Dinner is overrated (and I have the pictures to prove it)
Posted on December 22, 2015
Winter Blue Hour Reflection, Half Dome, Yosemite
Sony a7R II
Sony/Zeiss 24-70 f4
30 seconds
F/8
ISO 1600
In my Snow day post a few days ago, I shared the story of an overnight dash to Yosemite to photograph snow. I wrapped up that long day photographing various Yosemite Valley views in the frigid damp, bundled at Tunnel View, waiting in vain for the storm to clear. The sky was darkening quickly, and when a dense cloud engulfed my view I decided my (pretty sweet) day was probably done.
Hungry, tired, and cold to the core, I still faced a nearly 4-hour drive home. But descending into the valley El Capitan popped out, and as I approached the crossover that would loop me back to the park exit, all I needed was a single bright star to abort my exit plan and take one last look at a favorite Half Dome reflection. If nothing was happening, I rationalized, the detour would add only 20 minutes to my night—but if the storm had indeed finally cleared, the view would be worth whatever extra time it cost. Dinner would just have to wait.
I arrived at my reflection to find that in the short time it took me to span Yosemite Valley, clearing around Half Dome was well underway. With just a few minutes of late twilight photography, when my straining eyes could still make out snow-etched features in the fading light, I ran to the river and set up fast. Though a little light remained, already my camera was pulling out exquisite detail far better than my eyes could, and I worked fast to take full advantage of this perfect, shadowless light before it darkened into full-on night photography.
The image I share here was one of the last I captured before the darkness behind Half Dome was replaced by the glow of the rising, nearly full moon. By this time nightfall was almost complete to my eyes, but my camera still picked up sunset’s waning vestiges in a cloud capping Half Dome.
This scene is just one more illustration of something I preach to all who will listen—the camera sees the world differently than you and I do. Going home too soon after sunset is one of the most frequent mistakes made by inexperienced photographers.
Instead of heading straight to dinner, hang around for silhouettes and reflections using the fiery hues that follow the sun below the western horizon. Then turn and bask in the pink and blue pastels coloring sky opposite the sun, when the entire scene is illuminated by faint but sweet blue-gray skylight. By now it will be pretty dark to your eyes, but your camera is up to the task, I promise.
Of course you’ll need a DSLR and sturdy tripod to make the most of the low light. Remove your polarizer, bump your ISO, and stretch your shutter speed until the histogram is fairly centered—you’ll see that the image on your LCD is much brighter than the scene your eyes see. You’ll also see that dynamic range is not a concern, and the detail the camera pulls out in the shadowless light is impossible at any other time of day (except in the same light that precedes sunrise).
This evening I stayed well past twilight, not leaving until the stars popped out and the moon-glow washed out the sky behind Half Dome. And believe it or not, my day wasn’t finished….
Schedule of upcoming photo workshops
The rewards of a late dinner
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Snow day
Posted on December 17, 2015
Winter Storm Reflection, El Capitan, Yosemite
Sony a7R II
Sony/Zeiss 16-35 f4
1/8 second
F/10
ISO 100
From my front door I can be in Yosemite Valley in less than four hours (including a stop for gas and another for Starbucks). I enjoy the drive and am not averse to doing a one day up-and-back when I think something special is in store. And nothing is more special than a chance to photograph Yosemite with fresh snow.
My most recent Yosemite snow-dash was last month. Given the fickle nature of Yosemite’s weather, and four years of drought that have made Yosemite snow a rare commodity, I made this trip an overnighter to maximize my odds.
Though I arrived well ahead of the storm, dense clouds and a damp chill ruled the afternoon. Instead of rushing into photography mode, I used the relative calm to scout the conditions, and was pleased to find water in the falls and a few traces of autumn color lingering in some of the more sheltered spots.
The rain started just as night fell. Descending the hill to my hotel that evening, I monitored the outside temperature and was cautiously optimistic about the next day. I enjoyed a warm, quiet evening in my room, cleaning sensors and filters, organizing my wet-weather gear, and visualizing scenes of snow and granite.
Yosemite Valley is at 4,000 feet, but my room was in El Portal, less than 15 minutes away but 2,000 feet lower. Staying in El Portal means I often wake to rain and hold my breath as I ascend to the valley because, regardless of the forecast, snow in Yosemite Valley is never a sure thing.
As expected, that morning I left El Portal in a steady rain, but the drops on my windshield turned to flakes at about 3,000 feet—exhale. By the time I reached Cascade Fall at 3,500 feet, snow was sticking to the trees, and it only got better from there.
This was not a particularly heavy snowfall, but I stayed all day and the clouds never completely cleared. Instead, the storm ebbed and flowed, lifting its stratus cap enough to reveal all of Yosemite’s iconic landmarks, then dropping the lid to obscure everything beyond a few hundred yards.
I concentrated most of my attention on the assortment of El Capitan reflections on the west end of Yosemite Valley. For this image I parked at the El Capitan Bridge and walked upstream along the riverbank a short distance. From here I was close enough to El Capitan that I was unable to get all of El Capitan and all of its reflection in one frame, even at 16mm. I decided to bias my composition to the reflection, and as I worked the sky peaked through just long enough for me to include it in a handful of frames.
The ultimate clearing finally came shortly after sunset. With a nearly full moon illuminating snow-covered Yosemite Valley, I couldn’t resist photographing for a couple hours longer than planned. Stay tuned….
Schedule of upcoming photo workshops
Yosemite in the snow
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What lens should I use?
Posted on December 11, 2015
Half Dome at Sunset, Olmsted Point, Yosemite
Sony a6000
Tamron 150-600 (Canon-mount with Metabones IV adapter)
4 seconds
F/9
ISO 400
Inexperienced photographers tend to approach every scene with the idea that there’s one “best” shot, and that other photographers already know what that shot is. This might explain why there’s no better way to meet other photographers than to set up a tripod (I’ve learned that this even works on the shoulder of a busy highway with no obvious view). It might also explain why the most frequent question asked in my workshops is probably, “What lens should I use?”
The question usually comes as we’re unloading from the cars and assembling our gear for the walk to our shooting site. I don’t mind the question (I swear), but my answer rarely satisfies. That’s because I’ve done this long enough to know that their real question is, “What lenses can I leave in the car?” If only photography were that easy.
Your lens choice is part of your composition process. In other words, by limiting the lenses you carry, you’re also limiting your creative options. If adding an extra lens or two is the difference between going out or staying put, by all means, jettison the extra lenses and get out there. But here’s a photographic truth: The surest way to ensure that you’ll want a lens is to leave it behind.
I will acknowledge the most landscapes have an “obvious” shot—the first thing people see when they walk up—that everyone shoots. While many photographers are satisfied with the obvious shot, I wouldn’t be much of a workshop leader if I allowed my students to settle for the shot that everyone else takes.
While there’s nothing wrong with taking the obvious shot, it should be your starting point, never your goal. Your goal should be to find something unique, and the greater the focal range at your disposal, the greater your opportunity for a unique capture.
All this is to explain why, regardless of the scene, at the very least I carry lenses to cover the focal range spanning 20-200mm (full frame). For me that’s three lenses: the Sony/Zeiss 16-35 f4, the Sony/Zeiss 24-70 f4, and the Sony 70-200 f4. For practical reasons (to minimize bulk and weight and enhance my range and mobility), I might leave behind my specialty lenses (an ultra-telephoto, macro, and fast prime). But it’s a rare scene that, given enough time, I can’t find something for each of my three primary lenses.
Sunset Fire, Olmsted Point, Yosemite
Generally (and incorrectly) labeled a “wide angle location,” Yosemite has lots of spectacular views that can overwhelm the first time visitor. It’s natural to want to capture everything with one click, and these wide Yosemite images don’t disappoint. But with familiarity comes recognition and appreciation of details easily overlooked in the big picture. The longer you spend looking at Half Dome or El Capitan (or Yosemite Falls, or Bridalveil Fall, or …), the more work you can find for your telephoto lens.
At Olmsted Point, the obvious subject is Half Dome, but the composition possibilities here, from wide to tight, are endless.
In my October Eastern Sierra workshop I got my group to Olmsted Point with plenty of time for everyone to familiarize themselves with the scene. Moving around to check on the group, I reminded each person not to get so committed to one lens that they ignore the other options. (I find that merely carrying a variety of lenses often isn’t enough—using the full assortment is a habit to be cultivated.)
I don’t think there’s a better illustration of why it’s important carry a range of lenses than that evening’s shoot. I found myself switching not only between lenses, but between bodies, with my wide lenses on the full frame Sony a7R II, and my Tamron 150-600 on the Sony a6000 (with its 1.5 crop sensor) .
I started with the wider scene, because the composition had so many variables that required a lot more work to get just right. But once the color overhead started to fade, I switched to the a6000 and 150-600 team and zoomed tight on Half Dome, working through a number of long and ultra-long compositions.
Sunset hues, especially in the direction of the sun, usually outlast photographers. As the sky darkened beyond my eyes’ ability to register the color, all I needed to do was dial up the exposure to see that the color was still there. I finally stopped not because I’d run out of shots, but because the light was leaving and I don’t like the group scrambling down Olmsted’s granite in the dark.
In retrospect, I can’t help marvel at the difference between these two images of Half Dome captured just a few minutes apart, and the opportunities I’d have missed if I’d have lightened my bag.
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A gallery of Yosemite close-ups
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Is a tripod really necessary?
Posted on December 6, 2015
Sunset Fire, Olmsted Point, Yosemite
Sony a7R II
Sony/Zeiss 16-35 f4
1.3 seconds
F/11
ISO 100
If you’re content with derivative snaps of pretty scenes, a tripod may not be for you. But for those who agree that, rather than regurgitating a rough representation of the world as we know it, landscape photography should reveal deeper, less obvious natural truths—things like relationships between diverse elements, an intimate exploration of larger scenes, detail and pattern lost in the blur of motion—there is no substitute for a tripod.
The case against the tripod
Once upon a time, the tripod’s sole purpose was stability—preventing blur caused by camera shake during the exposure. And while stability remains important, clean high ISO and stabilized bodies and lenses make possible shooting hand-held in light we’d never dreamed of just a few years ago.
The anti-tripod argument says that tripods are expensive, add weight and bulk, are awkward to set up, get in people’s way, and slow the composition process. Given that the exposure compromises (higher ISO, larger than ideal aperture, longer shutter speed) forced by hand-holding are usually minor and more easily corrected today than what we faced with our film cameras, why bother with a tripod at all?
I’d argue that you never know when even a minor, hand-held compromise—such as shooting at ISO 400 instead of ISO 100, opening to f5.6 when f11 would have been better, or stretching your exposure duration out to 1/4 second and holding your breath—will be a deal-breaker for that law firm downtown who ordered a 10-foot print for their lobby. Why spend all this money on state-of-the art equipment only to compromise your image quality even just a little?
Nevertheless, I’ll (grudgingly) acknowledge that for many current landscape photographers, the convenience of tripod-free shooting outweighs these compromises—clean, printable images are possible without a tripod most of the time.
But….
Inconveniences notwithstanding, serious landscape photography is improved by a tripod. In fact, despite the advantages digital capture has brought to tripod-free shooting, digital photography has enhanced the tripod’s value to landscape photographers.
There’s a draft in here
The odds of the perfect landscape image happening on the first click are about the same as crafting a perfect poem, novel, or essay on the first pass. When we write something important, we don’t sit down and spin it out without stop or correction, we start with an idea, write a draft, review, rewrite, review, rewrite, until we’re satisfied.
A photograph should be no different—no matter how much you like the first click, it’s pretty unlikely that frame is so perfect that further scrutiny and adjustment won’t improve it further. Much like the drafts I create when I write, my workflow in the field is a click/review/adjust, click/review/adjust cycle that continues until I’m either satisfied with my image, or convinced there’s no image to be had. I can’t imagine doing this without a tripod.
To review a hand-held image, you must completely remove the camera from its shooting position (your eye) and extend it down and in front of you, essentially erasing your camera’s view of composition the way vigorous shaking erases and Etch A Sketch—fine if you’re done, but to fix problems and add improvements, you must return the camera to your eye and completely recreate the composition you just reviewed. Standing at a vista snapping a scene that’s been snapped a million times before? No big deal. But what about an image with layers of detail at varying distances, trying to include all of that rock on the left while without including any of that tree-branch on the right, all while trying to maintain front-to-back sharpness?
When I shot film (always on a tripod thank-you-very-much), my personal image reviews involved alternating between studying the scene and peering through the viewfinder. The most I could hope for was a good guess that I had everything right. Enter digital, with its instantaneous display, including a graph and flashing pixels that tell me if I messed up the exposure. Suddenly, I can critique the image itself, right on the spot.
With digital, composing on a tripod gives me the freedom to stand back and take time to scrutinize my creation. I can study the frame for balance, scan the borders for distractions, check the histogram to ensure proper exposure, magnify the LCD for sharpness and depth of field—doing all this comfortable in the knowledge that when I’m ready, the exact image I just critiqued is waiting right there atop my tripod, ready for my improvements. In other words, my adjustments are applied to an existing creation, rather than an approximate (fingers crossed) recreation.
Revisiting the writing analogy, hand-holding reminds me of the typewriter days, when a major revision required retyping everything I just wrote; using a tripod is more like a word-processor that allows me to edit the existing document.
For example
A trip to Olmsted Point in Yosemite has become a tradition for the final sunset of my Eastern Sierra Fall Color photo workshop. Olmsted Point offers a distant, less common view of Half Dome and an assortment of photogenic trees and boulders for the foreground.
On this year’s visit we parked and made the short hike to the “point” (more of a granite dome than an actual point) for the best view down Tenaya Canyon to Half Dome and beyond. I pointed out that the sky was setting up for something special; following my encouragement to anticipate the colorful sunset and find a foreground to complement the obvious background, the group quickly scattered.
I tried to stay fairly centrally located, eventually choosing a nearby triangle of glacial erratics (granite boulders carried by glaciers and deposited in place when the retreating glaciers melted) anchored by a weathered pine. With time to spare, I set about finding a composition. I decided vertical orientation would be the best way to exclude peripheral distractions, emphasize my primary subjects (rocks, tree, Half Dome), while including enough of the sky feature what had the potential to be dramatic color.
Working methodically, I started wide and gradually tightened, refining the focal length, focus point, and borders. I’m kind of obsessive about no distractions on the edge of my frame, and try as I might, it always seems that widening or tightening to eliminate one distraction introduces a new distraction over there.
In this case I was dealing with a couple of large boulders carrying too much visual weight to be on the edge of my frame, plus the leg of a nearby tripod, and an overhanging tree branch. I was able to tighten enough to eliminate these distractions without going so tight that I cut off the boulder on the right, or crowded Half Dome on the left. Of course, since I was on a tripod, each click was an improvement of the one that preceded it—in this case it took only about a half dozen images until I was satisfied.
The foreground was static, but the sky seemed to change with each second. While I had the general framework of my composition ready, as the color overhead intensified I decided I wanted a little more sky. Fortunately, by now I was so familiar with my composition that adjustments were easy. This image came as the color reached a crescendo, intensifying until the entire landscape throbbed with color.
My primary tripod is a Really Right Stuff TVC-24L with a RRS BH-55
My travel/hiking tripod is a Really Right Stuff TQC-14 with a RRS BH-30
Each of my cameras has a RRS L-plate
A gallery of tripod-crafted images
(All of my images were captured using a tripod, but my favorites tend to be the images that require the click/review/refine/repeat process that’s greatly enhanced by a tripod)
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Getting ahead of the shot
Posted on November 28, 2015
Dawn, Mono Lake and the Sierra Crest
Sony a7R II
Sony/Zeiss 16-35 f4
8 seconds
F/10
ISO 100
I hate arriving at a photo destination for the first time and having to immediately hit the ground running. Over the years I’ve come to appreciate the value of advance knowledge of landscape and light, and always try to factor in ample scouting time before getting down to serious shooting.
On the other hand, a prime reason people sign up for a photo workshop is to shortcut the scouting process, and for the most part this works pretty well. I (like any other experienced workshop leader) can share my knowledge of a location’s terrain and light to put my groups in the right place at the right time, and to provide insights into what’s in store and how they might want to approach it.
But sometimes there’s no substitute for firsthand exposure to a location before the good stuff happens. This is particularly true for sunrise spots, because the good shooting usually starts before it’s light enough to see the landscape. Unfortunately, a photo workshop’s tight schedule doesn’t always provide the luxury of exposing my groups to a location before it’s time to photograph it, but I do my best.
Mono Lake is a perfect example. The serpentine shoreline of South Tufa, the lake’s most photographed location, is a series of points and coves that offer lake views to the east, north, and west, depending on where you stand. Often nice at sunset, sunrise at South Tufa can be downright world class in any one of these compass directions. The best sunrise photography frequently cycles through (and sometimes overlaps) all three directions as the sunrise progresses. Overlaying South Tufa’s directional light are the vivid sunrise hues that can paint the sky in any direction at any time, and glassy reflections that double the visual overload.
After many years photographing South Tufa, I’ve established a fairly reliable sunrise workflow that helps me deal with these shifting factors. I usually start with tufa tower silhouettes facing east, into the early twilight glow in the east, then do a 180 to capture the magenta alpenglow on the Sierra crest in the west, and finally pivot northward as sidelight warms the tufa towers once the sun’s first rays skim the lake.
But just knowing the direction to point the camera is only part of the Mono Lake equation. In fact, with so many composition possibilities, South Tufa can overwhelm the first time visitor. Not only is there a lot going on here, on most mornings you need to contend with photographers that swarm the shore like the lake’s ubiquitous black flies.
Because of these difficulties, I make a point of getting my Eastern Sierra workshop group out to South Tufa for the sunset preceding the sunrise shoot. In my pre-shoot orientation, I strongly encourage my students to walk around before setting up their cameras, to identify compositions in each direction, and to envision the sunrise light.
It turns out, this year’s South Tufa sunset shoot was beneficial to me as well. With the lake level lower than I’ve ever seen it, the shoreline was virtually unrecognizable—many familiar lake features were now high and dry, and a number of new features had materialized. As alarming as it was to see the lake this low, the photographer in me couldn’t help but feel excited about the fresh compositions the new shoreline offered.
While showing the group around South Tufa’s various nooks and crannies, I spotted a stepping stone set of newly exposed tufa mounds on a north- and west-facing section. I pointed out to those still with me the way tufa could lead the eye through the bottom of the frame to the distant Sierra peaks, and made a mental bookmark of the spot. Sunset that night, with nice color a glassy reflection that’s more typical of sunrise than sunset, that everyone was a little dubious when I told them sunrise could be even better.
The next morning, all the conditions were in place for something special: a mix of clouds and sky, an opening on the eastern horizon to let the light through, calm winds to quiet the lake. Armed with knowledge from the night before, the group quickly dispersed to their pre-planned spots and I found myself mostly alone.
I’ve photographed Mono Lake so many times that I had no plans to shoot that morning, so I wandered around checking on everyone. As often happens when the photography is good (especially late in the workshop, when people have become pretty comfortable handling difficult light and extreme depth of field), I felt like my presence was more distraction than benefit, so I headed over to the spot I’d spied the previous evening (it had the added benefit of being pretty centrally located and well within earshot of my distributed students).
By the time I got there the show was well underway in the east and quickly moving west. It would have been easy to slip into panic-shooting mode and try to find something where things were good right now, but I’ve learned (for me at least) that it’s best to anticipate than react. Instead, because I’d already mentally worked this scene, I knew the composition I wanted and was ready for the color when it arrived.
The extra sixty seconds this bought me was enough to refine my composition, find the f-stop and focus point that would maximize sharpness throughout the scene, meter the scene and set my exposure, and orient my polarizer for the best balance between reflection and lakebed. It turns out that this anticipation was a difference-maker, as the vivid color peaked and faded in about 30 seconds.
Join my next Eastern Sierra Fall Color photo workshop
A Mono Lake Gallery
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I love you, goodbye…
Posted on November 18, 2015
Fire and Mist, Halemaumau Crater, Kilauea, Hawaii
Sony a7S
Sony/Zeiss 16-35 f4
10 seconds
F/4
ISO 3200
Last week I said goodbye to my Sony a7S. More than any camera I’ve owned, this is the camera that overcame photography’s physical boundaries that most frustrated me.
I’ve been interested in astronomy since I was ten, ten years longer than I’ve a been photographer. But until recently I’ve been thwarted in my attempts to fully convey the majesty of the night sky above a grand landscape.
What was missing was light. Or more accurately, the camera’s ability to capture light. Light is what enables cameras to “see,” and while there’s still a little light after the sun goes down, cameras struggle mightily to find a usable amount.
When faced with limited light, photographers’ solutions are limited, and each solution is a compromise. In no particular order, we can increase:
- Shutter speed: We can increase the time the light strikes the sensor. While we can usually keep our shutter open for as long as the battery lasts, the longer it’s open, the more motion we capture.
- Aperture (a ratio measure in f-stops): Larger apertures (the f-stop number shrinks as the aperture opens) allow more light, with a loss of depth of field. While the DOF loss is usually insignificant in most night photography scenes (because all subjects are usually at infinity), the laws of optics limit the size of of a lens’s aperture.
- ISO: We can increase the sensor’s sensitivity to light by increasing the ISO, but not without significant image quality degradation (noise).
Most night photography attempts bump into the limits of each solution before complete success is achieved. For me, the first barrier is usually the f-stop, which is soon maxed. With my f-stop maxed, I’m left with a dance between ISO and shutter speed as I attempt to balance acceptable amounts of motion and noise.
So why not just add more light? Duh. But, while adding light solves some problems, it introduces others. Anything bright enough to illuminate a large landscape (sunlight or moonlight) washes out the stars, and artificial local light (such as light painting or a flash) violates my own natural-light-only objective. Another option some resort to is image blending (one frame for the foreground, one for the sky), but that too violates my personal single-frame-only goal.
My first shot at the night photography conundrum came about ten years ago, when I started doing moonlight photography. I immediately found that the reflected sunlight cast by a full moon beautifully illuminated my landscapes, while preserving enough celestial darkness that the brighter, most recognizable constellations still shined through. But walking outside on a clear, moonless night far from city lights was all the reminder I needed that my favorite qualities of the night sky—the Milky Way and the the seemingly infinite quantity of stars—remained beyond my photographic reach.
To photograph a moonless sky brimming with stars, my next step was star trail photography—long exposures that accumulated enough light to reveal my terrestrial subjects at manageable ISO (not too much noise). Star trails have the added benefit of stretching stellar pinpoints into concentric arcs of light that beautifully depict Earth’s rotation.
While both enjoyable and beautiful, moonlight and star trail photography were not completely satisfying. But the laws of physics dictated that lenses weren’t going to get any faster, and Earth wasn’t going to rotate any slower, so the solution would need to be in sensor efficiency.
Unfortunately, camera manufactures remained resolute in their belief that megapixels sold cameras. So as sensor technology evolved, and photographers saw slow but steady high ISO improvement, we were force-fed a mind-boggling increase in megapixel count.
But cramming more megapixels onto a 35mm sensor requires: 1) smaller photosites that are less efficient at capturing light, and 2) more tightly packed photosites that increase (noise inducing) heat.
The megapixel race changed overnight when Sony, in a risky, game-changing move, decided to offer a high-end, full-frame camera with “only” a 12 megapixel sensor. What were they thinking!?
Acknowledging what serious photographers have known for years, that 12 megapixels is enough for most uses (just 12 years ago, pros paid $8,000 for a Canon 1Ds with only 11 megapixels), Sony bucked the megapixel trend to embrace the benefits of fewer, larger, less densely packed photosites. The result was a light-sucking monster that can see in the dark: the Sony a7S.
Since purchasing my a7S less than a year ago, I’m able to photograph the dark night sky above the landscapes I love. Additionally, I found that its fast shutter lag (since matched by the a7R II) made the a7S ideal for lightning photography. It was love at first click.
And now it’s gone. Last month Sony released the a7S II, and given my satisfaction with the upgrade from the a7R to the a7R II, it was only a matter of time before I upgraded to the a7S II. I’m happy to say that I found a good home for my a7S and in fact may even get to visit it in future workshops.
I haven’t had a chance to use the a7S II, but I assure you it won’t be long, and you’ll be the first to know.
About this image
The image at the top of this post was captured in September (2015) during my Hawaii Big Island Volcanos and Waterfalls photo workshop. Each time I visit here I hold my breath until I see what the sky is doing. I’ve encountered everything from completely cloudless to pea soup fog. I’ve come to hope for a mix of clouds and sky—enough sky for the Milky Way to shine through clearly, but enough clouds to reflect the orange light of the churning volcano.
On this evening we got a combination I hadn’t seen before—clear sky overhead, a few low clouds, and a heavy mist hanging in the caldera. Not only did the mist frame the scene with a translucent orange glow, it subdued the volcano’s fire enough for me to use a long exposure to bring out the Milky Way without blowing my highlights.
We’ll do it again in my next Hawaii Volcanos and Waterfalls workshop
An a7S homage
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On the rocks
Posted on November 14, 2015
Reflection On the Rocks, El Capitan and the Merced River, Yosemite
Sony a7R II
Sony/Zeiss 24-70 f4
25 seconds
F/11
ISO 100
Yosemite is known for its waterfalls, but I gotta say, I think I’m happiest photographing Yosemite when the falls are dry. Not that I don’t love Yosemite’s waterfalls (I do!), but when the falls are dry, the Merced River has slowed to a reflective crawl that paints reflections everywhere. And as an added bonus, when the falls dry up, so do the crowds.
Last month I spent a day guiding a couple from Sweden through Yosemite when the Merced River was at its drought-starved nadir. I’d been looking forward to this day for a while, but two days earlier I’d cracked ribs and my collarbone in a cycling accident—I could walk, I could talk, but I couldn’t do both, and simply getting in and out of the car was an achievement. The seatbelt? Torture. So my camera and tripod stayed in the car all day.
But when we pulled up to Valley View for sunset, I just couldn’t resist the mix of light, clouds, sky, and reflection. By the time I extracted my camera and tripod and made my way down to the river (no more than 20 feet from the car), the sun was about done with El Capitan. There were a few hot spots in the clouds, but my Singh-Ray two-stop hard GND held back the highlights enough to enable enough exposure to bring out the shadows. The resulting 25 second exposure added a gauzy texture to the reflection.
The trickiest thing about photographing a reflection with embedded features is achieving depth of field throughout. Though it seems counter-intuitive, the focus point for a reflection is the focus point of the reflective subject, not the reflective surface. In this case I wasn’t too worried about the reflection because I knew the long exposure would soften it anyway. But I did want to be sharp from embedded rocks all the way back to El Capitan. A quick check of my hyperfocal app told me that at f11 and 28mm, focusing on the closest rock (about ten feet away), would ensure sharpness all the way to infinity.
A public service announcement
I don’t always wear a helmet when I bike. I’m fortunate to live adjacent to a bike trail that can keep me off city streets for virtually all of my bike trips, so (my rationalization went), why mess with a helmet?
My accident last month happened on the bike trail, with no cars in sight, when I clipped a portable barricade with my handlebar and my bike went right while I continued forward. In addition to cracked ribs and collarbone, some nasty road-rash, and a torn-up shirt, my helmet was totaled. I shudder to think what would have happened had I decided not to wear a helmet that day (about a 50/50 chance), and will never, ever ride a bike again without one. I encourage you to make the same promise to yourself.
I return you now to your regular programming.
A gallery of Yosemite reflections
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Cool stuff on a cold night
Posted on November 9, 2015
Bristlecone Night, White Mountains, California
Sony a7S
Rokinon 24mm f1.4
15 seconds
F/2
ISO 6400
About a month ago I huddled with my Eastern Sierra workshop group on a mountainside in the White Mountains (east of Bishop). We were waiting for the stars to come out, but after driving over an hour on a road that would test anyone’s motion sickness resistance, hiking a steep half mile in the thin air above 10,000 feet, and waiting out a couple of rain showers, it looked like clouds might thwart our night photography plans. Since we’d already done all the hard work, I reminded everyone that mountain weather is is fickle and suggested that we’d wait just a bit. Bolstered by sandwiches, a hardy spirit, and good humor, wait we did.
I’ve done this long enough to know that the fun a group has is proportional to the discomfort they’re experiencing. Beneath the darkening sky we clicked between sandwich bites, cursing the chill and finding no end of things to laugh about. Everyone was pretty excited by their camera’s ability to suck detail from apparent darkness, and by the smoothing effect the long exposures had on the shifting clouds. Stars or not, the night was already a success.
To maintain night vision and avoid interfering with exposures, flashlights were forbidden. Instead we used our cellphone screens to illuminate our camera controls. It was so cold that gloves were a necessity, but they had to come off for even the most simple camera adjustment. Despite the discomfort, there were no complaints. About the time it became so dark that we could only recognize each other by voice, a few twinkling pinholes burned through the black ceiling. Multiplying with each minute, the stars slowly congealed into a fuzzy stripe that finally revealed itself to be the Milky Way—we were in business.
Some in the group had never seen the Milky Way; others hadn’t seen it since childhood. Those with night photography experience went right to work, while Don Smith and I helped the others get going. For most, night photography minus moonlight is an exercise in patience: even basic composition involves a fair amount of guesswork, and finding focus is an act of faith. Working with the others in the group, I was especially thankful for my Sony a7S and focus-peaking, which made both composition and focus a snap.
To isolate the bristlecone against the sky and align it with the Milky Way, I scrambled in the dark (remember, no flashlights) across loose rock until I was about 100 feet north of the tree. Balanced on a 30 degree slope, I had to plant my tripod firmly and rely on feel to ensure that it was secure.
Spending time with this image helps me appreciate a photograph’s power to give perspective to our place in the natural world. The bristlecone pine anchoring the frame was a seedling just about the time the finishing touches were being put Stonehenge. That sounds pretty old, until you pause to consider that it’s illuminated by light from the Milky Way, which began its journey to my sensor about 20,000 years before this tree sprouted. And accenting the frame are a pair of meteors, vestigial fragments of our solar system’s formation about 4 1/2 billion years ago. Pretty cool.
Join my next Eastern Sierra photo workshop
Learn more about starlight photography
A night sky gallery
Click an image for a closer look, and a slide show. Refresh the screen to reorder the display.
Big moon
Posted on November 3, 2015
Big Moon, Yosemite
Sony a6000
Tamron 150-600 (Canon-mount with Metabones IV adapter)
1/25 second
F/8
ISO 400
A few years ago, Don Smith and I were browsing the gallery of a famous landscape photographer when we came across a striking image of a tree silhouetted against a huge moon. Because the image was clearly a composite—a tree picture transposed atop a picture of a huge moon—we were initially shocked, but soon simply amused by the photographer’s dramatic, “blood pulsing” fiction of his “capture.” To this day, merely quoting a few words from that description will incite Don and me to fits of laughter. (Several years and gallery visits later, we noticed that the hyperbolic description had been removed, and actually got a salesperson at the gallery to acknowledge that the image was indeed a composite.) Yet, amusing as it is, that image turned out to be the seed that grew into a desire to capture something similar, legitimately.
Photographing a large moon is pretty simple—the longer the focal length, the bigger the moon. You can do it from your backyard. The difficulty comes when you want to include a terrestrial object with the moon (without digital shenanigans). Doing so requires an Earth-bound subject at great distance (ideally, a mile or more for the longest focal lengths), elevated against the sky. I’m always on the lookout for potential subjects for such a moonrise, and immediately log each discovery into my mental database.
But even with a subject, there’s the matter of determining the best vantage point, and figuring out when (to the minute, if possible) the moon and subject will align. If you follow my blog at all, you know how hard I work make this happen. Today there are apps that will get you pretty close (PhotoPills and Photographer’s Ephemeris to name the two I’ve used and recommend). But my own fairly convoluted (to others—I’ve been doing it so long that it’s second nature) technique predates these apps, and I find it more precise. Convoluted? At the risk of losing my audience, I’ll just say that it involves my iPhone, my computer, a moonrise/moonset app (Focalware), topographic mapping software (National Geographic Topo!), a scientific calculator app (HP 11c from RLM Tools), and a little trigonometry.
Informed by these resources, I rarely take a trip without knowing the moon’s phase, the best place to photograph it, and exactly when to be there. Often these trips are specifically timed for the moon.
So. Given the pride I take in moonrise/set photography, and my long-time desire to isolate a distant tree against a large moon, I’d love to tell you that I spied this tree teetering on Yosemite Valley’s rim near Dewey Point, plotted the place to photograph it and when to be there, and was waiting with my camera framed and focused when the moon slid into view. Uh, not so much.
Instead, on the day before my Yosemite Autumn Moon photo workshop, I was working with a couple who had hired me to show them Yosemite Valley for a day. After a nice, productive day we were wrapping up with sunset at Valley View, photographing reflections and warm light on El Capitan. My mobility severely limited by a cracked rib sustained in a bicycle accident a week earlier, I was quite content to enjoy the view, leaving my camera in the car.
The sunlight on El Capitan had faded and the shadows were deepening fast when my mind drifted to the moon. I knew it was about 60 percent full that day, and that it had risen (above a flat horizon) a couple of hours earlier, which meant by now it might be close to cresting Yosemite Valley’s vertical south wall. With zero expectations, I casually glanced upward, in the general direction of Dewey Point, and did an actual double-take when I saw an arc of white just cresting the ridge.
I immediately alerted my clients and “rushed” (remember, cracked rib) to the car for my gear. Wanting as much magnification as possible, I reached for my big tripod, 150-600 lens, and 1.5-crop Sony a6000 camera. In the time it had taken to set up and click a couple of quick shots, the moon had risen almost all the way as viewed from my elevated parking area vantage point, so I rushed down to the river to buy a few more seconds of the moon partially behind the ridge (moving down and closer steepened the angle just enough to make difference). From my new vantage point the moon was by itself against the sky, but I spied a solitary evergreen a short distance south of where the moon was balanced and I rushed (there’s that word again, but I have no memory of feeling any pain this time) upstream until the tree and moon converged and quickly zoomed, composed, focused, and clicked.
The processing of this image was pretty straightforward—a slight cooling of the color temperature and a moderate crop for framing was all it needed. While my tale of this evening is more about broken bones than pulsing blood, I’m proud to say that no ethics were harmed in the making of this image.
A big moon gallery (telephoto moon shots)
Click an image for a closer look, and a slide show. Refresh the screen to reorder the display.
Reflection season
Posted on October 26, 2015
Reflection on the Rocks, El Capitan, Yosemite
Sony a7R II
Sony/Zeiss 24-70 f4
1/40 second
F/11
ISO 400
It’s reflection season in Yosemite, that time of year when the falls are dry and the Merced River slows to a glassy crawl. Plugging in the golds and reds of autumn makes this my favorite time for creative photography in Yosemite, and explains the volume of Yosemite autumn images in my portfolio.
It also explains why I’ve been to Yosemite three times this month. The month’s first visit, with my Eastern Sierra workshop group, we photographed high Sierra reflections and a Half Dome sunset from Olmsted Point—we’d had lots yellow and orange aspen in the canyons above Bishop and Lee Vining, but it was a little early for Yosemite color. The next two trips were primarily focused on Yosemite Valley, ground-zero for autumn reflections. On both Yosemite Valley trips, the Merced River, always low and slow in autumn, was down far enough that I saw places I could have rock-hopped from one side to the other without getting wet.
Today’s image, from about a week and a half ago, almost didn’t happen. I’d been looking forward to this visit (to guide a couple from Sweden) for several months, but a bike accident two days earlier had cracked a rib, torn a muscle in my shoulder, removed copious amounts of skin from my arm, and pretty much prevented me from doing anything requiring movement (or breathing, for that matter).
When I left home that morning I knew I was going to be sore, but I was actually a little surprised by just how uncomfortable I was. Somehow, bolstered by liberal quantities of ibuprofen, I managed to survive the day, quite content to limit my activity to driving, narrating, and and answering questions. Even getting in and out of the car was an ordeal, and photography seemed out of the question. But when we pulled into the parking lot at Valley View for the day’s final stop, the reflection drew me to the rocks like the Sirens of Greek mythology.
Rather than grab my camera bag and sling it over my shoulder as I normally would (the mere thought makes me flinch), I gingerly extracted my tripod, camera, and 16-35 lens, and assembled them them at my car’s tailgate. Given my level of pain and the precarious footing on the rocks by the river, I knew wouldn’t be able to move around as much as I’m accustomed to (or at all), so scanned the route and I very carefully selected my destination before departing on the 20 foot journey. In a perfect world I’d have been able to shuffle slowly, but the route to the river was over a disorganized jumble of granite rocks that made each step feel like a knife had been thrust into my ribcage.
At the river I found a flat granite platform just large enough for both my feet, and a solid rock for each tripod leg. Using the tripod for support, I found that if I moved slowly enough, I could keep the pain to a manageable minimum. Nevertheless, I was even more deliberate than I usually am, strategizing and executing each movement. Soon I developed a workflow that allowed me to do pretty much all I needed to do by only moving my arms from the elbow down.
There were a lot of moving parts to consider as I crafted this image. Since the focus point of a reflection is the focus point of the reflective subject, not the reflective surface, I needed DOF that went from the nearby rocks, just a few feet away, all the way out to El Capitan at infinity. But I couldn’t make DOF decisions until I composed and decided on a focal length. And as I tried to compose, I found that even the slight adjustment in focal length and framing introduced new problems—rocks cut off or jutting in from the side, or even worse, introducing bright sky at the top of the frame.
At one point I thought I finally had it, only to realize that the top rock of the foreground triangle intersected El Capitan. Moving my tripod a few inches to the left solved that problem, but also made it impossible to use my viewfinder without repositioning myself. Rather than destabilize my precarious perch, I decided to forego the viewfinder in favor of the LCD (thank you Sony for the articulating viewfinder).
With a little work I finally found a composition that achieved my framing objectives: balanced foreground, clean borders, and no sky. Now for my exposure variables. I estimated that foreground rocks were about 10 feet away—according to my hyperfocal app, at 40mm and f11, the hyperfocal distance was a little less than 16 feet. I picked a rock about that distance and carefully focused there, thus ensuring acceptable sharpness from about 8 feet to infinity. I decided to go with ISO 400 to mitigate the light breeze that moved the leaves just a little.
The shadows were quite dark, while the cloud reflections contained some hot spots, but I was confident that my Sony a7R II could handle the dynamic range if I was careful. Watching my histogram, I increased my shutter speed until the highlights were right up to the point of clipping.
Finally ready, I realized that my remote cable was in the car. Since there was no way I was going to put myself through an extra roundtrip, I engaged my camera’s 2-second timer and clicked. After reviewing the image on my viewfinder I made a couple of small adjustments and clicked again. I repeated this click/review/click cycle a couple more times, until I was satisfied that I’d achieved my vision.
Photograph reflections like this in my next Yosemite Autumn Moon photo workshop
A gallery of reflections
Click an image for a closer look, and a slide show. Refresh the screen to reorder the display.
Eloquent Images by Gary Hart 