Eloquent Images by Gary Hart
Insight, information, and inspiration for the inquisitive nature photographer
Memory Lane
Milky Way, Grand Canyon (Tyndall Dome, Wallace Butte, Mt. Huethawali)
Canon EOS-5D Mark III
Zeiss 28mm f/2.0
30 seconds
F/2
ISO 6400
So, a few weeks ago I started moving all of my images to a 72 Terabyte Synology NAS system (configured as a RAID 6). This may very well be overkill, but it’s the kind of thing that happens when your son-in-law does IT. The image storage paradigm I’m replacing was a hash of hard drives that was long on redundancy and data security, but short on organization—I could find every image I had stored, but heaven help the person tasked with managing my estate in the event of my untimely demise.
An inevitable byproduct of this image management recalibration is opening random folders and running into long forgotten images from past trips. Which is how last week I somehow found myself sucked back into 2014, the year I switched to Sony, the first year of serious exploration of the spectacular Columbia River Gorge with Don Smith, and the year of my very first Grand Canyon raft trip.
Even now I remember that one of my prime motivations for rafting the Grand Canyon was the opportunity to go to sleep beneath impossibly dark skies brimming with more stars than I’d ever seen in my life. To ensure the darkest skies possible, I scheduled this trip (and every subsequent trip) for a new moon. And to avoid the summer heat and a muddy monsoon-season Colorado River, I chose May—when the Milky Way doesn’t rise above the canyon walls until well after midnight.
In 2014 I was still shooting Canon. Knowing that my 5DIII struggled at the extreme ISOs necessary to photograph in such darkness, the first couple of nights I stuck to star trails. Nevertheless, after a couple of nights of choosing sleep, I couldn’t resist giving the Milky Way a shot. This image from our third night was my first Milky Way attempt on that trip. When I processed it way back in 2014, I was pretty disappointed with the amount of noise. I reprocessed it this week, and between much better noise processing software (Topaz DeNoise AI) and a lot more experience processing Milky Way images, I’m much happier with my result—nowhere near what I get with my Sonys, but good enough.
I actually blogged about this image and the whole night photography experience of that first raft trip way back in 2014, so rather than try to reconstruct 6-year old memories from scratch, I’ve dusted off that original post and polished it up a bit to share here.
GCRT 2014 after dark, day one
We started at 4:30 a.m. when the group gathered in our Las Vegas hotel for the trip to the put-in point at Lee’s Ferry. So come dark, I was dead and ready for bed. (Foolishly) imagining that my home bedtime reading habit would transfer seamlessly to the Grand Canyon, I’d packed a couple of books to drift off to sleep to, but just five minutes into that first night I discarded that folly and simply basked in starlight, utterly mesmerized by the volume and variety of stars, constellations, planets, shooting stars, and satellites overhead. I fought sleep like a two-year-old at nap time—if I would have had access to duct tape I’d have considered taping my eyelids to my forehead.
GCRT 2014 after dark, day two
Topping off a long but relatively quiet day on the river, for our second night we’d tied up our two rafts at a fantastic campsite with a wide downriver view that opened to the southern sky. Immediately after dinner (before the darkness made composing and focusing extremely difficult) I had everyone line up along the river to set up their shots and focus. I gave a little orientation to everyone who was new to night photography, then we all just kicked back and waited for nightfall.
When the sky darkened and the stars popped out, we had a blast photographing star trails and pinpoint stars above the river. By 10:00 or so, long before the Milky Way rotated into view, everyone was ready for sleep. When I told the group that the best time to photograph the Milky Way would be between 2:00 and 4:00 a.m., there wasn’t a lot of enthusiasm—if I’d have known then what I know now, that open views of the southern sky are relatively rare at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, I’d have encouraged everyone with Milky Way aspirations not to pass this opportunity.
GCRT 2014 after dark, day three
Day three was all about the rapids, which seemed to come fast and furious all day, rarely allowing more than a few minutes of calm water before we had to hold on tight and “suck rubber” for the next one. Unkar, Hance, Crystal, Granite, the gem series, to name a few highlights, were simultaneously thrilling and chilling to us whitewater novices. And also physically draining.
At about 5:00 p.m., equal parts exhilarated and exhausted, we set up camp near the canyon’s 110-milestone. Despite my fatigue, I couldn’t help notice that there just might be enough southern sky for the Milky Way’s brilliant core to appear. Even so, not even another fantastic dinner could completely recharge the group, and for most the visions of a night photography marathon quickly succumbed to the gravitational pull of cot and sleeping bag. Nevertheless, I was one day smarter and had started to realize that this might be the best opportunity to try the Milky Way.
I’ll start by going back to the orientation delivered by lead river guide Wiley as it pertains to the evacuation of, uhhh, personal liquid waste: Peeing. Contrary to everything I’d learned from a lifetime of camping and backpacking, Wiley gave us very emphatic instructions to pee nowhere but in the river. That’s right. Apparently the Colorado River’s volume will sufficiently dilute the pee of the several hundred people enjoying the Grand Canyon from the river any given time; the alternative, we learned, would be all these visitors targeting the ubiquitous riverside sand to turn each campsite and trail into a giant litter-box. To achieve this goal the women were issued handy little buckets that allowed them to evacuate their bladders wherever they felt comfortable, then discreetly deposit the contents in the river; the guys, on the other hand, were expected to simply find a relatively private spot and apply the tried and true ready-aim-fire approach.
Before we first hit the river, even before the bathroom lecture, Wiley had also admonished the group about the hazards of dehydration, imploring us to consume copious amounts of water day and night. While this strategy achieved the desired effect (no one in the group succumbed to dehydration), an unfortunate byproduct was nature’s inevitable call in the, uh, “wee” hours of the morning. But what could all this possibly have to do with photographing the Milky Way?
Knowing that there was a pretty good chance nature would send me trekking down to the river at around two or three in the morning anyway, the last thing I did before crawling into my sleeping bag that night was mount my camera on my tripod, attach my 28mm Zeiss f2 (my night lens at the time), focus it at infinity, and dial in all the exposure settings necessary for a Milky Way shoot.
When I woke at around two o’clock the next morning, I hopped from my sleeping bag, grabbed my tripod/camera, and made my way down the river. (You’d be amazed at the amount of light cast by starlight in a deep canyon with no other light source.) At the river I quickly set up this shot, clicked my shutter, and went about the rest of my business. As a life-long Northern Californian, I’m accustomed to sharing delicious fresh water with parched and thirsty Los Angeles—standing there, I couldn’t help find comfort in the knowledge of the ultimate destination of my current contribution to the Colorado River.
As with all my images, this one was captured with one click. While this may not be the best way to technical perfection in a Milky Way image (blending one frame exposed for the sky and one frame exposed for the foreground yields more detail with less noise), I prefer exercising my creativity in my camera, not my computer. This isn’t a judgement of those who do otherwise, it’s simply the way I find my joy in photography. Shooting with the Canon 5DIII, this one-click goal was especially difficult, so I’m actually relatively happy with my results here.
Grand Canyon Top and Bottom
Click an image for a closer look, and to view a slide show.
Eloquent Images by Gary Hart 
Gary,
This is truly a collection of which you should be extremely proud. I have never seen so many exquisite photos of the Grand Canyon. Congratulations on your superior collection. The story is fun too!
Sherm and I continue to enjoy our photography even with the interruptions of sweet grandchildren. We have five now to keep us busy. Only the first one is a boy. We have upgraded to Nikon D 500 cameras and we are pleased with our results so far.
Cheers to you and Don!
Marilyn Eaton
Thanks so much, Marilyn. Boy, do I miss the Grand Canyon—so bummed I couldn’t do my raft trip this year, but crossing my fingers for the monsoon in August. Wow, five grandkids! I remember on our first trip you and the Podestas were lamenting the dearth of grandchildren, and now you’re ahead of me (5-3). Of course I fully understand that the real goal is to stay ahead of the Podestas—hope that’s working out for you.