Dressed for chill
Posted on January 17, 2017
Autumn Morning, Leidig Meadow, Yosemite
Sony a7R II
Sony/Zeiss 24-70 f4
1/15 second
F/11
ISO 125
A regrettable reality of my life is that the best conditions for photography are usually the absolute worst conditions to be outside. Fortunately, I’ve been hardened by decades of San Francisco Giants games at Candlestick Park, the coldest place on Earth. As a photographer, I continue to embrace my mantra for warmth at the ‘Stick: Too much is always better than not enough.
For me it’s all about layers: silk, wool, down, and Gore-Tex. I start winter mornings with wool socks, waterproof boots, silk long-johns (if it’s extremely cold), flannel lined jeans, wool long-sleeve undershirt, wool Pendleton or lined cotton shirt, vest, down jacket, gloves (I have a variety from thin to thick), neck gaiter, and a hat or band that covers my ears. I add and remove layers as conditions dictate, and don’t always wear everything, but I’m never too far from this stuff in winter. And if it’s raining or snowing, I add waterproof pants, a waterproof parka, waterproof boots, and a wide-brim waterproof hat to keep myself dry, freeing my umbrella to keep my gear dry while shooting.
The basic clothes I pack in my suitcase before each trip, but the gloves/hats/umbrella etc. are in a gym bag that is always in my car. In the car I also keep an extra pair of shoes and socks, towel, and garbage bag (to cover my camera when it’s on the tripod). With all this paraphernalia, I’m nice and toasty in whatever extremes the winter throws at me, and I can never use weather as an excuse for missing a shot.
About this image
On a very chilly morning in late October, my workshop group had wrapped up the sunrise shoot and was heading to breakfast when we passed Leidig Meadow beneath a thin veneer of fog. Knowing that the group was cold and hungry, I kept going, but in the cafeteria parking I polled everyone and found that while about half were ready for warmth and a hot breakfast, the other half wanted to return to photograph the meadow. They got no argument from me. In normal conditions this wouldn’t have been possible because Yosemite’s primarily one-way traffic flow would have required a 20-minute loop to return to this spot, and the fog would likely have been long gone. But this year, extensive roadwork had caused the National Park Service to make every open road two-way, and we were back at Leidig Meadow in two minutes.
Yosemite’s radiation fog can come and go in seconds (I crossed my fingers that it hadn’t dissipated in the five minutes since our original drive-by), so as soon as we parked the group grabbed their gear and scattered. Wanting a foreground that was more than just meadow grass, I ran for this downed tree that I’d seen on an earlier visit.
We only got about five minutes of quality shooting in before the fog was gone. All of my shots were some variation on this composition using the log anchoring the bottom of scene, and Half Dome framed by the nearby trees on the left and distant yellow cottonwoods on the right. To maximize my focal length and make Half Dome larger, I moved back as far as I could without losing my framing. The horizontal trunk was far enough away that I was able to achieve depth of field all the way to infinity when I focused there.
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A Cold Weather Gallery
Click an image for a closer look and slide show. Refresh the window to reorder the display.
Sanity check
Posted on January 7, 2017
Nightfall, Half Dome and Sentinel Fall, Yosemite
Sony a7R II
Sony/Zeiss 24-70 f4
1/2 second
F/9
ISO 100
Are you insane?
Albert Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Hmmm. For some reason this makes me think of the thousands of aspiring landscape photographers with portfolios brimming with beautiful images that they can’t sell.
Despite a great eye for composition, all the latest gear, insider knowledge of the best locations, and virtual guru status with Photoshop, somehow they haven’t managed to separate themselves from the large pack of other really good photographers. Their solution to anonymity is more: more locations, more equipment, more software. (Perhaps you even know such a photographer.) Compounding the problem, many photographers have become so mesmerized by technology that they turn over control of the most important aspects of their craft to their camera, completely discounting the most powerful tool at their disposal, the one on top of their shoulders.
Knowledge vs. understanding
Just as a new camera won’t make you a better photographer, neither will simply upgrading your knowledge of the latest gear, or accumulating . Knowledge is nothing more than information ingested and regurgitated. On the other hand, understanding is fundamental insight into the workings of a process. While knowledge might enable you to impress table-mates at a dinner party, understanding gives you the ability to use information to create new knowledge—solve problems.
Many photographers invest far too much energy accumulating knowledge, and far too little energy understanding what they just learned. For example, I see many photographers relying on a formula for determining the shutter speed that freezes star motion at a given focal length, oblivious to the fact that this formula doesn’t consider other equally important variables such as display size and the direction the camera is pointing (yes, that’s important). Similarly, simply knowing that a longer shutter speed, bigger aperture, or higher ISO means more light is of limited value if that knowledge doesn’t translate into an understanding of how to manage light, motion, and depth with your camera.
Take control
Pretty much anyone can pick up a camera, put it in auto exposure mode, and compose a nice image. While the automatic modes in most cameras “properly” (conventionally) expose most scenes, they struggle in the limited light, extreme dynamic range, and harsh conditions that artistic nature photographers seek. Worse than that, relying on the automatic exposure modes eliminates a photographer’s best opportunity for creativity—the ability to control a an image’s depth, motion, and light.
Too many aspiring photographers are stuck creatively because their unwavering faith in technology leaves them with a critical deficiency in two fundamental, related photographic principles:
- How a light meter determines the exposure information it gives you. This seems so basic, but auto-exposure and histograms have fooled many into thinking they understand metering and exposure. (Don’t get me wrong—the histogram is a wonderful tool for the photographer who truly understands it.)
- How to use the reciprocal relationship between aperture, shutter speed, and ISO to manage photography’s three variables: light, depth, and motion. This is the universal tool that enables photographers to handle the limiting factors of every scene.
Books and internet resources are a great place to start acquiring these principles, but the knowledge you gain there won’t turn to understanding until you get out with your camera and apply them. When these principles become second nature, you’ll be amazed at what you’ll be able to accomplish with your photography.
Insanity is in the mind of the beholder
If landscape photography already gives you everything you want, by all means continue doing what you’re doing. But if you’re having a hard time achieving a creative goal, I suggest that the solution is likely not doing more of what you’re already doing. Instead, start by reevaluating your comprehension of fundamental photographic principles that you might not have thought about for years. You’ll know you’re there when you have complete control of the light, motion, and depth for every scene you encounter, know how to get the result you want, or understand why it’s simply not possible.
Do I really think you’re insane for doing otherwise? Of course not. But I do think you’ll feel a little more sane if you learn to take more control of your camera.
About this image
The image at the top of the post is from a visit to Yosemite this past December. I’d guided my workshop group here for the rise of a nearly full moon, crossing my fingers that clouds wouldn’t obscure our view. The clouds exited just in the nick of time for us to enjoy a beautiful moonrise into the indigo twilight. I started with fairly tight compositions when the moon was close to Half Dome, but in the still, chilled air shortly after sunset, a thin radiation fog formed above Leidig Meadow and I started looking for a wider composition that would add the meadow to the moon and Half Dome.
Before thinking about the scene’s light, depth, and motion variables, I spent a lot of time just assembling the elements of my composition. I decided to frame the scene with Half Dome on the left and Sentinel Fall on the right, positioning myself so a group of tall foreground evergreens, mirrored by towering Sentinel Rock in the background, anchored the center of my frame. I knew that would require a wide composition that would render the moon very small, but I moved back as far as I could to allow the longest possible focal length to avoid shrinking the moon to pinhole size.
By far my biggest exposure concern was dynamic range—the moon is daylight bright, while the rest of my scene was deeply shaded. Normally I trust my histogram in these high dynamic range situations, but in this case the moon was so small that I knew it wouldn’t register. Instead I used my Sony a7RII’s pre-capture “zebra” highlight alert that indicates the parts of my scene that are overexposed.
At just a little wider than 24mm, with no significant detail in my immediate foreground, I stopped down to a fairly diffraction safe f/9. I’m always at ISO 100 unless I can’t achieve the amount of light I want at my ideal aperture and shutter speed, and in this case ISO 100 worked just fine. With my f-stop and ISO set, I increased my shutter speed slowly, checking the moon after each 1/3-stop click for the zebras (if you don’t shoot mirrorless, you can set blinking highlights and check the moon for “blinkies” when you review the image on your LCD). Since I know my camera well enough to know that I could push my exposure at least a full stop beyond the point where the zebras appeared, then recover the highlights in the Lightroom raw processor.
This image looked quite dark on my LCD, and the histogram was way to the left, but after loading it onto my computer and pulling the Lightroom Shadows slider to the right, I recovered an unbelievable amount of clean (low noise) detail, even in the darkest shadows. I just continue to be blown away by the dynamic range of this a7R Mark 2 sensor that enables me to capture scenes I’d never imagined possible in my previous (Canon) life. In this case I probably could have brightened the image further in processing, but I wanted a more moody, twilight feel.
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Yosemite Less Traveled
My 2016
Posted on December 31, 2016
Milky Way and Meteor, Bristlecone Pine Forest, White Mountains, California
Bristlecone Night, White Mountains, California
Sony a7SII
Rokinon 24mm f1.4
20 seconds
F/2.0
ISO 6400
Tonight the calendar clicks over to a new year, ready or not. Most are ready. The general consensus is that 2016 has been a difficult year. Our warming planet lost too many creative souls, and was rubbed raw by contentious elections in every hemisphere. But here we are knocking on the door of 2017.
I’m lucky to have photography and the dose of perspective it provides. Whether it’s a double rainbow above the Grand Canyon, fountains of lava on Kilauea, or a meteor slicing the Milky Way above 4000-year-old trees, our terrestrial problems just seem a little less significant when I’m behind my camera.
As I review 2016’s contributions to my portfolio, I have to admit that the year wasn’t a complete loss. To me these images are so much more than photographs, they’re a reminder that I was there to witness each of these gifts from Nature.
So, without further adieu, here’s a selection of personal highlights from this emotional, transformative, contentious, unforgettable year.
2016 Highlights
Click an image for a closer look and slide show. Refresh the window to reorder the display.
Happy New Year, everyone. Here’s to a great 2017.
– Gary
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The best lens for the job
Posted on December 28, 2016
Dawn, Tunnel View, Yosemite
Sony a7R II
Sony 70-200 f/4
25 seconds
F/8
ISO 200
Probably the workshop question I am asked most is some variation on, “What lens should I use?” While I’m happy to answer any question, this one always makes me cringe because the implicit question is, “Which lenses can I leave behind?”
What many photographers fail to realize is that the “proper” lens isn’t some absolute determined by the scene, a secret known only by the best photographers, it’s a creative choice made by each photographer who visits. While prior captures often imply a general consensus on a scene’s primary composition, that pretty much turns out to be the first composition everyone sees—just the compositions creative photographers should avoid. When I tell you the lens to use, I’m imposing my creative instincts rather than cultivating yours. “Okay, right, I get it. But seriously—what lens should I use?” Sigh.
Suck it up
The best landscape images usually require some sacrifice, so if you’re making lens choices based on what’s most convenient, maybe landscape photography isn’t for you. I’m not talking about risking your life to get the shot, or exceeding your physical limitations, but I am talking about a willingness to experience a little discomfort for your craft. That means venturing out in miserable weather, rising well before the sun, or (gulp) skipping dinner. And yes, it even means lugging a little heavier camera bag than you might prefer.
My general rule is to, at the very least, carry lenses that cover the full-frame focal range from 20mm-200mm. There are some trade-offs in the number of lenses you choose to achieve this. Some carry just one or two zoom lenses, sacrificing speed and image quality for comfort, convenience, and mobility; others go hardcore, lugging an assortment of fast, ultra-sharp primes. I’m in the middle, extremely happy with the combination of quality and compactness I get with my three Sony f/4 zoom lenses: the 16-35, 24-70, and 70-200.
In addition to my three primary lenses, I never go out without my full frame Sony a7RII and 1.5 crop Sony a6300 bodies. Because a 1.5 crop body increases the effective focal length of each lens by 50 percent, with these two bodies I can cover the focal range from 16mm-300mm. I also have a few specialty lenses that may or may not stay in the car (but never at home), depending on the scene, the room in my bag, and how much hiking/climbing/scrambling I’ll be doing: a Tamron 150-600 for extra reach; a Rokinon 24mm f/1.4 lens for starlight; and a Sony 90mm macro.
So seriously, the lens you choose for a scene is part of the creative process that defines you as a photographer, a personal decision that I’m happy to assist, but reluctant to dictate. In fact, it’s a rare scene that’s worthy of capture with one lens that’s not worthy of capture with another. And another. (And I promise that the surest way to need a particular lens is to leave it behind.) I’m not suggesting that you lug Hermione’s purse to every shoot; just try to remember that your images will last far longer than your discomfort.
Case in point
I do a half dozen or so workshops in Yosemite each year, plus a number of private tours. That means I spend a lot of time at Tunnel View. A lot. But I don’t photograph there much anymore unless I think I can get something I don’t already have, which means I do lots of watching other photographers. One thing I notice is how few photographers use a telephoto lens here. Given the breadth of the view, and the volume of existing wide angle Tunnel View images we’ve been conditioned by, reflexively reaching for the wide angle lens at Tunnel View is understandable. But approaching any scene with a preconceived idea of the best lens limits the array of creative opportunities the scene provides.
One chilly morning at Tunnel View earlier this month, my winter workshop group enjoyed the snowy granite, wispy fog, and pristine air only possible after a winter storm. Of course we had all of the standard wide angle compositions at our disposal, but when the fog and pastel sky moved me to pull out my camera, it was my 70-200 that I chose to pair with it. I tried a few compositions, before settling on this one that was just wide enough to include Half Dome, Bridalveil Fall, most of the fog, and the only clouds remaining from the storm. Not only would a wide angle lens have shrunk what I felt were the scene’s most significant features, my telephoto lens was able to exclude from my image the bright, empty sky above Half Dome, and most of the dead, brown trees scarring Yosemite Valley.
Because this image was captured 20 minutes before sunrise, the scene my eyes saw was much darker than what my camera captured. Photographers able to see with their camera’s vision rather than their own love photographing in the sweet light only possible at twilight. In this case not only did I benefit from a shadowless foreground, the 25-second exposure smoothed the clouds, fog, and waterfall ethereal quality.
I won’t pretend that this is a groundbreaking capture (far from it), but if I’d have walked up to the scene with a wide angle already mounted instead taking it all in before choosing my lens, I don’t think I’d have been nearly as happy with my results.
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A Tunnel View Gallery
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Deciphering natural order
Posted on December 20, 2016
Floating Autumn Leaves, Bridalveil Creek, Yosemite
Sony a7R II
Sony/Zeiss 16-35 f4
1.6 seconds
F/10
ISO 100
I’m often asked if I placed a leaf, moved a rock, or “Photoshopped” a moon into an image. Usually the tone is friendly curiosity, but sometimes it carries hints of suspicion bordering on accusation. While these questions are an inevitable part of being a photographer today, I suspect that I get more than my share because I aggressively seek out naturally occurring subjects to isolate and emphasize in my frame. But regardless of the questioner’s tone, my answer is always a cheerful and unapologetic, “No.”
We all know photographers who have no qualms about arranging their scenes to suit their personal aesthetics. The rights and wrongs of that are an ongoing debate I won’t get into, other than to say that I have no problem when photographers arrange their scenes openly, with no intent to deceive. But photography must be a source of pleasure, and my own photographic pleasure derives from discovering and revealing nature, not manufacturing it. I don’t like arranging scenes because I have no illusions that I can improve nature’s order, and am confident that there’s enough naturally occurring beauty to keep me occupied for the rest of my life.
Order vs. chaos
As far as I’m concerned, nature is inherently ordered. In fact, in the grand scheme, “nature” and “order” are synonyms. But humans go to such lengths to control, contain, and manage the natural world that we’ve created a label for our failure to control nature: Chaos. Despite its negative connotation, what humans perceive as “chaos” is actually just a manifestation of the universe’s inexorable push toward natural order.
For example
Imagine all humans leave Earth for a scenic tour of the Milky Way. While we’re gone, no lawns are mowed, no buildings maintained, no fires extinguished, no floods controlled, no Starbucks built. Let’s say we return in 100 Earth years*. While the state of things would no doubt be perceived as chaotic, the reality is that our planet would in fact be closer to its natural state. And the longer we’re away, the more human-imposed “order” would be replaced by natural order.
What does all this have to do with leaves on a rock?
Venturing outdoors with a camera and the mindset that nature is inherently ordered makes me feel like a treasure hunter—I know the treasure is there, I just have to find it. Patterns and relationships hidden by human interference and the din of 360 degree multi-sensory input, further obscured by human bias, snap into coherence when I find the right perspective.
I found this treasure of leaves floating in a pool atop a rock near Bridalveil Fall in Yosemite. What caught my eye was simply the floating leaves, but my image needed to create a relationship between the leaves and their surroundings. With the rock and leaves as my foreground, my background depended on where I set up on the rock’s 360 degree perimeter: pointing upstream included the base of Bridalveil Fall behind a tangle of bare trees; shooting across the creek added a lot of not particularly interesting rocks and trees; putting my back to the creek would have introduced a paved trail; downstream flowed the diagonal slash of Bridalveil Creek.
I chose the downstream view. A wide focal length enabled me to get within a couple of feet of the pool, filling my foreground with the rock, pool, and leaves, while maximizing (and shrinking) the amount of creek and forest in my background.
With the large-scale decisions out of the way, I spent over a half hour (34 minutes, to be precise) refining all the relationships in my frame. For example, I wanted to get high enough that the white water on the near bank didn’t intersect the top of my foreground rock (with the leaves), but not so high that an ugly dirt void left of the foreground rock became too prominent. I wanted to be wide enough that the white water on the right didn’t intersect my frame’s right edge, but not so wide that I included a disorganized mess of downed branches just upstream. I was also careful not to cut off any of the granite bowl containing the pool.
Exposure was easy in full shade (manageable dynamic range). The amount of motion blur in the creek didn’t vary much whether I was at a half second or two seconds, so I just went with ISO 100 (in other words, if I wanted to freeze the water enough to cause a noticeable difference in the blur, I’d have had to raise my ISO to an unacceptable value). I chose f/10 and focused on the back of the rock above the pool. Viewed at 100% my background is very slightly soft, but stopping down enough to make a difference would have resulted in more diffraction throughout the frame than I was comfortable with (since I wanted maximum foreground sharpness at any print size). There was a lot of reflection on this pool, but my (Singh-Ray) polarizer erased it.
* Since this is my fantasy, I’ve chartered a spaceship that accommodates all of humankind and travels at 90 percent of the speed of light. While Earth has indeed aged 100 years during our holiday, we travelers return only a year older. (Dubious? Don’t take my word for it, ask Albert Einstein.)
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Nature’s Order Revealed
(Coherently combining natural elements )
Enjoying Yosemite in a fog
Posted on December 14, 2016
Morning Sun, Half Dome, Yosemite
Sony a7R II
Sony/Zeiss 16-35 f4
1/100 seconds
F/16
ISO 100
One of Yosemite’s most underrated winter treats is the radiation fog that hugs the valley floor on cold, clear, still mornings. Unlike the advection fog that drapes the San Francisco Bay Area (among other places) when (relatively) warm, saturated air passes over the colder ocean and blows inland, radiation fog forms in place when plummeting overnight temperatures cause airborne water vapor to condense.
A sheltered valley with a cold river, soggy meadows, and a spongy forest floor, Yosemite Valley is ideal for the formation of radiation fog. Each winter, storms fill the Merced River and soak the meadows and forest. On nights when there’s no wind to mix the atmosphere, cold air sinks until it meets the water-laden air near the ground. Because cold air can’t hold as much water vapor as warmer air, and the air on the valley floor is completely saturated, the airborne water vapor condenses as soon as the air chills even slightly: Fog.
Often no more than a thin, gray veneer, in radiation fog that’s dense enough to obscure trees across a meadow, it’s sometimes possible to see stars or blue sky overhead. Viewed from a distance (for example, from Tunnel View), Yosemite’s radiation fog appears to be in constant motion, alternately engulfing and revealing treetops, sometimes rising hundreds of feet and completely disappearing in a matter of minutes. With no wind to move the fog, the reality is that what appears to be motion is primarily fog forming and dissipating in place. Yosemite’s radiation fog persists until the air heats enough to hold the available airborne moisture, or the wind picks up and mixes warmer air above with the colder, saturated air below.
About this image
Last Friday morning I went out to scout a new route to one of my favorite Yosemite spots, a bend in the Merced River upstream from Sentinel Bridge with view and reflection of Half Dome. My Yosemite Winter Moon workshop started that afternoon, but the original access here had been obliterated by major roadwork underway in Yosemite Valley, so I needed to make sure I could still get my group out here.
With very little time to spare, I originally left my camera bag in the car, but didn’t get too far before second thoughts sent me back for it. Good thing—after a few minutes of traipsing across crunchy snow, I made it out of the woods and to the river just in time to catch sunlight illuminating a diaphanous radiation fog. Shadows cast by sunlight passing through evergreen branches created a beam effect in the illuminated mist, while upstream a blanket of fog basked in golden sunlight.
The sun was about to disappear behind the granite ridge beneath Glacier Point and I new I only had a few more minutes of this spectacularly illuminated fog. At first I tried to position the sun behind the trees, but at this distance the treetops were so thin that very little blocking occurred and I ended up with a white blob of blown highlights. So I hustled over to the intersection of the ridge’s shadow with the sunlit ground and prepared for a sunstar. Every lens creates a different sunstar effect, some much better than others, and my Sony/Zeiss 16-35 f/4 is my favorite. Stopping down to f/16, I went to work. Moving with the sun so I was always straddling the shadow line, I was able to shoot for about five minutes before the entire beach was in shade and I was finished.
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Yosemite Fog
Photographic matchmaking
Posted on December 7, 2016
Autumn Pool and Cascade, Bridalveil Creek, Yosemite
Sony a7R II
Sony/Zeiss 16-35 f4
6 seconds
F/16
ISO 200
While everyone loves a pretty scene, I’m afraid our aesthetic sense has been numbed by the continuous assault of “stunning” images online. A picture grabs our eyes on Instagram or Facebook and we reflexively click Like and move on to the next (similarly) stunning image. The photography equivalent of pop music, formula fiction, or (most) network television, these images exit our conscious about as fast as they entered because they fail to make a personal connection.
But every once in awhile an image surprises us and we pause, float our eyes around the scene, examine detail, bask in its mood. Who knows the trigger for such a response? Maybe is as simple as aspect of the scene that spurs a memory or taps a longing. Or maybe the connection reaches deeper than that.
Pictures succeed not just by virtue of their visual elements, but also by how those elements are connected. I used to believe that the sole purpose of including visual elements throughout my frame was to create the illusion of depth in photography’s two-dimensional medium. While I still strongly agree, I think the value of multiple points of visual interest goes deeper than that. Just as humans seek interpersonal connections in our daily lives, I think we’re programmed to favor images with relationships between heterogeneous elements in the nature. Not just Grand Canyon, but Grand Canyon speared by lightning; not just Half Dome, but Half Dome beneath a rising full moon; not just glowing Kilauea Caldera, but glowing Kilauea Caldera beneath the Milky Way.
Creating relationships between elements work on a smaller scale as well (albeit, usually without the opportunity for planning that celestial or meteorological phenomena provide)—small forest scenes and intimate macros benefit from inclusion of multiple elements as well. Of course an image with a disorganized arrangement of elements, no matter how beautiful each is individually, probably won’t get a second look. But find a way to organize a scene’s elements in a way that allows the eye to flow effortlessly through the frame and you have the potential for visual synergy—an image that’s greater than the sum of its visual parts.
The opportunity to connect disparate elements is everywhere if you look, from the broadest panorama to the most intimate macro. Whatever the scale, the key is not locking onto your subject until you find something to pair it with. In other words, finding a photo-worthy subject should never be your goal, it should be your starting point.
Without diving too deeply into the concept of visual weight (a subject in and of itself), I try to create a frame with balance between visual elements (not loaded too much in on of the scene’s quadrants: upper left, upper right, lower left, lower right). I also try to keep objects with a strong visual tug away from the edges of my frame. And finally, I look to position my elements so they’re connected by virtual diagonal lines.
About this image
On the final morning of last month’s Yosemite Autumn Moon photo workshop, I set the group loose in the forest beneath Bridalveil Fall to scour the possibilities in and around Bridalveil Creek. Always a workshop favorite, I usually save the Bridalveil Creek until the workshop’s final day, when my students have found their creative zone after three days of shooting and training. This approach seems to pay off, because no matter how much time I give them in there, it never seems to be enough.
When I found this accumulation of just-fallen autumn leaves floating in a glassy pool, I knew I had the start of a nice scene. Scanning my surroundings, I didn’t have to look hard to find a small cascade to connect with my colorful leaves. But with the pool tucked beneath a fallen log, accessing the best angle was tricky. Sprawling nearly flat on my back beneath the overhanging log, with one tripod leg in the water, turned out to be the best way to maximize the virtual diagonal connecting the leaves and cascade.
The other consideration here was depth of field—the leaves started no more than three feet from my lens, while the cascade was about 12 feet away. To ensure maximum sharpness throughout with getting too far into the diffraction zone, I stopped down to f/16 and focused on the back of the leaves. I wasn’t too concerned about shutter speed and the cascade’s blur because the difference between one and six seconds was insignificant, and freezing the water would have required a ridiculously high ISO, while the pool was so still that I could discern no motion at all.
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A Gallery of Relationships
Fall color explained
Posted on November 27, 2016
Autumn Morning, El Capitan Reflected in the Merced River, Yosemite
Sony a7R II
Sony/Zeiss 16-35 f4
2 seconds
F/16
ISO 50
Like most photographers in the Northern Hemisphere, my fall color season is about finished. But things are just ramping up along the streets near my home in California’s Central Valley (where winter doesn’t really begin until December, and spring’s first blooms start to pop up at the end of January—sorry). While there’s not a lot for me to photograph in my neighborhood, the opportunity to partake of the visual feast without a camera in my hands is refreshing.
I’m also harvesting the fruits the most intense autumn workshop/travel schedule of my photography life, and appreciating all over again how much I enjoy fall photography. Browsing my autumn images, I’m reminded of the need to understand my subjects. That goes double for the why and when of fall color, a blend of science and myth so intertwined that casual observers often resort to memory, anecdote, and lore to fill knowledge voids with partial truth and downright falsehood.
Innkeeper logic
Show up at at the fall color spot that guy in your camera club said was peaking at this time last year, you might find the same trees displaying lime green mixed with just hints of yellow and orange. Ask the old guy behind the desk at the inn, and you’ll get a head shake and confident explanation that, “The color’s late this year—it hasn’t gotten cold enough yet.” Check into the same inn on the same weekend next year, you might find just a handful of leaves clinging to exposed branches—this time, as the old guy hands you the key, he proclaims, “That hot summer got everything started early—you should have been here last week.”
While “expert” testimony like this sounds like objective truth, it only perpetuates the myths surrounding fall color. Fortunately, science has provided a pretty good understanding of the fall color process to all who want to understand.
It’s all about the sunlight
The leaves of deciduous trees contain a mix of green, yellow, and orange pigments. During the spring and summer growing season, the green chlorophyl pigment overpowers the orange and yellow pigments, keeping the trees green. While this chlorophyl is quickly broken down by sunlight, the photosynthesis that turns sunlight into nutrients that nourish the tree, warmth and long days provide the energy to sustain chlorophyl creation through the summer.
As the days shrink toward autumn, things begin to break down. Cells at the “abscission layer” at the base of the leaves’ stem (the knot where the leaf connects to the branch) begin a thickening process that blocks the transfer of carbohydrates from the leaves to the rest of the tree. Meanwhile, movement of nutrients to the leaves is inhibited as well—without these minerals, the leaves’ chlorophyl production dwindles and finally stops. No longer masked by the chlorophyl’s green, it’s time for the tree’s yellow and orange pigments to shine: Color!
Sunlight and weather
Contrary to popular belief, the timing of the onset of this fall color chain reaction is much more daylight-dependent than temperature- and weather-dependent—triggered by a genetically programmed day/night-duration threshold; contrary to innkeeper-logic, the trees in any given region will commence their transition from green to color at about the same time each year (when the day length drops to a certain point).
Nevertheless, though it doesn’t trigger the process, weather does play a significant part in the intensity, duration, and demise of the color season. Because sunlight breaks down the green chlorophyl, cloudy days after the suspension of chlorophyl creation will slow the coloring process. And while the yellow and orange pigments are present and pretty much just hanging out, waiting all summer for the chlorophyl to relinquish control of the tree’s color, the red and purple pigments are manufactured from sugar stored in the leaves—the more sugar, the more vivid their color. Ample moisture, warm days, and cool (but not freezing) nights after chlorophyl replacement has stopped are most conducive to the creation and retention of the sugars that form the vivid red and purple pigments.
On the other hand, freezing temperatures destroy the color pigments, bringing a premature end to the color display. Drought can stress trees so much that they drop their leaves before the color has a chance to manifest. And wind and rain can wreak havoc with the fall display—go to bed one night beneath a canopy of red and gold, wake the next morning to find the trees bare and the ground blanketed with color.
Of course all these weather factors come in an infinite number of variations that make this year’s color timing and intensity a little different from last year’s and next’s. Despite my need to understand nature’s mysteries, it’s this (perceived) randomness, the impossibility of ever knowing for sure what I’ll encounter, that draws me back.
About this image
Yosemite isn’t an inherently great sunrise location. With most of its views facing east, toward shaded subjects beneath the brightest part of the sunrise sky, sunrise light is difficult here. And without clouds, more the the rule than the exception in California, Yosemite sunrises can be rather bland. But Yosemite’s bland sunrises are more than compensated by the first direct sunlight light visible Yosemite Valley, which starts on the highest points a few minutes after the “official” (flat horizon) sunrise, and progresses over the next hour or so until the valley floor is bathed in sunlight. El Capitan is among the first of Yosemite’s prominent features to benefit from this early light.
I have a mental list of go-to El Capitan views for photographing its first light. Among them is a quiet bend in the river, known affectionately (and unofficially) to photographers as “Tahiti Beach,” with views of Cathedral Rocks, El Capitan, and the Three Brothers. Additionally, the river widens and slows here, providing some of Yosemite Valley’s best reflection opportunities as well.
One morning in the first of this year’s two Yosemite fall color workshops, I guided my group to Tahiti Beach for El Capitan’s first light. Clouds ruled the sky as the first light window opened, but fleeting patches of blue gave me hope. And with the deciduous trees across the river displaying their finest golds and oranges, we weren’t lacking for opportunities in the meantime.
The sun broke through suddenly, spotlighting a thin slice of granite near El Capitan’s summit. Unsure how long the opportunity would last, I moved quickly to compose this wide, vertical frame that emphasized the reflection juxtaposed with a thin veneer of colorful leaves floating at my feet. I reminded myself to heed the frequent admonition I issue my workshop groups: the focal point for a reflection is the focus point for the reflective subject, not the reflective surface. In other words, while the leaves floated in water that was just a few feet from my lens, their focus point was much closer than the infinity focus point of the reflection in the same water. I focused on the leaves, confident that the depth of field provided by f/16 at my 18mm would render El Capitan, the trees, and the reflection acceptably sharp.
Another noteworthy exposure setting in this image is my 50 ISO decision. Though the leaves were completely still, there were slight ripples disturbing the river where most of my reflection lay. Stopping down to f/16, dialing my sensor’s sensitivity to ISO 50, combined with a polarizer carefully tuned to cut the reflective glare on the leaves without diminishing the rest of the reflection too much, allowed a 2-second exposure that smoothed the ripples enough to enhance the reflection.
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A fall color gallery
How do you do that?: Properly expose a full moon
Posted on November 20, 2016
Twilight Moonrise, El Capitan and Half Dome, Yosemite (2014)
Canon Rebel EOS SL1
.4 seconds
Canon is 70-200 f/4L
ISO 100
F11
The problem
Cameras struggle to capture simultaneous detail in bright highlights (the moon) and and dark shadows (the landscape)—capturing one or the other is easy, but both? Not so much. A full moon is daylight bright, but because a full moon rises at sunset and sets at sunrise (more or less, depending on exactly how full the moon is when it rises/sets, and the elevation of the horizon the moon and sun rise/set above), when a full moon is visible, the sky and landscape will be some degree of dark.
The dynamic range problem is compounded by the fact that the darker the sky, the better the moon looks—often by the time a photographer is inspired to pull out a camera to capture the moment, it’s too dark. Additionally, many photographers attempt to photograph a rising full moon on the night it’s at its maximum fullness, which at best provides very little margin for error, and often is just plain too late.
While the advent of digital photography has provided exposure aids like LCD review and a histogram to help us cope with extreme dynamic range, these advances have also caused poor exposure habits. By far the most frequent mistake made by aspiring moon photographers is insisting that the landscape part of their scene as it appears on the LCD look close to what their eyes see, all but ensuring a white blob of moon. Even the trusty histogram lets down moon photographers because the moon is usually too small to register on a histogram—they pat themselves on the back for what appears to be a perfect histogram, completely oblivious to the fact that the moon is hopelessly overexposed.
The solution
One solution to extreme dynamic range is a composite: one image exposed for the moon combined with a second image exposed for the landscape. As tempting as a composite solution seems, my goal is always to capture everything with one click. (But just because we’re doing it with one click doesn’t mean there’s no post-processing required bring out the full range of light my camera captured.) While my technique can work with a jpeg image, you’ll have a much greater chance for success shooting raw. Of course there is a point when the sky and landscape are so dark that a single-click moon/landscape capture becomes impossible and you’ll need to pack up, resort to a composite, or simply stand there and appreciate what you’re witnessing.
Timing
When I plot my moonrises, I look for opportunities in my “lunar sweet spot,” when the sky is dark enough for the moon to stand out in brilliant contrast, but not so dark that I can’t photograph landscape and lunar detail with a single click. That starts around 15 minutes before official (flat-horizon sunrise) and last until about 15 minutes after sunset. That doesn’t mean that I can’t get nice images a little earlier, and squeeze out usable exposures a few minutes longer, but it’s a good rule of thumb.
Getting the full (or nearly full) moon in my “sweet spot” starts with picking the right night—just because your smartphone app tells you the full moon is Sunday night, don’t assume that Sunday night is the best night to photograph it. “Official” sun and moon rise/set always assumes a flat horizon—if you have mountains or hills in the east, you’ll need to wait for the moon to ascend above them, all the while the sky and landscape are growing darker. It helps to know that the moon rises a little less than an hour later each day (this is an average that varies quite a bit with a number of factors)—of the full moon won’t rise above your local horizon until long after the sun is below the horizon, pick an evening one or two days earlier. While the moon is only completely round when it’s full, a day or two earlier will still net you a mostly full moon in much easier light. And if your scene is in the west, your best chance will be a sunrise moonset after the moon is full.
For example, I do a lot of Yosemite moonrise photography, where most of the views are against the eastern sky—depending on where I want to photograph the moon, I may need to be there one, two, or even three evenings before it’s completely full to time its appearance for sunset. In my just completed Yosemite workshop, my group got to photograph moonrise at sunset from four different locations on four different evenings—each evening I found a spot a little higher and farther away from the valley rim so the moon would have to rise quite as high as it did the previous night. On the other hand, in my Death Valley workshop most of our views face west, so we do three or four sunrise moonsets, each one at a spot with a higher horizon than the previous day.
Exposure
The key photographing both the full moon and landscape with detail starts with ignoring the way the picture looks on your LCD because, in a high dynamic range scene, an ideal exposure rarely looks good on the LCD. I repeat: In a high dynamic range scene, an ideal exposure rarely looks good on the LCD. The key is to make the image as bright as possible without blowing the highlights, then adjust the highlights and shadows in post-processing. In most extreme dynamic range situations the key is to completely trust the image’s histogram, but the moon is such a small part of most images, it rarely registers on the histogram—it’s possible to capture a histogram that looks great and moon that’s hopelessly blown (detail-less white).
So if you can’t trust the image or the histogram, what can you trust? I thought you’d never ask. While the histogram is helpful for the landscape part of the scene, when I photograph a full moon, I monitor the moon’s exposure with my camera’s highlight alert feature (“blinking highlights”). Highlight alert manifests in the post-capture LCD image review (though a mirrorless camera displays a highlight alert before I click, too). When engaged, everything in your frame that’s blown out flashes when you review your image, a helpful reminder that the exposure is broken and needs to be fixed. Every digital camera I’ve ever seen offers highlight alert, though some make you burrow deep into the menu system to turn it on and/or hide it on an obscure image playback screen (I’m looking at you, Nikon). If you don’t know how to find the blinking highlights, pull out your camera and manual, click a frame with blown highlights, and read/experiment until you figure it out (it really isn’t that difficult).
Once you’re confident that your camera’s highlight alert is engaged and you know how to check it, you’re ready for the next full moon. Here’s my process for a sunset moonrise:
- Metering in manual mode (because I want complete control of my exposure), I meter the landscape just as I would an ordinary scene. If I can get a good exposure (unclipped histogram) without the moon blinking, I know I’m good for the time being and get to work. Of course for a sunrise moonset, the process is reverse: I subtract light until the moon stops blinking
- The moon’s brightness won’t change, but if it’s a moonrise I’m shooting (always at sunset), I know the landscape will continue to darken, so that exposure that was perfect a few minutes ago isn’t quite so perfect now. As the scene darkens, I continue to add light by increasing my shutter speed in 1/3 stop increments (that is, one click at a time). Each time increase the exposure, I check the moon to make sure it’s not blinking.
- As soon as the moon starts blinking, I’m done adding light—no matter how much darker the scene becomes, giving it more light will blow out the moon.
The more familiar you are with your camera, the more success you’ll have. Different cameras’ highlight alerts engage at different points, and it’s entirely possible (likely even) that you can add a little more light after the first “blinkies” appear in the moon—on my Sony a7RII, I can usually push my highlights another 2/3 to 1 full stop once I first detect blinking and still recover detail later.
A graduated neutral density filter will subdue the bright moon, allowing you to add more light to the landscape without blowing out the moon. Depending on the location, a GND will add 5 to 15 minutes of productive shooting.
Processing
This is not a processing tutorial; I assume you’re shooting in raw mode and have at least rudimentary Lightroom or Adobe Camera Raw skills (though I’m sure if you’re comfortable with any raw processor you’ll be able to figure it out). I’ll just describe a couple of really quick raw processing moves to get you started.
As with all of my images, I try to do most of my full moon image highlight/shadow recovery in Lightroom. But before doing that, I want to get the white balance right. When I open the image in Lightroom, I drag the Vibrance slider all the way to the right (to exaggerate the color cast), adjust away any unwelcome color cast with the White Balance slider, then return the Vibrance slider to 0 (though I reserve the right to nudge it up or down later, when I’m further along in my raw processing).
With the color temperature right, I pull the Highlights slider all the way to the left, and the Shadows slider all the way to the right. This isn’t likely where they’ll end up, but it gives me a good idea of whether I captured recoverable details. If the moon is still blown, or the shadows are still black, I pull the Exposure slider left or right until the missing detail appears. (Tip: Holding down the Option/Alt key while adjusting any exposure slider reveals exactly what is and isn’t clipped.) If I can’t find the detail with the exposure slider, it’s not there.
This is by no means a complete processing workflow—that will vary with too many factors to cover here (including the conditions and exposure decisions at the time of capture, and your own processing style and preferences). But if you exposed the scene correctly, my suggestions will get your overall exposure to the point where you can start working on the rest of what the image needs.
About this image
My favorite spot to photograph a moonrise in Yosemite Tunnel View, which, in addition to being a fantastic view, is far enough from Half Dome to allow a fairly long telephoto. But for this moonrise in 2014 I realized that the moon would appear just a little too late—I needed to be higher and farther back to get the moon before the sky and landscape were too dark. So instead of Tunnel View, I took my workshop group to a vista on the west side of the Wawona Tunnel. While the view here is missing Bridalveil Fall and the bottom half of El Capitan, for our purposes it was perfect. (For this shoot I used my 1.6 crop body to increase the reach of my 70-200 lens.)
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A Full(ish) Moon Gallery
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Supermoon
Posted on November 14, 2016
Supermoon, Half Dome and El Capitan, Yosemite
Sony a7RII
Tamron 150-600 (Canon-mount with Metabones IV adapter)
1/3 second
F/9
ISO 100
The media tends to distort facts and blow events out of proportion. Perhaps you’ve noticed. The latest example is this week’s “supermoon,” an event heralded on TV, in print, and online like the Second Coming. Okay, now for a little perspective. Despite hype to the contrary, a supermoon occurs at least twice, and up to five times, in a year. In fact, our last supermoon was all the way back in October, and the next one isn’t until December.
But, as I’m sure you’ve heard, this month’s supermoon was special, an event the likes of which we haven’t seen since 1946, and won’t see again until 2034. True enough. But exactly how special was it? Not nearly as special as you might have heard: the diameter of the “epic” November supermoon was only one-half of one percent (.57) larger than the October full moon, and four-fifths of one percent (.84) larger than the December full moon—differences that are impossible to discern with the naked eye. Next year we’ll get two moons that are more than 99 percent the size of this month’s supermoon, and last year we had four.
So why was I out taking pictures of the full moon Sunday night? Because I think every full moon is beautiful, regardless of its size, and I take any opportunity to photograph it over my favorite landscapes. Which is also why each fall I schedule a workshop in Yosemite to coincide with the full moon.
Thursday night my Yosemite Autumn Moon workshop group photographed an 82% (of full) waxing gibbous (on its way to full) moon above Valley View at sunset. For Friday night’s sunset, from a quiet beach beside the Merced River we glimpsed through clouds an 87% moon rising just right of Half Dome. Saturday’s sunset found us beneath a magenta sky at Tunnel View to witness the 96% moon ascend between Sentinel Dome and Cathedral Rocks.
The workshop’s grand finale came Sunday night, when we gathered at the Half Dome vista on Big Oak Flat Road. Though I rarely encounter other photographers for any of my moon rise/set shoots, limited parking and tripod space here prompted me to arrive an hour before sunset. That turned out to be a fortunate decision, as within 30 minutes of our arrival the parking lot was brimming beyond full and photographers swarmed the nearby rocks like ants at a picnic.
With an hour to kill, I made sure everyone in my group was ready (but by now, this being our fourth moonrise, they were experienced veterans) and chatted with other photographers nearby. Comparing notes, it seemed that most (all?) of the other photographers had relied on apps like The Photographer’s Ephemeris and Photo Pills to plot the moon’s arrival location and time, while I was the only one clinging to my old fashioned topo map, scientific calculator, trigonometry plotting approach. (I do it this way because I’ve been plotting the moon since long before the apps were available, I feel like I can be more precise, and I enjoy it—not necessarily in that order.)
In the viewfinder of my Sony a7R Mark II, atop my tripod and armed with my Tamron 150-600 lens to enlarge the moon as much as possible, was the composition I wanted—assuming the accuracy of my calculations. The consensus among others seemed to be that the moon would appear from behind Half Dome’s right flank, anytime between 5:00 and 5:10 p.m. I stuck to my guns that the moon would show up at about 5:05, and that it would be straight over the top of Half Dome. While I saw this more as an opportunity to check my plotting method’s accuracy than a competition between methods, it was pretty thrilling when the moon popped into view right on schedule and on target. Take that, technology!
Since the moon didn’t appear until a full fifteen minutes after sunset, the extreme dynamic range (very dark landscape beneath a daylight-bright moon) made this an extremely tricky exposure for anyone (like me) not interested in compositing two images (one with the moon properly exposed, another with the scene properly exposed). To capture this scene with a single click, I closely monitored the pre-capture “zebra stripes” highlight alert in my a7RII and pushed my exposure 2/3 stop after the first hint of the alert appeared. To hedge my bets and give myself processing options, I varied my exposure 1/3 to 2/3 of a stop in either direction (an exception to my standard workflow because the moon is too small to register on the histogram).
The result was a scene that looked quite dark on my LCD, and a moon with no detail. No problem, I reassured myself, for my a7RII’s ridiculous dynamic range. This morning in Lightroom I adjusted the white balance, pulled up the shadows, and pulled down the highlights. In Photoshop I applied a moderate dose of Topaz DeNoise and did a few minor dodge/burn moves to get the image you see here.
One more thing
The size of the moon in this image has virtually nothing to do with the fact that this was a “supermoon,” and virtually everything to do with the fact that I was far enough away to be able to use a 600mm lens. Click below to read about how to capture your own big moon:
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The Moon in all Shapes and Sizes
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Eloquent Images by Gary Hart 