spot when we are out all night. I ran the location on PhotoPills and our ideal time would be about 2:30 am.  At least we had the cabin and didn't have to crawl inside of a tent or the backseat of the Jeep!  We brought dinner and learned about settings on the cameras, the ones that we did not use so far. I played with white balance shift and bracketing. Very interesting find. We chatted as we saw bits of the Milky Way slowly rise behind the mountain. It is truly beautiful and exciting to have all of the camera settings ready to capture the event.  Finally, at 2:30, we heard the last "click", folded up the tripods and took everything in to the nice warm cabin. Nice night!

 Lost Dutchman State Park is located east of Phoenix in Apache Junction.  It sits at the base of the Superstition Mountains, famous as the location of the lost Dutchman's gold mine.  I attended a night photography workshop taught by Beth Ruggiero York through Arizona Highways Photoscapes apps.org. It was a clear night and a little chilly as it was February.  The skies were clear and we were able to capture the stars.  Here is a sample of what I did.  An old fashioned western looking panoramic.  A vertical panoramic of the mountain and skies rising and over my head.  A series of seventeen photographs stacked 30 second photographs to show the star trails.  And a single forty minute photograph that captured the grace of the stars as the earth spun.