Tag: astrophotography

Weekend camping in Joshua Tree

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What a surreal first quarter! I feel like we’ve been playing dodge ball with the fast spreading Corona virus; been incredibly lucky to date. As I write this, the US government has just announced a 30 day ban on travel to Europe; the Indian government has also put a stop on foreigners traveling to India until April 15.

In traveling for both work and fun this year…

  • Jeff narrowly missed getting quarantined in Guangzhou in January – a few days after he’d returned, the Chinese government announced travel bans
  • Two days after we left Venice, the Italian government announced a citywide quarantine
  • I managed to get into the US 10 days after leaving Italy, and before the US announced the new spate of travel bans
  • While I was in the US, Singapore enacted the mandatory quarantine on travelers who’d visited Italy in the past 14 days; luckily, by the time I touched back down into Singapore from the US, I’d been away from Italy for 19 days.

Hopefully our luck holds. At the very least, we’re staying put this next month.

Anyway, happily, I still managed to go to the US for work (if the conference had been a week later though, we most likely would have cancelled. As it were, we were given the option at the 11th hour and during the conference itself to leave if we wanted). A few coworkers and I decided to go camping at Joshua Tree the weekend before.

It was most of their first time camping – and we had to scrounge to buy and get the camping gear for everyone. But it turned out fantastic!

Twilight at our campsite. By the time we’d settled on the camping idea, all of the campsites within the Joshua Tree National Park itself was already booked, given that this was the peak period. Happily we did find this barebones but quiet campground a half hour outside the park. We had a camping platform and a wooden fence to block off wind, but otherwise wide open land.

After dinner, we decided to head back into the park for a bit of astrophotography. There was a half moon out, which beautifully lit up our foreground for long exposure shots. We didn’t stay long though – the elevation was higher in the park and the wind stronger, so we quickly got chilled.

Back at our campsite, we settled down outside with mugs of tequila to watch the half moon set at around 11pm.

After the moon had set, three of us decided to drive back into the park to try our luck at spotting the milky way. Alas, we realized only later that the milky way season in North America is shorter than in Australia. Apparently, the best times for milky way spotting is in the summer in Joshua Tree. Oh well – we had fun driving down the dark windy paths in the pitch dark.

After a few hours hunkered down in our sleeping bags, we roused again at 530am to drive back into the park for sunrise. Given the clear skies the night before, we weren’t expecting much color, but it was still lovely to breath in the fresh cool air and see the sun slowly paint the rocks and desert sand a warm orange glow.

I wish we had more time to spend in the park, to slowly hike the backcountry trails. As it was, we had to return to the city. So after breakfast and packing up, we just drove through the park, from the North Entrance through the South, before turning back to LA.

Lovely short teaser to JT National Park!

Journey to the roof of Africa

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What was the one highlight of the trek for you, Juraj (or Ting as she corrected me) asked the group, on our last evening meal in camp. Certainly not reaching the summit – Jeff and I got to 100m below the summit, to Stella Point at 5756m. We would have made the summit if we’d gone on another 0.5km, gritted our teeth through another hour. But by that point, Jeff’s oxygen levels were dangerously low, and I was over it and dreading the slide downhill back to base camp.

In any case, taking the obligatory photos at the summit were not the highlight for Juraj and Ting either. The view wasn’t much too different from where we had parted ways.

I think, for all of us, there wasn’t one particular highlight. Certainly not the interminable slog up from base camp at midnight. That was the singular hardest and longest night of my life. It was beautiful looking up at the trail of lights from headlamps slowing snaking up the mountain in the dark, while the stars twinkled overhead. At times, when the clouds below parted, we could also see the distant yellow lights from the city of Moshi far, far below, where people slept soundly and snugly in their warm beds. Most of the time though, we kept our eyes firmly on the round spot of light from our headlamps, which were trained on the boots of the person in front of us.

It was too cold, too windy, and the air too thin, to appreciate the beauty of the night. We had all wrapped ourselves up in multiple layers. Two pairs of socks, three pairs of pants, three layers of jackets, beanie, two pairs of gloves. But still the biting wind cut through. It seemed an eternal struggle between stopping to gasp for air and shiver from the cold, or trying to fight off the building lactic acid in our legs and push on.

Groups passed us. We passed guides helping clients back down the mountain, seemingly before we had barely started on the trail. We passed people who keeled over suddenly to retch, passed people slumped over by piles of rocks, unable to get up on their own accord. I couldn’t see my watch under all my layers of jackets, but I concentrated hard on just putting one foot ahead at a time, and tried to estimate the minutes until sunrise.

I was never happier when I looked up to see the thin sliver of the waning moon rise above the clouds, the yellow crescent a sure and welcome precursor to the rising sun. And finally, finally, after five miserable hours in the dark, we could see the start of a band of indigo light up the clouds, which slowly broadened and turned orange and pink.

A most glorious sight, one of which I shall have to commit to memory, since I was too cold and tired to want to struggle to get out my camera. But the sense of relief was so sweet.

Making our way gingerly back down from Stella Point to Base Camp

So, while there wasn’t one highlight, as I reflected on the trip, and especially as I gave more thought to the question when I got up at 230am for my last night pee at altitude, what I appreciated was being out there in nature. To have been able to walk through the drastically different climate zones that Mount Kilimanjaro had to offer – from the wet and humid rainforest to the moorland, to the Alpine desert and finally the arctic zone, it was pretty special.

It was pretty special to ring in the new year on the mountain too. Not that any of us were particularly planning to stay up till the Tanzanian midnight to countdown to 2019. We had already marked the Sydney new year and the Singapore new year earlier. But my bladder, and the brief but rousing cheer of the porters woke me up right at midnight. I crawled out of my tent to find that the earlier fog and clouds had cleared, and I could see a sky full of stars overhead and even the snowy outline of the summit in the background. I exchanged greetings with a couple of the guides and porters in the vicinity, and with Juraj, and snapped a few astro shots to mark the occasion.

Ringing in the new year at Barranco Camp, alpine desert environment

2018 seemed long and short at the same time. Long, because we had packed quite a lot into the 12 months. Moved from Sydney to London and then to Singapore, and then we each visited another total of 6 other countries. Short because time seemed to flash right by.

But back to Kilimanjaro: we had a great experience. It wasn’t a vacation by any means, and frankly, after back to back trips like this and the kayak marathon, I am looking forward to a warm and relaxing vacation by the beach. A bit of snorkeling, kayaking, and sleeping in hammocks under the stars.

Our guide Francis, leading us to Big Tree Camp on Day 1 of the trek through the rainforest zone
The clouds mostly dispersed when I crawled out of the tent in the middle of the night for a toilet break at Shira 1 camp – see our private toilet tent in the left foreground; best decision ever since we didn’t have to trek in the darkness of night to the public stalls, which, let’s just say, have seen tons of use…
Sunrise at Shira 1 camp, marking day 3 of our trek. Our dining tent is the bright green one in the middle
Night view of Moshi city miles below on Jan 1, at Karanga camp. Day 5 of trek
Long walk through the alpine desert on Day 6 to Barafu camp

One big bonus – after going through countless pairs of hiking boots and even more blisters and a few lost toenails, I finally landed on a pair of boots that fit like a dream. The lady at Campus Corner in Singapore who sized me up, placed my feet on insoles two sizes larger than my usual boots and pronounced them perfect to go. And indeed they were. Perfect. Not a single blister after 100km on Mt Kili! To think that I had almost normalized wincing everytime I accidentally kicked my old boots against my hiking pole!

Fall weekend in Kangaroo Valley

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We couldn’t have asked for more perfect weather this weekend when the group of 7 of us tripped down to Kangaroo Valley for a spot of kayaking and camping. The skies were clear, the air crisp and cool, and there was not a hint of breeze. A complete opposite of our January experience really.

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As we sluiced our way down the river, we gawked at wombats, eagles, and kangaroos, and reveled in the delightful chirping of birds. The water was a perfect mirror of the stringybarks along the riverbank.

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Fall is definitely here though. By 430pm, the sun had already dipped below the line of trees up Yarrunga Creek. But we were already comfortably set up in our sheltered campsite, and the beginnings of a merry campfire going.

 

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In the morning, well, pre-dawn really, we clambered out of our toasty sleeping bags and eased our way into the water. The fog was thick, enveloping, mysterious. The perfect ambience for our quiet sojourn up dead tree gorge. As the sun rose and warmed up the air, the fog slowly dissipated, leaving behind a steamy film on the water surface.

 

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Another amazing weekend in the books. 🙂

 

Hiking and camping the Coastal Track in Royal National Park

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For our 6th wedding anniversary, and to check off Jeff’s bucket list, we went camping with some friends along the Coastal Track down at Royal National Park. This is a super popular hiking trail – with camping reservations booked out at least 3 months in advance. This was our third – or was it fourth?! – time trying our luck at hiking it. Previously, the weather had either been too stormy or too hot for us fair-weather folks to attempt it. Heh.

While the weather forecast appeared decent this time around, a recent bush fire had resulted in a 6.5km track closure between Wattamolla and Garie Beach, which meant that we had to car pool to get around the closed section. That turned out to be a huge blessing in disguise for me actually, since I need only lug my heavy pack for a much shorter distance. 🙂 I’ve been so focused on kayaking, I’ve lost any stamina I had in the first place for hiking. Good wake up call to start cross-training!

But Saturday was a beautiful day, with a nice steady breeze, and after we’d puffed our way over Thelma Head into our beautiful valley campsite at North Era, we changed into our swimmers and plunged into the waves to cool down.

We couldn’t have asked for a more beautiful end to the day really. The clouds gathered and thickened overhead, initially causing me to fret about having lugged my tripod for naught (since I wanted to shoot the stars), but they soaked up all the gorgeous hues of orange and pink and sunset.

 

And as the moon dipped below the horizon, the clouds did clear for a bit for the stars to come out to play. It was so relaxing and mediative to lie back on the soft grass to star up into the night sky, watching the stars pop out one by one.

I toyed with the idea of actually sleeping outside, under the stars. But when Lisa and I popped down to the beach to listen to the waves and play around with more long exposure photography, we noticed a band of lightning spread across the southern horizon at ever increasing intervals. I retreated back to the tent in the end, which turned out to be a wise decision because it did rain for a half hour right before sunrise (before the skies cleared again for what turned out to be a sweltering fall day).

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Lisa and I having some fun playing with long exposure shots on the beach; notice the light pollution in the background from Wollongong

Hiking Warrumbungles National Park

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Last weekend, we went camping at Warrumbungle National Park, Australia’s first Dark Sky Park. Australia in general already enjoys really low light pollution; even in Sydney, we can see the faint band of the Milky Way with our naked eye. But out there in Warrumbungle, my goodness. We could see, quite clearly, those billion little stars that made up the Milky Way. It was most mesmerizing, and we only tore our eyes away at the end to get out of the cold.

For it was cold. We’ve been in Sydney for 2.5 years now, and have already acclimatized to the mild winters here. In Warrumbungle, the temperatures dipped down to -8 degrees C. Thank goodness that the temperatures climbed as soon as the sun rose.

Rose, our trip leader, planned a meticulous itinerary for the short weekend trip. The first day, we did a hike around Breadknife and the Grand High Tops Circuits. Gah, I haven’t been hiking in so long, I was quite winded and opted against joining the others for the slog up Lugh’s Throne. So I was very glad that she decided to swap another long hike the second day for a much shorter – but no less scenic – hike up Split Rock.

We went to one of the many private observatories surrounding the National Park, where we squinted through telescopes at the distant galaxies and planets. The owner of the observatory, Peter Starr, even let us stick our camera to the end of a telescope to shoot this nebula.

Thanks Rose for organising such an awesome trip

Full moon weekend in Kiama

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We were supposed to go camping in Kiama a couple of weeks ago with a bunch of friends. It was a new-moon weekend, perfect for astrophotography. Alas, I caught a cold at the last minute, so Jeff and I regrettably had to drop out. From the pictures, everyone else looked like they had a blast, so we had a huge case of FOMO. So this past weekend, we loaded our car with snorkel gear and kayaks, and drove down the coast.

It was swell. Although it was quite chilly out, snorkeling at Bushrangers Bay in Shellharbour was awesome. Right at the start of our snorkel, we spotted a giant cuttlefish – maybe a foot long. We followed it for quite a while, taking our fill of photographs and videos, then spied another resting by a clump of sea grass. We spotted 3 more cuttlefish by the time we got too cold to continue – plus a humongous Australian Short Tail Stingray gliding by below us.

Giant cuttlefish in Bushranger Bay, Shellharbour (photo by Jeff Fung)

We caught the sunset by the famed Cathedral Rock, where I crouched down in a teeny tiny nook between huge boulders, with the tide fast lapping at my feet. A couple was watching the colours (a bit too muted, alas) near us too, and Jeff ended up helping film the guy’s proposal. 🙂

In the deepening twilight, we spotted a pod of dolphins swimming the length of the beach just offshore.

After dinner, under the full moonlight, we ventured down to Bombo Quarry for a bit of exploration. Our mind was blown by how much light the camera could pick up. Even with just a couple of seconds’ exposure, everyone was lit up, almost as bright as day. Initially, I’d been a tad disappointed at not being able to take pictures of the milky way, but I think I’m a full moon convert now. Granted, the milky way isn’t as prominent under the full moon, but I love how everything else just jumps out.

And before heading back to Sydney and real life the next morning, we went for a bit of a paddle up the coast, squinting out in the horizon for those tell tale spots. No luck alas, even though we’d spied two active pods the day before. Can’t complain though, it was still a very awesome weekend. 😀

Weekend in Batemans Bay

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My mum came to visit, so we went for a long weekend down in Batemans Bay. It’s a gorgeous location – very chill, much more low key than Jervis Bay, an hour to the north.

We got an AirBnB down by Surf Beach, where we went to one morning to catch the sunrise. The storm clouds from the day before still hung low above the horizon, but as the sun started to rise, the clouds dissipated.

Perfect for a leisurely kayaking trip along the coast. Since we had my mum with us, we didn’t bring our foldable kayaks, but joined a tour with Region X Kayak. It took some persuading for my mum to agree to go on the tour, but in the end, she said it was the highlight of her Sydney trip. 🙂 She was in a double kayak with Josh, the guide, and had an enjoyable time keeping her eyes peeled for the pods of dolphins playing in the waters in the bays.

We also checked out Guerrilla Bay, which lies in Batemans Bay Marine Park. It’s a picturesque location with a small rocky island that separates the bay by a narrow strip of sand which is accessible even at high tide. Jeff and I donned on our wetsuits one late morning, and slipped into the waters for a bit of snorkel. Not a bad swim – there were quite a few schools of fish, and even more sea urchins – but the current was buffeting and the waters very bracing. Maybe better in summer, and with gloves to pick the sea urchins.

We also checked out the Boat Ramp by Mossy Bay, where our kayak guide Josh had promised sightings of those gigantic Australian Short Tail Sting Ray. Indeed, we spotted a few swimming to and fro by the pier.

Australia’s largest sting ray, the Short Tail Sting Ray (photo credit: my mum)

We also managed to squeeze in an astroshoot by the beach Sunday evening. The clear skies meant for a lousy sunset, but we had about a 45-minute window between dusk and the full moon rise, enough time to get in some shots of the milky way overhead.

All in all, a most relaxing weekend down the coast.

Stars before the moonrise

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We are lucky to have escaped the relentless rain in Sydney. Down south in Batemans Bay for the long weekend, where we went kayaking with dolphins, and spied the tell tale spouts of whales in the distance, and also snorkeled the bracing waters of Guerilla Bay.

It’s the full moon this weekend, but we had an hour between dusk and the moon rise, so we made the most of it by heading the to quiet cove to drink in the stars. The last of the clouds had dissipated, and overhead, the milky way shone through, brightly. In the horizon, we could make out the faint red glow of the still hidden moon. Life is beautiful.

Easter Weekend – and Engagement Shoot – at Jervis Bay

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I can never remember that here in Australia, we get both Good Friday and the following Monday off. Back in the States, most companies don’t even observe Good Friday! But why question tradition, especially since it affords us more time to relax down in Jervis Bay? We took the opportunity also to take some engagement pictures for my cousin Calina and her soon-to-be-husband. Since they were pretty chill in terms of photography, and preferred candid and silhouette shots, I took it easy and just snapped pictures of us out and about enjoying the beach. Initially, I had hoped to take some underwater photography, but despite the sun, the weather was pretty brisk, so we wimped out, and contented with lounging on Hyams Beach and taking short strolls. 🙂

Jervis Bay sunset

Jervis Bay
Sunrise Saturday – not much color in the sky, but I loved the lines in the sand

 

Jervis Bay Sunrse
I loved watching the two fishermen in their bright yellow raincoats and their tiny little dinghy

 

We also explored the beaches in Booderee National Park – some, like Steamers Beach and Caves Beach, were exposed and had big surf; others like Murrays Beach was protected by the bay and had inviting calm waters. We hadn’t brought our kayaks along this trip, but Jeff and I can’t wait to go back to camp and paddle those waters.

 

On our last night in Jervis, we did manage to squeeze in a more formal engagement shoot. Although there was too much cloud cover, I reckon the effects we tried to go for weren’t half bad, and we even caught the moon rise.

Alas, it was too bad the two boys couldn’t rise out of bed Monday to join Calina and I at the beach for sunrise, for we were treated to a simply spectacular, albeit short, display of color. Calina was halfway down the beach jogging when the sky lit up though, so I had to content with a selfie. Haha.

Weekend in Wolgan Valley

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After two entire weeks of dreary rain in Sydney, we could not wait to escape to Wolgan Valley in the Blue Mountains. Sure, the forecast still seemed plenty gloomy, but we weren’t camping this time, but staying at the comfy Wolgan Valley Resort, courtesy of Jeff’s company. We figured we would have a blast come rain or shine. 😉

As it turned out, the rains stayed away. The skies even parted for a few hours on late Friday night when we arrived, revealing the stars behind.

Kangaroo galore at Wolgan Valley

It was a most relaxing weekend. We spent it mostly eating, enjoying the culinary delights the restaurant served up, and trying to work off the meals in between by checking out the trails surrounding the property. For the first time in a couple of years since moving to Australia, we went biking, and our rustiness showed, since we both wobbled on the muddy trails. But it was a great way to explore the valley, and we delighted in riding alongside hopping kangaroos.

Exploring Wolgan Valley by bike

We went looking for wombats at dusk, and found one lumbering literally outside our cottage