Elk wintering in the Willamette valley. The great conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn. Preparing a camping trip in winter weather conditions.
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170 Winter Camping In The High Desert
170 Billy Newman Photo podcast mixdown Winter Camping In The High Desert
Hello, and thank you very much for listening to this episode of The Billy Newman photo podcast. I appreciate you guys checking out this episode—this recording. I’m out here at the wildlife refuge now started the new year. And it’s a bit of a break in the weather. It’s nice and clear right now. And I’m at a rise just after sunset. I’m looking out over some of the lands out there. It’s cool earlier. I was clearing, and there’s like a herd of elk that’s in wintering now, which is pretty cool. It wasn’t here a few weeks ago when I was back over in this area. But yeah, like I’ve been kind of coming over here sort of through December. And I haven’t seen too many of them. But it’s cool. Now, looking at the section of a field over here. It was cool.
There were like, I think, probably almost 30 of them, I guess, but most of them are cows and my binoculars, so I was able to pull up, and I saw I think I saw two with a pretty good rack of antlers on them. It was cool. The elk antlers look pretty neat. Just the shape and structure and stuff. So it was cool seeing him. I’ve only seen him out here. That close, at least like a few times. I think like last year, and we were able to spot him up out in the field. This spring, I saw one of them roaming around just by itself out in the area. And then years ago, yeah, I’m seeing him out in that same field. It’s cool when they’re just kind of standing at attention here, you know, just kind of up and moving around and stuff. It’s pretty cool. Today, they were just they’re just kind of bedded down hanging out in an open field. And getting some sun and stuff is kind of fun. I think today it was pretty cold. It was like, you know, 30 degrees or something today. So it’s kind of cool that they’re out there hanging out and stuff. And yeah, now that it’s evening, I don’t know, it’s not bad. I hear it’s been pretty busy that day.
That means a lot like many people who are up and about roaming around and traveling through the wildlife refuge area out here. But it’s been kind of cool. A few weeks ago, now there was the great conjunction, which is pretty cool. I’m going to talk about this more in the night sky pod, guys, and you can check that one out too. And I’m going to have, I think, three new episodes of that coming out every month on the first that kind of covers some of the stuff that’s going on in the sky for the month, which would be cool. So I’m going to try and do a report of that every month. But I’m going to have one specific on that great conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn. And then I’m going to have some extra stuff for certainly on January 1. So this should be one out right now that you can check out. Let’s have a couple of days behind. Still, yeah, the one for January 1 should be out covering the information for the night sky here in January, which is fantastic, a couple of planets moving around Saturn and Jupiter kind of separating and then also fading off into the morning sky. And then we’re also going to start dealing with Venus more too, which is fantastic.
I think if you’re up in the morning, you’ll see a bunch of them together out here in that in a couple of weeks in January. But a couple of weeks ago. Yeah, I think I’m like December 21 is when they were at their closest, and then I’ve been watching him for the weeks since then, like kind of after Christmas. And then up into the new year, they’re all both pretty close to each other. And even now, like in the evening, I can kind of still see him just after sunset, which is fantastic. But Jupiter and Saturn were quite close to each other, and it was cool that you could cover them both up with your thumb if it were extended out. So I think that means they’re closer together than the width of a full moon. They’re pretty close together, like two minor points out in the sky. And they move away from each other faster. So that’s what I was surprised by is they came together at their closest point. And then the next night, you know, it’s a bit of distance away from each other you think oh, man, wow, that’s like, when you kind of think about the sky like well, it’s Yeah, a significant amount of motion. And just today, it was strange, though, to think that it’s going to take another 19 years of that to get back into the same position where they’re at. Another great conjunction and I suppose that won’t be as close to meeting as this time.
I think this time was especially close in their conjunction; most of the time, they’re a little bit away from each other, just with the angles that the two are in our orbit. And then those two planets’ orbits kind of makeup and alignment to each other. But I guess it was back in the 1600s that was the last time that we had great conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn that was as close as what we were able to see. A couple of nights ago. So that was cool getting to get in the spot and check it out for a while—a lot of fun. I’m getting to get the spot, Jupiter and Saturn, and great conjunction. It’s pretty cool, especially around December 21, when it was at its darkest days there that was kind of cool. And also like if you kind of go back to the stories of like the star at Bethlehem, I think there’s an idea that I think it was introduced by Kappler back in the early 1600s. Where the idea was that the great conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn and maybe Mars, or another planet was what was seen by or noticed by the three wise men as the Star of Bethlehem. So it’s kind of cool that that was right before Christmas, and sort of fun, fun sign, and stuff, but, but yeah, beautiful to see. And it’s kind of a cool and sort of rare event to see him that close together.
So it’s kind of a fun, probably mostly once-in-a-lifetime event, to see those two planets that close together. I think, though, in a few weeks, we’re gonna have a pretty close pass of Venus and Jupiter, but I think it’s like really early in the morning, it’s gonna be kind of difficult to see still gonna be in the glow of the sun and stuff. But yeah, I think we’re gonna start dealing with Venus more too. But yeah, first, the first week of January staff, I just put up wallpaper on my blog. I’m gonna be trying to do this every month. And I’m pretty happy to do it. I think it’s kind of cool. But I’m going through, and I’m picking up a series of photographs of 12 photographs and making a calendar out of it. And if you’re interested in picking up a digital wallpaper for your phone or for your computer, you can go to Billy Newman photo comm check out the latest blog for the January wallpaper for 2021. And there’s a link there to download a wallpaper-sized high-resolution image of January’s wallpaper, and I think it’s a landscape photo of Mount Washington. Beautiful shot, really cool. I love the way the snow and the land are kind of lie out there. And the way the clouds were that day was really cool. I’ve been trying to work on black and whites and stuff. So this is a black and white conversion of a photograph that had previously been shown in color.
And I’ve been liking working with these black and white mixers and some of the software control tools that they have to kind of change some of the features of the colors, the photographs. But then, in the black and white conversion, that kind of makes the contrast different, sort of like if you were to use a polarizer when you’re putting your photographs together. Like if you’re using a polarizer filter on the front of your camera, you can kind of twist that to polarize the light and get some different effects of what shows up as light or dark in your black and white photographs. We kind of similarly with making some adjustments in the mixer; you can do some of those changes for your black and white photos. If you put a blue filter on or a red filter, or a yellow filter, I’ll probably get into that more. But it’s cool. Yeah, put together the series of wallpapers so you can go get the Mount Washington wallpaper for January 2021. I think it’s I’m sizing everything and 2560 by like 1700 16 or 1700 sort of depending on the aspect ratio that the photograph and I should size out to fit a desk desktop, I got a 30-inch desktop monitor or alike a phone. And I guess it wouldn’t run the 4k resolution. I could probably figure that out. But if anybody’s interested in it or into a 4k version of the same photo, then I should they can let me know. But yeah, 2560 by 1700 wallpaper photos have been available. Billy Newman photo comm started. January 1, I guess, is the first one published. And I’m going to try and have one out on the first first day of the month, every day of every month between now and the end of the year, which is kind of fun. But yeah, looking forward to that trying to put a bunch of new stuff up on the blog and some new links, new web stuff, and trying to put together, so I wanted to be pretty full this whole year. What’s the next part? Yeah, so I’ve been kind of trying to put together a packing list. I think that’s something I’m going to focus on a lot this year to have some of the packing list stuff that I’m putting together.
And like the types of stuff that I’m going to try to put together for these different truck camping trips that are trying to head out on and even if it’s like, like day stuff, but especially like if it’s multi-day, a photo work travel stuff, I’m trying to put together some packing lists, and some like information and stuff about it to kind of talk about the different types of things I’m carrying, and some of the experiences I’ve had from it a lot of the time like you can get like pretty in-depth packing lists. But really, it Yeah, you can get really kind of trim it, or I don’t know, if you can, you can really kind of cut it down a lot. There’s a lot of there’s a few types of sort of general things that seem to come up a lot, and you can really handle a lot of your problems with those. So I’ve been kind of looking at like more complicated lists, or, you know, more kind of like expert level lists of stuff that people put together on some of these, these out outbound trips and stuff but really, I think like some of the better experts or people who’ve been doing it longer, kind of kind of worked out some of the smoother grooves to work in and I’m going to try and figure those out and then talk about as I’m, as I’m moving around, but I’m trying to move around more in January, trying to get out and do some traveling and stuff. So I just put up a postcard from the high desert backcountry, which is where I’m gonna be trying to travel. Think like this next week I’m heading out on a trip to go up into some high, or I guess maybe some high desert, we kind of see what the snow level is, I think out there, when you get above like 4000 feet, it’s especially this time of year in January, you’re going to be kind of dealing with the possibility of some snow on the ground and some different spots, which I’m kind of trying to avoid camping indirectly.
But I am trying to go out into some high desert backcountry stuff into some of like the sagebrush, Highland areas that are out there in Eastern Oregon or, or even Northern Nevada. I’m trying to get out to Northern Nevada more, but I think that’s going to be probably in a few weeks here. So yeah, as I kind of get more stuff together to get out of state. But it’d be kind of cool. But yeah, this high desert backcountry photo I put up as a Yeah, as a postcard on the blog the other day. And yeah, it’s cool travel around in the backcountry and stuff, it’s sort of the same stuff, I’m always up to where it’s just kind of like taking the day, day and a half-day today to using the truck camping out in the back of it, I got the heater going like all the time and like that little propane heater in the back, that ran a lot too, which is really cool. And I definitely like making use of my layers. But I don’t know. I’m trying to get a little bit more used to like doing stuff through the January season. December, I was pretty held up or held up November and December, it was pretty, pretty nice kind of having a comfortable holiday season and taking it easy and stuff. But now I’m trying to do colder weather, wet rainy weather photo stuff and some photo travel on camp and stuff. And so we kind of tried to dig into that a little bit more and get used to being being out in the rain or being out in the weather in the elements in the cold. And out here in the high desert, it’s kind of cool, and the weather is really quite a bit drier.
So if there’s no snow on the ground in that area, I mean, the cold it really revs through, you gotta have your layers and stuff, you gotta be like well insulated, but, but that there’s kind of dryness in the air. So like over in the valley, or is just like a lot of moisture, a lot, a lot more moisture in that area, and a lot more kind of wetness to deal with, which is okay, and it’s kind of nice, the temperatures above, above freezing. But when it’s below freezing, and the humidities kind of high and there’s moisture in the air, it’s really, I think, kind of a little bit more difficult to deal with. But out here in Eastern Oregon, it’s kind of nice, where you can set up a fire, and sort of setting up your heat source and stuff have Okay, shelter and stuff set up. And you can really kind of get through some of these colder nights. And I mean, it’s no, it’s no surprise, right? People have been camping out in like, you know, 1714 degree temperatures for a really long time, obviously even colder than that for a real long time. So you know, if I’m doing it, and it’s 24 degrees out somewhere in Eastern Oregon on a pretty mild set of days, and I’m trying to do some traveling, then it’s okay, I can probably figure out how to how to handle it, how to survive out there for the packing list stuff. I have some posts going up on my website here pretty soon. But I’ll kind of be a more comprehensive list of it just kind of generally like this is like everything, I try and put on a checklist of stuff then tried to bring in a trip.
And it’s helped me a lot. It’s cool. You are having that I can probably make it more specific about the stuff that I’m bringing on on each trip too. But yeah, going over the full list is pretty useful. So yeah, I recommend you check that out. And probably copy it over to I don’t know. But yeah, I’ve been trying to go over this list, get some stuff set up, set, I’m kind of prepped and ready to go. And I have the right kind of gear and stuff to get out on. And yeah, I’m definitely kind of loading up on warm equipment. So I have my sleeping bag, my sleeping bags, probably the weak link that I have right now for some of this winter camping stuff have plenty of dry gear, I have the truck in pretty good shape the camper shell on it so I can see dry, I don’t have to worry about you know, the wet weather rainy tent stuff. And I’m really in pretty mild climate areas where it’s going to be above freezing, or it’ll just drop below freezing for a period at night; there’s probably going to be no snow on the ground for the places I’m selecting. So it’s pretty mild, weathered kind of stuff. And a lot of ways.
I mean, gosh, if you think about what people have to do back east or back in like the Midwest, like Montana, even you know, even these western states, it’s gonna be a lot more difficult than probably the experience that I have for some of the microclimate that I have through the winter over here. So it’s cool. I’m trying to get out more and kind of take advantage of it, but a lot of it is, yeah, dealing with the rain and dealing with it kind of going in waves of rain as you’re out just kind of being exposed to the weather. So it’s okay. But the cold is kind of tough, and yeah, the weak link is the sleeping bag. So I have 15 degrees sleeping bag right now. And I was thinking about a zero-degree sleeping bag. That’s probably where I should have started, I figure, but I think where I’m going to try and move to now is a negative 15-degree sleeping bag so that I have one that’s sort of a warmer weather mild weather sleeping bag that’s, that’s positive 15 degrees, as is rated down to which I think is really only good to about 30 degrees Fahrenheit really much below that it’s really quite cold.
So I like to really only use it for kind of Spring, Summer, early fall stuff, and then really as it goes into deeper fall or early spring or anytime we really going to be dropping below 31 degrees below freezing. I think it’s pretty difficult to stay comfortable. I definitely get very cold at night, and I think that kind of negatively affects my sleep enough that I am certainly not comfortable on definitely not as well-rested for the other activities and stuff that I’m trying to get to when I’m camping out, so I think yeah, I’m gonna get through this trip with the positive 15-degree bag, but then I’m definitely going below zero bags sometime soon. So I’ve been trying to look over like stuff at Rei and figure out what kind of negative sleeping bag I have out there’s like synthetic-filled there’s, there’s down fill bags which are more expensive than then there’s like a treated waterproof down fill that sort of in some of the more premium bags, and I’m kind of still trying to decide, but I think the primary thing for me is like that warmth insulating layer.
And a lot of this stuff is going to be car camping or some good backpacking and a no solo backpacking trip. So I need it to be packable and storable. But really, I think a lot of things are and for the price increase to go from how I describe it says like to go from that zero degrees bag to the negative 15-degree bag is a little bump and to go from, say, synthetic fill to a down fill is a bump in price. So when you really kind of pick it out and selecting for the thing you want, you know lightweight, packable negative 15 degrees like so a lot of insulation it ends up being like a pretty expensive like backpacking sleeping bag, you know, it’s like it’s a couple 100 bucks it’s like 300 bucks for like look at Big Agnes, you look at NEEMO I was looking at like the Rei ones. And there’s, there are a few others that are out there that I’ve kind of been checking out a lot of cool stuff, a couple of 100 bucks for a bag in that kind of style. So I think that there’s one that I think it’s a Rei bag, that’s a negative 15-degree bag that was pretty reasonably priced set one, and I think there’s another one that’s like Outdoor Research bag that was a negative 15 that I think was a pretty well priced synthetic bag. That pretty good review, but I saw it, and I made a choice.
Yeah, I don’t know if you guys have experienced shoot me a message building, even photo calm. I guess I’ll read an email about sleeping bags. I’ve been trying to do some research on it. And it seems cool. But I’m just trying to figure out the right one for my needs and stuff. And yeah, I’m assuming a kind of like the two sleeping bag approach sometimes like if you’re really into it, you’ll go for sleeping bags. So you have like, you’ll have every kind of range for a sleeping bag. So you have a kind of warm temperate climate, you have that like mid cool, cold and then very cold as sort of your tears to go through. And I guess you probably have like a 15 to 30-degree difference between each of their ratings vary depending on like, what time of the season, or what time of year, what season you’re going camping in and trying to sleep out, and what kind of activity you’re up to.
But I think like a lot of people should probably focus on two sleeping bags system where you have something for kind of mid, cold temperate climates and then like an extra cold climate. And I think that’s probably what I’m going to try moving on here now. So I’ve had my summer bag for years now. And I think it’s time that I get a cold-weather bag, something that’s below rated for below freezing. And I guess that’ll get me to keep me warm in the 10s and teens temperatures that I’m trying to head out into. That’s cool. I’m out here kind of outside. It’s a clear night, and I’m looking at a bunch of Canadian geese that have taken off their flying or over the valley here, and I see him in the light that’s kind of still up over the hills. It’s after the sun had set, and yeah, 100 zones cool kind of float around swimming around. Really pretty to see the geese and stuff out here. It’s kind of cool. I like that part of January, December January out here. It’s nice watching the birds fly around. I think real soon we should be spotted the bald eagles coming in. I see as a bunch of hawks out here tonight. But I haven’t seen any Eagles out in the trees. It shouldn’t be any time, and I think I think this time of year is when they start showing up in this part of the valley, which is pretty fun. But I got some black and white photos going up on Instagram right now, a lot of black and white photos to come, and I think that’ll be pretty cool. Let me jump over GNC. Like what? What I was putting out this week, I think, Yeah, I’ve got some stuff from like Eastern Oregon is I think what was going on.
So I have a photo, and a bunch of black And White conversions is what I was trying to work on like I was talking about at the top of the podcast, whereas as going through this, this mixer and making changes to a bunch of the color photographs that I’ve had before and a bunch of photographs I shot this year that I haven’t posted yet putting out a black and white version trying to do some of the projects with them too. But I have a photo of Fort rock from a distance is kind of a shot of the sagebrush and stuff as it spreads across the land on a cloudy day; that that was a cool shot. This other image I’ve got is of some petroglyphs, and I talked about these petroglyphs before probably, but yeah, beautiful to see these, these Indian petroglyphs that are just like I think they’re these are ancient spas, these specific ones are really old. And I think they have like, I think they have a human depiction with animals. And then, like another kind of God-like figure was, I can’t there’s just a specific name for this like when tribes had petroglyphs depictions of sort of a half-animal half-human being on their petroglyph display, but there’s this big petroglyph display with this horned human with forearms. And then below that, there’s like the small man with two arms and two legs and no horns. And he’s got his hands up too.
But he’s kind of like beneath and below, like the bigger entity. And then on the other side of the rock is this display of like this field of animals and then a human. And it’s really interesting to see kind of the types of things that these people are thinking. beautiful to see it. But I love that photograph. And yeah, working with some of this high desert stuff. And some of these petroglyphs are pretty cool. And I like that kind of content a lot. Again, another photograph of the Alvord Desert out with the tent on it is really fine, and I want to get out to the Alvord. Again, pretty soon. And I hope to do that. Probably by the early spring. It’d be nice to get back out there. But definitely out in the area. I want to try and check out some stuff in a while he can get into. I think that’d be pretty cool. And I’ve got this other photo of the track I’ve been. I think it’s a truck pretty soon after the time that I put the canopy on it back in the spring, and I think it was a trip that I’d done out to what’s the name of that area, I don’t know. It was like up in up this creek in the Willamette national forest that I was doing a kind of an early spring fishing trip. And they did like an overnight trip up there. beautiful lake though beautiful water and stuff really nice to kind of go back up there and camp, but it gets kind of crowded. And that area, even as it is, it’s just kind of a tight Canyon. And so, like a lot of the opportunities for spots to stop at camp. I’ll get kind of filled up along that Creek set there. But yeah, it was cool going out there and cool. Definitely, checking out the truck with the canopy on it is nice. And I think, Yeah, another photograph I’ve put up this week was this one of them. I think it was the divide where the part of the Alvord Desert has the uplift that goes to the steens mountain. And really, I think a cool photograph. I think this one might be a film image. I’m not sure, maybe, maybe the digital copy of it too. But yeah, it looks at, I think, toward man Lake, which is this smaller, but the multi-acre lake that’s out there in the desert. So the Alvord Desert side of the steens divide, there be an uplift, I think probably about 8000 on average. And then I think it peaks at around like 9500 feet and then slopes off again, back down toward French Glen. And I think it’s like another 70 to 80, maybe 90 miles over to the ridge of heart mountain. And that’s where you get another section of uplift but really cool out there. And I loved getting out there over the Alvord and Steen’s area. And then another photo I have. Yeah, there are probably like a few photos you guys are probably going to see on social or up on the blog as a kind of go-through. But yeah, this other one from the Alvord Desert, as I look up to the steens mountain in the morning, I think this one had been like a color image that they put out a number of times. But yeah, it’s pretty cool. I like this photograph a lot. And I think it should be up probably this week. Number six on the photo, I think I’m probably putting out maybe 12 photos a week. Maybe a little more than that. I think it is supposed to be two a day, most days of the week. And so I don’t know it could be up to 14 photos, I guess, but I don’t know if it’s that many. And I got another photo here of some trees. Myself. Mount Hood, you probably get to see that photo. This black guy likes this black and white foot, Mount Hood. I was up in the Mount Hood National Forest. What would it be? I guess it’d be East are kind of on the east side of Mount Hood. And I was over. Yeah, the national forest area over there on some rows back in October. I think I was talking about it on the podcast too. I have a photograph here of it. Yeah, that was editing over into a black and white. But I really like how to contrast it is and how it’s kind of trying to work the blacks in the trees to be, you know, like real crisp and sharp. And then kind of isolate some of the channels in the backlight, so you get kind of a crisper relief of the details and the trees and the glean off the snow on the side of the peak of the mountain. It’s pretty cool. But it’s got fun stuff. And then I have another kind of abstract one. That’s sort of some clouds that are sweeping up in this long exposure, and I’m going to try and get into more long exposure stuff. This year, if I can do it, I want to try and use this, this Lee big stopper, neutral density filter, and I use this, and I also use really just like low light blue our time of day with the regular like 32nd exposure on the camera. And if there’s like a couple of clouds in the sky and sort of a skyline with some light on it, you know, some of that evening or morning skylight, it works really well to light a photograph for around 30 seconds, or so I really liked that actually, you know, shooting that time of day, I still really prefer the aspects that you get of the just before dawn, and just after sunset lighting that you get it’s probably some of my favorites, but you really get some of them, I guess kind of the dramatic contrast in the sky, you also get a lot of relief and color up into the clouds. And even in this one, that’s a black and white conversion. I think it’s cool, where you get to see the light kind of curling up over the horizon. And sort of making some dramatic effects in this sweep of the clouds as they were kind of cast into the photo over 30 seconds that they were exposed for. It’s pretty fun, pretty cool. But also pretty mellow stuff, some black and whites going up. If you have any thoughts on those, let me know to shoot me an email billing me with photo Comm. Also, you can get What it is got a billion human photo.com forward slash support to send me some information or to send me some cash if you want to and send me some information. If you want to have it, I talk about some stuff on the podcast. That’d be pretty cool too. But through the New Year 2021, it’ll be nice and kind of coming into a whole bunch of new stuff. So this week, I’m going out and doing some kind of, I guess kind of wintery desert cabin stuff should be kind of wet and really cold. And I’m going to try and keep that, and then coming up soon, I’m going to be trying to go over to the coast for I want to do some rock counting stuff and some I want to do some metal detecting I got this metal detector. So I got a whole plan on that coming out. Yeah, thanks for listening to this episode of The Billy Newman photo podcast. appreciate you guys tuning in and checking it out. I’ll get back to you next week. Thanks