Eloquent Images by Gary Hart
Insight, information, and inspiration for the inquisitive nature photographer
A Star in the East
Yosemite Falls Sunstar, Yosemite (Sony 12-24 f/4)
Sony a7R II
Sony 12-24 f4 G
12mm
1/30 second
F/20
ISO 100
When Sony asked Don Smith and me to try out their new lenses, I immediately thought of a couple of El Capitan and Half Dome views in Yosemite that would be ideal for the new Sony 12-24 f4 G lens. After great success photographing Yosemite’s granite icons as I’ve never been able to before (okay, well there was that one time last year when I borrowed a friend’s ultra-wide lens), I was ready to go home. But before leaving, I decided to walk up to the bridge beneath Lower Yosemite Fall, which was bursting with spring flow.
With my Yosemite Moonbow and Dogwood workshop starting in just five days, my goal this morning was more to see exactly how wet it is on the bridge than it was to take any more pictures, but I decided to take my camera anyway. On the way back I played with ultra-wide (12mm) vertical compositions of this scene. Still getting used to how much I can actually fit in my frame at 12mm, I flipped the camera to horizontal and was startled to find the sun in the right corner of my viewfinder. Startled because from my location, the top of Yosemite Falls is due north (0 degrees), and the sun at that time was at 125 degrees azimuth (35 degrees south of due east).
I quickly came to terms with this revelation and repositioned myself until the sun was behind a tree, dialed the aperture to f/20, composed, metered, and focused, then clicked as the sun peaked out. For the next ten minutes or so I moved as the sun moved, keeping my lens right on the edge of the tree’s shadow.
I knew the sunstar’s highlights would clip, but I wanted to give the shadows as much light as possible without losing the highlights in the waterfall. And as important as the histogram is in these scenes with brilliant highlights and dark shadows, I knew in this case it wouldn’t tell me the entire story. As I increased the light by lengthening my shutter speed, in my viewfinder (I love mirrorless!) I monitored both the shadow side of the histogram and the highlight alert in the fall. I know that shooting raw on my Sony Alpha bodies, I can increase the exposure a stop beyond where the highlight alert appears, but in this case I found that I only needed to add 2/3 stop before the histogram showed me that I had all the recoverable data in the shadows I needed.
A few words about sunstars
Sunstars can be overdone, but they’re often the best way to make something interesting in difficult light. When I find myself wanting to photograph a clear sky scene facing the sun, I often use the sunstar to add visual interest to a sky that is otherwise pretty boring. Often the sunstar makes an excellent counterbalance to another strong visual object. And while a sunstar isn’t exactly what our eyes see when we look toward the sun, I think it makes a pretty good substitute for the blinding experience of looking into the sun. Take a look at the gallery of images below and ask yourself how many of these images would have been as visually appealing without a sunstar spicing up the sky.
To capture a sunstar, use a small aperture (I usually use f/16 or smaller), remove any filters (to minimize flare), and place the sun on a hard edge with most of the sun obscured: the horizon, a cloud, a tree, a flower, and so on. The more sun visible, the bigger (and more blown out) the sunstar will be. As a general rule, I try to avoid too much sun. And since each lens creates a slightly different sunstar, it helps to experiment with different lenses to determine which ones work best.
I’ll be on my annual Grand Canyon raft trip, off the grid and unable to respond, until May 30
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A Sunstar Gallery
Eloquent Images by Gary Hart 
What an amazing shot, what a divine picture !! Gary, with your lens you have made Yosemite famous.
Thanks, Sabry—hope you’re doing well.
Beautiful is a lovely word, but not enough so to describe this photo. Thanks much for sharing. Great work (but I’m not surprised considering the photographer.)
Thanks so much, Carole. Hope you’re doing well.
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