By JC Carey for jcphotomedia.com On the road with my photographic partner in crime Andy Dunaway (IG @AnDunaway) heading from Los Angeles to Las Vegas for the WPPI Conference we stopped in at Joshua Tree National Park to test some gear and lenses. I had never been to this park and was excited. It didn't let me down. As a portrait photographer I'm used to finding bad light or bad locations and bending them to my will with my lights or lens selection. Shooting nature I can't do that. I have to just be. I need to take it in and realize that any day surrounded by beauty and good people is a blessing no matter if you get what you pre-visualized or not... 

All images with Nikon D5 and D810 with the Nikon 20 1.8 which is my favorite lens for this type of work. With it's 77 mm size it's easy to add filters like the 16 Stop Neutral Density filter I used on some of these images and it's just so sharp. For an 800 dollar lens - i think it's absolutely in the running for best bang for the buck of any lens on the market today. 

if you dig what i did here you should definitely check out my friends over at National Parks At Night since Matt and Gabe are really the two people that breathed light into my love of the dark and the entire crew of instructors there are amongst the very best in the world at what they do...

I'd also like to give a shout out to Oben Tripods who came through with a loan of two very cool tripods that made this possible when I had a couple of sets of sticks bite the dust. They were light, strong, held up to my knucklehead behavior with flying colors. Loans always turn into purchases but this is worth it. 

This top image was 900 seconds with the D810 and 20 1.8 with a 16 stop Neutral Density filter. The colors and light shifted dramatically during the exposure giving that hard break in the sky. Great location at Barker Dam in the middle of the park.

This last image was the last image i took in the park. 1247 seconds with the Nikon D5 and the 20 1.8. Not what I wanted. (it never is) but I really like the way it came out anyway...The flare at the top is the moon starting to creep in to the image as it moved down through the sky during those 20 minutes... 

JCPHOTOMEDIA.NET JCPHOTOMEDIA.NET JCPHOTOMEDIA.NET JCPHOTOMEDIA.NET By JC Carey for jcphotomedia.com JCPHOTOMEDIA.NET JCPHOTOMEDIA.NET By JC Carey for jcphotomedia.com JCPHOTOMEDIA.NET By JC Carey for jcphotomedia.com By JC Carey for jcphotomedia.com By JC Carey for jcphotomedia.com By JC Carey for jcphotomedia.com

JCPHOTOMEDIA.NET