I stood on Dante’s Peak in the dead of night, alone except for the stars. They were twinkling like the lights of Los Angeles from 30,000 feet. It was 3 a.m. and the Milky Way was high in the sky and 5,000 feet below me a vast expanse 100 miles across unfolded into Death Valley National Park and Badwater Basin, the lowest point in the United States.
I setup my tripod and started shooting into the night.
I had ventured out to Death Valley in the throes of an obscene 118-degree heat wave to see the Milky Way with the new Nikon D810a astro camera I had just bought in an area with minimal light pollution. The camera boasts lower noise at higher ISOs, and a special IR Cut Filter, which allows certain wavelengths of light to shine through which normally wouldn't, producing surprisingly vivid images of space.
Avoiding the heat during the day, I started from the east end of the park at Badwater, slowly working my way back towards Furnace Creek, and then up to Zabriskie Point and Dante’s View. I stopped at the “Elevation, Sea Level” sign and imagined the Pacific Ocean throwing double barrels over my head.
Sitting on the Devil’s Golf Course in a salt encrusted hexagon, I was shooting in temperatures over 100 degrees at night, in stinging hot wind. Waiting for the exposures and noise reduction to finish I killed the time drinking an ice-cold Mojave River IPA, listening to the Doors song “People are Strange.”
I guess sitting at the lowest elevation in the United States, in 106 degree weather, at midnight, to make pictures, is a bit strange. I wouldn’t have it any other way.
I finished shooting at 3:00 a.m., exhausted but convinced that the D810a is indeed a superior camera for capturing normal nighttime shots all the way to the Milky Way. By then the night had also cooled to a respectable 70 degrees due to the elevation, and it was pure bliss, on top of the mountain, on top of the world.