I can’t remember which trip it was that first took me past the famous Roy’s, but I remember I passed by at night, and I was tired. I drove by slowly and gawked as I passed, thinking to myself that the place was really cool and that I should stop, but I really just wanted to get to the hotel and crash. So I thought to myself I’ll go back some time, and that was that. Well, some scenes stick with you, and I have actually been back multiple times during the day. It’s just such an iconic spot along the old Route 66!
Back in the Spring of last year I worked out that there were a few compositions that lined up with the Milky Way and the famous Roy’s sign, but I ran out of time and clear nights. I continued to think about it over the summer and made it a priority when I returned in the fall to shoot instead with the rising Orion. I wasn’t exactly sure when the lights came on and how the whole scene could play out from a shooting perspective, so I hung around and chatted with worker who was there for the evening shift. She gave me a wonderful history of the place and caught me up on the current goings-on of the place – and then offered to let me turn the sign on, as well as the lights in the old hotel lobby, which now serves as a small time capsule of days gone by! Such a neat experience!
META
To create this scene I actually did an HDR type collection of shots, exposing for the sign and the rest of the foreground, using a visible light filter. The sign was so bright, relative to everything else, I had to go up the road a ways to get back under dark skies to capture the sky portion of the image. It is, however, astronomically accurate (positionally correct) for the scene. Sky is 10x, ISO 1600, f/2.8 at 2.5mins using a triband filter. Captured using a full spectrum modified Canon R5, using a Sigma 14-24mm lens at 24mm.
Location – Amboy, California
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by TheDanfromTN