In the Pink

Gary Hart Photography: Twilight Wedge and Setting Moon, Mt. Whitney and the Alabama Hills, Eastern Sierra

Twilight Wedge and Setting Moon, Mt. Whitney and the Alabama Hills, Eastern Sierra
Sony a7R V
Sony 24-105 G
1/5 second
F/16
ISO 100

The rewards of rising before the sun are many. For me, the opportunity to witness twilight’s soft, cool light slowly warmed by the approaching sun, to breathe in the cleanest air of the day, and to simply be alone with the purest sounds and smells of nature, are ample compensation for whatever chill and sleep deprivation I might experience. And on mornings when the sky is cloudless and the air especially pure, there might just be a bonus.

To collect that bonus, about 20 minutes before sunrise, look for parallel bands of vivid pink and steely blue hugging the horizon opposite the rising sun. Many photographers, myself included, call this early display the “twilight wedge,” but it has other similarly non-scientific names. Closer to the horizon, the dark blue band is actually Earth’s shadow—the final section of sky not receiving any direct light from the soon to appear sun; just above, the pink band is the the day’s first rays of direct sunlight. It’s pink because the sun is just far enough below the eastern horizon that the only its longest, red wavelengths manage to battle through the atmosphere all the way to the other side of the sky. The cleaner the air, the more vivid the twilight wedge’s color. (This color is also possible after sunset, but by day’s end there are usually more color-robbing particles in the air, and Nature’s quiet is often disturbed so much by human activity that some of the magic is lost.) And when towering peaks soar far enough above the viewer’s vantage point that they jut into this pink twilight wedge band, we call it alpenglow.

I love finding beautiful scenes to go with the gorgeous pre-sunrise sky opposite the sun. Near the top of my list is the Alabama Hills, in the shadow of the highest Sierra Nevada peaks. The Alabama Hills are a disorganized jumble of massive, weathered boulders covering many square miles, making an ideal foregrounds for the assortment of serrated peaks looming to the west. A more perfect arrangement for nature photographers couldn’t be assembled—and, as if that’s not enough, the Alabama Hills are also among the best places on Earth to photograph alpenglow.

Of course all this is no secret, and the Alabama Hills has become one of the most popular photography spots in California. To improve my chances of capturing unique images here, I love adding the moon to my Alabama Hills / Sierra Crest scenes. (And when I say “add,” I mean the honorable, old-fashioned way, not with AI or other digital shenanigans.) For years, I’ve timed my Death Valley winter workshop to allow me to take my group to the Alabama Hills, just a 90 minute drive from Death Valley, for the workshop’s final sunset, followed by the moon setting behind the Sierra Crest at sunrise the final morning.

Of course, because there’s only one “best” day in each lunar cycle to photograph a full (-ish) moon setting behind the Sierra Crest, I have no wiggle room when scheduling this workshop—a day early, and the moon is gone before the landscape is light enough to photograph; a day late, and the sky is much too bright by the time the moon drops close to the mountains.

But even nailing the day doesn’t ensure success. Clouds are of course a concern, especially in winter. And each year the timing and position of the moon’s disappearance behind the crest is a little different. In January and early February (when I always schedule this workshop), viewed from my preferred location, the moon sets somewhere between Mt. Whitney and Mt. Williamson (California’s two highest peaks), usually closer to Williamson.

Gary Hart Photography: Before Sunrise, Mt. Whitney and the Alabama Hills, California

Before Sunrise, Mt. Whitney and the Alabama Hills, California (30 minutes before sunrise)

I like to get my groups out to the Alabama Hills about 30 minutes before we can start photographing the moon. The foreground will still be quite dark to our eyes, and the moon will at least 10 degrees above the crest, but I tell my students to start shooting as soon as we arrive.

Using a long exposure in a frame that doesn’t include the moon (the top of the frame is below the moon), captures much more (mostly shadowless) foreground detail than our eyes see, while juxtaposing the mountains’ light gray granite against a sky that’s darker than the peaks—a magnificently striking sight indeed, especially when there’s snow on the peaks. We’ll keep shooting versions of this until it’s time to include the moon in the festivities.

For any moon photography, the darker the sky, the better the moon stands out. But too early and it’s impossible to capture foreground detail without completely blowing out the moon. For me, the time to photograph any setting full moon starts about 20 minutes before sunrise—basically, as soon as the landscape has brightened enough foreground and lunar detail with one click. And if we’re especially lucky, when that time arrives, we’ll find the moon in the midst of a vivid pink twilight wedge.

This opportunity only lasts a few minutes, because as the sky brightens and the foreground exposure gets easier, the color fades and the essential contrast between the sky and moon decreases. The twilight wedge lasts less than 10 minutes, and is followed by slowly warming sky. By maybe five minutes after sunrise, the good color is long gone and the moon/sky contrast has decreased enough for me to put my camera away.

This year’s Alabama Hills moonset was especially nice. One of my favorite things about my Death Valley / Alabama Hills workshop is that we get two “ideal” (moon setting as the color and light are at their best) sunrise moonsets for the price of one. On our last day in Death Valley, from Zabriskie Point we photograph the moon setting behind Manly Beacon, one of Death Valley’s most striking and recognizable features. Because the mountains behind which the moon sets from Zabriskie rise only about 3 degrees above a flat horizon, this moonset happens much closer to the “official” (flat horizon) sunrise that’s universally used for any celestial rise and set. The next morning we’re in the Alabama Hills—even though the moon sets about an hour later than it did the day before, because the Sierra Crest towers about 10 degrees above the horizon when viewed from the Alabama Hills, the actual moonset we see happens at just about the same time as the prior day’s moonset.

Which is exactly things unfolded for this year’s workshop group. We followed up a beautiful Death Valley Zabriskie Point sunrise moonset, with a similarly outstanding Alabama Hills sunrise moonset the next morning. The vivid hues of the twilight wedge had just peaked when I clicked this image. To my eyes, this entire scene (except the moon), and especially the foreground, was much darker than this image shows. But my camera’s ridiculous dynamic range, combined with Lightroom’s masking that allows me to process the sky and foreground independently from each other, enabled me to expose the scene dark enough to capture essential lunar detail, yet remain confident I had enough recoverable detail in the foreground.