During our recent visit to Death Valley, Cathy and I continued our exploration of night photography. On our first night out we went up to Zabriskie Point. The moon had not yet risen and we obtained some wonderful images.
A few nights later I realized that we would have a waxing crescent moon. That day we had been to Badwater and marveled at the immense salt flats and polygon salt formations. Thinking back upon our experiences at Arches National Park I realized that we could perhaps use the moon light to illuminate the salt pan while still getting a beautiful sky full of stars.
We got down to Badwater at about 9 pm and set up our equipment. After a few test shots to establish the proper exposure we got to work. The following shot was the result.
Exposure for this shot was 20 seconds, f 2.8, ISO 3200 using a 17 mm lens mounted on a Nikon D700. I turned on long term noise reduction to reduce the amount of noise in the sky. The salt pan was brightened somewhat in post production to improve the image.
Give it a try.
Mark
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