Where to Draw the Line

Gary Hart Photography: Beams of Gold, Desert View, Grand Canyon

Beams of Gold, Desert View, Grand Canyon
Sony α1
Sony 16-35 f/2.8 GM
ISO 100
f/16
1/25 second

I’m in the midst of 11 days and two workshops chasing lightning at Grand Canyon. Despite daily 4:15 a.m. wake-ups, very late dinners, and lots of waiting for something to happen punctuated by bursts of extremely intense activity, I am in fact (to quote Cosmo Kramer) lovin’ every minute of it.

The first workshop group photographed an assortment of monsoon thrills that included lightning, dramatic clouds, and vivid sunrises and sunsets. We also enjoyed skies as clean (haze-free) as I’ve ever seen at the Grand Canyon, which made for a spectacular Milky Way shoot on the North Rim. The second group started yesterday afternoon, and while the lightning spigot has briefly turned, starting this afternoon it’s forecast to return for the rest of the workshop. (Fingers crossed.)

One mantra I find myself frequently repeating to all Grand Canyon workshop groups is, “Less sky, more canyon.” That’s because, even though a landscape photographer’s objective is to maximize beauty (right?), and it’s a rare sky that rivals with the beauty of Grand Canyon, I frequently see photographers here giving too much of their frame to a sky that simply can’t compete with the canyon below.

This doesn’t mean Grand Canyon images should never include lots of sky, but it does mean that the sky you give your Grand Canyon (and other scenic locations) image should be earned. A towering rainbow? Shimmering Milky Way? Horizon-to-horizon sunrise or sunset color? By all means, widen your lens and tilt the camera skyward. But don’t forget that even when the sky is spectacular, it’s the canyon below that makes your image special.

For example, below are a couple of images captured from Hopi Point at different sunsets. The first one was a blank sky day, so I used the absolute least amount of sky possible, and augmented it with a sunstar. The second one was an electric sunset that filled the sky with red. To include even more sky without sacrificing the best part of the canyon, I even went with a vertical composition.

Sunset, Hopi Point, Grand Canyon

Sky on Fire, Hopi Point, Grand Canyon

I suspect people’s too much sky choice happens for a few reasons. Many photographers, so focused on their prime subject, tend to forget about the rest of their frame. Less experienced photographers often reflexively split their frame with the horizon, while other photographers, victims of bad advice, have become slaves to rigid rules. These photographers avoid putting the the horizon in the middle with biblical fervor, instead putting it 1/3 of the way down from the top, or 1/3 up from the bottom. But despite what you might have heard from the “expert” judging images at your neighborhood camera club, or viewed from that YouTube photography pro your brother-in-law swears by, there is no rule for where to place the horizon line.

In other words, I’ll put my horizon wherever I want to, thankyouverymuch. If I think the horizon belongs 1/3 of the way down from the top, 1/5 of the way up from the bottom, or straight across the middle of the frame, that’s exactly where it will go.

How do I determine where the horizon belongs? Put simply, that’s entirely dependent on the relative merits of the sky versus the landscape in the scene I’m photographing.

Without doing actual math (heaven forbid), I mentally weigh the landscape versus the sky and arrive at some kind of virtual score: if I like the landscape 4-times more than the sky, the landscape gets 4-times more frame than the sky; if I like the sky twice as much as the landscape, the sky gets twice as much frame as the landscape.

As I said, I don’t actually do this math in my head, I just end up here by feel. You can too, by trusting your instincts. And if you don’t trust your initial instincts, try popping the camera off the tripod (you are using a tripod, right?), pointing it in the direction of your scene, then slowly moving horizon line up and down the scene until a position feels right. Over time you’ll grow to recognize and trust the subtle signals your instincts send.

The image I’m sharing today was captured last Tuesday, on the first sunset of the first workshop. Because I’d started the shoot with my 100-400 lens, the foreground wasn’t a factor in my decision where to set up—I just chose an opening amidst the rest of my group. But as sunset approached, it started to look like something special was possible. Not only had a narrow gap appeared in the clouds near the horizon, the clouds were riddled with small openings with potential to allow sunlight to stream through as the sun dropped.

Because I was with my group and this was our first day, I didn’t do my usual anticipatory exploration for the best foreground, I just worked with the scene right there among my group. After replacing the 100-400 with my 16-35 f/2.8 lens, I started by trying to figure out the best way to handle the dead tree jutting up from below the canyon wall.

By shifting a couple of feet to my left to stand atop a light-color rock platform, I was able to block the less appealing middle foreground hill with the dense green shrub on the right, and to frame the dead tree (which had now become an important foreground element) between the two nearby shrubs. After determining that I wanted as little of the rocky dirt on the left as possible, I went to work on establishing the top of my frame.

The sky above the contiguous cloud bank blocking the sun was a lot of blue with a scattering of individual clouds. It was pretty in an ordinary way, but nowhere near as beautiful as the sunlit clouds and canyon below. That left me with two options for the top of my frame: directly above the clouds to include no more than a thin stripe of blue sky, or somewhere in the clouds with no blue sky.

I photographed it both ways for multiple options to choose between when I review my images on my computer. As you can see, I chose the former because I couldn’t find a good place to cut the clouds without putting a bright spot at the top of the frame and/or cutting off part of the sunstar.

This sunset display continued for about 15 minutes, continually changing as the sun dropped. I’ve actually processed another, very similar, image captured a few minutes later, without beams but with a better sunstar and have added it to the gallery below.

Of course all this advice applies pretty universally to whatever location you’re photographing, but few places provide examples as dramatic as Grand Canyon. Check out the gallery below for proof.