Three Minutes Before Twilight

STARS

Alexander Velazquez

8/29/20264 min read

On March 6, 2020 at Roswell, New Mexico. After so much reading, planning, and watching the moon, I thought I was finally ready. I had learned about ISO, shutter speed, aperture, the 500 Rule, and the dark interval between moonset and sunrise. I studied maps, located the galactic center, and selected three one-hour windows when everything might align.

I would be in the New Mexico desert for work, not far from Roswell. All I had to do was wake up two hours early and drive thirty minutes to a national park before dawn. There would be no city lights—only cactuses, small canyons, and open desert. Somewhere in that landscape, I would take my first photograph of the Milky Way. Not merely a photograph, of course. In my mind, it was already the photograph.

I imagined the galaxy above the desert while the first hint of morning painted the horizon. The landscape would glow softly beneath the stars, and one perfectly placed cactus would complete the composition. I packed my tripod and favorite new lens, a Sigma 16mm f/1.4. I knew the settings and the location. I was ready. Then it rained.

It rained almost nonstop for the entire week. The stars disappeared behind a ceiling of clouds. I could not believe it. It probably rains only one week a year around Roswell, and somehow I had chosen that week for my carefully planned encounter with the galaxy.

I was beyond disappointed. I had calculated moonset, sunrise, twilight, and the position of the Milky Way, yet overlooked the most obvious variable: the weather.

I accepted defeat and began searching for the next good night in March or April somewhere along the East Coast. My first image of the Milky Way would happen elsewhere, another time. Or so I thought.

At four o’clock Friday morning, I left the hotel for my 6:30 flight. The roads were nearly empty, and the failed plan was already becoming a story I would tell later. Then I saw a spark in the black sky—a tiny point of light. It could not be. Had the sky finally cleared?

Beyond the brightest city lights, more stars appeared. By the time I reached the airport at 4:30, the clouds were gone. I checked the numbers on my phone. The moon had just set. Morning twilight would begin in twenty-six minutes. The galactic center was descending toward the southwestern horizon, and the next major source of light pollution in that direction was more than one hundred miles away.

The careful planner in me argued with the part that wanted to take the chance. My flight left in two hours. The sensible decision was obvious. Then I told myself, I can do this. I would drive ten minutes south, photograph for ten minutes, and return immediately.

I expected darkness but found lights, buildings, and factories everywhere. I kept going until I noticed a narrow road that appeared to lead toward a farm and found a safe place to pull over. I jumped out, assembled the tripod, attached the camera, pointed it toward the sky, and took a photograph. Nothing. I checked my phone, found the galactic center again, adjusted the camera, and took another photograph. Still nothing.

Frustration took over. After a week of waiting, the sky had finally cleared, yet I could not find the Milky Way. I closed my eyes, counted to three, opened them, and looked up carefully. There it was. Faint but unmistakable, the cloudy band stretched through the darkness. Once I found it, I wondered how I had missed it. I checked my watch. I had only three minutes before the first twilight began.

I took a breath and told myself to relax. Then I heard a calm voice in my head: Alex, you have this. Remember the 500 Rule, and don’t be afraid of the ISO. You can deal with the noise later. I opened the lens to f/1.4, set the shutter to twenty seconds, raised the ISO to 3000, and pressed the button. Those were the longest twenty seconds of the trip.

While the shutter remained open, I noticed a large truck coming down the road. Its headlights grew brighter as it approached. No. No, no, no. This was going to ruin the photograph. The exposure ended seconds before the truck and its enormous lights passed me. I waved at the driver. He waved back, probably wondering what I was doing beside a dark road with a camera before dawn. Then I looked at the screen.

There it was: my first photograph of the majestic Milky Way—and a utility pole directly in front of it. Electrical cables crossed the sky. There was no canyon, no perfectly placed cactus, and no carefully designed composition. I laughed. Then, yes, I cried a little. It was not the photograph I had planned, but it was my photograph.

I had no time to reposition the camera or find a better foreground. I took a few more images and headed back. Sunrise was spreading across the horizon when I reached the airport, with enough time to make my flight.

My only regret came later: after experimenting with auto-HDR, I had forgotten to switch the camera back to RAW. The photographs were single JPEG images, edited in Snapseed on my iPad with adjustments to dynamic range, moderate saturation, and noise reduction. Technically, they were far from perfect.

Yet perhaps that is why the first one matters so much to me. I had planned the ideal image, but the image I received contained rain, uncertainty, a last-minute decision, three minutes of darkness, a passing truck, and an unavoidable utility pole. It captured not the landscape I imagined, but the experience I actually lived.

There is still much to learn. There will be darker skies, better compositions, RAW files, and more controlled exposures. Someday, perhaps, I will return and create the photograph I originally envisioned.

But there will never be another first photograph of the Milky Way.

And mine has an electric pole in it.