Painting with the Colors of the Wind

I wanted to test out the new G+ embeddable posts. You can scroll through the comments on my G+ post here, comments are updated live, and if you comment here it will be reflected on the actual G+ post. I like the idea of seamless interaction between multiple sites and I'm glad to see that more options are being rolled out. I think this is some pretty cool functionality, though I'm not sure I would use it often.

I took this Milky Way photo at Anza-Borrego Desert State Park last week. My favorite desert shooting buddy Peter Tellone met me out there because it was the last new moon of the summer and neither of us wanted to miss it. Landscape shooters are usually loners but Peter and I like shooting together because we just do our own thing; we usually grab our gear and head in opposite directions without saying a word and it's enough to know that someone is around in case one of us gets eaten by coyotes. And it's nice to have some company when you're hanging around waiting for the light to change.

It was well over 100° night, the light wind felt like it was blowing straight out of hell and it was incredibly humid. Definitely the hottest late night temperatures we've encountered this year (I can't count the record-setting day we went to Death Valley because we left shortly after sunset). I drank a case of water in a few hours of shooting and was drenched with sweat the entire time but we were rewarded with the most amazing sunset that either of us has ever seen at Font's Point (those photos to come). We were a bit worried about trying to photograph the Milky Way with all of the clouds in the sky but I really like the sense of movement that the clouds convey and the way they picked up the colors from the city lights.