Waiting for the Stars
Posted on December 2, 2018
Nightfall, Schulman Grove, White Mountains, California
Sony a7R III
Sony 16-35 f/2.8 GM
Breakthrough 6-stop ND filter
30 seconds
F/11
ISO 400
The bristlecone pines are among the oldest living organisms on earth. Some of these trees pre-date the Roman Empire by 2000 years—and they look every year of their age. The more harsh a bristlecone’s environment, the longer it lives.
As with the giant redwoods, it’s humbling to be among the bristlecone pines. What they lack in bulk they make up for in character, with their corkscrew branches, gnarled trunks, and intricate texture that make them fascinating subjects from any angle or distance, with any lens from wide to macro.
The plan this evening was to photograph these trees until sunset, then wait until dark and photograph them beneath the Milky Way. Despite an afternoon that included rain, fog, and lots of overcast, my hardy Eastern Sierra workshop group bundled up and toughed it out with the hope we’d get lucky. Occasionally patches of clear sky would tease us, only to vanish as quickly as it appeared.
Not getting what you came for is no reason to put the camera away, and I encouraged everyone to keep shooting while we waited. Because I was preparing everyone for a potential night shoot, I just found a composition I liked, set up my tripod in the fading light, and clicked a frame every couple of minutes.
When the darkness was nearly complete and there was still no sign of the Milky Way, we decided it head back down to the cars. I like to be the last one down the trail when we come out of the bristlecones in the dark, so I shot for a few more minutes while the rest of the group packed up. This image is my final frame of the evening. With no moon and a mostly cloudy sky, it was too dark to effectively compose and focus, so I stuck with the composition I’d started with when it was brighter. I used a 30-second exposure at f/11 and ISO 400 to capture more light than my eyes saw. That long exposure also really conveyed the motion in the clouds that had been whipping around overhead all evening. The rather ethereal quality I captured here is a perfect example of why twilight is an underrated time for photography.
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A Few Bristlecones
Fresh Takes
Posted on November 25, 2018
Half Dome Autumn Reflection, Sentinel Bridge, Yosemite
Sony a7RIII
Sony 24-105 f/4 G
1/8 second
F/11
ISO 100
I love the iconic captures as much as the next person—scenes like Yosemite’s Horsetail Fall in February, Upper Antelope Canyon’s famous light shaft, or McWay Fall’s tumble into the Pacific, are both gorgeous and a thrill to photograph. But standing elbow-to-elbow with hundreds (or thousands!) of photographers, each recording virtually identical images that are already duplicates of thousands of prior images, while nice, doesn’t necessarily stimulate my creative juices.
Iconic for a Reason
Once upon a time photographing even the most popular scenes in solitude wasn’t difficult. The tourists who overwhelm the best known views during the comfortable times of day would vacate just when the photography started getting good. But with the proliferation of digital photographers and easy exchange of information in our connected world, there aren’t many photography secrets anymore, and the opportunities to make unique images have become more challenging than ever. And if you do capture something special, posting it online is sure to immediately draw photographers like cats to a can opener.
Given that Yosemite Valley’s eight square miles attracts over five million visitors each year, you’d think it would be impossible to find unique perspectives. But on even the busiest summer day, rising for sunrise will give you at least a couple of peaceful hours. And of course in Yosemite’s backcountry, while relatively crowded by wilderness standards, solitude is always just a short detour away.
But the iconic spots earned their recognition for a reason, and first-time (or infrequent) Yosemite visitors want to see them too. For my workshops, in addition to sharing with my students a variety of my favorite more hidden Yosemite spots, I’ve learned to take them to the Yosemite locations they’ve come to know from a lifetime time of viewing Yosemite pictures.
The first visits to vistas like Glacier Point, Tunnel View, Valley View, and Sentinel Bridge still inspire the awe they always have. It’s easy for photographers, overcome by the majesty before them, to fall back on their memory of others’ images and settle for their own version of the same thing. Rather than suggest that my students avoid doing this (for many, these images are the very reason they signed up in the first place), I suggest that they start with the iconic shots they know, but don’t make it their goal. Rather, I encourage them to use those familiar imagers as a starting point for a fresh take that’s more uniquely theirs. I won’t pretend that this approach always, or even frequently, results in something that no one has ever captured, but I think everyone’s photography benefits when that is the goal—not just the images captured today, but the ability to see and execute better images tomorrow as well.
In this year’s Yosemite Fall Color and Reflections workshop we spent most of our time bouncing from one beautiful scene to the next. Autumn, with its colorful leaves and ubiquitous reflections, provides more opportunities for unique captures than any other season, and the color this years was fantastic. But that didn’t prevent us from checking off the icons.
Speaking of icons, my rule of thumb in Yosemite is El Capitan in the morning and Half Dome in the afternoon. But after breakfast one morning, one of the cars said they wanted to go check out Sentinel Bridge, one of the best Half Dome reflections in the park. Normally I resist photographing Half Dome in the morning because its face doesn’t get direct sunlight until late afternoon, but on the way to breakfast I’d noticed the cottonwoods upstream were beautifully backlit and I thought it might be worth checking out. So I scrapped my original plans and we detoured back to the bridge (hey, never let it be said that I’m not flexible).
I’m so glad I listened to the votes from the other car that morning because we ended up with one of the workshop’s highlight shoots. Half Dome was in full shade, sky was a bland blue mixed with a few thin clouds, but the backlit trees were off the charts. We all started with the wider, more conventional views, capturing Half Dome and the trees doubled by their reflection. But that doesn’t take long, and soon I was encouraging everyone to keep working it.
When working out a composition, I always try to figure out where the scene’s action is. In this scene the highlight for me was the upstream trees and their reflection. Wanting as little as possible of the fairly boring sky, I went with a horizontal composition. I also thought a horizontal composition would be best for framing the cottonwoods and reflection with the shaded trees on both sides of the river. To leave no ambiguity about what this image is about, I removed the actual Half Dome entirely, leaving its reflection for context only.
With my Sony 24-105 f/4 G on my Sony a7RIII, I zoomed to a composition that put the “action” front and center, making sure to get all of Half Dome’s reflection but minimal sky, balancing the backlit trees and their reflection toward the top of the from, and framing everything with the darker trees on the edges. Depth of field and motion weren’t concern, so I went with my default ISO 100 and f/11, focused, and clicked.
As anyone who has been in one of my workshops knows, the first click is a draft, an image to review and refine. Evaluating the picture on my LCD, I ran my eyes around my frame and made a few micro adjustments to ensure a tight composition without cutting off the tops of the sunlit tree in the top center, the shaded trunks on the left and right, and the cloud above (below?) Half Dome.
Judging from the variety of images shared in the image reviews, this shoot was a highlight for everyone else too. Some found their own takes on this upstream scene, while a few ventured across the road to capture a completely different scene looking downstream. Not a bad result for a location that wasn’t even on my radar for that morning.
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Fresh Takes on Yosemite’s Icons
Click an image for a closer look and slide show. Refresh the window to reorder the display.
It’s the People
Posted on November 22, 2018
Floating Color, El Capitan, Yosemite
The ability to earn my living visiting the most beautiful places in the world is plenty of reason for gratitude, but that’s not what I’m thinking about today. Today I’m thinking about all of the people my workshops have connected me with, and all the laughter and learning they have added to my life.
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t looking forward to the people part of photo workshops when I started, but I had no idea how much of the joy I get from leading photo workshops comes from the people. Over the last dozen or so years, my workshop students have taught me about their countries, professions, hobbies, religions,… I could go on. I’ve watched workshop participants from virtually every continent on Earth (no penguins yet), with wildly diverse values and world views, blend seamlessly and enthusiastically. Observing this, I’ve learned that despite the exterior tensions that seem to divide our world today, humans have far more in common than we imagine.
Like most people, I have my share of strong opinions about the way things in the world should be. But the people I’ve met in my workshops have shown me that a person’s “goodness” is not determined by his or her political views or any other category that we so conveniently like to slot people into. I’ve seen firsthand that no political affiliation, religious preference, gender, sexual orientation, or ethnicity has a monopoly on warmth, passion, generosity, empathy, patience, or humor. Even more encouraging, I don’t think these workshop epiphanies are mine alone. Workshop after workshop, I get to observe a dozen of the most diverse people imaginable not just set aside differences and work side-by-side, but actually form friendships that transcend conventional boundaries, deep friendships that often continue long after the workshop ends.
I went into the photo workshop business fully prepared to teach others, but completely unprepared for the learning others would offer me.
About this image
With the fall color for this year’s Yosemite Fall Color and Reflections workshop peaking, I had to work overtime to balance the need for quality photo time at each stop with my desire to get my group to all the photo spots. On the workshop’s final day we finally made it to Cathedral Beach, a great up-close view of El Capitan that’s always good for reflections in the fall.
With El Capitan in full sunlight, the river in shade, and nothing stirring the water, all the ingredients were in place for a nice reflection. We’d been photographing reflections all week, but I didn’t get the sense that anyone was tiring of them. Drifting cottonwood leaves added to the beauty and the group quickly spread along a hundred yards or so in search of a composition to make their own.
Often shooting a scene like this I start wide, but this afternoon I started with my Sony 100-400 GM lens, playing with close-ups of the leaves and reflection. After wringing every possibility from this approach, I went to the other extreme and switched to my Sony 12-24 G lens. A wide composition needs a strong foreground, usually the closer the better, so I dropped down to river level and started working on variations of this scene.
While the water was calm, I was close enough to the leaves that even the slightest ripples risked motion blur, so to increase my shutter speed I dialed my Sony a7RIII to ISO 400. At 12mm I have a tremendous amount of depth of field, but the leaves were so close that I decided to play it safe and use f/16. After a check check of my hyperfocal app, I focused on a leaf about 18 inches from my camera knowing that would give me sharpness from the closest leave all the way out to El Capitan.
Yosemite Fall Color and Reflections Photo Workshop
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An El Capitan Gallery
Click an image for a closer look and slide show. Refresh the window to reorder the display.
Taking Yosemite for Granite (sorry)
Posted on November 18, 2018
Face to Face, Half Dome from Glacier Point, Yosemite
Sony a7RIII
Sony 100-400 GM
ISO 100
f/11
1/6 second
Yosemite, like most of the Sierra Nevada, was carved from an intrusive igneous rock (subterranean magma that cooled without reaching the surface). This subterranean magma cooled slowly enough for its primary constituents, quartz and feldspar, plus mica and other minerals, to form crystals that fuse into an extremely hard matrix: granite. The granite waited patiently in the dark while overhead oceans advanced and receded, leaving thousands of feet of new sediment behind.
Beginning tens of millions of years ago, a slow-motion collision of tectonic plates uplifted the granite and its overlying sedimentary layers. As the ancient mountain range rose, erosion accelerated the demise of the sedimentary layers, eventually exposing the much harder granite. As the uplift continued, rivers moved faster, carving V-shaped river valleys that included the predecessor of what we now know as Yosemite Valley.
Then came the glaciers, an irresistible force meeting granite’s immovable object. Instead of breaking apart and collapsing as a lesser rock might, Yosemite’s granite stood tall as the glaciers cleared out the ancient Yosemite Valley, carving it into the U-shaped feature we know today—a flat floor bounded by vertical cliffs.
Granite’s hardness also affects the way it breaks up when exposed to the elements of weathering. Instead of crumbling under wind and rain like softer rock, or cleaving along aligned planes of weakness, granite retains its shape until fracturing along microscopic cracks caused by external stress such as pressure or weathering. These cracks allow water to seep into the rock. Of course you remember from high school science (right?) that unlike most substances, water expands when it freezes. This expansion pushes open the cracks, allowing even more water to seep in after the ice melts. This crack/seep/freeze/expand cycle continues until the rock fails, splitting along the expanded crack. In this process large chunks of granite are shed, often quite suddenly, while the remaining granite stands tall.
Granite’s unique qualities are on exquisite display in Yosemite Valley, where streams bursting with snowmelt tumble over shear granite walls, and granite monoliths tower 3,000 feet above the Merced River. Yosemite and Bridalveil Falls are Yosemite’s most recognized waterfalls, but look up on a spring day and you might count a dozen or more. The waterfalls dominate in spring, but Yosemite’s monoliths endure year-round, drawing visitors from around the world in every season. El Capitan, the largest chunk of granite in the world, is a climbers’ mecca, and few mountains have a more recognizable profile than Half Dome.
Half Dome is a bit of a misnomer, but one look at it the name is easy to visualize a rounded dome that lost a full half of its mass to a passing glacier. The reality is that Half Dome’s current shape is fairly close to the rock that was exposed by millions of years of erosion. While Yosemite’s glaciers filled most of Yosemite Valley, Half Dome was tall enough to protrude from the ice sheet and avoid direct contact. Half Dome’s shear face resulted from a single fracture that separated a large slice of granite to expose the flat granite face we all recognize.
After a nice day photographing fall color and reflections El Capitan’s shadow, we finished our day at Glacier Point for a face-to-face view Half Dome. The gray stratus blanket that had permitted a full day of sweet photography in diffuse the sunlight was about to become a liability for anyone longing for a colorful sunset.
Half Dome gets light all the way up to, and in fact even a couple of minutes beyond, the “official” (flat horizon) sunset. But because the view of Half Dome faces east, and the view to the west is obscured by terrain, there’s no way to know whether the horizon is clear in the direction of the setting sun. Even on cloudy days like this, my rule in Yosemite is to never give up on sunset until at least five minutes the after the official sunset time has passed. When a couple of people in the group started rumbling about heading back to the cars, I issued one of my favorite Yosemite proclamations to all within earshot: Never try to predict the conditions in five minutes based on the conditions now. I knew the odds were long for capturing anything more than darkening shades of gray fading to black, but without cameras they’d be zero.
I have no idea whether they truly believed me, or simply stayed put to humor me, but either way, I started to look pretty smart about five minutes before sunset when we spotted a faint glow on Half Dome. I held my breath as the sun slipped into a clear slot of unknown size on the horizon behind us to paint Half Dome with warm light. I hadn’t planned to shoot that evening, but as the light intensified I was glad I’d dragged my bag around anyway. As I quickly set up my tripod and extracted my camera, I urged everyone to keep shooting because there was no guarantee that this would last—just as I’ve witnessed many of these last minute miracles in Yosemite, I’ve also seen euphoria dashed in a heartbeat when the sun was suddenly snuffed right at the climactic moment (Horsetail Fall is notorious for this). But this evening the light held strong, warming to a golden crescendo, then fading to pink that intensified to a rich red that colored the sky from horizon to horizon.
The light tones of quartz and feldspar, plus its crystalline nature, make granite especially reflective. So while Yosemite isn’t especially known for its sunsets, when they do get red like this, granite’s inherent reflectivity causes the entire landscape to throb with a crimson glow. It’s one of my favorite phenomena in nature.
I ended up photographing the entire sunset with my Sony 100-400 GM lens on my Sony a7RIII. Not because I didn’t have a wealth of wide angle shots to choose from (I did!), but because I was working with my group and the telephoto compositions were simpler. Simpler in the sense that (for me at least) a wide shot requires a bit more strategic planning to first identify the frame’s foreground, middle-ground, and background elements, then position myself to give them a coherent relationship. A telephoto composition, on the other hand, has always felt more intuitive than strategic (though each generally requires elements of strategy and intuition), so I’m usually able to put my camera and telephoto to my eye, then move and zoom until something feels right.
With so many views at Glacier Point, the group had scattered a little before sunset, so I was only with about half of them for the good stuff at the end. Back at the cars I checked in with those who had gone elsewhere and found that while most had photographed it, a couple had watched the show from the parking lot. Sigh.
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Half Dome Near and Far
The Sky’s the Limit
Posted on November 11, 2018
Look to the Sky, Milky Way and Mauna Kea Gemini Observatory, Hawaii
Sony a7S II
Sigma 20mm f/1.4 Art
20 seconds
F/1.4
ISO 6400
I sometimes rail against camera clubs for their rule-bound creative constipation (yes, I know there are exceptions). On Hawaii in September I was reminded that I’m not immune to the same malady.
Because Nature doesn’t have a monopoly on beauty, earlier in my photographic life I was somewhat less discriminating with my choice of subjects, photographing anything outdoors that I found beautiful. Many of my bridge and skyline images were on (or atop) my personal bestseller list, but as my career evolved, I found myself resenting the intrusion humankind on nature and less inclined to include it—unconscious choices that evolved into my present style, photographing a world untouched by humans. The mere presence of a building, fence, path, or human is now enough for me to put my camera down. I’ve never felt it’s wrong to photograph manmade subjects—in fact I enjoy others’ photos of these things—it’s just that I’m not drawn to them as a photographer.
But this year’s Big Island workshop forced me to reevaluate my bias. As you might already know, not only do I love night photography in general, and Milky Way photography in particular, I’ve also been an astronomy enthusiast since childhood. The Big Island trip is one I’ve always especially looked forward to, partly for the opportunity to photograph the Milky Way above Kilauea. But (unless you’ve been living under a rock) you probably know that early this year Kilauea underwent a spectacular upheaval that spewed lava, altered the Hawaii landscape, and ultimately terminated the eruption that had been underway since 1983, much as the grand finale marks the end of the Independence Day fireworks show.
Pele’s festivities started in early May with a 6.9 magnitude earthquake that kicked off daily 5+ magnitude earthquakes, a sequence lasting for three months and precipitating an incremental collapse of the summit caldera. When the ash finally settled, there was no more glowing lava at the summit (or anywhere else on the Big Island) to accent the Milky Way.
Losing my Milky Way vista was an infinitesimal loss compared to the losses suffered by others on Hawaii, but I still faced a challenge to replace it with something that would satisfy a group of photographers expecting a spectacular night shoot. Enter Mauna Kea. I’d always been reluctant to take a group here because the road is rough and steep, and the air at (nearly) 14,000 feet is very thin (and cold!). I’d been up there before, but on this year’s pre-workshop reconnaissance mission another visit to Mauna Kea’s summit encouraged me enough to offer the option to the group. After explaining my concerns in the workshop orientation, I asked how many wanted to give the summit a shot and the enthusiasm was unanimous.
We summited in late afternoon with little drama (though the check engine light in my rental car came on about halfway up the mountain) and the group quickly scattered to take in the incredible view that included Maui, a blanket of gauzy cloud tops, and the glistening Pacific. While the rest of the group photographed a beautiful sunset, my focus was on two people having difficulty with the altitude—they ended up retreating to a spot about 6000 feet down the mountain and enjoyed a beautiful shoot of their own.
After sunset we simply drank in the view waiting for the stars to pop out. Fortunately I’d told the group before leaving to pack warm clothes (because I knew the Mauna Kea summit was a possibility), but next year I’ll tell them to pack for winter because even with jackets and gloves, it was cold up there. But when the Milky Way came out the cold somehow became a bit more tolerable.
Awestruck by the Milky Way’s shimmering ribbon, I scanned the surroundings for a subject to put with it. In the rocky, treeless terrain the obvious choice was the Gemini Observatory right in front of me. Similarly awed to be in the shadow of this impressive instrument, I rationalized that it would be okay to photograph a manmade something whose purpose was probing the celestial mysteries that had mesmerized me for most of my life. I’m so happy bent my rule.
I’ve photographed the Milky Way many times from the bottom of the Grand Canyon, which is about as dark as the sky can get, but this night I learned firsthand why they put observatories on mountain peaks. Not only is the sky dark, the air atop Mauna Kea is both pristine and unfettered by atmosphere (well, at least by much atmosphere). The sky’s clarity was made obvious when I studied my images and found virtually every one etched by at least one meteor. The image I share here captured five (!) meteors in a single 20 second exposure. Because none share a common point of origin, they can’t be the progeny of an unheralded meteor shower—it seems meteors just show up better in the clear, dark air at 14,000 feet.
We descended the mountain equal parts frigid and elated. I can’t wait to reprise this shoot next year and have promised myself that both my group and I will be much more prepared for the cold. I don’t think this success will much change my desire to photograph only natural subjects, but I will approach scenes with my mind a bit more open.
Hawaii Big Island Photo Workshop
Human Influence (just to prove I can do it)
That Didn’t Suck
Posted on November 5, 2018
Reflection on the Rocks, Nun’s Veil and Tasman Lake, New Zealand
Sony a7RIII
Sony 24-105 f/4 G
1/13 second
F/11
ISO 100
One evening in New Zealand
I get to a lot of locations and see so many spectacular sights that they sometimes run together. But every once in a while I experience a shoot I know I’ll never forget.
One of (many) highlights of the New Zealand workshop is the hike to Tasman Lake in Aoraki / Mt. Cook National Park. The reward for this short, steep (335 stairs) hike is a 270 degree view that includes 12,000 foot Mt. Cook, icebergs drifting atop turquoise Tasman Lake, Nun’s Veil (pictured here), and the Tasman Valley.
At the trailhead most of the workshop group decided the trail was too icy and opted for a beautiful but less treacherous view a couple miles back down the road. As Don led them to the alternate spot, I guided four members who wanted to brave the icy trail. It turns out the ice wasn’t a big problem, and in fact was completely gone from the trail within a couple hundred yards, and we made it to the vista short of breath but otherwise unscathed.
I’d been up here a few times, but it was the first time for the others, so it was fun to watch their reaction as they summited. Because the trail ends here and the viewing platform is fairly compact, we were able to work in close proximity all evening—having others to share our awe with enhanced the experience even more.
The Tasman Lake view is one of those vistas that’s far too broad to capture with a single frame; any attempt to do so shrinks every feature to the point of insignificance. Opting to divide and conquer by identifying and isolating the scene’s most compelling features, my eye instantly landed on the reflection of Nun’s Veil’s in a small pool down the slope. I soon hopped the vista’s small retaining wall to better center the reflection in the pool, then spent much of the evening here working on compositions that included the reflection. My clicking intensified as light on Nun’s Veil warmed, coloring the wind-whipped snow encircling the peak.
As if all that wasn’t enough, a few minutes after the light left Nun’s Veil, a full moon appeared just to the right of the peak. Despite the advancing night, we were able to photograph the moonrise for a few minutes before the scene became too dark to capture detail in the foreground and moon. But even facing a walk down the icy trail in the dark, we lingered in the moonlight just to marvel at the majesty. As we donned our headlamps for the walk back down the trail, I heard one of the members of the group call my name. “Gary,” long pause. “That didn’t suck.”
New Zealand Photo Workshop
Like reflections? Here’s an article on reflections I wrote a few years ago.
Reflections
Who doesn’t love the soothing tranquility of a good reflection? And like a metaphor in writing, a reflection is an indirect representation that can be more powerful than its literal double by virtue of its ability to engage the brain in different ways than we’re accustomed. Rather than processing the scene directly, we first must mentally reassemble the reflection’s reverse world, and in the process perhaps see the scene a little differently.
Reflections are a powerful photographic tool as well. Water’s universal familiarity makes it an ideal subject for photographers frustrated by their camera’s static representation of our dynamic world. Just as we freeze or blur a waterfall to express turbulent motion, we can include a reflection to convey serenity.
Water reflections come in many forms, from a mirror-sharp reverse of a mountain atop a still pool, to an abstract shuffle of color and texture on a choppy lake. Without getting too far into the physics of light, it’s important to understand that every object we see and photograph (that doesn’t generate its own light) comes to us courtesy of reflected light.
Mirror reflection recipe
The ingredients for a crisp, mirror reflection like the El Capitan image at the top of the page is pretty simple: still water, a reflection subject that’s much brighter than the water’s surface (the greater the contrast the better), and a view angle that matches the angle from the water’s surface to the reflection subject. (The best reflections are usually found on shaded water because there are fewer photons to compete with the photons bouncing from the reflected subject.)
The El Capitan reflection above was a perfect confluence of reflection conditions. Clean, still air, dense shade on the river, and El Capitan’s fully exposed, reflective granite, make early morning the best time for El Capitan reflections. On this April morning I made my way down to the Merced River hoping to photograph the first light on El Capitan reflected in the Merced River. Finding my route down to the river blocked by spring flooding, I was forced to improvise. The morning air was clean and calm, and the ephemeral lake was mirror-still.
Circling the flooded meadow, I found a gap in the trees that opened onto the most complete view and reflection of El Capitan and the Three Brothers I’ve ever seen. So complete in fact, that I couldn’t include it all with my 16-35mm lens at its widest focal length. Fortunately, I was able to borrow a Canon 11-24 lens and Metabones IV adapter from a friend (thanks, Curt!), just wide enough to fit the entire scene at the lens’s shortest focal length.
Playing the angles
Understanding that reflected photons leave the water’s surface at the same angle at which they arrive—imagine the way a tennis ball bounces (if it weren’t affected by spin, wind resistance, or gravity)—helps us get in position for the reflection we want.
A few years ago I found myself atop Sentinel Dome right after an intense rain shower had turned indentations in the granite into small, glistening pools. Rather than simply settle for the vivid sunset coloring the clouds above, I decided to include the sunset reflected in the pools as well. At eye-level the pools reflected blue sky, so I dropped my tripod as low as it would go, almost to granite level, positioning my lens at the same angle to the pools that the red light leaving the clouds struck the water.
When the water’s in motion
On the Rocks, El Capitan and the Merced River, Yosemite
As spectacular as a crisp, mirror reflection in still water is, it’s easy to overlook the visual potential in a reflection that’s not crisp, or to forget your camera’s ability to render a soft or abstract reflection much better than your eyes view it. While a crisp reflection often dominates the primary subject in an image, a splash of reflected color or shape can provide a striking accent to a dominant primary subject. And a reflection disturbed by the continuously varying angles of rippled or choppy water magically appears when a long exposure smoothes the water’s surface.
In the image on the right, the El Capitan reflection undulating atop the Merced River was barely perceptible to my eyes. But the reflection came to in a 25 second exposure achieved with the help of 2-stop hard graduated neutral density filter that subdued the day’s last rays on the clouds and El Capitan, and a neutral polarizer (with the reflection dialed up) that cut the light on the entire scene by a couple of stops. And since a reflection is never as bright as the actual scene, using a GND meant I need to do a little dodging and burning in Photoshop.
Where to focus
An often misunderstood aspect of reflection photography is where to focus. Though it seems counterintuitive, the focus point of a reflection is the reflection subject, not the reflection surface. This isn’t such a big deal in a scene like the El Capitan reflection at the top of the post, where the focus point of everything of visual significance is infinity, but it’s a very big deal when you want both your reflection and rocks or leaves on the nearby water surface sharp.
Autumn Reflection, El Capitan, Yosemite
The El Capitan reflection on the right is very different from the El Capitan reflection above, where the extreme depth of field ensured sharpness had I focused on anything in the scene or the reflection. But here the leaves that were my scene’s primary emphasis were just a couple of feet from my camera, while El Capitan was several thousand feet distant. Even though the leaves floated atop the El Capitan reflection, focusing on El Capitan would have softened the leaves. To increase my depth of field, I stopped down to f/18 and focused several feet into the foreground leaves, then magnified the image on my LCD to verify that all of the leaves were sharp. Though El Capitan is slightly soft, a soft reflection is far more forgivable than a soft fore
Think ahead
It seems that reflections often feel like a fortuitous gift that we just stumbled upon. But given that reflections are entirely beholden to the laws of physics, they’re far more predictable than many of the natural elements we photograph. Taking a little time to understand the nature of reflections, and how they’re revealed by a camera, enables photographers to anticipate their appearance.
For example, in Yosemite I know that low flow makes autumn the best time for reflections in the Merced River. On the other hand, when the Merced is rushing with spring runoff, Yosemite’s meadows often shimmer beneath tranquil vernal pools. I plan many trips (and workshops) to take advantage of these opportunities.
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A Reflection Gallery
Click an image for a closer look and slide show.
New Zealand on Ice
Posted on October 28, 2018
Glacial Flow, Tasman River, New Zealand
Sony 24-105 f/4 G
1 1/3 second
F/16
ISO 50
One summer when I was a kid my family took a camping vacation to the Canadian Rockies. Bits and pieces of that trip return to me as vague memories, but one memory permanently etched in my brain is the color of Lake Louise and Moraine Lake. My dad, a very passionate amateur photographer, was frothing with excitement and must have gone through half his film budget (remember those days?) at Moraine Lake alone. Nevertheless, and despite my dad’s pictures, I couldn’t fully process a world where water could be that color and for many years after that doubted my memory.
Long before visiting New Zealand I accepted that water really can be that color, but still had few opportunities to view it. Then I started visiting New Zealand, where photographing the lakes and rivers gives me a little déjà vu—it’s just plain disorienting to see water this color.
So what’s going on?
In areas of persistent cold, snow can accumulate faster than it melts. Over many years of accumulating, the snow’s weight compresses it into ice and a glacier is born. A glacier is incredibly heavy; since pressure decreases the freezing point of ice, at the interface between the glacier and the underlying rock (where the pressure of the ice’s weight is greatest), melting ice lubricates the glacier and allows it to move downhill. The glacier’s extreme weight combined with this forward motion breaks up the rock. Embedded with these rock fragments, the glacier behaves like sandpaper, grinding the rock on which it slides into finer and finer particles. The finest of these particles is called “glacial flour.”
Meltwater from the glacier flows downhill, carrying scoured rock with it. While the larger rock particles simply sink, the glacial flour remains suspended in the runoff. While most of the sunlight striking water infused with glacial flour is absorbed by the suspended particles, the green and blue wavelengths aren’t absorbed; instead they scatter back to our eyes and we are treated to turquoise water. The water’s exact hue (whether it appears more green or blue) is determined by the size of the suspended particles, which dictates the relative amount of green and blue wavelengths they scatter.
About this image
The Hooker Valley track is a spectacular 3-mile hike beneath Mt. Cook to Hooker Lake. This gradually sloped trail follows the Hooker River’s twisting turquoise ribbon, snaking back and forth across the water on three swinging suspension bridges. It doesn’t take too much time on the trail to understand why this is one of the most popular hikes in New Zealand.
This year’s workshop group didn’t have time to do the entire 6-mile roundtrip, but since the beauty starts pretty much in the first 100 yards and doesn’t let up, we guided them up the track with instructions to take their time and photograph without concern for how far they got. It turns out most only made it to the first bridge, initially stopped by the view of the river and mountains, and then by the sunset that colored the clouds above the peaks.
This image came from fairly early in our bridge shoot, when clouds capped the scene and I took advantage of the soft light to stretch my exposure and smooth the water. Here I was a few yards up the trail from the bridge, which allowed me to make the river a diagonal stripe across the frame. Less than thrilled with the fairly boring foreground shrubs, I moved around a bit until I found a large rock to occupy the that part of the frame.
New Zealand Photography Workshop
The Best of New Zealand
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Extracting the Essence
Posted on October 21, 2018
Autumn Light, North Lake, Eastern Sierra
Sony a7R III
Sony 24-105 f/4 G
3/4 second
F/13
ISO 100
Autumn Morning, North Lake, Eastern Sierra
Read about the travails leading up to this shoot in my previous post. But enough about that….
I’m afraid that when faced with a beautiful scene, photographers (myself included) sometimes settle for the obvious shot and leave more subtle opportunities on the table. But the most creative photography (though not necessarily the most popular) comes from looking beyond the obvious to find the scene’s essence.
The question photographers should ask themselves is: What about this scene makes it special? That’s really a personal challenge with as many answers as there are photographers seeking them. Once we identify something to emphasize, we need to figure out the best way to guide our viewers’ eyes. The tools at our disposal include our exposure settings to control the scene’s motion, depth, and light, and compositional elements like isolation, juxtaposition, lines, and shapes.
There were many “obvious” shots at North Lake this morning, and my group certainly did its best to exhaust them. But we spent enough time there that I was able to make it around to everyone to encourage them to break free of whatever they were locked onto and try to find something different. A couple dropped low with a wide angle to put foreground rocks close, some extracted a telephoto and isolated the reflection and/or colorful aspen across the lake, while others switched to a vertical composition that emphasized the clouds building above the peaks. Many played with variations of some or all of these approaches. I’ve shot here enough that I pretty content to observe, until…
About an hour into the shoot the clouds behind us parted and a shaft of sunlight snuck through to spotlight the cascade of orange across the lake, and I couldn’t resist. This sweet accent would be lost to wide field of the Sony 16-35 f/2.8 GM lens I’d had on my a7RIII all morning, so I (very) quickly replaced it with my Sony 24-105 f/4 G and went to work isolating the scene’s best elements. Even though I hadn’t shot much, I’d been composing in my head all morning, so I had a pretty good idea what I wanted to do.
In my mind the scene’s best feature was the vivid color and its reflection. But as striking as these features were, to turn it from a scene into a picture, I needed something to move the eye, and a visual landing place. Enter the zig-zag diagonals and fortuitously positioned sunlight.
I wanted to compose as tightly as I could without losing the light and reflection. With the color as my canvas, I simply let the diagonals span the frame (taking care to include the intersection on the left), and the sunlight fall near the top.
Eastern Sierra Fall Color Photo Workshop
Extracting the Essence
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I Just Love Happy Endings
Posted on October 19, 2018
Autumn Morning, North Lake, Eastern Sierra
Sony a7R III
Sony 16-35 f/2.8 GM
1/4 second
F/16
ISO 100
By the time I made it to North Lake for sunrise, I’d already had a trying morning. After some frustrations with the cars, my Eastern Sierra workshop group had gotten on the road about five minutes later than I’d planned. Fortunately I always schedule a little wiggle room, so we were on track, but still…. Then, just a couple of miles before the turn-off to the lake, I had to swerve to avoid a grapefruit-sized rock in the road, barely avoiding it. Phew. But the middle car in our mini-caravan wasn’t so lucky: Flat tire. Crap.
This year’s group had 13 people (including Don Smith, who was assisting, and me), but this little mishap suddenly dropped us to two cars (10 seats), with sunrise rapidly approaching. Surveying the damage, I decided that rather than make everyone wait, we could still cram all but three of us into the two remaining cars. I sent them up to the lake in Don’s care while I stayed behind with the unfortunate couple and their wounded car. Once everyone was situated at the lake, Don agreed to return in case we weren’t able to replace the tire.
Don pulled up about 20 minutes later, just as I put the finishing touches on the miniature spare. After a brief discussion we decided it wouldn’t be wise to take that (poor excuse for a) tire on the unpaved North Lake road, so the couple decided to return to Bishop to get their tire replaced. Since that would leave us with 11 people to transport with the two remaining cars, Don volunteered to return with them to Bishop while I drove up to North Lake to meet the group.
So I was pretty much worn out by the time I parked, hefted my camera bag onto my back, and started the short walk down to the lake. Making it to the lakeshore right around “official” sunrise, the scene that greeted me was an instant jolt of energy. In nature photography you do your best to time your visit for the best possible conditions, but ultimately have to deal with whatever you’re dealt. The variables we cross our fingers for at North Lake are good color, a crisp reflection, and nice clouds. We hit the trifecta this morning, with peak color from top to bottom across the lake (and everywhere else), water like glass, and a sublime mix of swirling clouds and blue sky. An unexpected bonus was the relatively small number of photographers competing for space at this always popular autumn sunrise spot.
One of the things I like most about North Lake is the variety of fall color here, a rare sight in California. The trees on the slope are a mix of orange and red, while those lining the lake are always vivid yellow. I’ve photographed North Lake a lot over the years, and my own photography during a workshop is never my priority, so I rarely photograph here anymore. But this morning was special and I couldn’t resist, so as I moved around to everyone in the group I found time to fire off a few frames of my own.
The background of the image I share here is a version of the broader, more conventional scene that is usually the starting point for a North Lake fall color composition. (In future posts I’ll share one or two others that I think capture the less obvious essence of the scene.) As always, I worked to find a foreground that complemented the primary scene, finally settling on the tall grass as a frame for the reflection and the the scene beyond—I thought the grass added just enough detail without distracting.) I liked the clouds, but the color was long gone by the time I was able to photograph, so I decided not to include too much sky. Finishing the scene off, I panned left to include a tall, yellow aspen for the left side of my frame. I composed, metered, and focused at eye level, but to get as much reflection as possible, before clicking I elevated my RRS TVC-24L tripod (I love having a tall tripod) to its maximum height, then used the tilting LCD on my Sony a7RIII to restore the composition I’d identified.
Given the way things started out, it would have been very easy to just pack it in and write the morning off as a loss. But despite the difficulties, this turned out to be a wonderful morning of photography for everyone. Just one more reminder that the happiest endings often start with a little hardship.
Eastern Sierra Photo Workshop
Why I Love the Eastern Sierra
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Mastering Focus (Hyperfocal and Otherwise)
Posted on October 14, 2018
Floating Autumn Leaves, Valley View, Yosemite
Canon EOS-1Ds Mark II
Canon 24-105 f/4 L
1/15 second
F/16
ISO 100
What’s the point?
It seems like one of photography’s great mysteries is achieving proper focus: the camera settings, where to place the focus point, even the definition of sharpness are all sources of confusion and angst. If you’re a tourist just grabbing snapshots, everything in your frame is likely at infinity and you can just put your camera in full auto mode and click away. But if you’re a photographic artist trying to capture something unique with your mirrorless or DSLR camera and doing your best to have important visual elements objects at different distances throughout your frame, you need to stop letting your camera decide your focus point and exposure settings.
Of course the first creative focus decision is whether you even want the entire frame sharp. While some of my favorite images use selective focus to emphasize one element and blur the rest of the scene, most (but not all) of what I’ll say here is about using hyperfocal techniques to maximize depth of field (DOF). I cover creative selective focus in much greater detail in another Photo Tip article: Creative Selective Focus.
Beware the “expert”
I’m afraid that there’s some bad, albeit well-intended, advice out there that yields just enough success to deceive people into thinking they’ve got focus nailed, a misperception that often doesn’t manifest until an important shot is lost. I’m referring to the myth that you should focus 1/3 of the way into the scene, or 1/3 of the way into the frame (two very different things, each with its own set of problems).
For beginners, or photographers whose entire scene is at infinity, the 1/3 technique may be a useful rule of thumb. But taking the 1/3 approach to focus requires that you understand DOF and the art of focusing well enough to adjust your focus point when appropriate, and once you achieve that level of understanding, you may as well do it the right way from the start. That ability becomes especially important in those scenes where missing the focus point by just a few feet or inches can make or break and image.
Where to focus this? Of course 1/3 of the way into a scene that stretches for miles won’t work. And 1/3 of the way into a frame with a diagonal foreground won’t work either.
Back to the basics
Understanding a few basic focus truths will help you make focus decisions:
- A lens’s aperture is the opening that allows light to reach your sensor—the bigger this opening, the more light gets in, but also the smaller your DOF.
- Aperture is measured in f-stops, which is the lens’s focal length divided by the aperture’s diameter; the higher the f-number, the smaller the aperture and the greater the DOF. So f/8 is actually a bigger aperture (with less DOF) than f/11. This understanding becomes second nature, but if you’re just learning it’s helpful to think of f/stops this way: The higher the f-number, the greater the depth of field. Though they’re not exactly the same thing, photographers usually use f-stop and aperture interchangeably.
- Regardless of its current f-stop setting, a camera maximizes the light in its viewfinder by always showing you the scene at the lens’s widest aperture. All this extra light makes it easier to compose and focus, but unless your exposure is set for the widest aperture (which it shouldn’t be unless you have a very specific reason to limit your depth of field), the image you capture will have more DOF than you see in the viewfinder. The consequence is that you usually can’t see how much of your scene is in focus when you compose. Most cameras have a DOF preview button that temporarily closes the lens down to the f-stop you have set—this shows the scene at its actual DOF, but can also darken the viewfinder considerably (depending on how small your aperture is), making it far more difficult to see the scene.
- For any focus point, there’s only one (infinitely thin) plane of maximum sharpness, regardless of the focal length and f-stop—everything in front of and behind the plane containing your focus point (and parallel to the sensor) will be some degree of less than maximum sharpness. As long as the zone of less than perfect sharpness isn’t visible, it’s considered “acceptably sharp.” When that zone becomes visible, that portion of the image is officially “soft.” When photographers speak of sharpness in an image, they’re really talking about acceptable sharpness.
- The zone of acceptable sharpness extends a greater distance beyond the focus point than it does in front of the focus point. If you focus on that rock ten feet in front of you, rocks three feet in front of you may be out of focus, but a tree fifty feet away could be sharp. I’ll explain more about this later.
- While shorter focal lengths may appear to provide more depth of field, believe it or not, DOF doesn’t actually change with focal length. What does change is the size of everything in the image, so as your focal length increases, your functional or apparent DOF decreases. So you really aren’t gaining more absolute DOF with a shorter focal length, it just won’t be as visible. When photographers talk about DOF, they’re virtually always talking about apparent DOF—the way the image looks. (That’s the DOF definition I use here too.)
- The closer your focus point, the narrower your DOF (range of front-to-back sharpness). If you focus your 24mm lens on a butterfly sunning on a poppy six inches from your lens, your DOF is so narrow that it’s possible parts of the poppy will be out of focus; if you focus the same lens on a tree 100 feet away, the mountains behind the tree are sharp too.
Moonset, Mt. Whitney and Whitney Arch, Alabama Hills, California
With subjects throughout my frame, from close foreground to distant background, it’s impossible to get everything perfectly sharp. Here in the Alabama Hills near Lone Pine, California, I stopped down to f/16 and focused at the at the most distant part of the arch. This ensured that all of the arch would be perfectly sharp, while keeping Mt. Whitney and the rest of the background “sharp enough.”
Defining sharpness
Depth of field discussions are complicated by the fact that “sharp” is a moving target that varies with display size and viewing distance. But it’s safe to say that all things equal, the larger your ultimate output and closer the intended viewing distance, the more detail your original capture should contain.
To capture detail a lens focuses light on the sensor’s photosites. Remember using a magnifying glass to focus sunlight and ignite a leaf when you were a kid? The smaller (more concentrated) the point of sunlight, the sooner the smoke appeared. In a camera, the finer (smaller) a lens focuses light on each photosite, the more detail the image will contain at that location. So when we focus we’re trying to make the light striking each photosite as concentrated as possible.
In photography we call that small circle of light your lens makes for each photosite its “circle of confusion.” The larger the CoC, the less concentrated the light and the more blurred the image will appear. Of course if the CoC is too small to be seen as soft, either because the print is too small or the viewer is too far away, it really doesn’t matter. In other words, areas of an image with a large CoC (relatively soft) can still appear sharp if small enough or viewed from far enough away. That’s why sharpness can never be an absolute term, and we talk instead about acceptable sharpness that’s based on print size and viewing distance. It’s actually possible for the same image to be sharp for one use, but too soft for another.
So how much detail do you need? The threshold for acceptable sharpness is pretty low for an image that just ends up on an 8×10 calendar on the kitchen wall, but if you want that image large on the wall above the sofa, achieving acceptable sharpness requires much more detail. And as your print size increases (and/or viewing distance decreases), the CoC that delivers acceptable sharpness shrinks correspondingly.
Many factors determine the a camera’s ability to record detail. Sensor resolution of course—the more resolution your sensor has, the more important it becomes that to have a lens that can take advantage of that extra resolution. And the more detail you want to capture with that high resolution sensor and tack-sharp lens, the more important your depth of field and focus point decisions become.
Hyperfocal focus
The foundation of a sound approach to maximizing sharpness for a given viewing distance and image size is hyperfocal focusing, an approach that uses viewing distance, f-stop, focal length, and focus point to ensure acceptable sharpness.
The hyperfocal point is the focus point that provides the maximum depth of field for a given combination of sensor size, f/stop, and focal length. Another way to say it is that the hyperfocal point is the closest you can focus and still be acceptably sharp to infinity. When focused at the hyperfocal point, your scene will be acceptably sharp from halfway between your lens and focus point all the way to infinity. For example, if the hyperfocal point for your sensor (full frame, APS-C, 4/3, or whatever), focal length, and f-stop combinition is twelve feet away, focusing there will give you acceptable sharpness from six feet (half of twelve) to infinity—focusing closer will soften the distant scene; focusing farther will keep you sharp to infinity but extend the area of foreground softness.
Because the hyperfocal variable (sensor size, focal length, f-stop) combinations are too numerous to memorize, we usually refer to an external aid. That used to be awkward printed tables with long columns and rows displayed in microscopic print, the more precise the data, the smaller the print. Fortunately, those have been replaced by smartphone apps with more precise information in a much more accessible and readable form. We plug in all the variables and out pops the hyperfocal point distance and other useful information
It usually goes something like this:
- Identify the composition
- Determine the closest thing that must be sharp (right now I’m assuming you want sharpness to infinity)
- Dig the smartphone from one of the 10,000 pockets it could be in
- Open the hyperfocal app and plug in the sensor size (usually previously set by you as the default), f-stop, and a focus distance
- Up pops the hyperfocal distance (and usually other info of varying value)
You’re not as sharp as you think
Since people’s eyes start to glaze over when CoC comes up, they tend to use the default returned by the smartphone app. But just because the app tells you you’ve nailed focus, don’t assume that your work is done. An often overlooked aspect of hyperfocal focusing is that app makes assumptions that aren’t necessarily right, and in fact are probably wrong.
The CoC your app uses to determine acceptable sharpness is a function of sensor size, display size, and viewing distance. But most app’s hyperfocal tables assume that you’re creating an 8×10 print that will be viewed from a foot away—maybe valid 40 years ago, but not in this day of mega-prints. The result is a CoC three times larger than the eye’s ability to resolve.
That doesn’t invalidate hyperfocal focusing, but if you use published hyperfocal data from an app or table, your images’ DOF might not be as ideal as you think it is for your use. If you can’t specify a smaller CoC in your app, I suggest that you stop-down a stop or so more than the app/table indicates. On the other hand, stopping down to increase sharpness is an effort of diminishing returns, because diffraction increases as the aperture shrinks and eventually will soften the entire image—I try not to go more than a stop smaller than my data suggests.
Keeping it simple
As helpful as a hyperfocal app can be, whipping out a smartphone for instant in-the-field access to data is not really conducive to the creative process. I’m a big advocate of keeping photography as simple as possible, so while I’m a hyperfocal focus advocate in spirit, I don’t usually use hyperfocal data in the field. Instead I apply hyperfocal principles in the field whenever I think the margin of error gives me sufficient wiggle room.
Though I don’t often use the specific hyperfocal data in the field, I find it helps a lot to refer to hyperfocal tables when I’m sitting around with nothing to do. So if I find myself standing in line at the DMV, or sitting in a theater waiting for a movie (I’m a great date), I open my iPhone hyperfocal app and plug in random values just to get a sense of the DOF for a given f-stop and focal length combination. I may not remember the exact numbers later, but enough of the information sinks in that I accumulate a general sense of the hyperfocal DOF/camera-setting relationships.
Finally, something to do
Unless I think I have very little DOF margin for error in my composition, I rarely open my hyperfocal app in the field. Instead, once my composition is worked out and have determined the closest object I want sharp—the closest object with visual interest (shape, color, texture), regardless of whether it’s a primary subject.
- If I want to be sharp to infinity and my closest foreground object (that needs to be sharp) is close enough to hit with my hat, I need a fair amount of DOF. If my focal length is pretty wide, I might skip the hyperfocal app, stop down to f/16, and focus a little behind my foreground object. But if I’m at a fairly long focal length, or my closest object is within arm’s reach, I have very little margin for error and will almost certainly refer to my hyperfocal app.
- If I could hit my foreground object with a baseball and my focal length is 50mm (or so) or less, I’ll probably go with f/11 and just focus on my foreground object. But as my focal length increases, so does the likelihood that I’ll need to refer to my hyperfocal app.
- If it would take a gun to reach my closest object (picture a distant peak), I choose an f-stop between f/8 and f/11 and focus anywhere in the distance.
Of course these distances are very subjective and will vary with your focal length and composition (not to mention the strength of your pitching arm), but you get the idea. If you find yourself in a small margin for error focus situation without a hyperfocal app (or you just don’t want to take the time to use one), the single most important thing to remember is to focus behind your closest subject. Because you always have sharpness in front of your focus point, focusing on the closest subject gives you unnecessary sharpness at the expense of distant sharpness. By focusing a little behind your closest subject, you’re increasing the depth of your distant sharpness while (if you’re careful) keeping your foreground subject within the zone of sharpness in front of the focus point.
And finally, foreground softness, no matter how slight, is almost always a greater distraction than slight background softness. So, if it’s impossible to get all of your frame sharp, it’s usually best to ensure that the foreground is sharp.
Some examples
A hat’s toss away: The closest pool was about 6 feet from my lens. I stopped down to f/20 (smaller than I generally like to go) and focused on the back of the pool on the left, about 10 feet away.
A baseball throw away: The little clump of wildflowers (lower right) was about 35 feet away and the trees started another 35 feet beyond that. With a focal length of 55mm, I dialed to f/11 and focused on the most distant foreground tree, getting everything from the flowers to Half Dome sharp.
Honey, fetch my rifle: With everything here at infinity I knew could focus on the trees or moon confident that the entire frame would be sharp. In this case I opted for f/8 to minimize diffraction but still in my lens’s sharpest f-stop range, and focused on the tree.
Why not just automatically set my aperture to f/22 and be done with it? I thought you’d never ask. Without delving too far into the physics of light and optics, let’s just say that there’s a not so little light-bending problem called “diffraction” that robs your images of sharpness as your aperture shrinks—the smaller the aperture, the greater the diffraction. Then why not choose f/2.8 when everything’s at infinity? Because lenses tend to lose sharpness at their aperture extremes, and are generally sharper in their mid-range f-stops. So while diffraction and lens softness don’t sway me from choosing the f-stop that gives the DOF I want, I try to never choose an aperture bigger or smaller than I need.
Now that we’ve let the composition determine our f-stop, it’s (finally) time to actually choose the focus point. Believe it or not, with this foundation of understanding we just established, focus becomes pretty simple. Whenever possible, I try to have elements throughout my frame, often starting near my feet and extending far into the distance. When that’s the case I stop down focus on an object slightly behind my closest subject (the more distant my closest subject, the farther behind it I can focus).
When I’m not sure, or if I don’t think I can get the entire scene sharp, I err on the side of closer focus to ensure that the foreground is sharp. Sometimes before shooting I check my DOF with the DOF preview button, allowing time for my eye to adjust to the limited light. And when maximum DOF is essential and I know my margin for error is small, I don’t hesitate to refer to the DOF app on my iPhone.
A great thing about digital capture is the instant validation of the LCD—when I’m not sure, or when getting it perfect is absolutely essential, after capture I pop my image up on the LCD, magnify it to maximum, check the point or points that must be sharp, and adjust if necessary. Using this immediate feedback to make instant corrections really speeds the learning process.
Sometimes less is more
The depth of field you choose is your creative choice, and no law says you must maximize it. Use your camera’s limited depth of field to minimize or eliminate distractions, create a blur of background color, or simply to guide your viewer’s eye. Focusing on a near subject while letting the background go soft clearly communicates the primary subject while retaining enough background detail to establish context. And an extremely narrow depth of field can turn distant flowers or sky into a colorful canvas for your subject.
In this image of a dogwood blossom in the rain, I positioned my camera to align Bridalveil Fall with the dogwood and used an extension tube to focus extremely close. The narrow depth of field caused by focusing so close turned Bridalveil Fall into a background blur (I used f/18 to the fall a little more recognizable), allowing viewers to feast their eyes on the dogwood’s and raindrop’s exquisite detail.
An extension tube on a macro lens at f/2.8 gave me depth of field measured in fractions of an inch. The gold color in the background is more poppies, but they’re far enough away that they blur into nothing but color. The extremely narrow depth of field also eliminated weeds and rocks that would have otherwise been a distraction.There’s no substitute for experience
No two photographers do everything exactly alike. Determining the DOF a composition requires, the f-stop and focal length that achieves the desired DOF, and where to place the point of maximum focus, are all part of the creative process that should never be left up to the camera. The sooner you grasp the underlying principles of DOF and focus, the sooner you’ll feel comfortable taking control and conveying your own unique vision.
About this image
Floating Autumn Leaves, Valley View, Yosemite
Yosemite may not be New England, but it can still put on a pretty good fall color display. A few years ago I arrived at Valley View on the west side of Yosemite Valley just about the time the fall color was peaking. I found the Merced River filled with reflections of El Capitan and Cathedral Rocks, framed by an accumulation of recently fallen leaves still rich with vivid fall color.
To emphasize the colorful foreground, I dropped my tripod low and framed up a vertical composition. I knew my hyperfocal distance at 24mm and f/11 would be 5 or 6 feet, but with the scene ranging from the closest leaves at about 3 feet away out to El Capitan at infinity, I also knew I’d need to be careful with my focus choices. For a little more margin for error I stopped down to f/16, then focused on the nearest rocks which were a little less than 6 feet away. As I usually do when I don’t have a lot of focus wiggle room, I magnified the resulting image on my LCD and moved the view from the foreground to the background to verify front-to-back sharpness.
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Playing with Depth: A Gallery of Focus
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Eloquent Images by Gary Hart 