bigwavedave

. I've been thinking about getting this shot for over a year now. I wasn't sure if I'd even be able to get it on this particular trip as it had been cloudy much of the time. I had managed to get a reasonable astrophotography timelapse a couple nights before at the windmill on Gooseberry Mesa but had to wait until after a thunderstorm rolled through and had a small window before the clouds came in again. After a mostly cloudy day in between, the forecast looked good and it also looked like the Milky Way was going to line up in the center of the Grafton Road Gap at about 4:30AM under relatively dark skies. I knew the execution would require a two exposure composite as astro photography can only be captured via a long shutter exposure and an action shot can only be clearly captured with a very fash shutter speed. I'd have to take one photo of myself jumping the gap, and another of the stars without moving the camera, and then combine them in post. We drove the van out to Grafton Ghost Town and set up camp just past the ghost towns cemetary. I set up 2 LED video panel lights. One on the run in about 20' from the lip, and one on the hill opposite it to illuminate the landing transition. They were bright, but not bright enough to even consider hitting the gap without also wearing a bright headlamp illuminating what was right in front of me at any given moment. I also set up a strobe in the middle of the road pointing toward the gap to light the cliffs as well as one strobe on a ledge of the left cliff pointing upward and aimed so that, hopefully, it would light me, the rider, as I passed over the center of the gap. Once I had it all set up, I then went to wake up Rachel. I needed a trigger person and she was the only other person with me at the moment. She'd been asleep for a good hour and a half. Just long enough to start having nightmares about sleeping near the Ghost towns nearby Cemetary and she tells me she doesn't feel good about the whole thing. She thinks maybe I should wait to do this until someone else could be there, just in case I hurt myself. After giving her a guilt trip about being a dream killer (something along the lines of not being supportive after I'd spent all the time to set it up), and reminding her that all she had to do was hold down the trigger while I jumped, I managed to roust her from her troubled sleep. She was such a trooper for even entertaining the idea and I have to give her credit as it would have been impossible otherwise. I then turned on all the lighting, made sure everything was synched up with the flash units, told her when to hit the trigger, asked her follow me with a decent flashlight to help with illumination, and then hiked my bike up to do a couple practice run-ins to see how the light would be. It wasn't as good as I'd hoped. I could have used at least a couple more video light panels as the upper part of the run in wasn't illuminated and the headlamp just wasn't cutting it at maximum speed. It's a no-brainer in the daytime, but at night all of the sudden you realize that it's off camber a bit in spots and you need to go brakeless at top speed to make the gap. I ended up balancing another high powered flashlight in a sagebrush to try lighting that part of the run in but it kept falling out. I finally got it to stay, but the batteries were fading fast so I told Rachel that this was the one. I was sick of messing with the technicalities. Needless to say, the jump happened. It was freakier than I expected. Nothing like the times I've hit it during the day, but it went without much issue. I went over, took a look a the preview, and though it wasn't as perfect as I'd have liked (I could have made it even more technical by adding more strobes in better locations), It was good enough. I thanked my amazing wife for getting up and helping me, and sent her back to bed. It was now about 2:15 AM. I cleaned up my lighting and strobes, left the camera on it's tripod in the exact same place, and went to bed at about 2:30 AM. I had to be up in an hour and a half just to make sure I didn't miss the moment the Milky way would pass through the center of the gap and hoping that the cloud cover would clear by then. My alarm went off in what felt like minutes from when I fell asleep. Off I went to take several long exposure shots. There were still some small hazy clouds that made the milky way and stars look a little less sharp than I had hoped for, but you work with what you've got and I didn't want to fudge this. The sky was clear enough to get the shot you see. After I took what I felt was enough pictures that I had at least one good solid milky way shot, I packed up the camera and rest of the equipment, and headed to bed by about 5:45 AM. We were meeting the Fezzari Brand Ambassador crew there at 9:30 AM to ride with them and try out their La Sal Peak for the day so I had to get a few more hours of sleep. We got up, had an aweseome time riding with them and absolutely loved their bikes and the crew. It's sharing moments like this with people who appreciate the gift of the outdoors that truly make life the amazing thing it is.