Leo Carrio beach cave and milky way

Here’s the final shot from the early am sesh out in Malibu on Tuesday am. We spent the 3-4 hours we had in the Leo and Matador cave. This cave specifically points to the SE so it’s ideal to catch it during the early MW season before it starts getting too far South. It’s also ideal to catch it slanting across the cave which you can’t get during the later months of the season. Tide has to be pretty low. More so for Matador but here as well. Lastly the sky has to be clear which isn’t always the case as the gloom months come along. You can’t take this shot right as the MW rises either as you are looking straight out towards Santa Monica and the southbay which is where all the glow is from. I knew I wanted a human on the rocks but we added a light to compliment the light pollution. Once the MW rose high enough over the pollution but just a bit before the dark horse moved too far right out of frame we snapped these shots around 4am. Perfect timing and perfect conditions and all within LA county. You get some cool shadows in the cave from the light pollution so I brought them out in post to really give the cave that 3D contrast. Usually I prefer the evenly lit/natural light scenes but I embraced this one. One of my new favorite astro shots from Malibu, up there with some of my fav astro shots in general. I’ll post up a shot from the El Matador cave down the road. Great way to kick in that 2017 milk.

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