frustrating.Parks close early

[BruceK]

Jack:

See if there's a local astronomy club and contact them for suggestions.

     Bruce

[Lin Evans]

Hi Jeff,

While the San Diego Balboa Park Zoo offers some nice shooting opportunities, especially from the top deck of the tour bus, I would highly recommend the Wild Animal Park. Take the train ride through the park a couple times and if you take along something like the 100-400 with a 1.4x tele or whatever the equivalent is with your camera, you can get some great shots. They also have a "photo safari" where they take several photographers in the back of a stake-bed truck and stop to let you shoot (mostly ungulates, & other browsing, non-predatory animals), I would not recommend it. It's dusty, dirty, bumpy and you can do as well or better from the monorail train which doesn't cost an arm and a leg.

Lin

[Where to shoot late night photo&]

I live in the city, and the recent spate of solar storms has increased the likelihood of some good Aurora viewing. Because of light pollution and tree/building clutter I would like to get away from town to shoot some photo's. I would also like to be able to do this at a moments notice, so a drive of more than an hour would be an issue. The problem is that the nearby state parks close at 10PM and none of my friends have property out of the city. Does anyone have any ideas on how I can go shoot somewhere at 2AM without either breaking laws or just generally causing concern for residents and police? What have your experiences been?

Thanks
JackR

[rickster]

I agree, down here in North Carolina a local astronomy club keeps Pilot Mountain State Park open plenty late.

[dbarthel]

There seems to be a Federal Govt trend to redefine nature. Down here in Florida, they claim sunrise is at 7:30am year around, and sunset is reliably at 5:30pm, both times of course staying the same during daylight savings time