Let’s Get Vertical (Again)

Gary Hart Photography: New Day, El Capitan and Half Dome from Tunnel View, Yosemite

New Day, Tunnel View, Yosemite
iPhone 17 Pro

(This seed of today’s blog is a post from many years ago—but the image and its story are brand new.)

What’s your orientation?

I’ve always questioned the reasoning behind labeling horizontally oriented images, “landscape,” and vertically oriented images, “portrait.” Despite my profession as a landscape (-only) photographer, nearly half of my images use “portrait” orientation. So it concerns me that this arbitrary naming bias might subconsciously encourage photographers to default to a horizontal orientation for their landscape images, even when a vertical orientation might be best.

The orientation of an image imparts implicit visual motion that’s independent of the eyes’ movement between an image’s visual elements. Photographers who understand that viewers’ eyes tend to move along the frame’s long side have an extra tool for guiding those eyes, and even to convey a mood.

For example, when orienting an image of a sunset on the coast, it’s easy to default without thinking to the same horizontal orientation that the distant horizon follows. And a waterfall image that’s oriented vertically certainly encourages the viewers’ eyes to move in the same direction as the water’s motion, so orienting the frame to match certainly seems reasonable. But, despite the natural instinct to match the frame’s orientation to the scene’s dominant flow, there is no absolute best way to orient an ocean, waterfall, or any other scene—there’s always a choice, and that choice matters. While matching the image’s orientation to the scene’s natural movement in this manner can instill a calmness to the image, a vertical ocean sunset, or horizontal waterfall, can create visual tension that can also be quite compelling.

Since I don’t need to convince most landscape photographers to take more horizontal pictures, I’m going to concentrate on the benefits of a vertical frame. One thing I especially like about orienting my landscape scenes vertically is the way it moves my viewer’s eyes through the scene from front to back, enhancing the illusion of depth that’s so important in a two-dimensional photo. And because of a vertical frame’s relative narrowness, a foreground element (that might get lost in a wider horizontal frame) instantly becomes the focal starting point that starts my viewer’s visual journey through the frame to whatever striking background I want to feature.

More than just guiding the eye through the frame, vertical orientation narrows the frame, enabling me to eliminate distractions or less compelling objects left and right of the scene’s prime subject(s). This makes vertical my preferred orientation when I want to emphasize an especially striking foreground from above (like Tunnel View), or a sky brimming with colorful clouds or a host of stars.

While a horizontally oriented scene is often the best way to convey the sweeping majesty of a broad landscape, I sometimes enjoy guiding my viewers’ eyes with vertical compositions of traditionally horizontal scenes. Tunnel View in Yosemite, where I think many photographers tend to compose too wide, is a great example. The scene to the left of El Capitan and the right of Cathedral Rocks just can’t compete with the El Capitan, Half Dome, Bridalveil Fall triumvirate, yet the world is full of Tunnel View images that shrink this trio to include (relatively) nondescript granite.

That’s why, when the foreground and sky aren’t particularly interesting, I often go for fairly tight horizontal compositions at Tunnel View. And while Tunnel View is among the most spectacular views on Earth, the foreground beneath the vista is usually quite bland, and overhead California’s chronic blue skies are frustratingly boring. So I’m afraid many of my Tunnel View images are horizontal, and rarely stray far left of El Capitan, or right of Cathedral Rocks.

Fortunately, there are exceptions. One of my favorite exceptions is those rare times when fresh snow smothers the evergreen valley floor. Another favorite is dramatic clouds, whether in the valley below or sky above. Faced with visual treats like this, vertical frames are wide enough to feature the foreground and/or sky without diluting the Tunnel View drama by including extraneous granite.

More specifically…

In Yosemite, one thing I never count on when there’s no weather in the forecast is a nice sunrise. That’s because Yosemite’s (default) blank skies, coupled with Tunnel View’s east-facing view, forces sunrise shooters to photograph fully shaded subjects (El Capitan, Half Dome, Cathedral Rocks, and Bridalveil Fall) against the brightest part of the sky. That’ why, without clouds, Tunnel View is much better late afternoon to sunset. For me, on a typical (empty sky) Yosemite morning, the real show is the first light on El Capitan, which arrives about 15 to 20 minutes after sunrise. On mornings with no clouds forecast, I usually start my groups with an El Capitan reflection of that first light—not only is this a reliably beautiful sight, everyone gets to sleep an hour longer (since going for the actual sunrise means being on location at least 30 minutes before sunrise instead of 20 minutes after).

But for whatever reason, and despite a promise of clear skies all morning (until a storm was forecast to start moving in that afternoon), I decided to hedge my bets on the final sunrise shoot of this month’s Yosemite Autumn Moon photo workshop. Normally we spend this final morning at Bridalveil Creek, arriving as soon as it’s light enough to start shooting in the dense shade there. Instead, I got everyone out about 30 minutes earlier and headed straight to Tunnel View. While this wouldn’t be early enough to shoot sunrise from start to finish, it would get us there in time for the best color in the remote chance the clouds arrived earlier than forecast. And that’s exactly what happened.

We were pulling in just as the cirrus precursors to the evening rain started lighting up. Since my group had already been up here twice, everyone was out of the cars and grabbing their gear before my seatbelt was off. Half the group beelined to the standard view with my brother (who was assisting me in this workshop), while the rest joined me on a granite ledge above the TV parking lot (a similar view, but with fewer people—also a little more physically challenging, and not the favorite spot of anyone bothered by heights).

As beautiful as the sky was, since I rarely photograph at Tunnel View anymore, my camera stayed in the car and I was content to just enjoy the show. Or so I believed. But as I stood there watching the color keep getting better and better, I started to second guess my decision to forego my camera. I knew I could be down to my car any back in less than 5 minutes, but the color was changing so rapidly, I also knew that would mean missing the best stuff. So I whipped out my iPhone 17 Pro, put it into RAW mode, and quickly framed up the scene.

With the great sky and bland foreground, I didn’t consider anything but vertical compositions. At first I went wide enough to include Bridalveil Fall, and though it was flowing nicely for autumn, it really wasn’t impressive enough to justify going that wide. So I quickly tightened my framing to include only El Capitan and Half Dome, putting in only the minimum amount of foreground so I could maximize the spectacular sky. I’d love to tell you what focal length, f-stop, and shutter speed I used, but my iPhone made all those decisions for me, and clearly did a pretty great job. What a time to be alive!

A few thoughts on iPhone image quality

Okay, seriously, as great as the iPhone (or any other current smartphone) camera is, let me remind you that smartphone image quality is nowhere near the quality of today’s full frame sensors and lenses. And I actually got a firsthand reminder of this fact while processing this image. Though I was truly blown away by the detail my iPhone captured, on the day I processed today’s image, I also prepared three large prints that had been ordered by an interior designer for the home of one of her customers. Though two of these images were captured more than 15 years ago with my Canon 1DS III (21 megapixels); the other was about 10 years old, from my Sony a7R II (42 megapixels), I was pretty confident the quality and detail this job required was all there.

: Stillness, South Tufa, Mono Lake

: First Light, Yosemite Valley

: Yosemite Sky, Tunnel View, Yosemite (2016)

And because maximizing this quality was the highest priority for her customer, she opted for custom prints rather than just going through my standard (much cheaper) SmugMug prints website (www.garyhartprints.com), where the images are pre-uploaded, medium resolution jpegs waiting for anyone to order (full disclosure: I’ve never had a single complaint about one of these prints). To prepare the images for printing, I returned to the original files and did extensive prep (using the latest processing technology) to ensure that the noise reduction, up-res, and sharpening got the most out of every single pixel.

I am absolutely certain I could print an iPhone image as large as these custom orders were (24×36) without apologizing. But getting up-close and personal with these three full-frame sensor prints at the same time I was processing an iPhone image, the detail captured left little doubt that, for anything much larger or more demanding than computer/web display, smartphone capture has a long way to go to catch “real” cameras. (But I’m still pretty thrilled to know that I can get useable quality any time Nature catches me without my real camera.)