Milky Way at Bell Smith Springs and Trigg Tower

I saw some night pictures by Jacob Grubbs, a local diver and hiker, at Bell Smith Springs.  He had shined his light into the creek and it glowed a brilliant blue.  I thought "man, that would be awesome for Milky Way photos".  A few people that I suggested it to said there was too much forest cover, but I did my research and found a few small windows to shoot through the canopy.  Or, at least, several that I thought I could shoot through.  I had never been to the place before, so I wouldn't know for sure until I got there.

I took the wrong trail and ended up at a steep cliff just above the spot I wanted to shoot from.  It was a long drop.  I navigated around for a bit and finally found stairs down to the creek level.  The Milky Way wasn't going to align at the exact times that I planned, so I scurried around and found another shot to kill some time.  I managed to get a shot from atop and from below the "jumping rocks".  


For the latter, I made use of my dive torch with a blue filter to recreate that glowing blue water look.  I was also standing in water nearly to the top of my waders to keep a branch out of view.  the rocks on the right are where I stood to get the shot above.


Then, I raced over to The Devil's Backbone, a rock that fell into the river and has bumps across its top like vertebrae.  I once again used the blue light in addition to my regular light to get the glow.



Then, it was time to head out. But first, I had to get back to the car.  I didn't remember there being so many stairs on the way down!


I was planning to head to Trigg Tower in July, and would be driving right by it on my way home.  I had never been to this fire lookout tower before, so I took a slight detour to scout it out.  To my surprise, the Milky Way was nearly perfectly aligned, so I grabbed the camera and got to work.  I learned that I need to shoot my tall vertical panoramas differently so they don't end up so skinny, but it was still fun.  The top of this photo is looking straight up as if you were laying on your back!



After that, I drove home and watched beautiful scenes of the day breaking from the car window.  One of these days, I'll save some energy to photograph that too.

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