Desert Dreams

This is my first official photograph of 2014. It seems like the last three years or so each year has started off at this location. This is one of my special places. You are almost guaranteed silence and solitude, and the overall scenery is just incredibly beautiful. I sometimes lose myself when I'm out here because I am just so taken in by the peaks and expansive views this location offers. I wanted to work on some night photography with my new canon 6d, so my friend and I decided to head out to this spot in hopes of catching some stars. We arrived well before sunset to scout our compositions and make sure we had our shots in focus as we were likely to wait for quite a long time for the stars to emerge. I knew the moon was going to be out, and it was perfectly situated to our right and relatively low. It was quite clear when we arrived, but soon enough clouds began to float over the peaks and some stuck around for sunset creating beautiful pink skies over the landscape. They quickly cleared after the light show and the desert began to transition from day to night. About an hour later I decided to start doing some long exposures to catch some streaking clouds. I took a few when I realized these beautiful pink streaking clouds on the LCD screen. These were not visible to our eyes, so I was quite excited to have these conditions. A perfectly positioned cloud appeared to emanate from the peaks and decided I got the shot I had been looking for. The faint star trails were a nice addition to the pink clouds and created an otherworldly atmosphere. I tend to use that quite a bit lately, but consider I am from the southwest, and everything is pretty much otherworldly out here! Some technical things to mention. This is a blend of two exposures. One before the stars appeared for the landscape to have everything completely in focus, and another one once the stars were out to capture them nice and crisp along with the peaks which was about two minutes.