Revisiting Locations Can Lead to Seeing with New Eyes, Boosting Creativity

Over the years, I’ve had many opportunities to revisit some of the great locations I’ve photographed. There have been times when a photograph I had envisioned didn’t quite work out for one reason or another—an errant plane leaving a trail across the sky, the moon or the Milky Way being in the wrong part of the sky, or simply me not getting the lighting quite right, or the stars being just a little bit soft.

I count myself fortunate to have the chance to reshoot, but I have learned not to expect to be able to recreate the original image, because if one thing is certain, it's that nothing stays the same for long. It could be that the light has changed, a tree has fallen over, or a gate is locked where once it was open.

On other occasions, I’ve made a successful image and am simply hoping to make another. Because I teach workshops in national parks and monuments, my students and I are often photographing well-known views in popular locations, and it can be a challenge to make an original photograph. It’s a worthy endeavor to try to make a unique image of Yosemite Valley, the church at Bodie, or of Mobius Arch in the Alabama Hills. I push myself, and encourage my students, to come up with compositions that they have never seen before.

ISO 100, 6 minutes, f/8. Canon 5D Mark II, Zuiko 24mm f/2.8 lens. Full moon.

ISO 100, 4 minutes, f/8. Canon 5D Mark II, Nikkor 28mm f/3.5 PC lens. Full moon.

ISO 200, 30 minutes, f/4,. Canon 6D, Tamron 15-30mm f/2.8 lens. New moon.

ISO 12800, 20 seconds f/4. Canon 6D, Tamron 15-30mm f2.8 lens. New moon.

ISO 400, 4 seconds, f/4. Canon 6D, Tamron 15-30mm f2.8 lens. New moon, blue hour.

Mobius is typically photographed at sunrise, as the arch runs from north to south, and Mt. Whitney can be framed within the arch just as the sun’s first rays light up the Sierra to the west. The most obvious shot is a horizontal one, and that is what most people choose to do. There are plenty of nocturnal versions too, with low moonlight on the Sierra, and the arch in shadow, which provides a great opportunity for light painting.

I challenge myself to make at least one unique view of the famous Mobius Arch every time I visit the Alabama Hills, a rocky landscape in the foothills of the Eastern Sierra in California. It’s a way to refine my vision and to stay sharp, and to appreciate how fortunate I am to be able to visit these places on a semiregular basis.

“If one thing is certain, it’s that nothing stays the same for long.”

— Lance

In 2007, I was invited by the Texas Photo Society to teach a night photography workshop in Big Bend National Park. The landscape, culture, and geology were all new and exotic to me (coming from Massachusetts) and I was excited to explore.

One of the unexpected highlights of the workshop was a visit to Terlingua Ghost Town, a former cinnabar mining town just outside of the park. Mining is always a dangerous occupation, and smelting cinnabar to extract mercury made it doubly so. Terlingua’s miners were mostly Mexican, and many of them died there.

The cemetery in Terlingua is a fascinating place to explore, and we were lucky enough to visit during Dia de los Meurtos, when the graves are decorated with sugar skulls, fresh flowers and candles. I made the following image during that workshop, and it was my favorite from the trip.

Tres Cruces, Terlingua, 2007. ISO 200, 5 minutes, f/8. Canon 5D, Nikkor 28mm f/3.5 PC lens. Nearly full moon.

This image was made with existing light, consisting of moonlight and the orange glow from a candle that was inside the fenced grave in the foreground. I positioned the camera so that the candle was hidden behind one of the fence posts which kept the highlights from being blown out. The candle glow contrasted nicely with the cool blue moonlight, and I felt like the image captured the spirit of the place.

I have just come back from another West Texas workshop, this one based entirely in Terlingua Ghost Town and the surrounding area, which is so rich with subject matter. I wanted to see how the graveyard had changed, thinking perhaps that one of the crosses might have fallen over, or at least be leaning over further than it was nine years ago.

Much to my surprise, very little had changed aside from the lack of Dia de los Meurtos paraphernalia. What was different was that I was there at the end of the lunar cycle, and the moon was below the horizon. The Big Bend region is the darkest area in the lower 48, so it was truly very dark.

One of the workshop students and I decided to do a reshoot of the photograph I had made in 2007. We worked together for about an hour and came up with a dramatic image of nearly the same composition. But the results were very different due to the lack of moonlight, to light painting, and to the partly cloudy sky.

I still like the original image, but very much enjoyed the opportunity to revise the location with different eyes.

Tres Cruces, Terlingua, 2016.  ISO 6400, 30 seconds, f/4.5. Nikon D750, Nikon 24-120mm f/4 lens at 24mm, Coast HP7 flashlight (back-lighting) and Coast HP3 flashlight (fence lighting). New moon.

For more information about the equipment mentioned in this post, see the Our Gear page and the following links:

Lance Keimig has been photographing at night for 30 years, and is the author of Night Photography and Light Painting: Finding Your Way in the Dark (Focal Press, 2015). Learn more about his images and workshops at www.thenightskye.com.

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UPCOMING WORKSHOPS FROM NATIONAL PARKS AT NIGHT

A Guide to Getting Started With the Art of Light Painting — Part II

This is the second part of Tim Cooper’s primer on light painting. For the introductory materials for this topic, see “Part I.”

In my last post I talked about the basics of light painting. Now let’s dig a little deeper to see how we build an exposure for a light-painted photograph. This technique can be applied to many images, both simple (like the one in the examples later) and complex (like Figure 1).

Figure 1. ISO 100, f/8, 4 minutes. Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8 ED lens, Nikon D4, Coast HP5R flashlight.

This photo is a more complex light painting scenario that involved a lot of testing and different components of painting. But it started with the same concepts as below, and I worked out the final exposure in the exact same way.

Ambient Light and Test Exposures

For most light painting compositions, you’ll want an exposure between 30 seconds and 3 minutes to allow time to illuminate your subject. More complex scenes may require more time.

The first step is to establish your ambient exposure and composition using a high ISO. This will allow you to make test frames more quickly, because your shutter speeds will be in seconds rather than minutes. (To learn more about this, see Lance Keimig’s post from April, “Save Time by Using High ISO Testing to Set Up Your Night Shots.”

A great trick to use is often referred to as the Six Stop Rule, which says that when you close down your exposure by six stops, your original (test) shutter speed in seconds translates to the same shutter speed in minutes. For example, let’s assume you like an ambient-light test exposure that you made at ISO 6400 with a shutter speed of 1 second. You can then calculate your actual exposure—one long enough to allow for light painting—by closing down six stops of ISO and shooting for 1 minute rather than 1 second. Here are the steps, one stop at a time:

ISO 6400 for 1" equals
ISO 3200 for 2" =
ISO 1600 for 4" =
ISO 800 for 8" =
ISO 400 for 16" =
ISO 200 for 30" =
ISO 100 for 1 minute

The 1-minute exposure at ISO 100 now gives you time to illuminate your subject with your flashlight.

If you need even more time, remember that changing the aperture can also help. That 1-minute exposure could also be a 2-minute exposure if you close down your aperture by one stop (e.g., f/4 closes down to f/5.6, or f/5.6 closes down to f/8). Remember, though: Closing down your aperture makes the hole smaller, which in turn makes your flashlight “less efficient.” In cases where your flashlight is too bright, this will be to your advantage; in cases where your flashlight is barely bright enough, this will be a detriment.

Here is an example of how I used the Six Stop Rule to begin my light painting process.
I began by putting my camera into Manual exposure mode with Matrix metering. Next, I set my ISO to 6400 and my aperture to f/11. I pointed the camera to the sky and adjusted my shutter speed so that the indicated meter read -1 (Figure 2). This setting makes the sky appear darker than at midday, but not black.

Figure 2.

The resulting image (Figure 3) shows how the sky has a night feel and the foreground is completely black. This exposure was 4 seconds at f/11 with an ISO of 6400. The -1 setting on the sky is typical for me when shooting around city light, but is certainly not mandatory. You can experiment with different brightness levels to suit your taste.

Figure 3. ISO 6400, f/11, 4 seconds. 24mm f/2.8D Nikon Lens, Nikon D4, Coast HP5R flashlight.

Next, I used the Six Stop Rule to calculate my final exposure. Again, the Six Stop Rule states that 1 second at ISO 6400 equals 1 minute at ISO 100. My test exposure was 4 seconds, so my final exposure was 4 minutes. Figure 4 shows the 4-minute exposure with my first attempts at painting the head stones.

Figure 4.

Add in the Light Painting

At this point it’s not necessary for me to run the full exposure while I test for light painting. I know the sky will look right at the 4-minute exposure, so now I am just testing the light painting. In other words, I’m building the final exposure one piece at a time.

Figure 5 was my next test shot. I painted the front headstones for longer (about 2 seconds for each stone). The total exposure for this shot was only 46 seconds, which makes the sky look black. But again, I’m not concerned about the sky at this point—I am simply trying to get my painting right for the main subject.

Figure 5.

After a couple of more light painting test shots, I learned that I needed to increase the time I spent painting the front headstones to about 3 seconds each. I then placed my flashlight at a low angle and painted the grass around the stones. Now I had all the information I needed to create the final image, as seen in Figure 6.

Figure 6.

This was taken using the full exposure of 4 minutes. The full exposure also gave me time to walk back into the scene and paint a few more monuments. Using Photoshop, I cloned out some of the brighter city lights at the rear of the cemetery to make for a less distracting background.

For more information about the equipment mentioned in this post, see the Our Gear page and the following links:

Learn more techniques from Tim Cooper’s book The Magic of Light Painting, available from Peachpit.

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Upcoming workshops from National Parks at Night

A Guide to Getting Started With the Art of Light Painting — Part I

The word photography means to draw or paint with light. When I first began studying photography, I was told that along with composition, the study of light would be a lifelong endeavor. Over the years, I’ve found this to be an absolute truth. I have also found that light painting is one of the more creative and magical ways to illuminate a scene.

In short, light painting is using a flashlight to illuminate your subject. Rather than depending on a typical light source for lighting, you use a flashlight to “paint” your subject. Standard photography involves the use of ambient light, meaning natural light provided by the sun, overcast days, the sky, indoor lighting, street lamps, etc. “Ambient” means “relating to the immediate surroundings,” so ambient light is that which surrounds us. The light that’s available.

Zion National Park. ISO 800, f/5, 60 seconds. 14-24mm 2.8 Nikon lens, Nikon D4, Coast flashlight.

Commonly, light painting takes place outside after dark, inside dark rooms, or in any other dimly lit situations.

This is not to say that complete darkness is necessary for light painting. It is possible and indeed fun to mix light painting and ambient light. One of my favorite times to paint with light is when the moon is full, as it is in the image above taken on our NPAN workshop in Zion National Park. The trick is to put yourself in situations where your shutter speed can be long enough to allow you time to paint your subject. If you are shooting a well-lit street scene, your shutter speed may be as fast as 4 or 8 seconds—which is just not enough time to effectively light-paint. A dark alley, however, may allow an exposure of 30 seconds, or a minute or two. These exposures are more conducive to creatively illuminating your subject with a flashlight.

The real beauty of light painting is in the crafting of the light. You are the artist. The conductor. Few forms of photography allow this level of creativity in shaping your subject. The flashlight becomes your brush and the scene your canvas. Imagination and experimentation become your workflow, resourcefulness and ingenuity your tools.

In this following image made in solitary confinement at Ohio's Mansfield Reformatory, I needed to add light to bring out the detail in the cell. In the first image we see how dark the cell was, with the ambient light reaching only so far down the hallway. Then in the second we see how the cell looked after I stood inside and painted outward with my flashlight to create the shadows of the bars on the floor.

ISO 100, f/8, 60 seconds. 24mm 2.8 Nikon lens, Nikon D4.

Same exposure/setup, with Coast flashlight.

While creating masterpieces takes some practice, the basic concept of light painting is little more than illuminating your subject with the flashlight while your camera’s shutter is open, a process that resulted in the following image of a structure in Meadowlark Gardens in Vienna, Virginia.

Adding light to the structure under a full moon. ISO 100, f/8, 4 minutes. 24mm 2.8 Nikon lens, Nikon D4, Coast flashlight.

Over the next couple of months, I’ll build on this topic as I present more ideas and techniques. For now, here’s a little to get you going!

Starting the Process

When getting started with light painting you may feel a bit like a fish out of water. Where to begin? What to do first? It all starts with visualizing your composition. As you look at the scene imagine what it can be rather than what it is.

1. Decide what lens to use. This will determine much of what comes next.

2. Think about depth of field. Do you want your whole scene sharp (f/8 to f/22) or do you want only the main subject sharp (f/1.4 to f/4)? I tend to like maximum sharpness, so my default apertures are f/8 or f/11. Consider using only one or two apertures when your first start out. This consistency will help you learn how much painting is necessary for a good exposure.

3. Set your ISO to 6400. If you don’t have 6400, use 3200. Running test shots at high ISOs saves time and helps with fine-tuning your composition.

4. Set your camera to its multi-segment meter. The multi-segment meters (“Evaluative” for Canon, “Matrix” for Nikon) deliver decent initial exposures in scenes that have a mix of lights and darks. Some adjustments may be necessary after you review your test shots.

5. You can obtain good exposures under moonlit conditions by pointing your camera into the sky and putting the indicated meter at -1. This will leave your foreground black but your sky will have that nighttime feel.

6.  For scenes without much ambient light, I typically shoot for 2 or 3 minutes at f/8 or f/11. I find these two apertures allow enough time to paint without being overly restrictive. f/16 and f/22 allow much less light to pass, increasing the time you need to paint.

7. Once your ambient exposure is established, begin to practice your painting. Remember, it’s not necessary to expose each of these test shots for the full time. At this point you are just analyzing your painting techniques. The overall length of exposure will have very little influence here.

8. If you are working in a bright area, there is a chance that some light can enter through the eyepiece in the back of the camera, causing an odd glow or streaks across your image. Closing the viewfinder eyepiece shutter during long exposures will eliminate these anomalies.

“At this point you are truly making photographs instead of taking them. You are creating the light.”

Painting the scene

Once the initial ambient exposure is established, the real fun begins. It’s time to put the brush to the canvas. At this point you are truly making photographs instead of taking them. You are creating the light. You are designing the overall look and feel of the image.

Should your subject be brighter? Get closer or spend more time painting. Too bright? Spend less time painting, or back up. Want to change the color of the main subject? Put a filter over your flashlight. Want the ambient light to be more blue? Change the white balance. The possibilities are endless.

The ambient exposure is controlled by the f-stop and shutter speed. But the light painting exposure is controlled by the aperture, length of time spent painting, distance from the flashlight to the subject, and subject reflectivity.

1. Wider apertures = shorter painting times. Smaller apertures = longer painting times. I typically use f/8 or f/11 at ISO 100 or 200.

2. For shorter painting times, get closer to your subject.

3. Subject reflectivity is also an exposure factor. Darker or rougher subjects will take more time to bring up to the desired brightness. Subjects that are smoother or lighter will require less time.

4. Because of all these variables, it is nearly impossible to give an average painting time for any given aperture. Experimentation is key. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes. Simply open your shutter and start painting.

For more on this topic, see "A Guide To Getting Started With The Art Of Light Painting — Part II."

For more information about the equipment mentioned in this post, see the Our Gear page and the following links:

Learn more techniques from Tim Cooper’s book The Magic of Light Painting, available from Peachpit.

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Upcoming workshops from National Parks at Night

National Parks To Celebrate Night Skies With Upcoming Festivals

The National Park Service is 100 percent on-board with the idea of preserving dark skies for all who wish to see them—from astronomy buffs to night photographers and everyone in between. It even maintains a Night Sky page on its website, and offers access to a Night Sky Monitoring Database of the entire U.S.

But not only does the NPS protect and promote the night skies, it also creates opportunities to explore and learn about them.

Lassen Dark Sky Festival, NPS Photo

Many of the parks offer ranger-led programs for visitors to experience night the way it once appeared everywhere, before the dawn of electrically lit cities and civilizations. For example, Pinnacles National Park offers night hikes, and Shenandoah National Park in Virginia offers an Evening Meadow Walk (in Big Meadows, no less, one of my favorites spaces in the entire park system!). Even New Mexico's Carlsbad Caverns National Park, whose star attraction is underground, shows off the night skies with its recurring Star Parties and Moon Walks.

But several of the parks go even bigger, hosting full-scale festivals that celebrate the night. They feature all sorts of spectator and interactive programs, including lectures by astronomers, telescope usage, photography workshops and more.

Photo by NPS/Brad Sutton

These are all excellent opportunities to get into the parks to learn and explore the night with like-minded people.

This year’s Death Valley Star Party is already behind us (it was in February), but there are plenty of park-hosted night-sky festivals on the horizon for summer and early fall. To help you find one (or more!) to attend, we’ve compiled the list below. If you attend, let us know how it goes—and send photos!

Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park

Black Canyon Astronomy Festival

June 1-4, Colorado

Highlights: Constellation tours, Tyler Nordgren presentation and book signing, telescope observations, "Nightscape Photography Workshop"

Bryce Canyon National Park

Annual Astronomy Festival

June 1-4, Utah

Highlights: hosted by Bryce Canyon's astronomy rangers and the Salt Lake Astronomical Society; keynote speaker Seth Jarvis from the Clark Planetarium

Grand Canyon National Park

Grand Canyon Star Party

June 4–11, Arizona

Highlights: access to multiple telescopes on both rims of the canyon, nightly presentations and slide shows; assistance from the Tucson Amateur Astronomy Association and the Saguaro Astronomy Club of Phoenix

Badlands National Park

Badlands National Park Astronomy Festival

July 8-10, South Dakota

Highlights: family-friendly activities and evening presentations with special guest speakers; nightly telescope viewing sponsored by the NPS Night Sky Program and Celestron

Rocky Mountain National Park

Night Sky Festival

July 28-30, Colorado

Highlights: activities, speakers, programs and night sky viewing

Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Parks

Dark Sky Festival

August 5-7, California

Highlights: astronaut speakers; special Crystal Cave tours; audio-visual and photography presentations

Lassen Volcanic National Park

Lassen Dark Sky Festival

August 12-14, California

Highlights: constellation tours; solar scope viewing; discussions and demonstrations by National Park Dark Sky rangers, NASA, International Dark Sky Association, RECON, Astronomical Society of Nevada and the Astronomical Society of the Pacific

Acadia National Park

Acadia Night Sky Festival

September 22-25, Maine

Highlights: workshops; internationally recognized speakers; hands-on experiences

Theodore Roosevelt National Park

Dakota Nights Astronomy Festival

September 23-25, North Dakota

Highlights: star viewing; presentations by nationally recognized speakers; rocket building and launching; solar system hikes

Great Basin National Park

Great Basin Astronomy Festival

September 29 - October 1, Nevada

Highlights: viewing through over 30 telescopes (some as tall as 20 feet); "Astronomy 101" presentation; Night Sky Photography Workshop by the "Dark Rangers"

Joshua Tree National Park

Night Sky Festival

October 28-30, California

Highlights: astronomers, scientists, cultural speakers and artists

Chris Nicholson is the author of Photographing National Parks (Sidelight Books, 2015). Learn more about national parks as photography destinations, subscribe to Chris' free e-newsletter, and more at www.PhotographingNationalParks.com.

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Upcoming workshops from National Parks at Night

Finding Our Parks: How We Participated in National Parks Week

Click to experience the map!

In late April, we hit the road NPAN style. We chose to celebrate the National Parks Service's free entrance days for National Park Week by taking a whirlwind tour of Southern Utah.

Gabe, Matt and Chris were joined by our friend Sean in Las Vegas and we hit the road in a car and on two motorcycles. Our trip led us through three national parks (including Zion, which wasn't a destination, but how could we not at least drive through?) and two national monuments. It was epic, and awe-inspiring.

Our routine was great! Eat a substantial breakfast, hit the road, drive through some amazing landscapes, grab some food and head out into the park to go shooting for the late afternoon and evening (often until 2 or 3 a.m.).

Here are individual highlights from the adventurers:

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Bryce Canyon National Park - by Matt Hill

“Love them hoodoos.”

— Matt

My first impression was a gasp when I viewed Bryce Canyon under a full moon. A massive canyon filled with hoodoos and trees. And gorgeous shadows. It was brutally cold, even for late April, and we withstood the wind on the canyon rim to enjoy the view and make some images.

Upon descending into the canyon, the wind died, as well as my hopes for avoiding aerobic exercise for the day. ;-) What goes down, must come up! That canyon is deeeeeep and steeeeeep. Nonetheless, we hiked into the hoodoo field and I spent a lot of time playing with the relationship between eroded sandstone rock and living wood. What a gorgeous juxtaposition of colors, textures and shapes.

We're fortunate the skies cooperated in a big way. Very happy with our experience there, despite hiking back up the canyon with 30+ lbs. in my backpack at altitude.

Visit the Bryce Canyon Official NPS Website to plan your visit! 

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Capitol Reef National Park - by Chris Nicholson

“Capitol Reef simply shines in the dark!”

— Chris

Capitol Reef has been on my bucket list for a couple of years, so I was thrilled we were including it on our road trip.

But to get there, first we drove through the big shocker of the trip: Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. None of us knew much about it, other than that it exists. And it's beautiful! We stopped about four or five times, mesmerized by both its size and its amazing landscapes. We didn't have time to linger, but we will be back there someday for sure.

We arrived at Capitol Reef with just enough time to scout some locations in daylight, which is important in a place with such dark night skies. (Capitol Reef is one of only three national parks designated as Gold Tier by the International Dark-Sky Association.) Checking our Photo Pills app, we knew we would have one hour of utter darkness before the moon rose, so we planned to start our evening photographing star trails at Chimney Rock.

From there we went to the orchards in Fruita, a remnant of the vibrant agricultural community in that area more than a century ago. The orchard proved difficult to photograph, primarily because it’s the one spot we did not scout well; instead of shooting right away, we spent 45 minutes walking around in the dark trying to imagine some compositions.

We ended the night near Panorama Point. We’d scouted a nice location with a road S-curving in front of a distant mountain. We each set up a composition, and Gabe manned our intervalometers while Matt drove the car and I held a Pixelstick out the sunroof, creating light trails along the road. The creativity was fun, but the wind was brutal and cold, so as soon as we felt we nailed the shot, we packed things in for the night.

On our second night in Capitol Reef, we were joined by our friend Steve Ryan, a sports photographer from New York City. He was very gracious in agreeing to drive us out to Cathedral Valley, an area filled with wonderfully photogenic rock formations accessible only by primitive roads. Unfortunately, a quick storm a few hours before departure made those roads impassable.

So instead we night-hiked to The Tanks, a series of natural water holes a short (but steep) climb up from Capitol Gorge. It was a gorgeous hike (ha! see what I did there?), a challenging (but fun) shoot, followed by a photograph-slowed hike back out of the gorge.

We are all eager to run a night-photography workshop in Capitol Reef some year soon. Stay tuned!

Visit the Capitol Reef Official NPS Website to plan your visit! 

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Natural Bridges National Monument - by Gabriel Biderman

“Bridges that lead you to the darkest of skies.”

— Gabe

Our quest for the darkest skies leads us to some very remote locations. But the opportunity to work with no light pollution and crystal-clear skies with thousands of stars is an experience no one will forget.

Natural Bridges National Monument is one of those special places. Located 40 miles from the nearest town in Southeast Utah, Natural Bridges is the oldest National Park Service site in Utah (1908) and was the first “Dark Sky Park” to be certified by the International Dark-Sky Association.

We arrived a few hours before sunset and had the most amazing conversation with Ranger Ted Hodson as he shared his stories, photographs and advice for how we could make the most of our one evening. Imagine three bridges that lie at the bottom of a deep canyon, formed from an ancient river over 260 million years ago.

You can do the 8-mile loop drive (in 20 minutes) and get little peeks of two of the three bridges, but the real adventure lies when you walk down the canyon and see the bridges act like windows to the stars.

So that’s what we did. With overcast weather looming we chose the path to Owachoma—probably the most photographed of the three bridges. We had seen the images at the visitor center and were focused on looking for new angles. I put myself right under the bridge and Matt and Chris found an oblique angle to start brushing light under the bridge. The three of us worked together on a few more angles and group light painting until the clouds enveloped the stars.

They say you can see 15,000 stars on a clear night at Natural Bridges. I stopped counting after 500.

Visit the Natural Bridges Official NPS Website to plan your visit! 

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Thanks for reading. Tell us if you participated, and how, in National Park Week. Did you #findyourpark? We'd love to hear more!

Job well done.

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Upcoming workshops from National Parks at Night