Beautiful Badlands
Beautiful Badlands
Behind the Camera.
I am convinced that beauty can be seen in every place. Sure, some require a little more searching, a little more effort to discover the hidden treasures, but somewhere there is a spark, a glitter, a jewel waiting to share its splendor to the explorer, its reward to the one who seeks it out. This belief in beauty motivates me to venture out of the comforts of home and into the wilds of nature. What about you? Is there a seed of desire, perhaps deeply planted in the core of your soul, yearning to discover hidden beauty?
This wanderlust, as its sometimes called, led me to western Kansas. I visited this place three years ago. I had read about some unique rock formations near Lake Scott State Park. After driving nearly 400 miles across Kansas, I came to Little Jerusalem Badlands State Park. Little Jerusalem sits between Oakley and Scott City. It is a geological marvel and a historical landmark.
Some say that this place got its name because from a distance it looks like the ancient walls of Jerusalem. George Custer once settled in the area. Native people roamed the area and a battle between people led by Chief Little Wolf and Colonel William Lewis was fought in the area. Wagon trains and stagecoach lines transited through here. They called the formations “Castle City.”
Apache, Commanche, and Kiowa traveled through this land. Before people lived here, this was home to a very different environment. Part of a vast intercontinental ocean, these formations were formed from sediment on the ocean floor. Fossils of prehistoric sea creatures remain throughout the area. Fossilized sharks teeth and mollusks have been discovered in road cuts.
The land itself is call “badlands” but what I witnessed was beautiful badlands. The open plains of western Kansas is like a large flat floor. Suddenly, the floor opens and there in an unexpected canyon the great chalk-stone pillars reach upward. As if they are attempting to claw their way to the sky.
When one looks at the clear night sky, filled with billions of stars, the reason for the upward reach of these strange rocks becomes more apparent. It is too beautiful to remain at the canyon bottom. Even the rocks look upward to see the beauty of the Milky Way as it streaks across the sky over Little Jerusalem Badlands.
Geek Speak.
I tried to get this photo once before. Unfortunately, the clouds obscured the galactic core and I tried to do too much with the composition. I tend to make things more complicated than they need to be, and it shows in the final product.
However, this night the sky was clear. A full moon was preparing to rise and threatened to blow out the sky, but there was a narrow window of time for the photograph. So, I setup my Sony a6700 camera on a tripod. Using a Sigma 16mm, f/1.4 lens, I planned a single exposure. My settings at this 16mm focal length were an aperture of f/2.2 and ISO at 3200. The shutter speed was set to 8 seconds.
With the lowest light setting on my headlamp, I set the timer for 10 seconds. Triggering the shutter, I ran about 10 feet to the right of the camera and “light painted” the grass in the foreground. I then took a second image, this time turning the light setting on my headlamp to its strongest setting. Once again, I ran about 10 feet to the right and painted the rock formations down inside the canyon. Back at the studio, I blended these photos and the result was this image of the Milky Way extending over the park. This is “Beautiful Badlands.”
