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I’d billed my just completed Yosemite spring workshop as a crescent moon workshop. The plan was (among other things) to photograph a crescent moon rising above Yosemite Valley in the pre-sunrise twilight on consecutive mornings. This spring waning crescent is one of my very favorite Yosemite phenomena, something I try not to miss each May (when it aligns best with Half Dome from the…
* * * * A few weeks ago I led a one day trip to Yosemite for a class I teach two or three times a year. This class usually fills, but this time I only had six students (about half the usual size), I suspect because many people saw a storm was forecast and decided to stay home. Sigh. As…
Yesterday I spent an incredible day in Yosemite, guiding a group of photographers from the Sacramento area. When I schedule these trips, I do my best to time them for nice conditions, but of course there’s no guarantee things will work out. Yesterday they worked out. Big time. Not only did we catch Yosemite Valley at its fall color peak (it’s late this year),…
My Bridalveil Dogwood image is eight years old now. It remains one of my most popular images, and is still a personal favorite because it represents so many of my personal goals for each image: Use camera’s unique vision to reveal nature’s frequently overlooked details Manage the front-to-back plane to create the illusion of depth Guide the eye and create location context with…
The plan was to photograph a full moon rising at the end of the Merced River Canyon, just to the right of Bridalveil Fall, at sunset. It was the final night of last week’s Yosemite Spring: Moonbow and Wildflowers photo workshop, and the moonrise was to be the grand finale. But after a day photographing poppies and waterfalls beneath a sky mixed with sun and…
This post is for everyone who woke up this morning thinking, “Gee, I sure wish there were more pictures from Tunnel View in Yosemite.” Well, you’ve come to the right place. Okay, seriously, the world really doesn’t need any more Tunnel View pictures, but sometimes I just can’t help myself. Call me biased, but I’ll put this view up against any in the world….
I love the iconic captures as much as the next person–scenes like Yosemite’s Horsetail Fall in February, Antelope Canyon’s heavenly beam, or McWay Fall’s tumble into the Pacific, are gorgeous and a thrill to photograph. But standing elbow-to-elbow with tens (or hundreds!) of photographers, each recording identical images that are already duplicates of thousands of prior images, while lots of fun, isn’t enough to stimulate my creative juices….
On my run this morning I listened to an NPR “Talk of the Nation” podcast about time, and the arbitrary ways we Earthlings measure it. The guest’s thesis was that the hours, days, and years we measure and monitor so closely are an invention established (with increasing precision) by science and technology to serve society’s specific needs; the question posed to listeners was, “What…
Whose bright idea was it to lable horizontal images “landscape,” and vertical images to be “portrait”? To them, let me just say: “Huh?” As a landscape-only photographer, about half of my images use “portrait” orientation. Sometimes I wonder if this unfounded naming bias explains why so many people default to a horizontal orientation for their landscape images, missing some great opportunities to improve their photography in…
* This message isn’t for everybody. If your photographic pleasure derives from simply breathing fresh air and admiring the view, or if your camera is just an accessory that helps you share and relive those outdoor experiences later, you’re already a successful photographer. But if you aren’t achieving the results you long for, either in the quality of your images or the attention they…
Eloquent Images by Gary Hart 