Among the Aspen
Posted on October 25, 2025
Among the Aspen, Lundy Canyon, Eastern Sierra (California)
Sony a7R V
Sony 100-400 GM (with extension tubes)
ISO 200
f/5.6
1/30 second
I’m deviating (briefly) from grand landscapes to remind you (and myself) that even the most beautiful scene is abundant with smaller, simple beauty. Case in point: The Eastern Sierra, which is filled with expansive views beautiful enough to easily drown out Nature’s exquisite subtleties.
Last week I shared an image from North Lake that featured many of the components nature photographers look for in a dramatic landscape scene: beautiful clouds and light, jagged peaks, a sparkling reflection, and vivid aspen throbbing with color. As spectacular as each of these things is, for me it’s the yellow and orange aspen that really make the North Lake scene special. When faced with a view like this, because it’s easy to overlook the underlying intricacies at play, each time I visit the Eastern Sierra I make a point of spending quality time among the aspen.
From a distance, especially in autumn, it’s the aspen’s color that first draws the eye. But move closer (or zoom tighter) and other qualities start to emerge, starting with the way the leaves dance and shimmer with the breeze. Closer still, and the parallel white trunks come into striking focus. But it’s not until you plunge into the depths of an aspen stand that you fully appreciate unique character of each individual aspen, the graceful curves of these knotted, textured trunks that seem to have paused mid-move while in the midst of an elegant dance.
I’ve explored many of the canyons up and down US 395 that are ideal for intimate aspen exploration. Unfortunately, the priorities and time restrictions of a workshop schedule generally limit my Eastern Sierra aspen opportunities to Bishop Creek Canyon (where North Lake is), and Lundy Canyon (a little north and west of Mono Lake). Though completely different, each offers opportunities to photograph aspen both far and near.
I found this little scene near the trailhead at the end of the Lundy Canyon road, during the final shoot of this year’s Eastern Sierra workshop. Instead of taking the popular approach to photographing within an aspen stand—some version of (usually) truncated trunks using front-to-back sharpness that emphasizes their parallel verticality receding into the distance—my preferred aspen stand approach is to minimize depth of field to isolate specific aspects of these beautiful trees. But the very quality that makes these close aspen scenes so enjoyable also provides a significant challenge: what my eye sees is absolutely nothing like what my camera sees.
That’s not a complaint, because the camera’s ability to “see” and share the world in ways that are completely foreign to human vision not only allows photographers to expand their viewers’ perspective, it may just be our most powerful opportunity for creativity. When I approach an aspen scene, I first decide what I want to emphasize. In last week’s image the aspen were across the lake, and just one (albeit significant) component of a grander scene. But when I wander among the aspen, I have to decide whether I want emphasize the parallel trunks of the entire stand, the yellow leaves (or leaf), the colorfully blanketed forest floor, the unique character of an individual trunk, or maybe some hybrid of multiple aspects.
In this instance, I decided to make it all about the trunks. I started with a tree that had a good assortment of knots, scars, and striations, then repositioned myself until the tree had a fair amount of separation from the trunks and leaves behind it. The position that worded best had a few green leaves dangling between me and my target trunk, but I was pretty sure my shallow depth of field plan would make the leaves a feature rather than a distraction.
I went to my 100-400 lens, adding 15mm of extension so I could focus closer, then set my aperture wide open (f/5.6). Now I was ready for the best part: putting my eye to the viewfinder, focusing on the trunk, and watching the scene to transform. As expected, the close green leaves created a soft green border. My subject trunk jumped into sharp focus, revealing all the intricate texture and definition I hoped to emphasize. while the background trunks softened into complementary vertical posts with enough definition to be recognizable, but not so much as to draw the eye from my subject. And the surrounding aspen leaves blurred into a golden canvas upon which my scene rested.
Following that initial view I tweaked my position and focal length a few times until everything felt balanced. But after few minutes the sun crested canyon wall, washing out the beautiful soft light, and the workshop was over.
An interesting (to me) aspen fact
Aspen reproduce largely by sprouting suckers and shoots from their roots. This makes a stand of aspen a single organism of genetically identical trees, all fed by the same root system. Though each individual aspen trees will only live up to 200 years, a mature aspen stand can be thousands of years old.
Aspen Near and Far
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Hold My Gear (the Sequel)
Posted on October 18, 2025
Color and Clouds, North Lake Autumn Reflection, Eastern Sierra
Sony α1
Sony 16-35 GM II
1/100 seconds
F/9
ISO 100
After sharing in my prior post that I’ve been lugging a 30 pound camera bag through airports, it occurred to me that I haven’t updated you on the ever-changing contents of said camera bag lately. But before I continue, let me remind you that a photographer’s gear choice is no more relevant to his images than a writer’s pen is to her stories, or a chef’s cutlery is to her cuisine. Yes, these choices might make a difference on the fringe, but I imagine most would agree that a great chef will almost certainly get better results with Kirkland knives (with all due respect to Costco) than an average chef would get with top-of-the-line Zwilling.
But that doesn’t mean that I would voluntarily discard my current gear for some other brand. Far from it. I love the gear I use, and am always happy to share why. So what follows is a revised version of the first Hold My Gear post, from 2021—below that, you’ll find the story of today’s image.
I’ll start with my camera bag
Shimoda Action X50 with a Large Core Unit: This bag simply checks all the boxes for me: for starters, it’s large enough to carry everything I consider essential, with room to spare for a few things that are less than essential and that may change depending on the trip and my objective. In addition to 2 bodies and 5 lenses, it fits all the miscellany I always want with me (headlamp, rain and/or cold weather apparel, extra batteries and media cards, tools, among many things).
But more than capacity, my bag also needs to be comfortable on long hikes—whether across rugged High Sierra terrain, Iceland’s winter icescapes, or the endless concourses of Sydney International Airport—and (just as important) it must fit fully loaded into any overhead compartment I encounter. My Shimoda passes all these tests with flying colors.
Always in my bag
- Sony a7R V and Sony a1 bodies
- Sony 12-24 f/2.8 GM lens: Though I don’t use it as much as a couple of other lenses, having a lens as wide as 12mm allows me to photograph things I never could before, and I love that it’s still relatively compact.
- Sony 16-35 f/2.8 GM II lens (plus a Breakthrough polarizer), which is usually mounted on the a1: This focal range is covered by other lenses in my bag, but I love the lens too much to leave it behind—crazy sharp, and f/2.8 means it’s fast enough for night photography in a pinch. Plus, unlike the 12-24, I can use it with conventional polarizing and ND filters.
- Sony 24-105 G lens (plus a Breakthrough polarizer), which is usually mounted on the a7R V: Not only is this lens wonderfully sharp, its middle-of-the-road focal range fits so many situations—it’s no wonder this lens is my workhorse.
- Sony 100-400 GM lens (plus a Breakthrough polarizer): Replacing my 70-200 with this slightly bigger lens doubled my focal range, without adding tons of extra weight—and it’s a good match with the Sony 1.4X teleconverter.
- (Usually) Sony 14mm f/1.8 GM lens: This is my night lens, and though I only use it at night and don’t do night photography on every trip, since I have a slot for it and it’s not too heavy, my 14 GM usually just lives in my camera bag.
- Sony 1.4X teleconverter—I used to use the 2X, but found a noticeable sharpness improvement after switching to the 1.4X.
- Filters: Breakthrough 72mm and 77mm neutral polarizers (nearly fulltime on the 16-35, 24-105, and 100-400 lenses), Breakthrough 72mm and 77mm 6-Stop Dark polarizing filters (to switch out with my standard polarizers when I need a longer shutter speed).
- Memory cards: Each camera has two 128 GB Sony Tough cards, then I have a handful of other 128 GB and 64 GB SD cards rattling around in a pocket, just in case.
- Other stuff: Lens cloths, headlamp, insulated water bottle, extension tubes, memory cards, multiple spare batteries, Giotto Rocket Blower, and a couple of Luna Bars (because photography always trumps meals).
Specialty Equipment (lives in a second camera bag that gets tossed in the back of the car and stays there when I don’t need to fly to my destination)
- Sony 20mm f/1.8 G lens: For Milky Way and other moonless night photography—this one’s even more compact than the 24mm.
- Sony 24mm f/1.4 GM lens: For Milky Way and other moonless night photography—I can’t believe how compact this lens is.
- Sony 90mm Macro: I use this lens a lot with extension tubes to get super close for my creative selective focus work (wildflowers, fall color).
- Sony 200-600 G lens: When I want to go big on a moonrise/moonset—often pared with the 1.4x teleconverter. I also use this lens with extension tubes for selective focus fall color and wildflowers.
- 2 Stepping Stone LT-IV Lightning Triggers
Support
- Really Right Stuff Ascend-14L tripod with integrated head: Absolutely the best combination of light, tall, and sturdy I’ve ever found in a tripod. It’s so light and compact that I just attach it to my camera bag, even when flying, and just forget about it until it’s time to shoot (never a problem with TSA).
- Really Right Stuff 24L Tripod with a RRS BH-55 ball head: Sturdy enough for whatever I put on it, in pretty much whatever conditions I encounter. I also like that, even though it doesn’t have a centerpost, when fully extended (plus the head and camera), it’s several inches taller than I am. As much as love my Ascend, this is my tripod of choice in strong wind, or when I’m shooting extra long. As with my bag that carries my specialty lenses, this tripod usually lives in the back of my car and doesn’t usually fly with me (it would need to go in the suitcase), but is always available when I drive to a destination.
Color and Clouds, North Lake Autumn Reflection, Eastern Sierra
A few words about today’s image
Thanks to a great group and beautiful conditions, this year’s Eastern Sierra workshop was a great success. Though today’s image didn’t come during the workshop, you could call it ES workshop adjacent, because it came the day before the workshop, on my annual pre-workshop scouting visit to North Lake.
As familiar as I am with all my locations, I hate taking my groups to locations I haven’t been to in a year, because you just never know what might have changed. That’s especially important when the goal is fall color, which can vary significantly from year to year. It’s not always practical to pre-scout every location, but I do my best to make it happen when I can.
For my Eastern Sierra workshop, I always leave early the morning of the day before the workshop, which gives me time to hit all my spots on the way down. I can make it as far as Bishop, which makes for a long day, but from Bishop can finish my scouting the next morning by driving the final hour to Lone Pine, and leaving early enough to get eyes on my Lone Pine locations (Whitney Portal, Mt. Whitney, and the Alabama Hills) before the workshop starts that afternoon.
With the workshop always starting a Monday, Sunday is dedicated to scouting my locations. But this year’s Sunday scouting mission was a little problematic because I’d only just returned from Jackson Hole at 9 p.m. Saturday night, after assisting Don Smith’s Grand Teton National Park workshop (I’d get instant payback because Don would be assisting my Eastern Sierra workshop). After unpacking and repacking, the plan was to rise dark and early Sunday morning and be on the road by 7:00 a.m. This year, instead of bounding out the door at 7:00, I pretty much dragged myself out (with a shove from my wife) closer to 8:30. Still enough time, but not a lot of wiggle room.
I perked up pretty quickly once on the road, helped no doubt by an intermittent light-to-moderate rain that followed me down 395, and (especially) the beautiful clouds that came with it—a significant upgrade from the chronic blue skies that often plague this trip.
To ensure that I made it up to North Lake before dark, I didn’t take my usual swing through the June Lake Loop, and skipped the drives up to the McGee Creek and Mosquito Flat trailheads as well. Since these aren’t workshop stops (though I do recommend them as possible extra locations for anyone looking to photograph more color on the drive from Bishop to our Lee Vining hotel on Day 3), I felt okay about missing them in favor of North Lake.
On the steep ascent up Bishop Creek Canyon, I got a front row view of the peaks playing hide and seek with the clouds. By the time I climbed the last mile on the (mostly) unpaved, one-lane road to North Lake, a few sprinkles dotted my windshield. With so much workshop prep on my mind, I virtually never photograph at any point on this pre-workshop scouting trip, but for some reason (beautiful sky), this time I swung my camera bag onto my back for the 100-yard walk from the parking area to the lakeshore. I was beat, and hungry, and with darkness coming soon, I just wanted to get back to Bishop to check-in to my hotel to prepare (and rest up) for the workshop—but if the lake is real nice, maybe I’ll fire off a couple of frames before calling it a day.
The color couldn’t have been better, and the clouds were off the charts. A couple of other photographers were set up on the lakeshore where I usually like to shoot the reflection, but with a light breeze spreading small ripples across the water, I passed on the reflection in favor of the gold and green grass to fill my foreground.
After about five minutes I was pretty happy with what I had and was just about to pack up when I noticed that the water across the lake had flattened out, and a reflection had formed. It was a long way away and hardly visible, but looking closer, I could see the stillness expanding toward me. Soon—in no more than a minute—the entire lake surface a calmed to a reflection and all thoughts of leaving vanished.
With my usual reflection spot occupied, I moved about 30 feet closer to the road, to a tiny micro-cove sheltered by grass and a large rock. Here you can’t get as much reflection, but being so sheltered, it’s usually the last place the reflection leaves if a breeze picks up.
Given the narrowness of my foreground reflection here, combined with beautiful clouds and light high above, I opted for a vertical composition. Dropping lower, I positioned myself to include two small rocks as foreground anchors, then composed wide to include as much sky and reflection as possible.
Despite occasional sprinkles, the rain mostly held off and I ended up staying for nearly an hour, finally moving over to my usually spot when the other photographers moved on.
This was Sunday evening. I returned with my group for sunrise Wednesday morning. I was pretty confident the color would still be great, but crossed my fingers all the way up the canyon hoping we’d get a reflection. I was right about the color, and the reflection gods smiled on us as well, delivering an absolutely flawless mirror atop the water. We also had a couple of clouds, but nothing like my evening a couple of nights earlier, and as excited as my group was, I didn’t have the heart to tell them that I had it even better.
I Love Reflections (Perhaps You Noticed)
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Things Always Work Out…
Posted on October 10, 2025
Setting Crescent Moon, Grand Teton, Grand Teton NP
Sony a7R V
Sony 24-105 G
.8 seconds
F/16
ISO 100
I’m a naturally positive person who doesn’t have to work too hard to stay optimistic about pretty much everything. And while this “things always work out” philosophy generally serves me quite well, it can sometimes cause problems. Case in point…
A couple of weeks ago I was in Jackson Hole to help out Don Smith with his Grand Teton workshop. Back in the pre-Covid days, when Don and I would trade off assisting several of each other’s workshops every year, my annual Jackson Hole trip was one I especially looked forward to. Since I hadn’t been there since 2018, returning this year was a particular treat.
In addition to the incomparable beauty of the Tetons, Jackson itself is has a great little downtown that I make a point of walking daily when I’m there. With so many shops, galleries, and restaurants, it’s hard to spend quality time at each, but the one place I always make sure I get to is Tom Mangelsen’s gallery on Cache Street.
This year I had so much other stuff on my plate, by the time our final day arrived, I still hadn’t made it there. So I got a late checkout and carved out a couple of morning hours to walk down there, browse, and return before heading to the airport.
While enjoying the beautiful gallery, I couldn’t help patting myself on the back for allowing enough time to feast on every print displayed without feeling rushed. Even though I’d estimate that at least 80% of Mangelsen’s images are of wildlife, and I don’t photograph wildlife, I couldn’t help but feel the inexplicable kindred connection that draws me to a very small cadre of nature photographers whose motivation seems, rather than to dazzle or impress, simply to share their own very personal relationship with natural beauty as it touches them. And while I won’t pretend to have tapped those instincts to the extent Mangelsen and those few others have, their images have a profound influence on me.
As much as I’d have loved to leave with a Mangelsen print, I knew that would be far beyond my ability to transport home (not to mention my budget). But during my meanderings I couldn’t help notice the variety of beautiful Tom Mangelsen coffee table books displayed throughout the gallery. Last year I wrote a post about, among other things, my relationship with coffee table books, and how it saddens me that the coffee table photo book appears to be a declining medium., so it always thrills me to encounter signs of CTB life. On a whim I asked if any of the books were signed (I’d looked but found none) to my delight she not only did she point me to some, she said there was no price premium for the signed books.
For context, I’m of the pre-selfie generation, coming of age way back in the time autographs, not selfies, were the ultimate commemoration of a transient connection to greatness. (Another nice thing about autographs is that they can be acquired without bothering a person who is most likely quite tired of accommodating intrusive strangers.) Though I’m not a collector, over the years I’ve assembled an eclectic inventory of signed memorabilia from people I admire.
How eclectic? Well, I have a baseball signed by Ted Williams; a bottle of wine signed by Mick Fleetwood; “August and Everything After,” in vinyl, signed by all of Counting Crows; CDs signed by Michael Franks and Pat Metheny; two signed Galen Rowell prints; and a personal postcard from Wallace Stegner. (And the person who scores me a cartoon personally signed by Gary Larson would be a friend for life.) So anyway, getting a signed Tom Mangelsen book just seemed like the thing to do.
I’d be lying if I said I’d forgotten that, on my flight out, my suitcase weighed in at 51 pounds, one pound above the checked bag limit, forcing me to transfer a pound worth of miscellany to my already 30-pound camera bag. (My computer bag, which must fit under the seat to qualify as a personal item, weighs about 10 pounds and was already stuffed to the brim.) Nevertheless, I of course chose the largest, heaviest Mangelsen book: “The Last Great Wild Places”— a whopping 12×18 inches and (including the lovely protective carryall) about ten pounds. My plan for how I was going to travel with an additional 10 pounds? It’ll work out.
Unfortunately, somehow the woman at the Jackson Hole United Airlines counter didn’t get that memo. While packing, after adding my new book, I’d made a token effort to transfer a few more things to my camera bag (oh yeah, I’d also purchased some T-shirts for me, a sweatshirt for my wife, plus a pound of coffee, so my suitcase was starting out even heavier than before), and strategically positioned a few other heavy-ish items near the top of the suitcase for easy access in case more transferring was required. At the airport, I held my breath as I hefted my suitcase onto the scale, flashing my best, “Hey, I’m nice guy—work with me here” smile. The counter person looked at the scale, then back at me, and issued her best, “You’ve got to be kidding me” stare. When I feigned ignorance, she simply said, “You’re ten pounds over.” Sigh.
After shifting my pre-staged heavier items and discovering that I was still seven pounds overweight, a small amount of panic started to leak in. Fortunately, we’d arrived at the airport more than 3 hours early. After 45 minutes of shifting, repacking, and reweighing (at least four times) I passed the weigh-in and queued up for TSA. (My new United airlines “friend” wouldn’t even reward me for getting down to just 1/2 pound over.)
I won’t bore you with the details, but suffice to say, if the plane had gone down and they sent my recovered belongings to my wife, she’d no doubt be scratching her head trying to figure out why my camera bag included a one pound bag of ground coffee, my toiletry kit, a Bluetooth speaker, and a pair of hiking boots—and why my computer bag also included a coffee mug, umbrella, and several pairs of socks.
But the bottom line is, after countless failed weigh-ins, then lugging (not to mention babysitting) over 50 pounds of bulky carryon through the Jackson Hole, (incomprehensibly large) Denver, and Sacramento airports, I did indeed make it home with the signed Tom Mangelsen book that’s now on display in my office. So I guess things really do work out.
Speaking of things working out
The workshop shoot that resulted in today’s image was not part of Don’s Grand Teton workshop master plan. It was an opportunistic response to a fortuitous confluence of blank skies and a crescent moon that just happened to come at the right time this year.
When scheduling a photo workshop, we have no idea of the conditions we’ll encounter. While I schedule many workshops using the moon as a hedge against blank skies, other factors can and do take priority—like fall color in a fall color workshop. Since this was Don’s workshop, I had nothing to do with the schedule, but I knew this one had to be scheduled for the best chance of peak fall color, moon be damned. (And to say Don nailed the fall color timing this year would be an understatement.)
Having just returned from my Hawaii Big Island workshop, and knowing I was departing for my Eastern Sierra workshop the day after returning from Jackson Hole, the moon had been the last thing on my mind until just a day or two before the workshop started. That we’d have a crescent moon in the west shortly after sunset had been on Don’s radar long before that, but we both agreed that it would probably be too far south to align with any of our prime sunset locations. But when mostly clear skies were forecast for the workshop, Don and I revisited the moon as a potential blank sky antidote to follow one of the workshop’s sunsets, and decide that we could indeed make it work.
After pulling up some topo maps and solar/lunar data, I plotted the waxing crescent’s altitude and azimuth for each evening of the workshop and determined that Thursday night would be the time to go for it. Then Don and I scouted the potential locations, both on maps and in person, and found a spot on the road between Jackson Lake and Oxbow Bend that would align the moon perfectly with Teton Peak on Thursday evening.
When the day arrived, we followed a nice sunset at Jackson Lake with a short drive to our predetermined spot, arriving in the warm glow of early twilight. To my eye the view here was the spectacular peaks to our south and west, but I couldn’t help notice that just across the the road and facing north (backs to the mountains), a dozen or so photographers were pointing very long glass at something far across the meadow. I looked more closely and barely made out a pair of elk doing whatever elk do (no, not that). Whatever. (Okay, seriously, I understand the appeal of wildlife photography, it’s just not for me.)
We landscape shooters pointed in the complete opposite direction, toward the brightening crescent hanging above Grand Teton, arguably America’s most striking mountain. To align the moon and peak with the foreground I wanted, I jogged about 5o yards down the road, staying only long enough to get a few frames. But being down there also gave me a great perspective of the conflicting priorities on display: wildlife shooters on one side of the road pointing north, landscape shooters on the other pointing south (it was actually a pretty amusing sight I wish I’d thought to take a picture of). I imagine they were just as baffled by our choices as I was about theirs.
Even though this moonset wasn’t a “featured” shoot of the workshop (people were there for fall color and the many views of the Tetons), it’s a great example of how things really do work out. Don and I used to stress about the conditions in a workshop and whether people might be disappointed, but we learned a long time ago that if you stay prepared and flexible, there will always be great stuff to photograph—and things really do work out.
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A Peek at Peaks
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Kilauea Eruption Episode 33, Part 2: Grand Finale
Posted on September 29, 2025
Fountain of Fire, Kilauea Eruption, Hawaii
Sony a7R V
Sony 100-400 GM
ISO 400
f/5.6
1/125 second
For the full context of my experience with Kilauea eruptions in general, and the events leading up to the fountaining portion of this episode (33), check out my prior blog post: Kilauea Eruption Episode 33, Part 1: So You’re Telling Me There’s a Chance…
The euphoria of our (very) early Thursday morning Kilauea eruption shoot powered my workshop group through the day and into Thursday night. Since we hadn’t made it back to the hotel until 4:00 a.m., I pulled the plug on our sunrise shoot (with zero objections), and the group didn’t gather again until our 1:00 p.m. image review session. It turns out many were so excited by the eruption experience, they opted for downloading and processing over sleep, but the few eruption images we did see definitely turbocharged the eruption enthusiasm.
The discussion during the afternoon meeting centered around whether the fountaining we saw was Kilauea’s new normal, or whether there might be more to come. My inherent optimism went straight to the fact that the prior episode (episode 32, in early September) had delivered the second greatest volume of lava to the caldera floor of all the episodes —the most of 2025 so far. And the latest USGS report said that continuing inflation at the summit meant more was coming. Yay.
The pessimist in me, that annoying little voice that keeps reminding me of the times Mother Nature has thrown cold water on high hopes, kept reminding me of the signs that the reliable eruption sequence that started in December 2024 might be flagging: the fountain height of recent eruptions had decreased significantly from its 1000+ foot peak; the gap separating each fountaining phase was increasing; and most significantly (in my mind), live webcams focused on the eruption’s vents showed that the activity we’d photographed the prior night had completely died—only smoke was visible where we had once seen bubbling, flowing lava.
Shortly after the image review session, we departed for the workshop’s sunset shoot at my favorite beach on the Puna Coast. That evening’s spectacular sunset pushed the eruption buzz to the background, and in a way felt like a fitting wrap-up to a fantastic workshop. We did have one more sunrise shoot planned, but I think everyone felt like it would be anticlimactic following all we’d photographed in the workshop so far. In fact, with flights to catch and coming off a night with very little sleep, when I suggested that we stay in Hilo and stick to the sunrise plan even if the eruption resumed during the night, the agreement was unanimous—we’d already had a great volcano shoot that would be tough to beat. (We’d already been up to Kilauea twice, so I also suggested that anyone who changed their mind should feel free to go up on their own if the eruption started.)
That plan lasted until 3:30 a.m. One of the workshop participants (who had his office manager in Ohio, where midnight in Hawaii is 6 a.m., monitoring the Kilauea webcams and reporting any changes) messaged the group, “It’s fountaining!” I was sound asleep, but the messaging frenzy that followed quickly roused me enough to grab my phone and check the webcam. I instantly knew the sunrise plan was out the window and we were going back to Kilauea, sleep be damned. When he said fountaining, he meant FOUNTAINING!!!
This fountaining was on an entirely different scale from what we’d seen the prior night, or even from anything I’d ever seen—like someone had kicked a giant sprinkler head on the caldera floor. (I learned later that it was the highest fountaining since early July.) Almost all of the group was wide awake and on the road in 20 minutes.
Even though we arrived before 5:00 a.m., a little more than an hour after the fountaining began, the park was much more crowded than we’d seen the previous night. We found parking, but just barely, and I knew the way cars were streaming into the park the open spaces wouldn’t last long.
Because of the crowds, we’d implemented an “every car for itself plan,” each doing its own thing while staying in contact. My car started at Kilauea Overlook, but found the view, while very close, was partially obscured behind the caldera rim. So we quickly doubled back to the Wahinekapu Steaming Bluff (steam vents), for the best combination of direct view to the fountaining vents, and fast access. There we reconnected with most of the rest of the group.
The view to the fountaining vents from the Wahinekapu is about 2 miles—our other option was the closer vantage point at Keanakako’i Overlook, on the other side of the caldera (where I shot the 2023 eruption). This is about 1.25 miles from the fountains, but also required a 15 minute drive followed by a 1 mile walk, and I knew that even if we found parking there (far from a sure thing), it would probably be starting to get light by the time we got our eyes on the eruption. Plus, having shot the eruption from Wahinekapu already, I knew we’d be close enough that 400mm would be plenty long enough.
I’m so glad we took the path of least resistance and stayed at Wahinekapu. Even though my brother Jay (who was assisting me in this workshop) and I had a very small window to shoot before we needed to head back to Hilo to catch our flight home, the timing of the eruption and our arrival couldn’t have been better. We started with nearly an hour of complete darkness, allowing exposures that froze the fountains without blowing out the highlights (overexposing the lava) to create the virtually black background that I think makes the most dramatic lava images. Following the complete darkness, we photographed through the slow transition into a beautiful sunrise. Finally, as the day brightened, we enjoyed about a half hour of the eruption’s towering plume warmed by lava-light from below, and low sunlight from above. Absolutely spectacular.
When I first photographed lava in 2016, I was learning on the fly. At night, standard histogram rules don’t apply to lava because a properly exposed frame will be almost completely smashed agains the left side (with much cut off), and often, especially on wider shots, with just few small highlight blips on the far right. Basically, job-one is to make the lava as bright as possible without blowing it out. And job 1a is to do that using a shutter speed that freezes the lava’s motion (unless motion blur is your objective). And finally, you really should do this using the best (lowest) possible ISO.
The mistake people make for any kind of motion blur, and I’ve heard a lot of “best shutter speed for Kilauea’s lava fountains” advice, is to assume that there’s one ideal shutter speed for freezing the lava fountains. There isn’t. Just as with flowing water, the shutter speed that freezes a lava fountain is a function of several factors: the speed at which the lava is moving—the higher the fountain, the faster the lava will be moving when it reaches the ground, the distance to the fountain, and the focal length.
Back in 2016 I started with extremely high ISOs to maximize my shutter speed, but have gradually, through trial and error, dropped both my ISO and decreased my shutter speeds for my lava images. At night, since depth of field is usually no concern, for most of my long telephoto shots using my 100-400, I now just shoot wide open, at f/5.6 for that lens. My exposure trial and error process involves taking a shot at a certain focal length, verifying that the lava is close to maximum brightness without blowing out, then magnifying the image in my viewfinder (or LCD) to confirm that there’s no motion blur in the lava fountain (make sure you check the lowest lava blobs, as they’ll be moving fastest). If that works, I lower my ISO and increase my shutter speed further, until I find the threshold where blur is discernible. Then, for a just-to-be-safe cushion, I bump my ISO and shutter speed back up to just slightly more than the prior settings (that I thought froze the lava).
I had to do this for every significant change in focal length, but it wasn’t long before I became pretty comfortable with my settings. And by the time this Friday morning lava fountaining started—having done it in 2016, 2022, 2023, and earlier that week—I was feeling so comfortable with my exposure settings that it was no longer a distraction. In fact, I was varying my focal length so frequently and clicking so fast, to simplify the process I just kept my exposure settings in the range I knew would work all the way out to 400mm. I was fine with this because a very satisfactory ISO 400 gave me a shutter speed in the 1/100 to 1/200 second range that I knew worked.
So bottom line? In total darkness, standing 2 miles away, at 400mm I was perfectly comfortable with f/5.6, ISO 400, and 1/100. But I hope you can see that my exposure settings probably won’t work for you if you’re much closer than 2 miles, and might be overkill if you’re farther away. In other words, I strongly encourage anyone who wants to photograph fountaining lava to apply my process, not my settings. (And there are many people with far more experience photographing lava than I have, so feel free to defer to them if their results confirm that they know what they’re talking about.)
This experience, the final shoot of my 2025 Hawaii Big Island workshop, wasn’t just the grand finale for this workshop, it was the grand finale of 15 years of Hawaii workshops. As I pare down my workshop schedule and ease (slowly) toward retirement, I decided a few months ago that this would be my final Hawaii workshop. Not because I don’t enjoy it (I do!), or because it no longer fills (it does!), but simply because I had better reasons to keep other workshops. Just as my final Grand Canyon raft trip was gifted with a beautiful, albeit less dramatic, crescent moon for our final sunrise, I can’t imagine a better Hawaii memory to go out on.
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Kilauea Memories (2010-2025)
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Kilauea Eruption Episode 33, Part 1: So You’re Telling Me There’s a Chance…
Posted on September 24, 2025
River of Light, Kilauea Eruption, Hawaii
Sony a7R V
Sony 100-400 GM
ISO 400
f/5.6
1/250 second
One out of a million…
One of the great motivators for a nature photographer is the potential for the unexpected. As much as I love planning my photo shoots, especially when things come together exactly as hoped, the euphoria of the unexpected feels like photography’s greatest reward.
Some natural phenomena can be predicted with surgical precision—events like a rising or setting sun or moon, a total solar eclipse, the moonbow that materializes every spring full moon at the base of Yosemite Falls, and the sunset light that colors Horsetail Fall in late February—with the only variable being whether or not the clouds will cooperate enough to allow us to view the show.
I love those reliable phenomena and have made my living scheduling photo workshops to share them with others. But I also have a few workshops scheduled around the hope of something spectacular—a high risk, high reward roll of the dice that can only be timed to provide the best chance of success. In this category I include the Iceland aurora workshops Don Smith and I do each year, my Grand Canyon monsoon workshops where we cross our fingers for lightning and rainbows, and my latest obsession, chasing supercells and tornadoes across the US and Canadian plains.
But let me submit a third category: those phenomena where there’s absolutely nothing strategic about the timing, and when it occurs, it feels like a gift from Heaven. I guess that could describe any random sunset, rainbow, or unexpected snowfall, but I’m thinking more about those one-out-of-a million phenomena that are so spectacular and rare, for many they’re a once in a lifetime event. Like an erupting volcano.
My personal volcano history
I’ve been visiting Hawaii’s Big Island every (non-Covid) September since 2010. Through 2017, the lava lake in Halemaʻumaʻu on Kilauea’s summit bubbled away 24/7, allowing each of my workshop groups to view and photograph beneath the Milky Way. This was so reliable, I simply took lava’s nightly glow for granted. Until 2016 I never saw actually the lava itself, just its rising smoke and vapor plume during the day, and the lava’s orange radiance illuminating the caldera walls after dark. But in 2016 the lava lake rose to the top of Halemaʻumaʻu and overflowed onto the caldera floor, and my group and I were gifted with the rare opportunity to view bubbling, exploding lava. Then in 2017 everything was back to normal, and my group returned to photographing the glow (and me to taking the eruption for granted).
But in a frustrating exhibition of Mother Nature’s fickle whims, in 2018 she reminded me to never take her for granted, and completely shut off the summit eruption the week before my workshop. Of course there’s lots of other stuff to photograph on the Big Island (my favorite Hawaiian island), but it’s pretty hard to top a volcanic eruption.
Since 2018, Kilauea has been mostly quiet, with a handful of relatively minor eruptions each year, most measured in hours or days, arriving with very short notice, and vanishing just as suddenly. In other words, impossible to plan a workshop around, and rare enough to never be expected.
My groups got nothing from the volcano in 2018, 2019, and 2021 (2020 was lost to Covid). Then in 2022, my workshop group and I were fortunate enough to get a long distance view of an eruption and the Milky Way from a brand new location. And in 2023 we hit the jackpot when a very active eruption started the day before my workshop, and ended the day after. For that one, I got to photograph numerous small fountains and lava rivers across a wide area of the caldera floor three different times, and my group enjoyed the same show twice. Then in 2024, Kilauea was quiet again.
I knew that Kilauea’s eruption history meant that the next one could be tomorrow, or years away. Or never. But in December of 2024, a whole new kind of eruption started on Kilauea. Instead of smaller fountains spreading across the caldera as we’d seen in 2023, this one was limited to one or two massive fountains. And instead of the recent one-and-done eruptions that would last for days or (occasionally) weeks, this new eruption came in short and sweet bursts separated by days. The first few lasted longer, up to 8 days, but after a while this latest eruption established a fairly regular routine, coming every week or so and lasting less than a day.
The fountaining in some of these episodes exceeded 1000 feet (a height I struggled to imagine, despite the many pictures and videos shared online), with most reaching at least 300 feet—far higher than anything I’d seen before, including in 2023.
Finally, we get to this image
(That’s a lot of context for just one image, so thanks for sticking with me.)
Since I scheduled the 2025 Hawaii workshop in the summer of 2024, I added it with no expectations of photographing an eruption. I simply knew any eruption, while always possible, was quite unlikely. Of course Hawaii has plenty to photograph without an erupting volcano, but a person can dream….
When the current eruption started late last year, nothing in recent history gave hope that it would last long enough to still be going by the time my workshop came around. With 10 months to go, my hope meter stayed pegged on zero. But as the volcano settled into its once-a-week routine and the months clicked past with little change in that pattern, I started to notice a slight quiver in the meter’s needle.
But as we all know, Mother Nature toys with hope. No sooner had my meter shown signs of life, the reliable one-week span between eruptions started stretching out to 10-14 days, the episode duration dropped to less than 12 hours, and the fountain heights dropped well below 500 feet. By the time episode 32 came and went in early September, I was down to hoping my workshop group would be lucky enough that the 12-hour or less span of the next episode (if there was a next episode), would fall sometime in the workshop’s 4 1/2 days. Not great odds, but to be safe, a few weeks before the workshop I e-mailed my group explaining our poor odds, but also reassuring them that if any eruption did happen during the workshop, we’d drop all other plans and I’d do everything in my power get us up to Kilauea to view it, regardless of the hour.
But in the secret recesses of my mind, despite my overwhelming desire to see and share this unprecedented sight, the possibility (no matter how small) that I might be responsible for navigating a dozen photographers and 3 vehicles through the mayhem reported to accompany every prior episode—gridlock and hours just getting into the park, no parking once we get in, and limited viewing space—was daunting at best. Combine that with the fact that I obsess about getting my eyes on a scene before guiding a group to it—not only did I not have any experience with the best viewing locations for this eruption (each eruption happens at a different location in or near the crater), if it did happen during the workshop, I’d be learning on the fly, with my group depending on me.
I did as much research and preparation as possible from 2600 miles away, scouring the internet, reaching out to others I knew who had viewed prior episodes, and practically memorizing the viewing instructions on the NPS Hawaii Volcanoes website. But I knew all this planning would be of little use if we made the 45 minute drive from our Hilo hotel to the park and found it teeming with double-parked photographers and gawking tourists.
Then, just a few days before the workshop, the USGS posted an eruption forecast stating that the earliest the next episode would start would be September 19, and possibly later if summit inflation (the amount of magma in the subterranean chamber) decreases. Since my workshop wraps up following the sunrise shoot on September 19, I knew we’d almost certainly miss it. A disappointment for sure, but also a significant stress reliever.
On my pre-workshop scouting visit, I learned that the vent of the eruption had been glowing the last couple of nights, a sign that the magma chamber was filling. With that information I realized there might be an opportunity to give my group a caldera night shoot for the first time since 2017. Not only that, as I scouted the views to the current eruption vents, I realized that I’d be able to align the caldera’s glow with the Milky Way, just like the olden days. Even without an eruption, things were looking up.
On Tuesday, our second night, I took the group to the caldera for sunset, and we stayed for a magnificent Milky Way shoot beneath a spectacularly (and unusually) clear sky. In fact, unlike all the prior Kilauea Milky Way shoots, where we just photographed a glowing hole at the bottom of a featureless caldera floor, subsequent eruptions (and especially the current one) had raised the caldera floor from 100 to 300+ feet, and replaced the dull rocks and shrubs with brand new beautifully textured lava. And the glow now emanated from a discernible volcanic cone that at times during our shoot emitted visible splashes of lava.
I went to bed that night overjoyed to have given my group an actual active volcano experience. And then I woke Wednesday morning. Checking the USGS Kilauea status update, I did a double-take. The earlier September 19 – 23 episode 33 forecast had been revised to indicate that an eruption was imminent, and could start any time from September 17 (today!) to 19. Whoa.
Along with the euphoria that we might indeed get to witness an actual fountaining eruption came the prior anxiety of not knowing exactly how I’d navigate it. So I devised a plan. Knowing that we’d all been up to the volcano the prior day, I decided that if the eruption does start, we’d drop everything and immediately beeline to Kilauea as a group, in no more than 3 vehicles (there were 14 of us, including me and my brother Jay). Once there, we’d do our best to stay together, but if it was too crowded and unmanageable, each car would have full autonomy to go where its occupants wanted to go, and to stay as long as they wanted. If that happened, we’d still keep in constant contact via our workshop WhatsApp group (which we’d already been using all week), and share any insights we learned about parking or vantage points. With a plan in place, we went about the day’s workshop plans (Akaka Falls and Hawaii Tropical Botanical Garden), keeping a constant eye on the USGS eruption webcams and status updates.
Nothing had happened by the end of the day, so before sending everyone off for the evening, I checked to see who wanted to be awakened if the eruption started overnight, and found that all but three were up for an overnight adventure.
At 11:30 p.m. I’d already been asleep for a couple of hours when my phone started lighting up with notifications that the eruption had started. We were awake, dressed, and on the road in 15 minutes. By 12:15 a.m. (Thursday morning) we in place at the caldera and clicking madly.
What we saw this evening was not the promised fountaining, but no one was disappointed by the bubbling vent, lava falls, and lava river we did see. The splashes this night reached up to 50 feet, and our vantage point at the Steam Vents gave us a perfect view straight to all the action. We stayed to photograph it until 3:00 a.m., and drove back to the hotel completely euphoric. Needless to say, we passed on the sunrise shoot.
Stay tuned for Part Two…
Unplanned Beauty
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Lightning Safety (for Photographers)
Posted on September 15, 2025
Lightning and Sun, Amistad, New Mexico
Sony a7R V
Sony 24-105 G
1/4 second
F/18
ISO 50
If you’re reading this post and hope to stay completely safe from lightning, just stop right here and simply go indoors at the first flash, and stay there until 30 minutes after the last flash. (You’re welcome.) But if you would like to assume the risks of photographing lightning while staying as safe as possible, read on….
It’s a personal calculation
I share a lot of lightning pictures. Which of course means I spend a fair amount of time outside, in and around electrical storms. In fact, if I didn’t usually have to travel so far to so much as see lightning, I’d absolutely be out there chasing it a lot more than I do. But based on my many lightning images, it occurs to me that some might believe I’m risk taker (I’m not), or that I’m just plain foolish (perhaps, but not where lightning is concerned). Believe it or not, there is method to this madness.
I was already thinking about dedicating a post to lightning safety when I recently read an article on that very topic from the June 2024 “Outside Online” magazine. While there wasn’t a lot of new info there, that article did underscore for me how much most people have wrong about lightning safety, and how that ignorance puts them at risk. Given that sharing lightning images as much as I do might be construed as tacit encouragement to go out and do this inherently unsafe thing, I think the time for my safe (-ish) lightning photography post is now.
I want to start by acknowledging that photographing lightning is dangerous, no matter how careful you are. But life is continual series of calculated risks that start when we get out of bed in the morning, and continue until we turn off the light at night. (And have you ever considered that even after you’re “safely” tucked away with the lights out, a meteor could be speeding toward your bed? If only you’d have been outside photographing lightning, you’d have escaped perfectly unharmed.)
Whether it’s driving a car, sharing our lives on social media, taking a jog around the neighborhood, managing finances online, or free-soloing El Capitan, there is some degree of risk in virtually every decision we make. Yet we go ahead and expose ourselves to these potential dangers anyway, when we believe the benefits outweigh the risks.
As a nature photographer with a significant and lifelong attraction to Nature’s astonishing power in many forms, my personal risk/reward calculation deems the thrill of witnessing and photographing lightning worth the inherent risks. But that doesn’t mean I blindly rush outside at the first thunder crack—if anything, my desire to experience as much lightning as possible is a great motivator to become as familiar with lightning safety as I possibly can be.
Safety first
The 2000 (or so) people killed worldwide by lightning each year had one thing in common with you and me: they didn’t believe they’d be struck by lightning when they started whatever it was they were doing when they died. The key takeaway here is, don’t get cocky.
The foundational elements of lightning safety are:
- Preparation: If we knew in advance exactly where the next lightning bolt would strike, the risk of getting struck would be almost zero. Of course that’s not possible, but you can at least give yourself an advantage by learning as much about thunderstorms and lightning as possible, and by relying on lightning experts who know far more than you do.
- Weather forecasts are your friend. Find a reliable source very familiar with the area you want to photograph lightning, and monitor the forecast constantly. For me, that’s the National Weather Service, who has forecast offices throughout the US that are staffed with genuine weather experts, and in fact provides most of the data the other forecasters rely on.
- Thunderstorms have personalities, and while you should always assume they’ll behave unpredictably, they do have “tells” that can hint at their behavior for anyone who understands the how, where, and why of thunderstorm development. Learn to recognize the stages of thunderstorm development and their various components (inflow, outflow, updrafts, downdrafts, anvil tops, wall clouds, hail zones, etc.) that reveal important things like the storm’s direction of motion, intensity, and where its lightning is most likely.
- Awareness: Never get so caught up in the spectacle of an electrical display that you lose track of everything happening elsewhere. And it’s more than just your eyes you need to rely on—lightning safety is very much a multi-sensory effort. For example:
- A wind increase or direction change often signals an approaching storm.
- The sound of thunder is usually an indication that the storm is too close. You generally don’t hear thunder that’s more than 8 miles away (at 5 seconds per mile, thunder from lightning 8 miles away would arrive in 40 seconds), yet lightning can easily strike 10 miles or more from its prior strike. Though I’m not usually close enough to hear my lightning’s thunder, when I am, my vigilance goes on overdrive.
- Hair on your head, arms, or legs standing up is a sign of grave danger, indicating a nearby strike is imminent. This is the time to run, not get one more shot.
- Similarly, the smell we normally associate with burning electronics is another indicator of the electrically charged (ionized) atmosphere that immediately precedes a strike.
- Escape plan: Before setting up to photograph lightning, always have an escape plan—a safe place immediately (within seconds) accessible if lightning surprises you.
- The best escape plan is to never let the lightning get close enough that you need to escape in the first place. That’s why I prefer photographing lightning at distances great enough that I can’t hear the thunder, using my moderate to long telephoto lenses (24-105 and 100-400) and a Lightning Trigger (www.LightningTrigger.com) that senses daylight lightning more than 50 miles away—not too uncommon at Grand Canyon, where I’ve done the majority of my lightning photography. (And any time you find yourself reaching for an extreme wide lens, such as a 12-24 or 16-35, just assume the lightning is too close.)
- But for those times I might need to escape, before setting up I want to know exactly where my safe shelter is and how long it will take me to reach it. For me, that shelter is almost always my car, and I don’t like it to be more than a 30-second sprint from where I’m photographing (yes, I realize sometimes even 30 seconds isn’t fast enough—see risk calculation reference above).
Of course, since an electrical storm always has a first lightning bolt, all the vigilance in the world won’t save you if you’re just plain unlucky enough to catch one before you have a chance to retreat. But if you’ve done your preparation, use all of your senses to remain hyper-aware of the conditions in all directions, you’ve greatly improved the odds that lightning won’t surprise you. And when you do see, hear, smell, or feel anything that causes you to think the lightning risk is increasing, it’s always better to retreat to your pre-determined shelter (building or car) too soon than too late.
Under fire
With those common sense basics out of the way, let’s get to what I think is the greatest risk facing lightning photographers: General ignorance of lightning safety in the field that causes them to feel safer than they actually are while photographing it. There’s just a lot of misinformation out there.
The safest place to be in an electrical storm is in a fully enclosed structure that has plumbing and/or wiring that will channel a lightning strike around the perimeter and into the ground and away from occupants. Contrary to what many believe, shelter from rain does not equal shelter from lightning. You are not safe in an open structure (such as a covered patio, bus stop, shed, etc.), beneath a tree or overhanging rock, or in a cave. In other words, if you find yourself outside with no fully enclosed structure to retreat to, you’re kind of screwed.
But if your goal is to photograph lightning, you’ll no doubt want to be outside, with a bit more mobility than a solid building provides. Fortunately, lacking an enclosed building (with plumbing and/or wiring), the next best shelter is a hard-top, metal vehicle with the windows closed. Though fiberglass bodies don’t work, modern composite car bodies usually contain enough metal to safely channel the lightning.
Lightning myth buster: A car’s lightning safety is courtesy of its metal frame and has nothing to do with its rubber tires. You’d be just as safe sitting in a vehicle that’s perched on 4 bare rims as you would be in a vehicle atop massive truck tires.
So the combination of safety and mobility makes my car an integral component of my lightning-photography safety protocol. When I chase lightning, I make sure the vehicles are within a few seconds sprint from wherever I (and my group) are set up. And I never set off into the wilderness any time there’s even a slight chance of electrical activity—regardless of how clear the sky is now, or how great the potential photography.
The last resort
If you follow the guidelines I’ve outlined above, you should be able to avoid most lightning dangers. But most is not all. Maybe you wandered a little far from shelter and got caught off guard because the storm acted completely unpredictably, or (more likely) you got so caught up in the spectacle that you missed a warning sign or strayed too far from shelter. Now you’re exposed and fear that the next bolt could target you.
If you do ever find yourself caught outside in an electrical storm with no available shelter, shame on you. But I get it—on the Grand Canyon North Rim, my groups take the 1/2 mile walk to Cape Royal, where we have indeed photographed lightning. Being 1/2 mile from safe shelter is outside my standard lightning comfort zone, but the visibility here is distant enough that we can (and have) photographed lightning 50 miles away, and I’m extremely quick to pull the trigger on our retreat with even the slightest indication that nearby lightning might be possible.
If you do find yourself exposed to lightning without safe shelter, here’s some knowledge that will improve your chances:
- Lightning is quite lazy and always follows the path of least resistance, so you should avoid proximity to conductors like metal, water, power poles, cell towers, and trees (which contain lots of water). While these things don’t actually attract lightning, they do provide the easiest path for lightning to follow—unless you get too close, in which case you may become the path of least resistance.
- Whether you use an aluminum or carbon fiber tripod makes no difference.
- Sadly, the human body is mostly water, making it an excellent conductor. Your job is to minimize the chance that you will be the lightning’s conductor of choice.
- Avoid high ground.
- Avoid exposed areas.
- Stay at least fifteen feet from other people, to minimize collateral damage.
- Do not lie down. Lying down to reduce your height might slightly improve your chances of a direct hit, but it also greatly increases your surface area that’s in contact with the ground, thereby greatly increasing the chances a nearby strike will use your (waterlogged) body to discharge itself.
- If you’re surrounded by trees, position yourself near shorter trees, as far from the trunks as possible
- Rubber soled shoes provide no lightning protection. And despite assertions to the contrary, neither does a foam sleep pad.
- The “lightning position”—crouching on the balls of your feet, with your feet together and your hands covering your ears—is of very little value. Some consider it the solution of last resort, but many lightning safety experts now believe you’d be much better off spending the time you’d be in the lightning position running to a safer location.
- Safety is relative, so sometimes the best you can do when there is no safe location, is to find a safer location:
- Head to lower ground—basically, just run downhill, and keep going until you can’t get any lower (but avoid standing beneath or even getting too close to elevated ridges).
- Stand in a grouping of uniform height, shorter trees.
At the risk of repeating myself…
If you’re risk averse, just stay inside. But if you find beauty in Nature’s power, few natural phenomena provide a better opportunity to experience that power than lightning. And while lightning isn’t as predictable as a moonrise, not only is lightning’s unpredictability a big part of what makes it special, lightning isn’t as unpredictable as those who don’t understand it believe. If you learn the science, remain vigilant, and always respect the risks, photographing lightning can be one of the most thrilling things you do with your camera.
About this image
Today’s image is one of many from what became one of the most memorable photo days of my life (from my June 2025 storm chasing workshop). To read about the shoot that produced this image and several others, click here.
Here’s the bounty from the storm chasing afternoon that produced today’s image (June 7, 2025)
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- Double Rainbow and Lightning, Amistad, New Mexico (vertical crop)
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- Lightning at Sunset, Eastern New Mexico
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- Lightning and Road, Amistad, New Mexico
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- Lightning and Sun, Amistad, New Mexico
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- Lightning and Thunderhead, Eastern New Mexico
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- Alien Spaceship, Amistad, New Mexico
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- Down the Middle, Rainbow and Lightning Near Amistad, New Mexico
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- Sunset Supercell Lightning, Amistad, New Mexico
Read my Photo Tips article on photographing lightning: Lightning
And here are my lightning-centric photo workshops:
Grand Canyon Monsoon
Storm Chasing
Lots of Lightning
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A Different Kind of Thrilling
Posted on September 6, 2025
Quiet Dawn, Aoraki and Lake Pukaki, New Zealand
Sony a7R V
Sony 24-105 G
30 second
F/18
ISO 50
Chasing tornadoes is undeniably thrilling, but photographers don’t live by thrills alone. Or maybe a better way to put that would be, thrills don’t necessarily need to set your heart racing. Because after nearly 2 weeks chasing supercells and their (thrilling) progeny, I was only home for a couple of days before jetting off to New Zealand for a completely different kind of thrills. Instead of action-packed targets like lightning, tornadoes, and the supercells themselves, our New Zealand thrills skew more toward soothing.
On any photo trip, whether it’s a workshop or personal, I like to balance the essential popular photo spots with a variety of less known, personal-discovery sites. For our New Zealand workshops, over the years Don Smith and I have assembled a nice variety of these spots to mix in with the Wanaka willows, Doubtful Sounds, and Tasman Lakes that justifiably attract the beauty-loving masses.
In New Zealand, and elsewhere, Don and I have learned that popularity doesn’t necessarily mean superiority, and some of our off the beaten path photo spots can be at least as beautiful as their more popular counterparts. With the added bonus of complete solitude.
When we scout workshop locations, we always get our eyes on the popular spots for a better understanding of things like light, foreground options, light, and so on. But we spend much more time poking around the perimeter of these known locations, venturing off-road (or at least off main and paved roads), studying maps, querying locals, and simply exploring the terrain for potential vantage points that are easily overlooked. (This doesn’t make us special—most good photographers take a similar approach.)
Which is how we came across this sweet location on the shore of Lake Pukaki in New Zealand. Many years ago, Don and I were just driving along the lakeshore, scouting possible photo locations in the Aoraki/Cook area. And while this spot is off the main highway, I’d hardly label it “hidden.” But we’ve never seen another photographer there. When we first saw it, we instantly realized that it checked every box on our list that day: mountains, lake, and foreground features (plus access that won’t kill anyone in the group).
From the get-go, Don and I made this a regular workshop sunrise location. And over the years we’ve learned that, like many spots, it’s a little different with each visit: the lake level goes up and down (and with it the rocks that are visible), the snow line on the surrounding peaks changes, amount of churn on the water varies, and of course the sky is always doing something different. Not only that, making our way from the van to the water in the pre-sunrise dark, it’s easy to end up a couple hundred feet one direction or the other from where we were the previous year. But one thing remains unchanged: we’re always alone.
One of the most important features of this spot is the prominence of Aoraki (Mt. Cook). At over 12,000 feet, it’s New Zealand’s highest peak. Sometimes clouds obscure its summit, but this year’s group got to watch Aoraki’s striking outline slowly materialize against the brightening sky.
With the group settled in and happily clicking away, I set about searching for this year’s foreground rocks. One of the things that makes this such a great location is the shallowness of the water near the shore here, which allows a few rocks to jut above the surface, with many more clearly visible just below the surface. For my foreground, I always look for the protruding rocks, but also stay very aware of the surrounding submerged rocks. This year, with Aoraki so visible, I hunted until I found a V-shaped collection of nearby rocks that complemented the distant peak.
Because the lake was fairly choppy, I decided on a long exposure to smooth the water, which provided the added bonus of better revealing the submerged rocks. We were still about 20 minutes out from sunrise, so achieving a 30-second exposure without a neutral density filter was a simple matter of dropping to ISO 50 and stopping down to f/18. To compose, I positioned myself so the nearby rocks framed Aoraki. Then I dropped my tripod a little to shrink the gap between the rocks and the peak, but didn’t drop as low as I might otherwise have because the lake’s glacial turquoise is such a beautiful feature itself.
One unsung perk of these pre-sunrise long exposures is the waiting. Nothing is more soothing, and dare I say thrilling, than simply standing and basking in morning’s quiet calm while my camera collects the faint light. Sublime.
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Roads Less Traveled
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That’s a Wrap
Posted on August 30, 2025
Lightning and Abandoned House, Eastern Colorado
Sony a7R V
Sony 24-105 G
1 second
F/13
ISO 100
Photographing blue-sky California as much as I do, it seems that I spend much of my life strategizing, hoping, praying, and sometimes even begging (whatever it takes) for a quality sky to complement the Golden State’s spectacular scenery. So the irony wasn’t lost on me when my June storm chasing group spent nearly two weeks under absolutely jaw dropping skies, strategizing, hoping, praying and begging for quality foreground to complement whatever sky we were chasing.
Fortunately, our Midwest skies were so consistently spectacular that we didn’t need much foreground. Hay bales? Sure. Oil drilling rig? Absolutely. Barn? Jackpot! Empty field? Good enough.
As the trip wound down, we’d reached the point where we’d photographed so many spectacular sights, we started to feel like hoping for more would be greedy. But that didn’t keep us from still trying.
On our final full day of chasing, we found ourselves in eastern Colorado, pursuing several active thunderstorms. While the forecast didn’t look good for supercell development (and the associated tornados), these cells certainly buzzed with electricity. For our first stop that afternoon, we found vantage point overlooking verdant, rolling hills dotted with distant farms. Not exactly Yosemite, but fine for lightning and dramatic clouds. Most of the lightning was several miles away—far enough that we didn’t hear thunder—but my Lightning Trigger did a very good job catching each bolt. Even though I was pretty sure I wasn’t getting anything I’d use, that didn’t stop me from feeling thrilled each time.
When the primary activity at this location receded and shifted away from the best foreground views, we loaded into the vans and race to get back out front of the storm. Within a few minutes we were back in position, but at first saw no foreground worth stopping for. Then someone noticed a farmhouse in the distance, and as we approached we saw that wasn’t merely a farmhouse, it was long-abandoned and wonderfully weathered.
We screeched to a stop and piled out and were met instantly by what felt like hurricane force winds. When a bolt flashed in the general direction of the house, it was instantly clear that we were much closer to the action than we had been at the previous location. Since the house as at least 1/4 off the road, with no discernible path out to it, I figured we’d just shoot it from the road and move on. But boy, it would sure be nice to get closer and use a wider lens to include more of that spectacular sky…
About the time I had that thought, Jeremy (my workshop co-leader) bolted across the field in the direction the house, and instantly at least half the group, myself included, followed. I kept waiting for Chris, our trip leader and lead storm chaser, to call us back, but honestly, I’m not sure we’d have heard him anyway in all that wind. So we just kept going.
Without a road, we had to maneuver around holes, culverts, and a variety of aggressive plants. My biggest concern was the thorns, of which there was an abundance. Let me just say that Texans like to brag about how everything is bigger in Texas, and while I’m not sure that’s a universal truth, it sure applies to their thorns. Earlier in the trip, after navigating a similar field, something started stabbing the bottom of my foot with each step, and figured a sharp object had worked its way into my shoe. But when I realized it only hurt when I had my shoes on, I removed my shoe, turned it over, and discovered a thorn had completely pierced the sole. But anyway…
Lightning and Abandoned House, Eastern Colorado (my final frame of the trip)
We made it to about 100 yards from the house, setting up in a line so no one was in anyone else’s way. We all had the same goal: a lightning bolt in the general direction of the house. The lightning was firing across a fairly wide area, and some of it was pretty shrouded by rain. Every once in a while we got a bright bolt somewhere in the scene, or a faint one aligned with the house, but nothing that was both bright and perfectly aligned. The other problem was that crazy wind—not only did it require us all to hold on tight to our tripods, it was also a clue that we were perilously close to the storm’s RFD (rear flank downdraft), and all the hail and lightning that came with it. And the wind was intensifying—not a good sign.
About the time we started getting splatted with large but (so far) relatively infrequent raindrops, someone noticed that Chris was frantically waving us back to the vans. I knew the smart thing to do was to retreat without hesitation, but I delayed just a little bit—just long enough for, bang! My attention had been on the evacuating photographers, so I only caught the bolt out of the corner of my eye, but Chuck, the other person foolish enough to still be out there confirmed that it was indeed bright bolt, and right behind the house. When a second bolt hit seconds later, we just grabbed our tripods and raced back to the vans. That bolt turned out to be the final frame of one of the most unforgettable trips of my life.
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My Storm Chasing Bounty (So Far)
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Days of Lightning Passed
Posted on August 23, 2025
So. Here I am, back from my Grand Canyon monsoon workshop, isolated at home with Covid. I usually return from these workshops, hit the ground running, and find myself longing for more time to process all my new lightning images. Ironic that the one time circumstances force me to slow down and lay low, providing tons of time to process my new lighting bounty, I have no new bounty to process. Alas, though this year’s was indeed a fantastic workshop with many beautiful sunrises and sunsets, we got no lightning. (During the workshop—those who stayed through the day following our wrap-up sunrise shoot got a nice lighting show.)
Instead of feeling sorry for myself, I decided to go through images of past lightning that I never had time to process. I’m feeling better, but this week, rather than write a conventional blog, I’m just going to share three of my (hundreds of) previously unprocessed Grand Canyon lightning images, and the links to blog posts about those shoots.
Distant Lightning, Lipan Point, Grand Canyon South Rim
Sony a7RIV
Sony 24-105 G
1/4 second
F/8
ISO 200
The thing that stands out about this 2021 afternoon was the thunderhead that we could see in the distance for the entire 40 minute drive out to Lipan Point. I was afraid it would be spent by the time we got there, but this was a show that just didn’t want to end: What Would Michael Scott Do?
Inside Job, Inner Gorge Lightning, Grand Canyon North Rim
Sony a7RIV
Sony 24-105 G
1/4 second
F/8
ISO 250
Two days before capturing the preceding lightning image, the same 2021 monsoon group enjoyed a spectacular electrical display from the view decks adjacent to Grand Canyon Lodge (RIP) on the North Rim: Frozen in Time.
Incoming, Oza Butte Lightning Strike, Grand Canyon North Rim
Sony a7RIII
Sony 24-105 f/4 G
Breakthrough neutral polarizer
Lightning Trigger LT-IV
1/4 second
F/11
ISO 100
This lightning bolt landed just a mile away from my 2019 group’s perch on the Grand Canyon Lodge view decks. With safety just a few feet away, and shielded by lightning rods, many of us stayed out to enjoy the show. But less than five minutes later, we were all chased inside by an even closer strike: I Just Have to Share This.
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The Show Must Go On
Posted on August 13, 2025
Ablaze, Desert View Sunset, Grand Canyon
Sony a7R V
Sony 100-400 GM
Sony 1.4x Teleconverter
ISO 100
f/9
1/1600 second
Greetings from Grand Canyon.
A big part of nature photography is anticipation and planning. And with planning comes expectations. Sadly, expectations often don’t live up to reality, so another big part of nature photography is how you handle the situations when expectations aren’t met.
To those people who preempt disappointment by simply avoiding expectations (after all, if you don’t have expectations, you can’t be disappointed) I say, what fun is that? Despite the risk of disappointment, I truly enjoy getting excited about upcoming trips—then just do my best to make the most of whatever situation has dashed my expectations.
When planning my workshops, I try to remember that it’s not just my own expectations on the line—big promises also means the potential for big disappointment. And few things ramp up expectations, both my own and my workshop students’, more than the possibility of photographing lightning at the Grand Canyon. Of course with or without lightning, Grand Canyon is special. But let’s be honest—the only reason I schedule this workshop in Grand Canyon’s most crowded month is because that’s the best time for lightning. And despite all the inherent beauty here, lightning is the prime reason most of my workshop students sign up. The number two reason? Probably the opportunity to visit the North Rim.
This year, the first threat to everyone’s expectations came in July, when Grand Canyon Lodge on the North Rim burned, forcing the closure of that side of the park. Though the North Rim doesn’t have the views to match the South Rim, I’ve always believed the rest of the North Rim experience exceeds the South Rim: fewer people, evergreen forest setting, and rustic Grand Canyon Lodge. Additionally, the North Rim has been the site of some of my groups’ most spectacular lightning successes. But rather than cancel the workshop because we lost our two North Rim nights, I just switched those lost nights to the South Rim, where I believed (crossed my fingers) that the overall experience could be just as good, only different: expectations reset.
Smoke can create havoc at Grand Canyon, but at the time the fire changed my plans, I fully expected that it would be extinguished when my workshop came around (a month later). I also consoled myself with the belief that the chances for lightning this year would be no different than any other year (extremely good). In other words, expectations were back on the rise.
But, as the workshop drew near, the fire actually exploded from fewer than 10,000 acres to its current 145,000 acres (and climbing), with the containment percentages barely budging each day (it’s currently only 44% contained). Worse still, as August approached, it started to become clear that this was not a good monsoon year in Northern Arizona. Expectations cratered.
The workshop’s first day dawned with no hope for lightning, and a canyon filled with smoke—not a great combo. But by this time, we were in “the show must go on” mode, and I was grateful to have a group that was happy to stay as positive as I was. At the orientation I laid out the scenario, and gave them a rundown of all the ways we could make the best of it. I reminded them that some of my favorite Grand Canyon images were only possible because the smoke subdued a brilliant sun, and I’ve seen the forecast turn from clear to thunderstorms with very little warning.
Making it out to the east-side views on our first shoot, we found the skies cloudless, and a fair amount of smoke. But the smoke could have been much worse, and was thin enough to permit at least a decent view into the nearby portions of the canyon, with outlines of the canyon’s internal ridges receding down the canyon to the west. Not the iconic red rock grandeur people expect at Grand Canyon, but quite photogenic for anyone with a telephoto lens and reasonable understanding of exposure.
The view that evening enabled me to reemphasize the point I’d made in the orientation: this would likely be a sunset where the sun, receding ridges, and a telephoto lens would take the day. Even with the smoke, careful exposure would be required to capture (in a single frame) enough canyon detail for silhouettes, without blowing out the sun.
That’s exactly the approach I took for this Desert View sunset image from that first evening. I started by setting up my 100-400 with a 1.4 teleconverter for the biggest sun possible, then composed a few sample frames while the sun was about 15 minutes from the horizon. This gave me enough time to anticipate the spot on the distant canyon rim where the sun would disappear, and to play with the possible compositions, finally arriving at this one at a little less than 500mm. Then I waited.
I held my breath a few minutes later when the sun disappeared into a layer of clouds, exhaling only when it reappeared shortly thereafter. As it dropped to within a sun’s-diameter of the horizon, I started clicking, keeping a close eye on my camera’s histogram and highlight alerts (“zebras”), while pushing the exposure to as bright as I could make it without losing color in the sun. To hedge my bets, I varied my exposure up and down by a couple of stops, my standard practice any time the sun is in my frame. (This allows me to use my large monitor at home to select the image with the best highlights/shadows balance.)
Honestly, the resulting images looked like crap on my LCD: the sun appeared too bright, while the canyon was virtually black. But I know my camera well enough to know that both highlights and shadows were within the recoverable range. Not only that, underexposing everything but the sun turned the clouds a fiery orange-red.
Processing this image was actually a piece of cake: I just pulled Lightroom’s Highlights slider all the way to the left, the Shadows slider all the way to the right, then adjusted the Exposure slider upward until everything felt right. Believe it or not, as soon as I finished those three moves, the sun and clouds looked pretty much like this (no special masking, blending, or color adjustment required)—I actually chose to desaturate the color a bit in Photoshop to make everything look more credible. Besides some moderate noise reduction in the darkest areas of the frame, this image required very little more than that. (Amazing how much simpler processing is when you nail the exposure.)
We’re now on workshop Day 3, and it turns out that initial shoot was our smokiest. Though we haven’t seen many clouds (yet), and have had lots of smoke in the distance, the canyon itself, as well as the sky above, has been sufficiently smoke-free to permit very clear views all the way down to the river, and brilliant sunstars (which require the brightest possible sun) at each sunrise/sunset shoot after that first one.
I’ve also found myself even more thrilled than I expected to be to have much more time on the South Rim—not only do we have two more days here, we also didn’t lose most of one day to the drive to the North Rim. That’s allowed me to take group to a few favorite locations that I’ve never had time to share with groups before. And I’ve been doing this so long, I’ve found very effective workarounds to the daunting South Rim crowds.
And as if to reward everyone’s positive spirit, now the National Weather Service has dangled hints of thunderstorms for tomorrow, and completely dropped the hints in favor of downright promises for the day following (fingers crossed). So things are definitely looking up.
Having lost the North Rim for the foreseeable future, I wasn’t sure I was going to continue this workshop. But after this week’s experience, even without the normal amount of lightning, all systems are go for next year.
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Eloquent Images by Gary Hart 