Milky Way Over Bisbee, Arizona
During our recent trip Arizona, I was presented with many opportunities to take some great photographs. After our first day of filming in Bisbee, I headed out after sunset to attempt to capture the glow of the old city nestled amongst the hills.
At first, my goal for the evening was to capture a time-lapse of the stars as they passed over the small town. My only concern was overexposing the city as the sky was much darker. I tested the shot and my concern was a reality. I decided to turn the camera around and capture stars passing over a small cliff along the roadway. Because of the darkness and absence of big-city streetlights, framing the composition proved to be quite a struggle. I ended up having to expose the image for 30 seconds to see the frame, then adjust as best I could, expose again, etc. until I was happy with the frame. I then set the camera up to take a 30-second exposure every minute. After 2 hours I didn’t feel like I was capturing anything worth while, so I decided to look for another spot.
The resulting time-lapse:
I headed a little bit north of town and found a small road that doubled back. From there I found an even smaller road, fronted with signs warning of rough terrain and 4-wheel drive recommendations. Naturally, I it looked like a good idea to me. After winding up the steep, dirt and rock road for a mile, I decided to turn around as I couldn’t really see a shot I wanted. No sooner than beginning my descent, I saw exactly what I wanted to capture. I was high above the town I was just in, and could see the ridge line of the mountains it lay nestled in. I looked up to see if the stars were clear and interesting enough, and to my amazement I was able to see the Milky Way with my naked eye. I spotted it last year in Pittsburgh without any technological assistance and since then it’s been my goal to capture it in an image.
Pittsburgh weather isn’t the best for starlight photography, so I decided to take advantage of this opportunity and grabbed the camera and tripod.
Keep in mind I was still sitting on a dark and narrow dirt road, with a rock wall on side and a cliff on the other. I was nervous so I set up quickly. I took a few test shots and realized I couldn’t get the whole scene in frame with the lenses I had available. I then decided to try a panorama, something I’ve never done at night before. So I took 2 columns of 4 rows (8 pictures total) with each image exposed for 30 seconds. Because of the nature of the shot, I decided against trying to time-lapse what I saw. I was also worried about blocking the road, and it was well after 2am, so I decided to head home after the being awake since 5am.
Below is the resulting image after stitching it together:
