Day to Night: Joshua Tree National Park

When the sun goes down in the desert, a sprawling blanket of stars and moon illuminate the subtle outline of nature’s contour. Welcome to Joshua Tree National Park. This is nature’s amphitheater that showcases kaleidoscopic view of ancient light projected on dark night skies.

Joshua Tree National Park is merely 3 hours drive east of Los Angeles and it is one of the closest national parks to visit from the city (with Sequoia/Kings Canyon NP roughly 3 1/2 hours). The park is located where Sonoran and Mojave Deserts meet, and it is expansive home for worldly known Joshua Trees. If complete sense of isolation and lazy galaxy gaze is your jam, this is the place to go. My plan was to visit the park before sundown and document the day (and night) in the life of this grandiose place. My friend Warren has offered help to make this spontaneous trip happen and we drove out LA in the early afternoon to reach Joshua Tree National Park by evening around 6pm. Arrival timing was perfect to catch the glimpse of Joshua Tree in broad daylight just before descending sun doused the entire sight into tangerine orange daylight.

Warren staring off distance on top of rocks near Ryan Campground

Once the sun disappeared beyond mountains, the early evening gradient started to paint the landscape with layer of royal blue. It was getting closer to optimal night photography time. We drove east to White Tank Campground to stand by for star gazing at Arch Rock.

En route from Ryan Campground to White Tank, we’ve stopped at Hall of Horrors solely appealed by its name. This was not a mistake. The place holds great quality for rock climbing and exploration to the open desert. Nice quick stopover to snap the ghostly appearance of Joshua Trees in dimming daylight.

Arch Rock Trail is easy 0.3mile stroll from White Tank Campground that leads to quite impressive view of arch rock formation similarly to what you can see in the great national parks in Utah like Arches National Park and Capitol Reef National Park.

I was determined to photograph the tapestry of stars over the arch. We’ve reached the facade of arch rock using the beam of torch light as the only guidance to scramble up the rocks. On top of rather slick rock surface we set up tripod mounted with Sony A7S2 (aka the beast) and calibrated the shutter speed and focus to get the pictures right. First several attempts were total act of blindness and focus was awfully off, but I have figured out a trick to flicker my torch light to shine the arch while I focus my lens (aggravating the other photographers in the process). Proceeding shots came out quite nice and I started to feel comfortable with shutter speed and illumination combination to get the desirable glow on the arch foreground.

My best shot of the night at the arch. f1.4/T30 seconds. Torch light was aimed to the ground underneath the arch and illuminated for about 6 seconds. The result produced soft bounce light to reveal the bottom part of the arch.

After spending about 2 hours at the arch, we went back to White Tank Campground to the car. On the way back to the parking lot I was stopped constantly by fascinating night views. Once again, Sony A7S2 has proven the power of ultra-sensitive sensor to capture some of the best night photography I’ve ever taken with literally just a torch light.

Here’s tips for your night photography needs:

  • Equip the camera with fastest lens you own. f1.4 or faster is must.
  • Bring tripod that does its job right. No wobbly tripod!
  • Set the shutter speed to 30 seconds, use remote or self-timer to release the shutter.
  • Focus the subject by shining a light to the subject before disengaging the shutter.
  • Use flashlight to illuminate the foreground subject for about 5-6 seconds. Make sure to aim the light away from the subject; use the ground or pale rock to bounce the light off to the main subject this will create nice contrast between light and shadow areas.

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Joshua Tree National Park visitors information can be found on NPS website.

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