Star Gazing at Moon Rock

With the goal of shooting the Milky-Way, we planned our first adventure of the year.
“Heel up, reel up, bring it back-come-rewind”
I was having a text conversation with my friend, Gary; early January. He said something like “I’m ready to go stargazing, man”. I did some quick research, pulling up the lunar calendar online, to find that there was no moon (new moon) on Friday, January 27th. I hit him with those facts, and just like that, we had a plan.
Location: because of light-pollution, we know from experience that we have to get away from the bay and other largely populated areas. Altitude helps as well, but we can’t go too high, being that it’s the middle of winter and road conditions can be sketchy the higher you go. Factoring in weather, it boiled down to a tried-and-true location in the Stanislaus National Forest we lovingly call “Moon Rock”.
Date and location set, I put the invitation out to a couple of friends, and the plans were all set.
Friday the 27th came: I got off of work, went home, gathered all my stuff. My boy Alex came to the house. We were picked up shortly after by the man Rush, with Best and his girl in pursuit. A couple hours later we were at our destination.
It all happened so quickly. One moment, I’m chillin’, bullshittin’ and laughing. Next thing I know, tripods are being set-up with the quickness. The sky was full of stars. I cracked a brew, and went to work, myself.
Snap

Crackle

Pop

So many stars, it looks like fucking chaos

Messed around with my ISO setting to experiment and see what worked and what didn’t

Then, I caught the boys messing around. I went in for further investigation.

Thanks to Rush for running around with a flashlight for that shot.
I walked away from the group to shoot our base of operations, and caught what is probably one of the best shots I got that night.

And so went most of the night. We drank, we ate, we bullshitted until the sun came up.

In the golden hour I captured my girl

And a caught the boys at work

With the sun out and shining, we decided to head to Yosemite

But we got there, and they wanted to charge us 30 bucks per car and we had to buy snow chains… we declined. Instead deciding to find a place to BBQ in the snow.

Grillmaster.
And that was pretty much it. After we ate and had a last beer, we headed home from our short adventure.
Many thanks to everybody that made this trip possible.