Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest

Made from 5 light frames (captured with a NIKON D850) by Starry Landscape Stacker 1.6.4. Algorithm: Median - This tree is estimated to be 4000 years old. I used an IRIX 15mm lens - awesome lens!

• Pablo Picasso.

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Another old shot from California, this time of the priceless Bristlecone pine, some of which are in the record books as some of the oldest trees on the planet. This particular grove, known as the Methuselah Grove is considered the home of the oldest two trees on earth. This place is in the white mountains on the eastern side of California and is home to some of the most spectacular scenery in the US.

Due to their elevated location, I have found that here the sky is mostly devoid of haze, which ever prevalent in California, often provides a sharp contrast to the old branches of these stunning trees. Hope you all like it.

• Eddie Huang.

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When I decided to do the impromptu trip to Bishop to capture the last proper view of the Galactic core of the milky way galaxy, I was only planning to get there before complete darkness set in. So I took the drive in a leisurely pace and was happy when I pulled in to the parking lot of the Schulman grove while the sun was just setting. It was freezing cold and I quickly got covered up with my mid-layer, puffer, and wind jacket and hiked up the trail to this particular Bristlecone Pine tree. The weirdest part was I started to get breathless as I gained elevation and realized that I was overheating, the slope where this tree is located was actually pretty warm.

Anyways as I got to the tree, I noticed that there was still some light by the peaks in the Sierra and quickly set up an evening shot on the slopes. I used a fallen tree log as my foreground interest and set the focus point on the tree. I had to be quick with the shot as there were other photographers who were setting up shots all around me. So I didn’t get enough time to figure out the hyperfocal distance or to use Nikon's focus shift photography setting to get the foreground in focus. But since I wanted to stress on the interesting shape of the pine and the color in the sky, I am not too worried about the lack of focus on the foreground, but generally, as a rule, its always good to make sure the closest objects in the frame are in sharp focus.

Again, this is a very simple shot with no filters or any other complicated settings. This was taken in aperture priority with iso locked in the lowest setting. I metered the shot using the brightest point in the sky as the D850 has epic shadow recovery ability and balanced the light in the image by dialing in exposure compensation referring the RGB histogram.

This was in my list of things to do but I have never thought I will fulfill my dream so soon. You will not appreciate this place unless you know that...

• Sarah Williams.

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One of the true reasons that propelled me to make the hastily planned trip to Bishop was the fact was that Monday night was the last possible opportunity to do Milky Way shot for the year. The core of the Milky Way will not be properly visible until at least March of next year. Since I was on a roll with the Trona Pinnacles last month, I wanted to continue the momentum and keep on shooting the stars.

This shot was on my mind since the first time I visited Schulman Grove and saw this bristlecone pine tree that was precariously located on a crumbling slope of the white mountains. It's perfectly positioned for a milky way shot of the tree with the Sierra Nevada mountains as the backdrop. I pretty much drove all day from LA to get to Inyo National Forest just as the sun was about to set and lugged my camera bag on the steep trail to claim a spot for the planned night shot.

This spot has so little light pollution, we saw the core of the Milky Way before the blue hour was over. And iso 2000 was more than enough to get a great shot, usually, I must dial the iso between 3200 to 8000. I got a chance to employ low-level lighting one more time with my LED panel and the results were great. Hope you all like it.

• Lord Byron.

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Here is one more shot from my trip to the Bristlecone Pine Grove at Schulman Grove in the White Mountains to get the last proper Milky Way’s shot of the year. This location in the white mountains is a hidden gem of the Sierras. I found this location a couple of years ago by a total accident. We were spending a week-long summer vacation in Bishop and was staying at a hotel close to the Visitor Center for the Schulman Grove. This a basically a small shack with a noticeboard next to glacier point campground on the intersection between Rt 395 and Rt 168. After seeing some photos at the noticeboard, we decided to try our luck with the place and in between our scheduled sunset and sunrise shoots, visited the place at smack in the middle of the day. On our first day, we did the 4-mile long hike and found the ancient trees to be spellbounding. 6 months later we were back and completed the other two trails and realized how wonderful a spot this is.

Since then, we have had countless shoots here of which this was the latest. I had this shot in my mind since the day we hiked this trail and often postponed the trips due to inconveniences arising at work. But this time I decided to make it happen and just drove on a Saturday morning and returned Sunday after a sunrise shot. That was a total of 560 miles in two days. I loved the drive and the fact that how focused the trip was and hope to make more like this.

When I decided to start taking astrophotos, I was a bit intimidated as it looks very daunting. I tried to listen to videos made by very respectable photographers and read up on articles about night photography. It didn’t help, actually, I failed a lot. There are tons of night shots that make me cringe in my hard drive. Then I remembered how I learned landscape photography and the path was clear. You must take lots of bad images to learn photography, there is no way around it as the lesson you learn in practice makes you understand why photographers stick to certain practices. So that’s what I did. The general ground rule in night photography is this, Start with ISO 3200, manual exposure, aperture at your lenses widest setting, and then adjust to fit the lighting at the scene and your equipment. Also if you have a high megapixel or a crop sensor camera stars will start to streak when applying the 1/500th rule for exposure so you might have to go for an even shorter exposure, this means a higher iso or wider aperture lens to compensate for the light. These type of nuances will come by taking bad images, for me, the challenge was learning to compose and focus at night in pitch darkness but now after a couple of bad outings, I believe I have nailed my method.

• Mark Twain

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Recently during our visit to Big Pine we had a chance to visit the beautiful Bristlecone pine forests and the Methuselah grove. The Bristlecone pines you see here are the oldest living being in the world. The sky was overcast with strong sidelight coming in when the winds clear the clouds around. I hope I could come back here again on a clear night and shoot some shots of the magnificent trees with some stars in the background.

Thanks again for visiting.

While photographing the oldest trees on the planet, I have tried multiple compositions to make them look interesting. It doesn't need any special...