My last night at Mesa Verde culminated with this night time photo shoot at the Far View Observatory. After 3 days at altitude and long days of hiking, I was starting to get tired and was nervous that I wouldn’t have the energy to pull off one last star trail, but I was fortunately able to hold it together.
I’m not used to shooting at altitude or from mountaintops, so one thing I didn’t realize before this trip – your nice, dramatic views and perspective are erased by the near total darkness of a moonless night. My high ISO background test shots pretty much showed me right away that the foreground here wasn’t going to be as detailed as I would have liked. While this view encompasses hundreds of miles of distance, your only visual night time clue is some layered street lights playing with light on the horizon.
None-the-less, I’m still generally please with how this turned out. A good send off to Mesa Verde.