I have an aversion to being in nature with lots of people, to me it is a sanctuary to decompress and a break from that which keeps me from hearing myself. I will occasionally invite one other person on a limited basis, but I prefer to be alone. The problem anymore is finding a place where you can be alone. There are simply too many people around, especially in the summer. I have recently decided that after the Labor Day holiday is a good time to go to the Uinta Mountains. I went back in 2020 on Labor Day monday and stayed overnight, having a blast lying in my truck and listening to thunder echo back and forth and the sound of the rain. It was amazingly soothing. I ran away this last Labor Day too, but didn't get any rain. I took my motorcycle for a little dirt road riding and I also took my camera to try for a few astrophotography shots and general mischef.

I had partial clouds and some pretty skies. The waxing moon was a bit bright and I had more light pollution than I wanted which kind of annoyed me. But I did come back with some fun photos I wanted to share. Walking around the lake the afternoon I arrived was a blast, we used to camp there every summer as a kid and fish till I was sick of it. I was too pensive to take photos sitting at our fishing hole, but a little ways further around the lake I found a sky reflection I liked. The abstract distortion of clouds and sky make for more interest than the sky alone.

Sunset the first night was subtly beautiful, the wind calming especially in the little lagoon by my campsite that is more protected than the main part of the lake. Guess this is why the call it Mirror Lake.   

Repeating the theme of just the sky reflected in the lake worked here, surprisingly I did little post processing to this photo.   

I do not remember these trees, partially as this is a part of the lake we seldom walked to, we had our fishing hole and went back and forth from the campsite but never seemed to find the time to hike around the lake. I found them photogenic and a nice accent. I do believe that the picture would be less without them.   

Bald Mountain is the dominating feature to the west.   

Waiting for the moon to set required getting out of a warm sleeping bag, which was not what I was hoping for  to be honest. I like being comfy, It works for me, quite well thank you very much. One of the many hard parts of astrophotography and milky way photos in particular is the perspective and scale of the sky. Even with very wide angle lenses it is extremely difficult to place a foreground and still get adequate sky as well. This photos is actually a panorama take with an already ultra wide Pentax 15-30 lens at 15mm. The stitching software introduced a little distortion but I think it is a good start. I will likely extend further to the right the next time I try and get more of the eastern portion of the Milky Way included. I think it would improve the shape somewhat.   

As a technical aside, there are several things you need for this type of photography I am about to show: A really solid tripod, some type of remote release to keep vibrations from affecting sharpness. You need a fast lens with aperture of f2.8 or wider and typically a wide to ultrawide lens. My Pentax K1mii and Pentax 15-30 f2.8 qualify, as well as my Rokinon 12mm f2.8 fisheye lens which I also used. There is a lot more than that, but honestly I am not qualified to really teach about it. I need to take some classes and play with it more. My settings are 1600ISO f2.8 and usually 30 seconds exposure. I probably should use 3200 ISO and let the camera do some noise reduction as it likely does it better than I can in post processing. I like what I got but there is a fair amount of noise from the sensor if you look too closely. Anywhoo, here are some of the photos I captured.

I love this perspective. Looking up through the trees and seeing that sky really makes me happy.

 This photo was quite a long exposure, I almost let it go too long and as dawn was approaching I lost a few of the fainter stars. I also had an early morning hiker who didn't know he was being captured.  

Thats it for this post. Hope you enjoyed it!