Eloquent Images by Gary Hart
Insight, information, and inspiration for the inquisitive nature photographer
Seeing the forest for the trees
Posted on May 30, 2011
Photographing a redwood forest is an exercise in humility. Even on the brightest of days, a mature redwood forest is twilight-dark, not a problem until you realize that its nearly cave-like setting is invariably marred by random spots of daylight that seem designed to taunt your camera’s limited dynamic range. Any attempt to capture the forest’s exquisite shadow detail is peppered with distracting blown (overexposed to absolute white) highlights. Score one for the redwoods.
Another problem is the shear immensity of the forest’s scale. The difficulty capturing this scale with a photograph is underscored for me when I see people’s reactions upon their visit first visit to California’s redwoods–they’ve seen the pictures, but no image can prepare them for the actual size these trees. (This post refers to California’s coastal redwoods, but similar observations apply to photographing the slightly less tall but far more massive giant sequoia of the Sierra.) The only way to photograph a redwood tree from top to bottom is an extreme wide, vertical composition that shrinks the entire world, and distorts the forest into a assemblage of tilting sticks. Redwoods two, photographer nothing.
But let’s say that you’ve found a composition that doesn’t involve an entire tree, and somehow avoids the highlights. In the forest darkness, the aperture necessary for any amount of depth of field forces, even after resorting to a noise-inducing high ISO, shutter speeds long enough to blur foliage in the slightest of breezes. Strike three.
Despite all these limiting factors, I can’t help returning to the redwoods with my camera. My favorite time to visit is when rain or dense fog mitigates the dynamic range, delivering the entire scene in even, shadowless light. But apparently Mother Nature’s priorities are different from mine. Last week, while assisting Don Smith’s Northern California workshop, I found myself wandering beneath the dense canopy on the Ten Taypo trail in Redwood National Park. The sky was clear. Our small group, all alumni of previous workshops (Don’s and/or mine), was more than comfortable without my input, enabling me to get into my creative zone, a luxury I don’t have in most workshops.
For all the reasons detailed above, success in a redwood forest requires subverting the urge to bite off too much of the experience. Instead, I seek a single aspect of the scene to highlight, and let other aspects of the scene complement or fade into the background. In this case I found my eye drawn to a branch of delicate, green, new-growth leaves (can anyone help me out with the identification of this tree?), backlit by indirect sky-light. Attached to dark branches and juxtaposed against the deeply shaded redwood foliage, these translucent leaves appeared to be individually lit and suspended in midair.
Positioning myself to best frame the leaves meant including splashes of light that leaked through distant trees. A confusion of thin, bare branches added distracting disorganization between my leaves and the redwood backdrop. Not that easily discouraged, I removed my camera from my tripod and experimented with some compositions. I found that dropping a little lower and shooting slightly up allowed me to eliminate most of the tangled branches while still placing the leaves against the towering trees in the background. While dropping shooting up meant introducing even more background light, I found that zooming tighter on the leaves (113mm) and using a large aperture turned the bright points of light into fuzzy balls, a jewel-like effect that I though actually added interest without being a distraction. It also made the parallel trunks just recognizable for context, without competing with the leaves I wanted to emphasize.
I spot metered on the bright leaves, taking care that my exposure ensured wouldn’t blow any of the RGB channels (each pixel is actually a combination of red, green, and blue light values). A very soft breeze intermittently nudged the leaves, so I bumped up to ISO 400 (I try to avoid going higher than this whenever possible) to maximize my shutter speed. With my camera secured to the tripod, I refined my composition, then switched to live-view mode, magnified to 10x the leaf I most wanted sharp, and manually focused there. I clicked a series of fairly wide f-stops, adjusting my shutter speed accordingly and closely monitoring the magnified live-view LCD image, clicking only when it was completely still. At home I decided that f5.6 gave me the best combination of blurred light-jewels and redwood trunks that were soft enough to recede into the background, but just sharp enough to be recognizable.
This image reminds me of an essay I wrote several years ago on the “ooh” and “ahhh” of nature photography. I got a lot of really nice images on this trip, probably more than most trips, many of which will no doubt generate more oohs than this one. But this kind of image makes me so much happier than the large, dramatic scene. I love the effort and precision of its execution, from concept to completion, and the feeling that it’s one-of-a-kind. It may not have the electric ooh-power to draw you from across the room, but (for me at least) it has the ahhh-factor that holds you once you arrive.
Making memories: Experience counts
Posted on May 24, 2011
Several of my first experiences of the world are etched forever (and exclusively)
in my mind: the unfathomable immensity of the Grand Canyon; the jutting monoliths of Stonehenge; the gleaming white marble of the Taj Mahal; and the belching orange fire of Hawaii’s Kilauea Caldera. After a lifetime of vicarious marvel via books, film, and photos, I believed I was prepared to view (and photograph) each firsthand, only to be humbled by the experience.
Experience. Not a scene or view to be photographed, but a three dimensional, multi-sensory, memory-etching moment. Standing on the rim of the Kilauea Caldera that night, I knew my camera couldn’t convey the significance of being firsthand witness to the newest rock on earth bubbling beneath celestial pinpoints that began their journey thousands of years ago. So I was content to just stand and appreciate before engaging my camera to capture the two-dimensional memory-trigger you see here.
Am I frustrated by my inability to recreate reality with my camera? Of course not. In fact, I appreciate the things my camera does differently than my eyes, but that’s a thought for another day. Right now I just want to stare at this image, remember my first volcano, appreciate the way my camera has guided and refined my experience of the world.
Dogwood Bouquet
Posted on May 19, 2011
Earlier this week I had the good fortune to be in Yosemite for the peak of the annual dogwood bloom. Photographing dogwood is one of my favorite things, yet in recent years it seems I’ve been thwarted in my attempts to capture the event at its peak. Yosemite’s average peak bloom is around May 1, but that can vary by a couple of weeks; since I generally schedule my workshops a year in advance, and always time them to coincide with a full or crescent moon, all I can do is hope everything aligns. Of course that doesn’t stop me from driving up for the dogwood on my own, a last-minute luxury that should (in theory) enable me to photograph the peak with watchmaker’s precision. You’d think. Last year I nailed the dogwood peak on a quick overnight trip, only to have my car break down and end up spending two days in Fresno instead. Yippee.
On to 2011. By the end of my April 28-May 1 workshop, the dogwood blossoms had barely started to emerge from their pods and I guessed two weeks would be about right for the peak. So last week I got the car serviced and booked Sunday and Monday nights in Yosemite. The dogwood were indeed at full strength. But so, I’m afraid, was the sun and with it the tourists. Parking lots were jammed, getting a meal at any of the park’s cafeteria’s or food counters was an exercise in patience, and it seemed that every roadside deer or squirrel incited a rubber necker’s convention. But when the rain arrived Monday afternoon, I couldn’t help the eerie feeling that the Rapture had arrived and photographers had somehow been overlooked (go figure). For the rest of my stay the roads were empty and it seemed the only people I saw were wielding tripods.
I love photographing dogwood in shadowless, overcast light. And in addition to their crowd dispersing qualities, raindrops give the flowers an opalescent quality. Shortly before heading home Tuesday evening, I found this young tree in full bloom beside the Merced River, across from Bridalveil Fall. As often happens, the more I worked the scene, the more compositions I found. A wind that ranged from light to nonexistent allowed me to experiment with various depths of field at ISO 400; it wasn’t until I saw the images on my computer that I chose this frame with a wide-open aperture that blurred the background river and blooms, emphasizing the graceful, glistening foreground display.
What’s on your hard disk?: A project for a sunny day
Posted on May 13, 2011
One of the risks of making photography your livelihood is the possibility (likelihood?) that the business will preempt the photography. Even though I’ve consciously chosen to continue photographing only what I want to photograph without concern for the marketability of an image, when I return from a trip the demands of the business often leave little time for my captures.
A few days ago I received a request for an image that sent me digging through my archives. I found what I was looking for, but in the process stumbled upon a few images I’d forgotten about; probably nothing that will make me rich, but at the very least some that make me happy. This got me thinking that every photographer might benefit from occasionally revisiting rejected captures. Often our first impression, influenced by the mood of the moment, is entirely different from our current impression. You’ve no doubt grown as a photographer, re-defined your tastes, refined your eye, improved your processing skills–all factors that might lead to different conclusions about past rejects. The next time you find yourself in a photography state of mind, and the bright sun and blue sky outside offer little promise, try returning to past captures. If an image stops you, open it and play a bit. Correct flaws, experiment with different crops, sharpen–whatever you think it might need. Who knows, you may just find yourself pleasantly surprised by what’s there.
Today’s image is one such find. As a Yosemite photo destination, Valley View is probably second only to Tunnel View in popularity. I take all my workshop groups to Valley View, and usually can’t resist a peek when I’m in the park on my own, but rarely photograph there anymore. But on a visit a couple of autumns ago, finding the light and clouds irresistible, I set out to see if I could create something I didn’t have. With the clouds enshrouding El Capitan lending an air of mystery, I chose a vertical composition to eliminate less compelling surroundings. Rather than emphasize the almost irresistible reflection in the meandering Merced, I adjusted my polarizer to reveal the river-rounded rocks beneath the surface. The result was a high-key perimeter framing the darker scene that gives the frame a negative feel, where the darkest regions do the most work. Despite liking it as soon as it flashed in my LCD, I thought little more about this image until I stumbled upon it last week. While this won’t likely be the image I retire on, at the very least it nudged me into digging a little deeper on my hard drives to see what else might be out there. Stay tuned….
Shoot now, think later
Posted on May 7, 2011
Sunrise Trio, Crescent Moon Above El Capitan and Half Dome, Yosemite
Canon EOS-1Ds Mark II
Canon 100-400 L
.6 seconds
F/11
ISO 200
Magic moments in nature are rarely static, and reacting to them as they happen is rarely productive. But taking the time to do you homework helps you anticipate these special moments well enough to consistently put yourself in position before they happen. Understanding the conditions necessary for a rainbow, anticipating a sky favorable for a colorful sunset, and plotting the moon’s position above an iconic landscape puts nature photographers in position to photograph the magic. But when that magic happens, it’s time to turn off your left (logical) brain and give control to your right (creative) brain. In other words, don’t think, shoot!
A lot of thought goes into taking a picture, but when comes time to click the shutter, the impulse needs to start from your heart, not your brain. After many years conducting photo workshops, I’ve concluded that a prime factor hindering photographers’ ability to shoot from the heart (along with an inflexible adherence to photography “rules”) is their struggle to master metering, exposure, and their camera. I’m afraid that the “intelligence” built into today’s cameras misleads people into thinking their camera can handle everything. It can’t. Mastering photographic fundamentals until they’re second nature, until they happen without conscious thought, frees you to connect with the beauty of the moment and compose by feel.
My most recent spring workshop group made the most of its opportunity to photograph this once in a lifetime* moonrise event from Half Dome View on Big Oak Flat Road, across the Merced River Canyon from Yosemite’s more heralded Tunnel View. Our goal was to underexpose the scene just enough to silhouette Yosemite’s two most recognizable monoliths against the rich twilight glow on the eastern horizon. Automatic metering would have made a mess of this.
The moonrise happened on our final morning, giving the group three days to overcome any automatic-mode bias in favor of the manual control this scene required. We’d exorcised most of the exposure kinks with a silhouette shoot from Tunnel View the morning prior, and visited Half Dome View the prior afternoon to familiarize everyone with the scene. A 4:45 a.m. departure got us in place about fifteen minutes early, more than enough time to set up tripods, frame initial compositions, meter, and focus. When the moon appeared, everyone was ready to stop thinking and simply shoot.
We were dealing with two changing variables that morning, the moon’s ascent and the increasing light. As the moon moved first toward (and partially behind) and then above Half Dome, the compositional balance in the frame changed. And the brightening of the sky, gradual enough that the eye couldn’t really register change from moment to moment, necessitated constant exposure adjustment.
Throughout the shoot I called out reminders to vary compositions, wide/tight and horizontal/vertical, and monitor exposure. If you train yourself to glance at your histogram every few frames, exposure adjustment at sunrise is simply a matter of making a one-click-at-a-time (1/3 stop in most cameras) exposure subtraction—no need to re-meter or even look through the viewfinder for anything besides composition.
I’m happy to report that everyone was successful that morning. A quick review of my image series shows that I captured thirty-two frames over twenty-two minutes, eighteen horizontal and fourteen vertical. I shot everything with my 100-400 lens, and used the entire focal range from 100mm to 400mm (the majority were closer to 400mm than 100mm), trending wider as the moon rose. The image in this post was captured about twelve minutes after the image in last Monday’s post. Not only has the moon moved quite a bit, the light has increased significantly, and the sunrise color has really started to kick in.
I have no memory of consciously making exposure decisions, but I know my process in the field well enough to predict the progression of my settings. Reviewing my EXIF data confirms that once I got my initial exposure, I shifted into unconscious exposure mode (small adjustments, without re-metering, as the light changes). My “default” settings (for best image quality) are f11 at ISO 100 (adjusting shutter speed to control the exposure), but that morning I started at f8 and ISO 400 to allow a faster shutter speed because my first exposures were long enough that I was concerned about motion-blur in the moon and a stiff wind.
As the light increased, I first increased my shutter speed because the wind made vibration my prime concern (rather than noise from a too-high ISO, or softness from a less-sharp f-stop). When my shutter speed was no longer measured in seconds, I adjusted my ISO down to 200; as the light increased more, I went to f11, the aperture at which that lens is sharpest (for me). After that my shutter speed increased in 1/3 stop increments until the light from rising sun washed out the foreground/sky contrast I needed. There were no frame-to-frame adjustments greater than one stop.
* Once in a lifetime because it will be many, many years before a 3% crescent moon slips through the narrow gap separating El Capitan and Half Dome in the pre-dawn sky.
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A Gallery of Yosemite Moons
The Other Ninety-Nine Percent
Posted on May 2, 2011
Cradled Crescent, El Capitan and Half Dome, Yosemite
Canon EOS 1DS Mark III
4 seconds
400 mm
ISO 400
F8
Thomas Edison said, “Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.” (Without claiming genius) I think this applies to photography as well: Many successful images are more the product of being in the right place at the right time than divine inspiration. Of course anyone can stumble upon a lucky convergence of location and conditions and come home with a great photo, but the “genius” behind creating great photos consistently is preparation and sacrifice–a.k.a., perspiration.
The moonrise on the final sunrise shoot of last week’s Yosemite workshop spurred these thoughts about inspiration and effort. We were all in more or less the same place, photographing the same thing. And while everyone probably captured very similar images (in this case of a crescent moon squeezing between El Capitan and Half Dome), the true magic was simply being there.
But why were we the only ones there to witness this special moment that probably won’t repeat for decades? Determining the moon’s altitude and azimuth from any location on Earth is as easy as visiting one of many websites, or using one of many astronomical software applications such as The Photographer’s Ephemeris or (my preference) the Focalware iPhone app. Armed with this data, aligning the moon’s rise with any landmark isn’t rocket science.
Based on my calculations and plotting, I scheduled my “Yosemite Dogwood and Rising Crescent” workshop to coincide with a sunrise crescent moon. The dogwood bloom isn’t as reliable, but I know interesting weather is still possible in Yosemite in late April and early May. What we ended up with was mostly clear skies (great for tourists, but definitely not for photographers) and a very late dogwood bloom in Yosemite (probably two weeks behind “schedule”), forcing me to shift the daytime emphasis of my spring workshop to rainbows. I’m happy to report Bridalveil and Yosemite Falls delivered more photogenic rainbows than I can count, from a number of different locations.
As spectacular as they were, overshadowing the rainbows was the moonrise on our penultimate morning. I promised the group that departing at 4:50a.m. would get us to Tunnel View in time to photograph a 7% crescent moon rise above Yosemite Valley, between Sentinel Dome and Cathedral Rocks, in the pre-dawn twilight. (I knew this because I’ve been calculating moonrise and moonsets in Yosemite and elsewhere for many years, and have photographed more of these from Tunnel View than any other location.) That moonrise came off exactly as advertised–so far so good.
But the Tunnel View success, as beautiful as our images were, was merely a warm-up that gave everyone an opportunity to hone their silhouette exposure and composition skills in advance of the rare moonrise opportunity I’d planned for the next morning. When scheduling this workshop I’d determined that about 45 minutes before sunrise on May 1 of this year (2011), a delicate 3% crescent moon would slip into the narrow gap between El Capitan and Half Dome for anyone watching from Half Dome View on Big Oak Flat Road.
Lunar tables assume a flat horizon, so unless I’m at the ocean, the primary uncertainty is when the moon will appear above (or disappear below) the not-flat horizon. Once I’ve photographed a moonrise (or set) from a location, I simply check the precise time of its appearance (or disappearance) against the altitude/azimuth data for that day to get the exact angle of the horizon from there. Until I have this horizon information, I only have the moon’s direction and elevation above the unobstructed horizon and can only make an educated guess as to the time and location of its appearance.
The other big wildcard in moon and moonlight photography is the weather, but a last minute check with the National Weather Service confirmed that all systems were go there. Nevertheless, despite all my obsessive plotting, checking, and double-checking, having never photographed a moonrise from this location, and the fact that an error would affect not just me but my entire group, I couldn’t help feel more than a little anxious.
The afternoon before our second and final pre-dawn moonrise, I brought the group to Half Dome View so they could familiarize themselves with the location and plan their compositions. Due to the horizon uncertainties I just described, the first time I photograph a moonrise/set from a location, I generally give my group only an approximate time and position for the moon’s rise/set. But during this preview someone asked exactly where the moon would rise, and I confidently blurted that it will appear in the small notch separating El Capitan and Half Dome between 5:15 and 5:20 a.m. (about 25 minutes after the official, flat-horizon moonrise). Standing there that afternoon, however, I realized how small the notch really is, meaning that even the slightest error in my plotting could find the moon rising much later, from behind El Capitan or Half Dome. So I quickly qualified my prediction, explaining that I’ve never photographed a moonrise here and the uncertainty of knowing the horizon. But given all of my perfectly timed waterfall rainbow hits so far, not to mention our Tunnel View moonrise success earlier that morning, I had the sense that my group had unconditional (blind) confidence in me. (Yikes.)
Sunday morning we departed dark and early (4:45 a.m.), full of anticipation. We arrived at Half Dome View a little after 5:00, early enough to enable everyone to set up their tripods, frame their compositions, and set their exposures. Then we waited, all eyes locked on the gap separating El Capitan and Half Dome. Well, almost all eyes–mine made frequent detours to my watch and the Focalware iPhone app responsible for my bold (rash?) prediction. (What was I thinking, promising a moonrise into a paper-thin space in a five minute span from a spot where I’d never photographed a moonrise?) My watch crawled toward the 5:15-5:20 window: 5:15 (Is the notch shrinking?); 5:16 (It’s shrinking–I swear I just saw Half Dome inch closer to El Capitan); 5:17 (I entered the coordinates wrong, I know I did–what if it comes up behind us?). Surely this wasn’t the kind of perspiration Edison was thinking about.
As I frantically re-checked my iPhone for the umpteenth time, somebody exclaimed, “There it is!” I looked up and sure enough, there was the leading sliver of nearly new moon perfectly threading that small space between El Capitan and Half Dome. Phew. The rest of the morning was a blur of shutter clicks and exclamations of delight (plus one barely audible sigh of relief). (How could I have even dreamed of doubting the tried and true methods that had never failed me before?)
Before the shared euphoria abated, I suggested to everyone that they take a short break from photography and simply appreciate that they’re probably witnessing the most beautiful thing happening on Earth at this moment (a feeling every nature photographer should experience from time to time). It’s always exciting to witness a moment like this, a breathtaking convergence of Earth and sky that may not occur again exactly like this in my lifetime. It’s even more rewarding when the event isn’t an accident, that I’m experiencing it because of my own effort, and that I get to share the fruit of my perspiration with others who appreciate the magic just as much as I do.
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A Crescent Moon Gallery
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Eloquent Images by Gary Hart 