This essay is part of my Utah Roadtrip collection. It's best viewed with your monitor's display brightness set to maximum.
On my way to Moab at the start of my roadtrip, I stopped for two nights at Capitol Reef National Park. Known for its dark skies, the park was a fantastic place to frame epic rock formations against millions of stars. On the night I took this shot, I was experimenting with light painting a small barn right by the Fruita campground. Unfortunately, I was quite new to the art, and almost all of my attempts were fruitless - the light was unidirectional and harsh, over-exposing a strip through the foreground and reflecting off of the surrounding mist. Ironically, the most usable shot (below) was from one of my few photos with no added light at all.
A few nights later, I was at Arches National Park, trying to capture the stars through Windows Arch. During one of my exposures, another photographer walked up with their headlamp on - but rather than ruining the shot, the light painted the arch and foreground perfectly!
Over the following weeks, I took more night sky photos at Zion, Bryce Canyon, Kodachrome Basin, and other spots across the state.
I reached Bryce Canyon in time for the full moon. Nights were almost as bright as day in long exposure photographs; with the right settings, my 3am shots seemed indistinguishable from ones I'd taken in the middle of the afternoon!
Over the following nights, I attempted my first moonlit time-lapse (at Kodachrome Basin State Park), and my first focus-stacked astro-photo (immediately below).
After many, many failed attempts (ruined by cloudy skies, light pollution from faraway towns, freezing temperatures leading to dead batteries and dew-ed up lenses, etc.) I finally managed to successfully capture some milky way photos on the last few nights of my trip. I was BLM camping in the Grand Staircase National Monument - miles away from the nearest human beings and at long last able to take advantage of the incredibly dark skies.
© 2026 Bharath Srivatsan
.jpeg?auto=webp)
.jpeg?auto=webp)
.jpeg?auto=webp)
.jpeg?auto=webp)
.jpeg?auto=webp)
.jpeg?auto=webp)
.jpeg?auto=webp)
.jpeg?auto=webp)
.jpeg?auto=webp)
.jpeg?auto=webp)
.jpeg?auto=webp)
.jpeg?auto=webp)
.jpeg?auto=webp)
.jpeg?auto=webp)
.jpeg?auto=webp)
/1x.jpeg?auto=webp)
/1x.jpeg?auto=webp)
/1x.jpeg?auto=webp)
/1x.jpeg?auto=webp)
/1x.jpeg?auto=webp)