A Dose of Perspective

Celestial Reflection, Milky Way Over the Colorado River, Grand Canyon
Sony a7SIII
Sony 20mm f/1.8 G
ISO 12800
f/1.8
30 seconds

Nothing in my life delivers a more potent dose of perspective than viewing the world from the bottom of the Grand Canyon. Days are spent at the mercy of the Colorado River, alternately drifting and hurtling beneath mile-high rock layers that reveal more than a billion years of Earth story. And when the sun goes down, the ceiling transforms into a cosmological light show, each stellar pinpoint representing a different instant in our galaxy’s past.

I’ve done this raft trip eight times now—long enough to know that when I stop doing it, the night sky is what I’ll miss most. To ensure the darkest skies (and the most stars), each trip is timed around the lunar minimum when the moon’s only appearance is a thin crescent is shortly before sunrise or after sunset. For most of my rafters, these are the darkest skies they’ll ever see—so dark that the Milky Way actually casts a faint shadow.

While cloudless nights down here always deliver a seemingly impossible display of stars, viewing the glowing core of our Milky Way galaxy is never assured. In the Northern Hemisphere, even when the galactic core reaches its highest point, it’s still relatively low in the southern sky. So, given the Grand Canyon’s general east/west orientation (high walls north and south), the best Milky Way views are usually blocked by the canyon’s towering walls. But these trips spend the first two nights in the north/south-trending Marble Canyon stretch of Grand Canyon, where we can enjoy open views of the north and south sky. And even after the canyon’s westward bend just downstream from the Little Colorado River confluence, a few fortuitous twists in the river open more nice southern views.

Campsites along the Colorado River are all first-come, first-served—if you set your sights on a Milky Way spot and arrive to find it occupied, there’s no option but to continue downstream. Over the years my (incomparable) guides and I have become pretty adept at identifying and (equally important) securing the best sites for Milky Way views—if the weather cooperates, we always score one or (usually) more quality Milky Way shoots.

One more Grand Canyon Milky Way obstacle I should mention is that even in the most favorable locations, the galactic core doesn’t rotate into the slot between the canyon walls until around 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning. Often rafters go to bed with every intention of rising to photograph it, but when the time comes to rise and shoot, their resolve has burrowed somewhere deep in the cozy folds of their sleeping bags. The best antidote for this is willpower, bolstered by bedtime preparation. To assist my rafters, I prescribe at the very least:

1. Pick your campsite strategically, with the Milky Way in mind. (The first thing I do when we land is let everyone know where the Milky Way will appear.) That means either setting up your cot or tent with a good view of the southern sky, or at a place with easy access (in pitch darkness) to your desired shooting spot.
2. Before going to bed, identify your composition, set up your camera, lens, and tripod, set your exposure (a relative constant that I’m able to help with), and focus at infinity.
3. Have your camera ready atop the tripod and beside your cot (or outside your tent) when you go to bed. Some people just wake and shoot from their campsite (sometimes not even leaving their cot), but I usually prefer walking down to the river for the best possible foreground.
4. Better still, if it can be done without risk of someone stumbling over it in the dark, leave the camera composed and focused at your predetermined shooting spot. But if this spot happens to be beside the river, check with the guides because the river level fluctuates on a known schedule (based on releases from Glen Canyon Dam timed for peak flow during peak electricity demand, and distance downstream).

I’ve learned that it isn’t practical to plan a group shoot for the wee hours of the morning, so I let people know when I plan to be up and where I’ll be, then let them decide whether to join me, choose their own time or place, or just stay in bed.

Regardless of the night’s Milky Way plan, I always forego the available but optional tent in favor of the unrivaled celestial ceiling. At home I’m a read-until-the-book-drops-to-my-chest guy, but down here I just lie flat on my back with my eyes locked heavenward, scanning for meteors, constellations, and satellites until my eyelids fail me. Here’s a sample of the mind-boggling thoughts that crowd my mind as I gaze:

• The light from every single pinpoint up there was created at a different time, and took many, sometimes thousands of, years to reach us—I really am peering back into the past.
• That streaking meteor was no larger than a pea and had probably been drifting around the solar system for millions, or billions, of years.
• Many of these stars host planets capable of hosting life.
• Our Milky Way galaxy is home to 10 times as many stars as there are people on Earth.
• For each star in the Milky Way, there are at least 20, and possibly as many as 200, galaxies in the Universe—many with trillions of stars.

Mind sufficiently boggled, I’ll eventually drift off to sleep (resistance is futile), but am fortunate that I don’t usually need to set an alarm to wake up—at bedtime I just tell myself what time I want to be up and trust my body’s clock. Then I psych myself into getting up by thinking I’m just going to fire off a dozen or so frames and then go back to bed. Of course I usually end up staying out much longer—always when there are others up and needing help, but often just because once I’m awake, the sky is just too beautiful to go back to sleep.

Rising for the galactic core’s arrival gives a good two or three hours of quality Milky Way time before the sky starts to brighten noticeably in the camera, sometime around 4:00 a.m. (the eyes don’t see the brightening for another half hour or so). I use all that dark time to work on a variety of compositions and exposure settings, sometimes moving around, but often staying put and just letting the Milky Way do the moving across the scene, from one side of the canyon to the other.

Since the “star” of the Grand Canyon night images is the sky, and vertical orientation gives me more of the vertically oriented Milky Way framed by the canyon’s vertical walls, my initial compositions are usually vertical. But the longer I do this, the more I’ve tried to lean into horizontal compositions as well, giving the canyon walls billing equal to the Milky Way.

Today I’m sharing a newly processed image from my 2021 raft trip—you can read the story of this night, and see a vertical version of the scene, here. This spot has become one of my favorite campsites because of the way, when the flow is just right, the water here spreads and pools at an extreme bend in the river. The reflection this night was spectacular, probably the best I’ve ever seen here, and (needless to say) I got very little sleep.

FYI

This image (like all of my images) is a single click (no compositing of multiple frames) with no artificial light added (no light painting or any other light besides stars and skylight). I was using my 20mm f/1.8 lens, which was wide enough, but I sure wish I’d have had the 14mm f/1.8 that was on order but didn’t arrive on time.

I had to skip the 2023 Grand Canyon raft trip, but am excited to be returning in May of 2024—and I just scheduled my 2025 trip.

Milky Way Favorites (one click—no blending)

Click any image to scroll through the gallery LARGE

Celestial Ribbon, Colorado River, Grand Canyon

Bristlecone Night, Milky Way from the White Mountains, California

Milky Way Reflection, Lake Wakatipu, New Zealand

Looking Up, Milky Way and Mauna Kea Gemini Observatory, Hawaii

Fire and Mist, Halemaumau Crater, Kilauea, Hawaii

Milky Way Reflection, Colorado River, Grand Canyon

Winter Night, Milky Way Above Tasman Lake, New Zealand

Celestial Reflection, Milky Way Over the Colorado River, Grand Canyon

Sky Light,The Milky Way and City Lights, Lake Wanaka, New Zealand

Dark Night, Milky Way Above the Colorado River, Grand Canyon

Milky Way and the Southern Alps, Mt. Cook / Aoraki National Park, New Zealand

Starfire, Halemaumau Crater, Kilauea, Hawaii

Milky Way Reflection, South Tufa, Mono Lake

Milky Way and Small Magellanic Cloud, Lake Wakatipu, New Zealand

Night Fire, Milky Way Above Kilauea Caldera, Hawaii

Stairway to Heaven, Milky Way Over the Puna Coast, Hawaii

Moonlight and Milky Way, Lake Wakatipu, New Zealand

Milky Way Reflection, Colorado River, Grand Canyon

Glow, Milky Way Above Kilauea, Hawaii

Milky Way, Nun’s Veil and Tasman River, Mt. Cook / Aoraki National Park, New Zealand

Milky Way and SpaceX Falcon 9, Wotan’s Throne, Grand Canyon

Fire on High, Kilauea and Milky Way, Hawaii