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On consecutive nights last week the post-sunset sky featured a conjunction between the waxing crescent moon and Venus. This event had been on my calendar for a while, so when the first date arrived I was a little concerned to see thin clouds assembling in the west. Nevertheless, my camera and I headed to the foothills south and east of home, hoping to catch…
Photoshop processing sometimes gets a bad rap. There’s nothing inherently pure about a jpeg file, and because a jpeg is processed by the camera, it’s actually less pure than a raw file. As a general rule, the less processing an image needs, the better, but sometimes raw capture followed by Lightroom/Photoshop processing is the only way to a successful image. I’ve always considered myself a film shooter…
The foreground for Mt. Whitney is the rugged Alabama Hills, a disorganized jumble of rounded granite boulders, familiar to many as the setting for hundreds of movies, TV shows, and commercials. These weathered rocks make wonderful subjects without the looming east face of the southern Sierra. What makes this scene particularly special is the fortuitous convergence of topography and light that rewards early risers with a skyline…
This week I’ve spent some time going through past images that I just haven’t had time to get to. Unlike many of the images I uncover by returning to old shoots, this one from the final night of my October 2010 Eastern Sierra workshop wasn’t a surprise–the sky over Half Dome that night was magic, something I’ll never forget. Shortly after returning home I…
January 2012 I just wrapped up a long week that underscores the best and worst of my life as a landscape photographer. In the plus column I’ll put visits to Big Sur and Yosemite and the opportunity to spend quality time with a great bunch of photographers; in the negative column goes long days, dull weather, and lots of solo miles. Sunday morning I…
California is in the midst of the strangest winter I’ve ever experienced: a rainy season without a drop for nearly two months, daytime highs consistently in the sixties, and a virtually non-existent snowpack in the Sierra. January days in the Central Valley are usually wall-to-wall gray; nights are an opaque muck. But this year it’s been an endless cycle of blue skies and twinkling stars….
I’m fortunate to have a ringside seat for many of Mother Nature’s most exquisite phenomena, but few excite me more than the shimmering arc of Yosemite’s moonbow. A “moonbow”? I thought you’d never ask…. As you may have figured, a moonbow is a rainbow caused by moonlight. (Don’t be fooled by the fact that your spellcheck doesn’t recognize “moonbow”–it’s a very real thing indeed,…
A regrettable reality of my life is that the best conditions for photography are the absolute worst conditions to be outside. Fortunately, I was hardened by decades of Giants games at Candlestick Park, the coldest place on Earth. As a photographer, I continue to embrace my mantra for warmth at the ‘Stick: Too much is always better than not enough. For me, cold weather photography…
Something I teach, write, and lecture on frequently (ad naseum?) is the photographer’s obligation to understand, not fight, the camera’s vision. Some people seem to get this; others, not so much. So I’ve decided to try a slightly different tack. Visual “Truth” is relative Without getting too philosophical, it’s important to understand that, like your camera, your view of the universe is limited and…
“Did you put that leaf there?” I’m frequently asked if I positioned a leaf, moved a rock, or “Photoshopped” a moon into an image. My (truthful) answer is always the same: “No.” I suspect I’m asked this so much because I aggressively search for natural elements and patterns to isolate and emphasize–they’re not hard to find if you look. We all know photographers who…
Eloquent Images by Gary Hart 