The bus that fell from the sky. I’ll break down how I got this strange-looking night photo. After all, it’s not every day you see a bus that looks like it plummeted from the heavens and jammed into the earth.

Bus Night photo of the Car Forest in rural Nevada.
Night photo of the Car Forest in rural Nevada.

Dutch angle

I decided early on to photograph this using a Dutch angle. I don’t always use this angle. However, when I do, I make it really crooked. Full-on 1960s Batman crooked. It creates tension and movement far more than a photo with a straight horizon could ever hope to do.

Light painting

First, I light-painted the exterior of the bus with a handheld ProtoMachines LED2 light painting device during the exposure. I skimmed it across the surface to create more texture.

Then, hiding the light behind the wall of the bus, I used red light and illuminated the interior of the bus. Once again, I used a shallow angle to create more shadow and texture.

This illumination makes the bus more colorful and makes it pop forward against the blue moonlit sky.

Star trails

This photo felt like it could use some star trails. I let the camera click away. I used longer individual exposures than I typically do. Each individual photo was seven minutes at f/8 ISO 200. I ended up letting it click away for seven total exposures. This added up to a total exposure of 49 minutes.

In Adobe Photoshop, I “stacked” the seven individual photos together. I then switched the top six layers to “Lighten” Mode. Although I don’t always enjoy post-processing, this is one of my favorite things to do. I love how the star trails suddenly magically appear after changing the mode to “Lighten.” 

If you don’t have Photoshop, you can use any other photo editing program that supports layers such as Affinity. Or you can use StarStax, which runs on Windows, Mac OS, and Linux. StarStax is also free. And we all love free things, don’t we?

Where is this bus?

bus in desert with cars
Another night photo of the Car Forest in rural Nevada.

This is a strange art installation on the edge of the Mojave Desert known as The International Car Forest of the Last Church. Mark Rippie and Chad Sorg collaborated to make this happen in the rural Nevada desert outside Goldfield. The Car Forest has been painted over many times, sometimes by more artistic people, and sometimes by exceedingly unartistic people hellbent on destruction and ugliness. Nevertheless, it’s a fantastic place for photography, day or night, but especially night. And at night, the vehicles almost seem to be begging for color. Lots of color.