The best time of day
Posted on October 20, 2015
New Day, Sunrise Sunstar, Mono Lake
Sony a7R II
Sony/Zeiss 16-35 f4
1/4 second
F/20
ISO 125
Imagine a world that’s so quiet you can hear nature’s every stirring, a place where each breath holds a pristine bouquet of subtle fragrances, and the sky is a continuously shifting kaleidoscope of indigo, blue, yellow, orange, and red. In case you haven’t figured it out, I’m describing the very world we live in, before the sun’s light and warmth draw out the dirty, noisy, oblivious masses.
As a nature photographer, I’m quite familiar with this world. And while I can’t say that I relish a 4:30 a.m. alarm, I’ve come to terms with its darkness, frigid temps, and sleep depravity. I also understand why most people despise early wake-ups, because that used to describe me. We’ve been conditioned by a lifetime of rising for school and work and completely bypassing early morning’s benefits as we rush to obligations, appointments, and responsibilities that are almost invariably less pleasant than staying in bed.
But if you haven’t learned to appreciate the joy of the pre-sunrise world, let me help you reset your bias with a few tips for making early mornings happen:
- For the full experience, plan to be at your spot at least 45 minutes before the “official” (flat horizon at that latitude and longitude) sunrise for that location. The eastern horizon will already be brightening noticeably by then, but the stars will be visible. (This is for mid-latitude locations—twilight starts earlier in the high latitudes, later in the low latitudes.)
- Get organized before you go to bed. Lay your clothes out, assemble your gear, make sure everything’s charged, and prime the coffee maker. You do all this so you can…
- Set your alarm for the absolute minimum time necessary to get ready. Your resolve will be much stronger at bedtime than when it goes off—the less time you have to delay, less the chance that you’ll lose your resolve to the cozy warmth of your bed. This also gives you the maximum amount of sleep possible. And don’t forget, one of the best things about being up when no one else is up and it’s dark is that it really doesn’t matter how you look (so you don’t really need to spend a lot of time on personal hygiene).
- Under no circumstances use the snooze button on your alarm. Rising early is like ripping off a Band-Aid—the sooner you get it over with, the happier you’ll be; the longer you drag it out, the harder it is. Trust me.
The weather report called for clear skies and no chance of rain this morning. But the lightning was already firing when we walked out to Grand Canyon’s Bright Angel Point in the dark, and it was still going when we finally ran out of compositions over two hours later.
- Don’t be discouraged by the conditions at bedtime or wake-up. Some of my most memorable sunrises have happened on mornings I’d have skipped if I’d relied solely on weather reports, or on the way things look when I peek out the window after the alarm. Photography is just one of the benefits of being out before the sun. Even when the photography conditions don’t materialize as hoped, I rarely regret those mornings when I dragged myself out of bed to sit in the cold and dark. And for some reason, the most special stuff seems happen when I go out with the lowest expectations, driven solely by the attitude that I’m just going to enjoy this special time of day.
For example (the above image)
Getting to this remote location on Mono Lake’s north shore is always an adventure; getting there early enough before the sun can feel downright crazy. We depart an hour-and-a-half before sunrise, navigate a bone-jarring maze of unpaved roads that worsen with each mile, and drive until we can drive no further. From there the lake is still a half mile walk. Most of the hike is in volcanic sand, but the last couple hundred yards are through shoe-sucking mud; with no trail or light, it’s no wonder I never end up at the same spot from one year to the next.
Earlier this month my Eastern Sierra workshop group made the annual pilgrimage out here for our final sunrise. We’d been incredibly blessed with great conditions throughout the workshop—great sunrise and sunset color, nice clouds, and glassy reflections at Mono Lake’s South Tufa the day before (always a highlight when it happens). Our luck held as we got all three—color, clouds, and reflection—for this final sunrise.
I started shooting in near darkness, with wide, east-facing compositions that included a thin slice of moon flanked by Venus, Jupiter, and Mars. My focus turned more south and west as the sun started to rise and paint the clouds with color. Soon the mountains in the west were bathed with warm light and I turned my attention there. The wind stayed calm, so every direction I shot, I was able to double the beauty with a reflection.
Watching the shadow slide down the mountains, I was able to anticipate the sun’s arrival at my position and turn back to the east just in time to make my sunstar composition. I used a trio of nearby rocks to anchor my foreground, removed my polarizer (I wanted a maximum reflection and didn’t want to worry about differential polarization at my wide focal length), extracted my 3-stop reverse graduated neutral density filter (Singh-Ray), and stopped down to f-20 to enhance the sunstar effect.
When the sun appeared I clicked a half-dozen or so images, each with a little bit brighter sunstar. I chose this one because it was a good balance between brilliant sunstar without washing out too much of the sky around it. Thanks to my GND and the ridiculous dynamic range of my a7R II, I got this scene with a single click. In Photoshop I dodged the top 2/3 of the sky and burned the water to disguise the GND effect, but did very little else.
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The joys of sunrise
Grad School
Posted on October 12, 2015
Sunset, Hopi Point, Grand Canyon
Sony a7R II
Sony/Zeiss 24-70 f4
2.5 seconds
F/18
Breakthrough 3-stop hard GND
Since the first photon struck a photographic plate, photographers have struggled to stuff the broad range of light their eyes see, into the relatively narrow range their camera can capture. When we shot film, the time waiting for the film to return from the lab was filled with self-doubt and second guessing, punctuated by ecstasy or despair. Then came digital capture, with its immediate image review, histograms, and a host of processing tricks that made one-click exposure-angst a thing of the past—we still had to be careful, but there was a safety net.
Despite digital’s advantages and advances, photographers are still faced with a world illuminated by a much greater range of light than our cameras can handle. Of course this creates opportunities to use our cameras’ limited dynamic range creatively, for example to create a silhouette or a high-key background that helps our subject stand out, but more often than not we’re looking for ways to squeeze all of a scene’s dynamic range into a single frame.
HDR software and layer masks are great post-capture solutions, but I prefer minimizing processing time by getting as much right as possible at capture and am never far from my graduated neutral density (GND) filters. Portable, simple, and effective, I can’t imagine photography without GNDs. And rather than being rendered irrelevant by digital’s ever-improving dynamic range and advanced blending techniques, digital processing enhances GND use.
GNDs explained
A standard (not graduated) neutral density (ND) filter is a uniform, neutral (doesn’t affect color) piece of glass (usually) that darkens a scene (the “density” part) without affecting the scene’s color (the “neutral” part). Its prime purpose is to slow shutter speed, usually to blur motion. While an ND (photographers usually shorten the name by just pronouncing its initials) filter can be rectangular, most are circular, with threads that screw onto the front of a lens. The amount of darkness an ND filter adds is measured in stops of light.
A graduated neutral density filter is half dark, with its density (dark) part on top and the bottom half completely transparent (alters nothing). Like its ND filter cousin, a GND filter’s density is measured in stops. The “graduated” part of the name refers to the transition between the dark and clear halves of the filter.
Despite their similar names, a graduated ND serves an entirely different purpose than a neutral density filter. Rather than a tool for increasing shutter speed, a GND is used to reduce contrast in opposite halves of a scene, usually by darkening a bright sky enough to pull detail from a shaded foreground.
Most GNDs are glass or (more commonly) acrylic rectangles that you move up and down in front of the lens until it’s situated on the best place to disguise the transition. While you can purchase a circular GND that screws onto your lens, a circular GND is nearly worthless because it forces you to place the horizon transition zone in the center of your frame. In other words, don’t buy any GND that’s not rectangular.
It might be natural to assume that glass GNDs are better than plastic, but that hasn’t been my experience: Quality acrylic (sometimes called optical acrylic or optical resin) can be more visually pure than glass. And while glass doesn’t scratch as easily as acrylic, it’s heavier and breaks more easily if stressed or dropped.
GNDs come in three primary flavors that describe their all-important transition from light to dark—hard, soft, and reverse—each with its own purpose, advantages, and disadvantages:
Hard GND: Most of the filter’s dark half is its maximum darkness, with a very abrupt transition across the middle separating maximum darkness and completely clear. With this abrupt transition, a hard GND will darken a greater percentage of the upper half of your scene (usually the sky). The disadvantage of this abrupt (“hard”) transition is that the transition is more difficult to hide. A hard GND is most effective when there’s a distinct break between the bright sky and dark foreground, such as at the beach or flat landscape. In this image, a 3-stop hard GND allowed me to reveal shadow detail beneath a bright Grand Canyon sky. The hard transition blended easily into the flat horizon.
Reverse GND: A reverse GND’s darkest region is just above the center, with a hard transition to clear below, and a gradual transition lighter above. While the dark portion gradually lightens toward the top of the filter, it never becomes completely clear. A reverse GND is best for sunrises and sunsets, when the brightest part of the sky is directly on the horizon. In this Mono Lake sunrise image, a 3-stop reverse GND put the darkest part of the filter on the horizon, right where I needed it, without darkening the sky too much.
Soft GND: A soft transition GND only delivers its maximum density (darkness) near the top of the scene, and transitions very gradually to a completely clear bottom half. While this gradual transition makes a soft GND less effective for most of the scene, its subtle effect is much easier to disguise. A soft GND is best suited when there’s no an obvious place to hide the transition, such as a scene with an uneven horizon line. Above, a 3-stop soft GND held back just enough of the Yosemite sky to prevent the beautiful sunset pastels from washing out. The gradual transition blended smoothly into the uneven horizon beneath Half Dome.
Buying a GND
As I said earlier, while you can purchase a circular GND that screws onto your lens, these are pretty much useless, so my comments assume you’re using a rectangular GND. And I’m going to give you my own GND preferences—if you’re happy doing things differently, more power to you.
Hand-hold vs. filter holder
Given the large combination of options (size, density, transition), buying your first GND can be somewhat daunting. And size really does matter. But before you commit to a size, you need to decide whether you want to insert your GNDs into a filter holder that attaches to your lens, or simply hand-hold your GNDs.
The advantage to using a holder is that it frees a hand, which can occasionally be handy but is rarely something I can’t work around. And if you think you might be using a GND without a tripod (shame on you), you must use a holder and can skip the next paragraph.
At the risk of offending those photographers who use a holder, let me say that I find using a holder for my GNDs far more trouble than it’s worth: a holder can cause vignetting; a holder doesn’t play well with other things mounted to the lens, such as a lens hood (which I don’t use either) or polarizer; a holder makes it difficult to impossible to move the GND during exposure (more on this later); extracting (not to mention locating in my bag!) and attaching a holder is just one more step before I can start shooting; a holder only handles one width filter, so if you decide you never want to hand-hold, your holder choice locks in the filter size you’ll be purchasing. (If you hand-hold your filters, you can purchase a variety of filter sizes to suit various lens-opening widths.)
GND size
Holder or not, the filter you purchase must be wide enough to cover the front of your lens. I used to automatically purchase a larger size (100mm x 150mm, or about 4″ x 6″) believing that it would be easier to hand-hold without getting fingers in the frame, but I’ve slowly transitioned to a smaller size (66mm x 100mm, or about 2.6″ x 4″), keeping a couple of 4×6 filters for my largest lenses.
I prefer the smaller size not just because they’re cheaper, but because I found the bigger filter’s transition from dark to clear spans an area that’s too large to be completely effective on most of my lenses—to get maximum density with a large filter, I need to pull the transition zone down much farther into the darker part of my scene than I want to. This is especially a problem for the large soft transition and reverse GNDs.
Which GNDs to purchase
Because I don’t think one GND will give you enough flexibility for every situation, I recommend at least two. If you’re only getting two, a 2-stop hard and a 3-stop soft should handle most of your GND needs, albeit with somewhat limited flexibility. But because I prefer flexibility, and GNDs are small and light, in addition to the 2-hard and 3-soft filters, I also have a 3-stop hard and a 3-stop reverse.
I know photographers who carry far more GNDs than I do, and certainly the more filters to choose between, the more flexibility you’ll have. I try to balance flexibility with convenience, and too many GNDs can be difficult to carry and organize—four to six GNDs is my sweet spot on the flexibility/convenience continuum.
A big part of flexibility for me is the ability to carry my filters in small slotted, padded filter pouch that attaches to my tripod. With my GND filters always within reach, I’m much more likely to use them. If I care any more than six, not only do they start getting disorganized, I have less room in the pouch for spare batteries, a lens cloth, and the lens cap for my current lens.
Which brand to purchase
You don’t need to purchase the most expensive filters, but if you’ve invested in quality lenses, you’ll defeat their value by putting a cheap filter in front of them—in other words, price shouldn’t be an important factor in your brand choice (it’s better to buy one or two good filters than four or five cheap filters). Poor quality filters scratch and break easily, are often imperfectly calibrated (may be darker or lighter than advertised), and worst of all, are often not truly neutral (add a color cast).
There are two quality GND brands that I can recommend (there may be more, but I have no direct experience with them): Singh-Ray and Lee. Because of their quality, service, and variety, I’ve always used Singh-Ray (without having specific numbers, I’d guess that Singh-Ray is the most popular GND brand among pros). The only other brand with which I’ve had direct experience is Cokin, which I can’ t recommend because they add an unnatural color cast (they’re not truly neutral).
Using a GND
A typical GND scene is a landscape with a broad tonal range, from bright sky to dark foreground, that exceeds your camera’s ability to capture. While this is often addressable in processing, the more manageable you can make the scene’s dynamic range at capture, the more flexibility you’ll have when processing.
Choosing the right filter for the scene
Effective GND use starts with using the correct filter (or filters). Hard? Soft? Reverse? And how many stops? Your goal is always to defeat the scene’s dynamic range with minimal evidence a filter was used. Too much density, not enough density, improperly placed transition will be ineffective and/or betray the filter’s use.
Stacking a 3-stop reverse and 2-stop hard GND darkened the bright sky enough for me to bring out foreground detail. In post-processing I dodged (brightened) the darker parts of the sky a bit.
When shooting toward the sun, I prefer a hard or reverse GND with as much density as I can get away with. A hard-transition filter’s effect is much more pronounced than a soft-transition’s because a greater percentage of the filter is maximum density (a smaller transition zone), but its abrupt transition is also much harder to disguise in the scene.
A hard GND is especially effective for a scene with a flat horizon that spans the frame, such as the ocean or the rim of Grand Canyon. A darker, low-detail region spanning the frame between a bright sky and shaded foreground, such as a line of trees at the base of a mountain, is also a good place to hide a hard GND’s transition.
In the most extreme light conditions, for example when the sun is on the horizon and I want to pull lots of detail from the foreground shadows, I’ll stack two GNDs (pancake, one filter in front of the other). For example, combining a 2-hard and 3-reverse GND gives me up to 5 stops of density spread fairly evenly across the top half of the frame. Every scene is different, so experiment.
A 3-stop soft GND allowed me to capture detail in the trees without washing out the blue in the sky. Its gradual transition was subtle enough to be completely imperceptible.
A soft GND is easier to disguise when there’s no obvious place to hide the transition. I usually use a soft GND when I want to hold back the sky opposite the sun (e.g., the eastern horizon at sunset) enough to prevent sunset/sunrise color from washing out. For example, in Yosemite Valley, where both El Capitan and Half Dome jut into the brightest part of the sky, a hard-transition filter darkens them right along with the sky, while a soft-transition filter’s subtle transition blends much better.
Disguising your GND use
The better you are at disguising your GND use, the more effective your GND will be. Here are some common problems that betray a GND’s use:
Visible dark/light transition: Disguising the transition between the dark top and clear bottom of the filter is an art that improves with practice. Getting it right starts by choosing the right filter for the scene.
The band of trees enabled me to hide the transition of the 2-stop hard GND that held back the brilliant sunlight on El Capitan’s granite.
Most visible transitions are caused by a hard filter with too much density for the scene, and or misplacement of the GND transition. A soft GND, while usually not strong enough in extreme dynamic range conditions, is much easier to disguise.
If extreme dynamic range demands a hard or reverse GND, you need to train your eye to identify the best place for the transition. Placing the transition directly upon a flat, uniform horizon is usually best. When I don’t have a flat horizon, I look for an area of uniform darkness that spans the frame, such as a line of trees at the base of a mountain.
Often I can fix a visible transition by dodging/burning in post-processing. And some scenes just aren’t suited for a GND, in which case you’ll need to blend multiple exposures, look for a creative alternative like a silhouette, or simply move on to a different scene.
Too much density (a sky that’s too dark): Too much density causes the sky to appear too dark for the foreground. Often the problem is as simple as a sky that’s unnaturally dark, but sometimes its more subtle. I see this most frequently in reflections, when the reflection is brighter than the reflective subject—since that’s impossible, it’s a dead giveaway that a GND (and/or poor processing) was used.
Here’s one big advantage of GND use in the digital age—correcting a too much density problem can be as simple as dodging the too-dark sky and burning the too-bright foreground. The less extreme the difference, the easier it will be to correct, so an easy processing solution isn’t an excuse to be sloppy with your GND selection.
Vignetting from the filter holder: When the lens’s angle of view is too wide for the holder, vignetting (darkening on the edges) will be visible. While increasing your focal length will eventually eliminate the vignetting, that renders the lens unusable with a GND at its wider focal lengths. The better solution is to get a wider holder (and the filters to go with it). Better still, start by purchasing a holder/filter ensemble that will handle your widest lens and its widest focal length without vignetting. Or best—toss the holder and hand-hold your filters.
Visible fingertips: As someone who hand-holds every time, I have a vast assortment of images of my fingertips enjoying beautiful landscapes. Fortunately, this only happens when I’m sloppy, do-overs are no problems, and keeping your fingers out of the frame is easy if you’re careful. With the larger filters it’s usually pretty easy to simply pinch a corner that’s outside the frame.
The smaller filters I prefer often don’t have enough real estate outside the lens’s field of view, requiring a different technique. Instead of pinching a corner, I hold the smaller filters on the outside, by their edges with my thumb and middle or index finger (one on each vertical side), so my fingertips never touch the front or back of the filter. (When someone asks how much three inches is, you hold your fingers three inches apart—now, just slip a filter between those fingers and you’re ready to go.) Holding the filter like this, the rest of my hand is out of the way, either above or below the filter. It’s actually pretty simple, but I suggest practicing at home first.
Metering
In my film days (when exposure failure was not an option), when a GND was called for, I carefully spot-metered first on the highlights and and again on the shadows—the difference between the two gave me the scene’s dynamic range in stops. With this information, I knew how much light to give my shadows, and how many stops to subtract with a GND (but I still bracketed to hedge my bet).
Then came digital with its post-capture histogram that enabled me to streamline my metering—I soon found myself (after setting my ISO and f-stop) spot-metering once on the shadows, dialing the shutter speed to a value that ensured sufficient foreground light, and selecting the least extreme GND necessary to subdue the highlights. After my first shutter click, I’d check the histogram and adjust the shadows and/or GND as needed. What could be simpler?
I thought you’d never ask….
Since switching to mirrorless, I pull out the GND I think the scene calls for and with my eye on my pre-capture histogram, dial up the shutter speed until the highlights start to clip, then click. Reviewing the post-capture histogram, I determine what, if any, adjustments are needed—for example, if my shadows are still too dark, I might pull out a stronger GND and add more light. (This approach also works with a DSLR that displays the histogram in live-view mode.)
GNDs with a polarizer
I get asked so much if it’s okay to use a GND with a polarizer so much that I’ve created a whole section for my answer:
Yes.
Technique
Proper placement of the GND transition happens through the viewfinder (or live-view LCD). Compose the scene, place your
In this Mono Lake sunrise image, the brightest part of the scene was on the right, and the fine detail I wanted to pull out was on the bottom-left. By angling my 3-stop soft GND about 45 degrees across the right half of the frame (maximum density on the top-right), I was able to give the foreground tufa enough light without overexposing the sky and reflection.
GND in front of the lens, and position it where the transition will be least visible. If you can’t see the GND transition, it often helps to move the filter up and down and watch the scene slide between light and dark—just a few up/down strokes should be enough to locate and position the transition.
To prevent reflections, gently rest the filter flush against the lens when you click. But to minimize scratches, and to avoid moving the camera during exposure, it’s also important that you don’t apply too much pressure against the lens. (And there’s nothing wrong with holding the filter a couple of millimeters away while you position it.)
Sometimes we get scenes with the region of greatest brightness not distributed horizontally across the frame. Fortunately, there’s no law that mandates a GND to be oriented horizontally. I guess that in at least a quarter of my GND images the filter isn’t oriented perfectly horizontally.
A 3-stop hard GND allowed me to avoid a glowing white lunar disk in this extremely dark twilight scene.
When I have shutter speeds approaching a second or longer, I often further disguise my GND transition by moving the filter up and down slightly during the exposure. This is especially effective for hard-transition filters. You don’t need to move it much, and the amount of movement will vary with the size of the brightness you’re trying to hold back (sometimes it’s the entire sky, other times it’s just a bright stripe on the horizon) and the size of the transition zone. If you’re not sure how much motion to use, practice a bit first by watching the motion in your viewfinder.
A GND can stretch by ten to fifteen minutes the twilight window when I can get detail in the darkening foreground and the daylight-bright moon. Since I do a lot of moonrise/moonset photography, and consider a full moon image a failure if I don’t get detail in both the foreground and the moon, the extra time a GND buys me is a huge advantage.
GNDs in the digital age
The advent of digital capture has brought a photography renaissance. Image quality improves steadily, as does our post-capture control of our images. It’s easy to forget (if you’ve been around long enough to have ever known), or believe obsolete, the basic tools that were once a landscape photography staple.
But not so fast….
Missing link
Digital processing provides the missing link for GND use. The late Galen Rowell, GND-filter pioneer and its strongest advocate, was a film shooter who was stuck with imperfect in-camera GND results—no matter how much he tried to disguise his GND’s use, there were situations where the transition or over-darkening was impossible to eliminate at capture. Google Rowell’s images, or better yet, stop by his beautiful Mountain Light Gallery in Bishop, to see a number of images with visible signs of GND use.
Even the best photographer, film or digital, will have visible GND transitions at capture. Rowell’s GND technique was impeccable, he just lacked the ability touch things up after capture. But today, with careful dodging and burning in Photoshop, digital shooters can virtually eliminate all signs that a GND was used.
As digital sensor dynamic range improves, some photographers argue that GNDs are becoming obsolete. For example, my Sony a7R II give me 2 to 3 stops more dynamic range than my Canon 5D III did. That means without filters I now get the same dynamic range I could only get by using my 5D III with a 2 or 3 stop GND. This significant improvement allows me to keep my GNDs in my bag for many shots that, in my Canon days, I would never have attempted without a GND.
But this doesn’t mean that I use GND filters any less, or that other digital shooters can use improved dynamic range as a reason to leave their GNDs home. Because for every shot improved dynamic range allows me to capture without a GND, I can find a new shot with so much dynamic range that I wouldn’t have considered attempting it even with a GND.
For example, the Grand Canyon sunset image at the top of the page wouldn’t have been possible in one click without the ridiculous dynamic range of my a7R II, a 3-stop reverse GND and the dodge/burn capabilities of Photoshop. Thanks to digital tools and my good old fashioned GNDs, I’m now closer than I ever dreamed possible to capturing natural images with the dynamic range my eyes see.
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A GND gallery
Click an image for a closer look, and a slide show. Refresh the screen to reorder the display.
Over the hill
Posted on October 3, 2015
Bristlecone Star Trails, Schulman Grove, White Mountain Bristlecone Pine Forest, California
Canon EOS-1Ds Mark II
22 minutes
F/4.0
ISO 200
36 mm
Tomorrow morning I head up and over the Sierra crest and down US 395 in the shadow of the precipitous Eastern Sierra. Under-appreciated by tourists, the Eastern Sierra is no secret to photographers. It’s no surprise that Eastern Sierra fall color photo workshop, which starts Monday, has been among my most popular workshops since I started offering it nearly ten years ago.
The fall color on the other side of the “hills” is a particular highlight, but it’s by no means all we’ll photograph—of all the locations I visit, the Eastern Sierra by far offers the greatest variety of subjects. Check this out:
- Mt. Whitney and the Alabama Hills, including Mobius Arch
- Bishop Canyon, including North Lake, South Lake, Lake Sabrina, and lots of fall color
- The ancient bristlecones of the White Mountains (technically not part of the Sierra, but it’s the best place for panoramic views of the Eastern Sierra)
- Mono Lake, including South Tufa and another much more remote (solitary) location
- Lundy Canyon for more fall color
- Tuolumne Meadows and Olmsted Point in Yosemite
An Eastern Sierra workshop favorite each year is our trip to the bristlecone pine forest in the White Mountains, east of Bishop. Because it’s an hour drive back to civilization, and we leave dark-and-early for sunrise the next morning, I’ve never kept the group up there after sunset to do a night shoot. But last year I decided to give everyone the option of waiting for the stars—my plan was to make it optional, letting all who didn’t want to stay return to the hotel for a reasonable dinner and lights-out time. But no one opted out, and we had so much fun, and got such great images, that I’ve decided to make it a regular part of the workshop.
About this image
Eight years ago I was in California’s White Mountains with Don Smith and a couple of other photographer friends. On a chilly autumn evening we photographed sunset among the bristlecones, then stayed out past dark to photograph these photograph these amazing trees, (at over 4,000 years, among the oldest living things on earth) beneath the stars.
The others did some light painting, but I waited until the flashlights were dowsed to capture the silhouette of this magnificent tree against the celestial canvas. This was my first serious attempt at star trail photography, and after the success I had that night I was instantly hooked.
<< Read more in my Starlight photo tips article >>
As happy as I was with my results that night, nothing will compare to the experience of reclining with friends beneath a sky filled with more stars than I imagined possible, sometimes laughing and trading stories, and other times simply basking in impossible silence.
Moonset, Mt. Whitney and the Alabama Hills, California
See for yourself in my next Eastern Sierra Fall Color workshop
An Eastern Sierra Gallery
A sample of the Eastern Sierra’s varied beauty
Click an image for a closer look, and a slide show. Refresh the screen to reorder the display.
Out of my depth
Posted on September 27, 2015
Hidden Waterfall, Akaka Falls State Park, Hawaii
Sony a7R II
Sony 70-200 f4
1/10 second
F/16
ISO 1600
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about appreciating the small stuff. Writing that article opened my eyes to how much I’d gotten away from aspects of photography that give me great pleasure, and that were a big part of my photographic style. Not completely away, but far enough to notice a difference when reviewing my images from the last year or so, a year that coincides with my switch from Canon DSLR to Sony mirrorless. While I can’t attribute this shift to a shortcoming in my Sony gear (far from it), I do believe the timing is more than coincidence.
First, with its radically different interface and shooting workflow, mirrorless is a new trick and I’m an old dog, and I think I underestimated the ramifications of the mirrorless switch. Nevertheless, within a few weeks I felt reasonably comfortable seeing through an electronic viewfinder, had embraced a new focus and metering paradigm, and became sufficiently familiar with my Sony a7R’s features, buttons, dials, and menus. So far, so good.
But simply knowing a camera doesn’t mean I don’t have to think about using it. And it’s the unconscious control of photography’s technical side—the focusing, metering, setting exposure variables, and so on—that frees my brain to create. (I suspect it’s this way for most other photographers too.) So until I can make my camera an unconscious extension that functions more like an extra limb, the interface is a distraction. After ten years, I’d taken for granted my ability to control every aspect of my Canon DSLRs by feel, in the dark if necessary, without conscious thought—simply put, it’s taken nearly a year to achieve that familiarity with my Sonys.
In that gap between familiar and intimate with my Sony bodies, bad (lazy) habits formed. Because while I was getting used to a new way of shooting, I became so enamored of my a7R’s extreme dynamic range that my photography began to skew in that direction. Suddenly sunrises and sunsets that had been especially difficult (or impossible) with my Canons, were easy, a luxury I was all too happy to indulge. Then came the a7S, with its mystical ability to see in the dark, and suddenly night photography was occupying much more of my photography time.
Compounding the problem, these high dynamic range scenes tend to be more dramatic, and drama impresses the masses more than subtle. I’d post a new image to rave reviews (“Stunning!”), and soon found myself lured by the instant validation. I loved what I was shooting, others loved what I was shooting, so what could possibly be wrong?
Or maybe a better way to put it, what’s missing? I’d scroll through my recent images and couldn’t avoid the vague sense that there were fewer images that excited me personally. There were some, but not as many as I’d been accustomed to. And then it hit me—my images lacked depth.
Depth is the final frontier for aspiring photographers. Photography attempts to render a three-dimensional world in a two-dimensional medium, and intuitive disconnect. But while true depth in a photograph is impossible, what is possible is the illusion of depth. I’ve always felt that most people can compose a nice two-dimensional landscape, but what separates the great photographers from the good is their ability to convey depth.
Conveying the illusion of depth starts with not settling for a dramatic background or striking foreground subject, but using that as the starting point for a scene that contains visual points throughout the (missing) front-to-back plane. If the primary scene is in the distance, find nearer objects that balance and complement it. Likewise, if your subject is in the foreground, make every effort to include complementary background elements.
But finding a complementary foreground and background is just the beginning. Once you’ve identified your foreground and background (and mid-ground if possible) elements, you have to manage their relationships while mentally subtracting the camera’s missing third dimension (depth). Things like creating imaginary lines that connect objects at different distances; avoiding merging of discrete objects; perspective management with focal length and subject distance choices; focus (depth of field) control to emphasize/deemphasize foreground/background elements (to name a few). All of these things take a scene from more literal, two-dimentional snaps to interpretive, artistic creations that exist only in your brain until the shutter is clicked.
And that’s what I think has suffered in the year since my Sony switch—I’m still getting captures that excite me (and others), but in settling for the scenes the Sony sensor makes so easy, I lost my way a bit. Now that I recognize what’s been lacking, it’s time to up my game and apply that amazing Sony sensor to our three dimensional world.
About this image
I traveled to Hawaii earlier this month vowing to reinvigorate my quest for depth in my images. With lush rainforests, rugged volcanic beaches, vivid sunsets, and an active volcano, it’s a great spot for filling the frame from front to back.
One place in particular I looked forward to visiting was Akaka Falls State Park. The little scene in this image is extremely familiar to me—it’s near the end of Akaka Falls loop, after the view of the fall, making it easy to think the show is over as you beeline back to the parking lot to escape the humidity. Each time I pass this spot I stop and try to make it work, which starts with finding a way to pull detail from the dense shade without blowing out the fully exposed foreground foliage. And even if I can make the dynamic range work, I still have to figure out how to balance the conflicting need for a small aperture that ensures adequate depth of field, against the need for a shutter speed long enough to pull the waterfall from the extremely dense shade, but fast enough to avoid blurring the leaves in the almost unavoidable breeze.
But several things worked in my favor on this visit. A heavy cloud cover reduced the foreground brightness to a more manageable level, and my new Sony a7R II has at least two stops more dynamic range than the Canon 5D III I’d used on prior visits—suddenly, dynamic range wasn’t a deal-breaker. Also, someone had flipped the switch on Hawaii’s usually reliable trade winds—the still, humid air was extremely uncomfortable, but far better for this kind of close photography. Last but not least, the high ISO capability of my a7R II made me quite comfortable shooting at ISO 1600, high enough to permit f16 while maintaining a fast enough shutter speed.
My focal length was 154mm, so even at f16 I needed to be careful about focus. In scenes where I’m not sure whether I’ll have enough depth of field to ensure front-to-back sharpness, I almost always find a point that keeps my closer elements sharp. To maximize depth of field, I’ll focus as far behind the closest visual anchor (in this case the closest flowers) as I can without sacrificing any foreground sharpness. In this case I was pretty sure I could focus on the back flower and still keep the closer flowers sharp. In a perfect world I’d have liked just a little more motion blur in the water, but even with the air relatively still, I wasn’t comfortable going beyond 1/10 second.
Read more about controlling depth of field
The illusion of depth
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Kilauea Milky Way fun (with the a7S)
Posted on September 14, 2015
Starfire, Halemaumau Crater, Kilauea, Hawaii
Sony a7S
Rokinon 24mm f1.4
10 seconds
F/1.4
ISO 1600
Rain in Hawaii is great for almost everything—it fills the waterfalls, cleans the air (for the best sunrise/sunset color), sparks rainbows, and makes photographing Hawaii’s lush foliage a joy. But it’s not so great when your objective includes stars. And based on the forecast for this year’s Hawaii Big Island workshops, our odds for finding the Milky Way above Kilauea weren’t too good. But a nature photographer who relies entirely on the odds will soon be an ex nature photographer.
The first night my group visited Kilauea we were completely shutout by a wet fog that obscured the world beyond 100 feet and deposited tangible flecks of moisture on every exposed surface. Undaunted, the next night we returned to the caldera despite rain in Hilo falling faster than our wipers could erase it. The downpour pounded us all the way through town, then eased a bit as we started to climb.
Despite the improving conditions, frequent skyward peeks through the windshield offered no cause for optimism. By the time we entered Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, the rain had stopped completely, but the clouds persisted. Parking at our destination we still saw no stars, but the caldera’s orange glow throbbed below and the clouds above reflected its orange glow—a definite improvement over the previous night. While not the grand prize, this reflected fire makes beautiful photographs too, offering a small consolation for a group of photographers with their hearts set on the Milky Way.
In the complete darkness a starlight shoot requires, the less setup required at the shooting location, the less we need to use our lights and the sooner everyone’s eyes adjust. So at the cars everyone’s polarizers came off, our apertures were opened wide, and the ISOs were pushed as far as the camera’s image quality will allow. Pared down to just a tripod, one camera, and one lens, we marched off to the caldera.
Ever the optimist, midway through the short walk to the rim I ventured one more glance upward—what had just seconds earlier been a solid blanket of orange-tinted grayness had suddenly acquired a jet-black rip sprinkled with twinkling points of light. I turned off my headlamp to confirm and there it was, the Milky Way, spread like a bag of sugar spilled on a pool of ink.
Most of the group had no experience with night photography, so despite the previous day’s training, I knew most of my time would be taken helping everyone find a composition, tweak exposures, and (somehow) focus through a virtually black viewfinder (or LCD). Because the caldera’s brightness varies daily, and the amount of moisture in the air affects the overall light that reaches the camera, I started with a test shot of my own to determine that night’s exposure. Then Don Smith and I bounced around from person to person, helping them achieve starlight autonomy.
Some mastered it quite quickly, while others were slowed by a slew of problems ranging from simple lens cap removal to more difficult camera errors. On my travels I’d occasionally stop at my camera long enough to click a frame of my own (and maybe check the frame I’d clicked on my previous pass). Eventually the pleas for assistance abated and I was able to stay at my camera long enough to recompose and experiment with different exposures.
After about an hour the clouds started to fill back in. I was pretty confident that everyone had had a success by then, but I made my way up and down the line to ensure that everyone was satisfied, and thanking my lucky stars for our good fortune.
This was the sixth year I’ve attempted photographing Kilauea at night. As my experience has grown, my equipment has evolved as well. The first time my fastest lens was f4, and I was reluctant to push my Canon 1Ds Mark III beyond ISO 1600. Looking back on those early images, I’m appalled by the noise I considered acceptable. I also shake my head now at the effort required to simply get a focused frame.
Fast forward to last year, when I shot the caldera with a Canon 5D Mark III and Zeiss 28mm f2 lens. I was pretty happy with my results and the ease with which success was achieved. But this year was my first attempt with the Sony a7S and my new Rokinon 24mm f1.4, and it’s a whole new ballgame.
My excitement was underscored as I helped those in the group still using DSLRs. My a7S viewfinder and live-view LCD displayed the caldera and stars with brilliant clarity, while even the best the SLR viewfinders and LCDs were virtually black. While I composed and focused in about 3 seconds (and didn’t even bother checking my results), the SLRs took minutes to compose, focus, and confirm (the only way to ensure sharpness on one of these cameras is to replay and magnify a picture).
Night photography is limited by a camera’s ability to display the scene for composition and focus, and the viewfinder of an SLR has advanced about as far as it can. On the other hand, electronic viewfinders have barely tapped their potential—the better the sensors become, the more detail they’ll be able to pull out of the dark. Once upon a time, low-light performance was a reason to stick with an SLR, but I suspect it won’t be long before the quality of an electronic viewfinder image renders SLR viewfinders unnecessary. The a7S is there already; for higher resolution mirrorless bodies, it’s only a matter of time.
Hawaii Photo Workshops
A starlight gallery
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Appreciating the small stuff
Posted on September 9, 2015
Forest Autumn, Yosemite
Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III
1/25 second
F/4.0
ISO 200
200 mm
Posting as much as I do here in my blog and on Facebook, it’s sometimes easy to be sucked into sharing images that I know will generate the most enthusiastic response. But that’s not a complete reflection of my relationship with nature, or the reason I take pictures for a living. So every once in a while I find myself needing a reset, a re-focus on images for me.
Here’s an example of the kind of stuff that makes me happy. Fall color is always beautiful, but merely putting your eye to your camera and photographing a beautiful scene is no guarantee of a successful image. The closer you can come to identifying a scene’s essence, what about the scene that moves you (and not what you think will move others), the more your photography will resonate.
The obvious draw of fall color is (duh) the color. But beyond that, I particularly love the way leaves light up when they’re backlit. So when I wander forests in the fall I look for backlit leaves that stand out, leaves I can isolate from the distraction of their surroundings. When I find something that works, my job has just begun. Next I look for a complementary background that (if I’m lucky) also adds context (location, conditions, and so on). And finally I need to make my depth of field decision—do I want lots of DOF, or will too much background detail distract from my subject?
I found this group of leaves as I wandered the Merced River near Fern Spring in Yosemite Valley a few years ago. I move around until the leaves aligned with vertical evergreen trunks and a splash of deciduous color. The forest had lots going on, so I opted for a wide open aperture to reduce it to a barely recognizable blur of color, shape, and line.
Scenes like this underscore my desire to be in charge of as much of my camera’s decision making process as possible: spot metering in manual mode, manual focus, raw capture—all these things remove the decision process from my camera and give it to me. In this case, before composing I metered on a bright leaf and set the exposure to what I thought would give me the best color (in manual mode I can point my camera’s meter anywhere and not have to worry about my settings changing when I recompose).
The wind was nearly calm, but to be safe I bumped my ISO to 200 (the quality difference between ISO 100 and 200 is nearly imperceptible) to further ensure against microscopic motion blur. And since I shoot in raw mode, I never have to make my white balance decisions until I’m in the comfort of my home office.
When all my settings were complete, I returned my camera to the tripod, focused carefully on the center vein of the most prominent (left-most) leaf (at f4 there’s no margin for focus error), and clicked. It’s unfortunate that nature’s subtle beauty doesn’t attract the attention that the dramatic sunrises, sunsets, and spectacular weather do. I enjoy photographing those scenes as well, but I never want to forget to appreciate the small stuff.
A gallery of unspectacular beauty
(Subtle beauty you need to slow down to appreciate)
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Fallen color
Posted on September 5, 2015
Fallen Color, Rock Creek Canyon, Eastern Sierra
Canon EOS-1D Mark II
3/10 second
F/9.0
ISO 100
85 mm
When you’re surrounded by beautiful scenery, it’s easy to overlook the small details that make a scene special. But there’s no substitute for the pleasure that comes from spending a little time in a scene, identifying its intricacies, and creating an image that conveys this connection to others. Capturing these intricacies can be the most rewarding aspect of photography, because they’re almost always uniquely reflective your own vision.
About this image
People frequently look at this image and ask if I arranged the red leaves. The answer is an emphatic, No! I usually go on to remind them that you can draw a straight line between any two objects on the face of the earth (or any other planet, as far as I know). In fact, the only arranging I do to an image is myself—circling, rising, dropping—and in that regard I’m quite aggressive.
In the field I look for individual elements to isolate in my frame; or better yet, groups of elements. Of course finding a subject is not the end of the job—without properly positioning the subjects in the frame, the scene is likely to fail. But rather than moving your subjects (the lazy solution), move yourself.
In this scene I circled the leaves slowly, camera to my eye, until the frame felt balanced. And while the leaves ended up at the “rule of thirds” points, that wasn’t a conscious decision on my part, but rather confirmation that the rule of thirds is indeed valid (sometimes).
Putting the Rule of Thirds in its place
What is the rule of thirds? Very simply, imagine a tic-tac-toe grid on your frame—the Rule of Thirds says that important linear elements (like the horizon) should be on the lines, and important compositional elements (like these leaves) should be at (or near) the intersections.
I hesitate to even bring the Rule of Thirds up because it’s one of the easiest photography “rules” to be broken effectively. It’s also probably the rule most frequently abused by well meaning judges at your local camera club. (If you get too much abuse about your Rule of Thirds choices in images you really like, don’t change your compositions, change your camera club.)
I think the Rule of Thirds true value is to help remind beginners not to bullseye subjects, or not to crowd elements against the edges. In fact, I could probably show about as many successful images that break the Rule of Thirds as follow it. When I’m composing a shot, any Rule of Thirds voices in my head are overruled by my intuition, my sense for what what balances a frame, and even more simply, what feels right.
Read more about photographing fall color
A fall color gallery
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Going long
Posted on August 24, 2015
Sunset Silhouettes, Desert View, Grand Canyon
Sony a7R II
Tamron 150-600 (Canon-mount with Metabones IV adapter)
1/125 second
F/11
ISO 200
It’s no secret that a prime benefit of mirrorless photography is the smaller form-factor of the bodies and lenses. And while I was looking forward to lightening my bag when I made the switch, it turns out that my first mirrorless thought wasn’t, “Oh gee, this bag is so light!” (it was). My first thought was actually, “Oh gee, look at all that extra room!”
While everyone knows that nature abhors a vacuum, it appears that nature photographers do too. Rather than leave that space empty and revel in my eased burden, I opted to fill every cubic inch with more gear. So, in a bag that was formerly maxed out with one Canon SLR body and four lenses covering 16mm to 200mm, I now carry three mirrorless bodies and four lenses that go from 16mm to 600mm. It’s the heaviest bag I’ve ever carried—and I love every ounce of it.
Occupying the most bag real estate (and weight!) is a Tamron 150-600mm lens (and Metabones adapter). My original thought when I purchased the Tamron was that I’d leave this beast in the car and only lug it out for very specific uses (much the way I used my Canon 100-400). But I’ve been having so much fun doing long telephotos with the 150-600 that I suck it up and pack it out pretty much everywhere I go.
I had particular fun with the big Tamron on my recent Grand Canyon trip. With distant vistas at virtually every stop, Grand Canyon provides infinite opportunities for the isolation and compression shots an extreme telephoto lens does so well. Suddenly I was enjoying familiar vistas in brand new ways—far off rock spires and buttes suddenly filled my entire frame, the distance separating receding ridges compressed until they lined up like a column of dominos, and the sun’s throbbing disk expanded on the horizon like a hot air balloon.
On the final sunset of our second workshop, Don Smith and I guided the group to Desert View, where we all spread along the rim west of the Watchtower. The canyon was extremely hazy, but I told everyone in the group within earshot that the haze would subdue the sun enough that we’d probably get that red rubber ball sun as it dropped from view.
I wasn’t planning to shoot, but as I stood on the rim working with the students (who were by now pretty independent anyway), I couldn’t resist setting up my tripod and breaking out the 150-600. Anticipating where the sun would reach the horizon, I moved a little east to balance it better with the most striking features in the view. Then I framed up my composition and waited for the sun to slip into the haze. With the help of my 3-stop Singh-Ray reverse graduated neutral density filter, I was indeed able to retain some yellow in the sun while still capturing silhouettes of the ridges stacked all the way to the horizon.
When I got the image home and opened it in Lightroom, the canyon was completely black, and the sun was a white disk. But tugging the Shadows slider to the right pulled out the silhouettes you see here (with remarkably little noise), and dragging the Highlights slider all the way to the left filled almost the entire sun with yellow (a thin band of white remained along the top edge, which I touched up in Photoshop). While the sun appeared more red to my eye, I was thrilled to get any color at all.
Schedule of Photo Workshops
A long shot gallery
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The dark night
Posted on August 20, 2015
Angel’s View, Milky Way from Angel’s Window, Grand Canyon
Sony a7S
Rokinon 24 f1.4
20 seconds
F/1.4
ISO 6400
How to offend a photographer
Gallery browser: “Did you take that picture?”
Photographer: “Yes.”
Gallery browser: “Wow, you must have a good camera.”
Few things irritate a photographer more than the implication that it’s the equipment that makes the image, not the photographer. We work very hard honing our craft, have spent years refining our vision, and endure extreme discomfort to get the shot. So while the observer usually means no offense, comments discounting a photographer’s skill and effort are seldom appreciated.
But…
As much as we’d like to believe that our great images are 100 percent photographic skill, artistic vision, and hard work, a good camera sure does allow us to squeeze the most out of our skill, vision, and effort.
As a one-click shooter (no HDR or image blending of any kind), I’m constantly longing for more dynamic range and high ISO capability. So, after hearing raves about Sony sensors for several years, late last year (October 2014) I switched to Sony. My plan was a gradual transition, shooting Sony for some uses and Canon for others, but given the dynamic range and overall image quality I saw from my Sony a7R starting day one, I haven’t touched my Canon bodies since picking up the Sony.
While I don’t think my Sony cameras have made me a better photographer, I do think ten months is long enough to appreciate that I’ve captured images that would have been impossible in my Canon days. I instantly fell in love with the resolution and 2- to 3-stop dynamic range improvement of my Sony a7R (and now the a7R II) over the Canon 5D III, the compactness and extra reach of my 1.5-crop a6000 (with little loss of image quality), and my a7S’s ability to pretty much see in the dark.
But what will Sony do for my night photography?
I need more light
I visit Grand Canyon two or three times each year, and it’s a rare trip that I don’t attempt to photograph its inky dark skies. But when the sun goes down and the stars come out, Grand Canyon’s breathtaking beauty disappears into a deep, black hole. Simply put, I needed more light.
Moonlight was my first Grand Canyon night solution—I’ve enjoyed many nice moonlight shoots here, and will surely enjoy many more. But photographing Grand Canyon by the light of a full moon is a compromise that sacrifices all but the brightest stars to achieve a night scene with enough light to reveal the canyon’s towering spires, receding ridges, and layered red walls.
What about the truly dark skies? For years (with my Canon bodies) the only way to satisfactorily reveal Grand Canyon’s dark depths with one click was to leave my shutter open for 30 minutes or longer. But the cost of a long exposure is the way Earth’s rotation stretches those sparkling pinpoints into parallel arcs.
As with moonlight, I’m sure I’ll continue to enjoy star trail photography. But my ultimate goal was to cut through the opaque stillness of a clear, moonless Grand Canyon night to reveal the contents of the black abyss at my feet, the multitude of stars overhead, and the glowing heart the Milky Way.
So, ever the optimist, on each moonless visit to Grand Canyon, I’d shiver in the dark on the canyon’s rim trying to extract detail from the obscure depths without excessive digital noise or streaking stars. And each time I’d come away disappointed, thinking, I need more light.
The dynamic duo
Early this year, with night photography in mind, I added a 12 megapixel Sony a7S to my bag. Twelve megapixels is downright pedestrian in this day of 50+ megapixel sensors, but despite popular belief to the contrary, image quality has very little to do with megapixel count (in fact, for any given technology, the lower the megapixel count, the better the image quality). By subtracting photosites, Sony was able to enlarge the remaining a7S photosites into light-capturing monsters, and to give each photosite enough space that it’s not warmed by the (noise-generating) heat of its neighbors.
With the a7S, I was suddenly able to shoot at ridiculously high ISOs, extracting light from the darkest shadows with very manageable noise. Stars popped, the Milky Way throbbed, and the landscape glowed with exquisite detail. I couldn’t wait to try it at Grand Canyon.
My first attempt was from river level during this year’s Grand Canyon raft trip in May. Using my a7S and Canon-mount Zeiss 28mm f2 (after switching to Sony, I was able to continue using my Zeiss lens with the help of a Metabones IV adapter), I was immediately blown away by what I saw on my LCD, and just as excited when I viewed my captures on my monitor at home.
But I wasn’t done. Though I’d been quite pleased with my go-to dark night Zeiss lens, I wanted more. So, in my never-ending quest for more light, just before departing for the August Grand Canyon monsoon workshop, I purchased a Rokinon 24mm f1.4 to suck one more stop’s worth of photons from the opaque sky. The new lens debuted last Friday night, and I share the results here.
About this image
Don Smith and I were at Grand Canyon for our annual back-to-back monsoon workshops. On the night between workshops, Don and I photographed sunset at Cape Royal, then walked over to Angel’s Window where we ate sandwiches and waited for the Milky Way to emerge. The sky was about 80 percent clouds when the sun went down and we debated packing it in, but knowing these monsoon clouds often wane when the sun drops, we decided to stick it out.
Trying to familiarize myself with the capabilities of my new dark night lens, I photographed a handful of compositions at varying settings. To maximize the amount of Milky Way in my frame, everything oriented vertically. As with all my images, the image I share here is a single click.
Despite the moonless darkness, exposing the a7S at ISO 6400 for 20 seconds at f1.4 enabled me to fill my entire histogram from left to right (shadows through highlights) without clipping. Bringing the shadows up a little more in Lightroom revealed lots of detail with just a moderate amount of very manageable noise.
This is an exciting time indeed for photographers, as technology advances continue to push the boundaries of possibilities. Just a few years ago an image like this would have been unthinkable in a single click—I can’t wait to see what Sony comes up with yet.
Some comments on processing night images
Processing these dark sky images underscores the quandary of photography beyond the threshold of human vision—no one is really sure how it’s supposed to look. We’re starting to see lots of night sky images from other photographers, including many featuring the Milky Way, and the color is all over the map. Our eyes simply can’t see color with such little light, but a long exposure and/or fast lens and high ISO shows that it’s still there—it’s up to the photographer to infer a hue.
So what color should a night scene be? It’s important to understand that an object’s color is more than just a fixed function of an inherent characteristic of that object, it varies with the light illuminating it. I can’t speak for other photographers, but I try to imagine how the scene would look if my eyes could capture as much light as my camera does.
To me a scene with blue cast is more night-like than the warmer tones I see in many night images (they look like daylight with stars), so I start by cooling the color temperature below 4,000 degrees in Lightroom. The purplish canyon and blue sky in this image is simply the result of the amount of light I captured, Grand Canyon’s naturally red walls, and me cooling the image’s overall color temperature in Lightroom. For credibility, I actually decided to desaturate the result slightly. (The yellow glow on the horizon is the lights of Flagstaff and Williams, burned and desaturated in Photoshop.)
Learn more about starlight photography
A dark night gallery
Click an image for a closer look, and a slide show. Refresh the screen to reorder the display.
Hurry up and wait
Posted on August 14, 2015
Diagonal Lightning Strike, Lipan Point, Grand Canyon
Sony a7R II
Sony/Zeiss 24-70
1/13 second
F/11
ISO 50
Photographing lightning is about 5 percent pandemonium, and 95 percent arms folded, toe-tapping, just plain standing around. A typical lightning shoot starts with a lot of waiting for the storm to develop and trying to anticipate the best (and safest) vantage point. But with the first bolt often comes the insight that you anticipated wrong and: 1) The lightning is way over there; or 2) The lightning is right here (!). What generally ensues is a Keystone Cops frenzy of camera bag flinging, tire screeching, gear tossing, tripod expanding, camera cursing, Lightning Trigger fumbling bedlam. Then it’s more waiting. And waiting. And waiting….
In many ways the waiting part is a lot like fishing—except these fish have the ability to strike you dead without warning. And a strike is no guarantee that you’ve landed something—that assurance won’t come until you review your images. Unfortunately, when a Lightning Trigger is attached, LCD reviews are disabled. But to avoid missing the next one, I’ve learned to resist the temptation to turn off my Lightning Trigger and check after every bolt (like pulling the line from the water every few minutes to see if the worm’s still there).
About this image
With clear skies in the forecast, Don Smith and I started last Sunday with plans to recover from the preceding day’s 12 hour drive to the Grand Canyon, and to recharge for our Grand Canyon Monsoon workshop that started Monday. But walking outside after lunch, dark clouds building overhead sent us racing up to the rim (a 15 minute drive) to see what was going on (see Keystone Cops frenzy reference above).
Starting at Grand View, we quickly set up our tripods, cameras, and Lightning Triggers and aimed toward promising clouds up the canyon. But within 10 minutes the clouds overhead darkened; when they started pelting us with hail, we retreated to the car. Since the storm appeared to be moving east-to-west, we drove east to get on the back side of it, eventually ending up at Lipan Point (one of our favorite spots).
We set up west of the Lipan vista, enjoying relative peace and quiet away from the summer swarm. The cell that had chased us from Grand View was diminishing, so much so that we needed sunscreen when we started, but we could see an even more impressive cell was moving up from the south. Meanwhile, the clouds in the canyon were spectacular, but all the lightning was firing above the flat, scrub pine plain to the south. Our hope was that it would reach the canyon in our viewfinders before reaching us.
Of course I wanted lightning firing into the canyon, but at first I hedged my bets and composed wide enough to include the less aesthetically pleasing evergreen forest. As the rain moved across the canyon to our west, our blue sky had started to give way to darkening clouds, and distant thunder rolled through the afternoon stillness.
This was my first lighting shoot (and just my second overall) with my brand new Sony a7R II, so I was quite anxious to test its lightning capture capability. Speed is of the essence with lightning, and the faster the shutter responds to a click command, the better the chances of capturing it. My Canon 5D III had done the job in the past, but I knew I missed a number of strikes due to its only mediocre shutter lag.
The a7R II, like the a7S and a6000 (but not the a7R), has an electronic front curtain shutter that drastically shrinks shutter lag, so in theory its performance would rival the a7S and a6000, both of which I’d already succeeded with. That morning I’d tested the a7R II against the a7S and found its response identical, but you never know for sure until you try. (The other part of this equation is a good lightning sensor, and the only one I’ve seen work to my satisfaction is the Lightning Trigger from Stepping Stone Products.)
That afternoon we enjoyed about a half hour of quality shooting before the storm moved too close for comfort. In that span I saw at least a half dozen canyon strikes; the new camera captured most (all?) of them. The one you see here was from early in the show—subsequent strikes were further north (right) before petering out.
Read more about lightning photography, and see a gallery of lightning captures, on my Lightning Photography photo tips page.
Eloquent Images by Gary Hart 