March 2025 (One Month - One Picture)

Explore Landscapes #83

An image resulting from a happy (photographic) accident, combining over exposure and a red headlamp with a side of dramatic unwanted clouds and disappearing stars.

I think something went wrong | © 2025 Jon Norris

March 2025 | Joshua Tree (CA)

It’s been a month since my last post. Wow … those four weeks went by super fast. Long story short, a hectic two-week business trip that exhausted me, then a week or so being sick (caused by the exhausting business trip). I’ve really missed my writing ‘habit’, and it feels really good to be back.

March marked the start of my dark sky photography workshop season as the MIlky Way galactic core is visible in the Northern hemisphere from March thru October each year.

Early on in the ‘season’, the core is not visible above the horizon until about 1:30am. So it’s a long wait from the end of astronomical twilight, 8:30pm (the start of nighttime) until then.

I want to give a shout-out to my workshop client Kim for braving the cold weather and being prepared to wait it out until the core showed up. The evening started with a clear sky, so once it was dark we shot a couple of star trail time lapse sequences (which take about a minimum of an hour each).

As we were wrapping up our second star trail time lapse we noticed that a bank of clouds was starting to form to the West of us. Sure enough, the weather did not play ball, the clouds made a dramatic appearance, and the stars disappeared. We were not going to see the Milky Way that night.

The image I chose for March is what I would call a happy accident. I decided to shoot that night with a lens I’ve never used for dark sky photography before - a 24mm f/1.8 lens. This test shot is completely over-exposed (during a new moon you can’t actually see stars and detail in the foreground). And to add insult to injury, I forgot to switch off my red headlamp.