This post is part of my Bodie blog post series.

Bodie is far from city light pollution. With no moonlight, the nights are dark and stars and the milky way very visible. The sky reminded me of a recent trip to Mongolia. During our visit to the ghost town, the moon rise was after 11 pm. So we had a good 4 hours of dark sky followed by an other 1.5 hours of moon light.

Bodie is a small town and has a limited number of subjects to shoot. Given that this was a guided evening, subject matters tend to be repeated. Some of the images I shot are therefore not that unique. Anyway, I love this car and it is kind of fun to have the front lights turned on and the cabin illuminated under the big sky with the dominant Milky Way. Light painting was used to add some light to the car chassis.

The sky with the Milky Way was so huge, I used the vertical format to better capture it.

The night was getting colder and I returned to the car to put on an additional layer of clothing. On the way back, I came upon the church from the backside. Since I had my camera with me, there was nothing holding me back from taking this shot. This is definitely one of my favorites of the night.

An other subject was the Standard Mine and Mill on the west slope of Bodie Bluff. Due to the unstable ground, this part of Bodie is only accessible as part of a guided tour. Nancy led us up the hill and we were able to capture these structures under the stars as well.