September 2026 (One Month - One Picture)

Explore Landscapes #126

The opportunity arose to spend 3 nights in the Alabama Hills and I jumped at the chance—especially as it coincided with new moon. For me, new moon means astrophotography.

Milky Way and Mobius Arch (Alabama Hills) | © 2026 Jon Norris

September 2026 | Alabama Hills | Huntington Beach | Joshua Tree

After spending so much time in the mountains during August (while I was trekking across the Eastern Sierras) I was keen to get back to them after a few weeks in civilization. I would argue, however, that the wilderness is far more civilized that everyday life.

The opportunity arose to spend 3 nights in the Alabama Hills and I jumped at the chance—especially as it coincided with new moon. For me, new moon means astrophotography. I’d seen so many images of the arches in the Alabama Hills and was keen to go scout them for a future workshop.

The full image of the Milky Way and Mobius Arch (Alabama Hills) | © 2026 Jon Norris

I had a great time exploring the arches of Alabama Hills: Mobius Arch (by far the most famous of the arches), Boot Arch, The Eye of Alabama, and the Cyclops Skull Arch.

Unsurprisingly, I wasn’t the first photographer to arrive at Mobius Arch the night I was shooting. However, I found a good spot to shoot from, set up my composition, and then waited for the end of astronomical twilight.

While I was shooting a batch of 10 images (to stack to reduce noise) one of the other photographers lit up the arch without checking if anyone else was shooting. Not good form when you can see other photogs are also shooting. It would have been nice for him to have asked whether anyone was shooting. Anywho.

However, in this instance, I liked the resulting image as the light was sufficiently low level and didn’t flood the arch with tooi much light.

This image is straight out of camera without any post processing.