2024 In the Mirror: The Night Sky
Posted on December 30, 2024
Silent Night, Milky Way Above Lake Wakatipu, New Zealand
Sony a7R V
Sony 14mm f/1.8 GM
ISO 6400
f/1.8
13 seconds
This is my third and final post looking back at my 2024 photography experiences. Next up: 2024 Highlights—my favorite images of the year.
My relationship with the night sky predates my photography life. In fact, for most of my photography life, cameras weren’t even capable of capturing dark skies well enough to do them justice. That changed with the advent of digital capture, and the evolution of digital sensors that continues to this day.
My love for astronomy was powerful enough that I made it my major when I entered college—and also why I decided to change that major as soon as I found myself actually resenting the quantification of concepts that I simply wanted my mind to be boggled by (I’m fairly good at math, but not astrophysicist-good). Since then, I’ve been much happier simply gazing skyward and pondering the incomprehensible time and distance each pinpoint of starlight represents. Turns out, photography enhances the night sky experience. Not only do my cameras reveal detail and color my eyes can’t see, night photography’s multi-second exposures provide ample time to gaze and ponder.
Though every year includes many night sky experiences, 2024 was especially memorable for a couple of reasons. First, it included each my favorite night subjects: Milky Way, northern lights, the moon, and (especially) a comet (!). The other thing that made my 2024 night sky photography extra special was that my (non-photographer) wife joined me for my two favorite shoots: the Comet Tsuchinshan–ATLAS shoot above Mt. Whitney in October, and my Milky Way shoot at Tasman Lake in New Zealand in July.
Northern Lights
Northern Lights and Big Dipper, Vik, Iceland
The northern lights shoot happened in February, midway through this year’s Iceland workshop that Don Smith and I partner on. Even though the aurora is the top priority for this workshop, it’s also the least reliable of my night sky “big four.” While every night shoot requires clear skies, unlike the other celestial phenomena I target, an aurora is about as reliable as the weather—I can plan a workshop a year or more in advance knowing exactly where the moon, Milky Way, and sometimes even a noteworthy comet, will be, but with the northern lights we just have to schedule and hope. Hope that solar activity tickles the magnetosphere, and hope the skies are clear if it happens.
In the half dozen or so times Don and I have done this trip, we’ve only been shut out once, but for a while it looked like this year would be number two. The aurora forecast was decent—the weather? Not so much. But on the day of our longest drive, from Snaefellsnes Peninsula to Vik, both forecasts improved slightly. After three days of clouds and snow flurries that were about to transition into a major storm, the new forecast promised a small window of clear sky that might last into the beginning of the aurora window. Instead of going straight to dinner upon our arrival in Vik, we beelined up to a cemetery above town and waited, one eye on the northern horizon, the other on the clouds approaching from the south.
As you can see, the clouds held off just long enough. And while we didn’t get the dazzling full-sky display of some prior trips, the lights did dance enough to thrill.
Moonrise/Moonset
Moonrise, Half Dome, Yosemite
My two favorite moon shoots also happened early in the year, first with a moonset in Death Valley and the Alabama Hills in January, followed by a couple of February moonrises in Yosemite. Since I’m no stranger to photographing the moon in these locations, for me the highlight of these experiences was sharing the with my workshop groups.
That said, both the Alabama Hills and Tunnel View shoots were especially nice this year. In the Alabama Hills, my Death Valley workshop group watched a waning gibbous moon, still nearly full, slip behind Mt. Williamson (California’s second highest peak) just as the sun’s first rays pinked up a gauzy layer of clouds.
The Yosemite moonrise looked like it was going to be erased by clouds—especially disappointing as this moonrise aligned so perfectly with Half Dome. But much to the thrill of everyone, the offending clouds thinned and parted at just the right time.
Comet Tsuchinshan–ATLAS
I’ve written about this shoot already, both shortly after it happened, and again in the first post of this series.
Milky Way
Silent Night, Milky Way Above Lake Wakatipu, New Zealand
Usually I get a couple of Grand Canyon Milky Way experiences each year, first on my raft trip in May, then again in my monsoon workshop in summer. But this year clouds wiped both of those out. That loss was more than made up for on the Puna Coast in my Hawaii workshop, and (especially) in New Zealand. You can read about the Hawaii Milky Way experience here.
Of all my annual Milky Way shoots, the one that excites me most is New Zealand, my only opportunity to view the spectacular Southern Hemisphere sky. In addition to the unique sky, pristine air and minimal light pollution makes New Zealand an inherently great place for Milky Way photography, and this year was especially memorable. I’ve already written about the amazing night my wife and I spent with the Milky Way above Tasman Lake, so today I’m sharing a new image (above) from the last night of the New Zealand South Island workshop Don Smith and I do each year.
From the aurora in Iceland to the Milky Way in New Zealand, you have no idea how much Don and stress about delivering celestial phenomena completely out of our control. In New Zealand we have a number of go-to Milky Way spots throughout the workshop. Since it’s winter, clouds are fairly common, but we also nine nights, so when clouds rule one night, we just cross our fingers and hope the next night will deliver. But this year we struck out all the way up to our final night, so our stress level was peaking. (We go no push-back from the group—they understood that we have no control over the conditions and appreciated how hard we were trying to make it work. This was all self-induced stress.)
The workshop’s last full day had a lot of clouds and a little blue sky, but nothing if not optimistic, we were going to give the Milky Way a shot no matter what. After our sunset shoot, we drove straight to our Lake Wakatipu spot and waited for the sky to darken. By the time we arrived the clouds had cleared wonderfully, and I knew it was just a matter of time before our group would understand that all my raving about the New Zealand night sky isn’t just hyperbole.
New Zealand Night, Milky Way and Small Magellanic Cloud, Tasman Lake (2024)
These nights, when I know it’s just a matter of time before the sky delivers and there’s absolutely nothing to stress about, are some of my favorite times with my workshop groups. Waiting for the sky to darken, we just stand (or sit) around chatting and laughing—especially on the final evening of a 10-day workshop, when genuine friendships have formed—watching the landscape fade and the stars slowly pop out. The camera will “see” the Milky Way before we do, so every few minutes I click a frame to monitor its progress. At some point I’ll tell the group it’s time to start shooting, and not long after that it becomes dark enough for the Milky Way to be clearly visible to our eyes too.
For a while after we can see it, the Milky Way seems to get brighter and brighter against the still darkening sky. In New Zealand, I always keep a lookout for the Magellanic Clouds, two small satellite galaxies, bound by gravity to our Milky Way but not visible in the Northern Hemisphere. When they appear, I know the darkness is complete.
Since most of my time during these shoots will be occupied helping people, by the time everyone has started shooting, I have my composition in place, my camera focused, and my exposure set. That way I can just click a frame each time I pass my camera on my way to help the next person. This also frees me to just gaze and ponder, as I’ve always done when the sky is dark and stars are out, and as I will forever do.
Experience the New Zealand night sky for yourself
2024 After Dark
Click any image to scroll through the gallery LARGE
2024 in the Mirror: More Experiences
Posted on December 22, 2024
Evening Glory, Lake Wakatipu, New Zealand
Sony a7R V
Sony 24-105 f/4 G
ISO 50
f/18
15 seconds
I’ll be compiling my favorite 2024 images very soon, but before emphasizing my images, I’m trying to acknowledge the experience that went with their capture. In my previous blog post, I described three especially memorable 2024 photography experiences; today I’ll share two more. This time, instead of specific shoots, I want to celebrate my ability to visit two countries that are as beautiful as they are different, and distant, from one another.
New Zealand
My first experience of New Zealand came in 1995, when, while working for a company that sold a programming language, I traveled to Christchurch to train programmers how to code in our language. I was there in August (winter), staying in the rural countryside outside this beautiful city. My 7-mile run before traveling to meet my class each morning started in darkness and continued through sunrise. So beautiful was my route, I actually started carrying my camera to record it.
I interrupt this blog to bring you a funny story…
Approaching the Christchurch airport terminal to start my long trip home, I encountered a police roadblock. We were told in no uncertain terms to stay in our cars, and it soon became apparent that the parking lot was filling with people fleeing the terminal. This was pre-911, back when airport security measures were more of an afterthought for passengers, so I had no idea of what could be going on. Fire? Gas leak? Kiwi infestation?
My questions were answered when my car was rocked by a loud explosion that launched a swarm of brightly colored clothing that wafted like oversized confetti onto the pavement. Crisis averted, the road and terminal reopened and we all made our way inside. There we learned that a rogue suitcase had been discovered in the terminal; when authorities found no one to claim it, they decided the prudent thing would be to detonate it (because who wouldn’t pass on the opportunity to legally blow something up?). Only then did they learn that nothing nefarious was afoot—and some traveler’s wardrobe had been suddenly and significantly depleted.
I return you now to your regularly scheduled blog post…
After those two weeks, most of which were occupied with work more than sightseeing, I harbored dreams of someday returning to New Zealand, but never found the opportunity. That is, until Don Smith and I got the idea to partner on a New Zealand workshop. After a couple years of research and scouting, Don and I have done at least one, and sometimes two, New Zealand workshops every non-Covid year since 2018. To say I’ve fallen in love with this country would be an understatement—not just for its spectacular scenery, but also for its friendly people, surprisingly delicious food, pristine air and water (and cities!), and mesmerizing night sky.
Our New Zealand trip is always in June or early July—winter Down Under. In addition to avoiding tourists, winter offers the best potential for interesting weather. The potential for harsh conditions of course creates a real wildcard element, but photographers have more pressing priorities than comfort—like good pictures. Difficulties attributed to harsh weather are usually more than made up for by spectacular scenes only possible in the wildest conditions. For each shoot wiped out by rain, snow, or fog, we enjoy multiple shoots significantly enhanced by dramatic light, clouds, and weather phenomena.
For example, the snowy peaks and crimson sunset that blessed the first evening of this year’s New Zealand workshop. In July I shared one image from this sunset, but suffice to say, it wasn’t the only picture I took. (You can view that slightly tighter version in the gallery below.) Today’s image from that evening is similar, but composed wider to include more sky and foreground.
Scenes like this just demand to be composed wide, but I was inhibited by a few obstacles: specifically a railed vista to my right (where many in our group were set up), and a steep slope covered with dense shrubs to my left. After a little searching, I found a spot on the other side of the railing and a few feet down the slope that stayed out of everyone’s frame, kept me above the shrubs, and was as far as possible from the vista.
I couldn’t avoid a couple of nearby tripod legs, which allowed me to go just wide enough to include a small pool in the foreground rock that I noticed was reflecting the sky’s otherworldly color. Fortunately, the tripod legs were simple to remove in Photoshop without altering the scene in any visible way. With the mountain portion of the lake reflection disturbed by gentle undulations, and the reflection on the near shore beneath me even more wind-whipped, I added a Breakthrough 6-Stop Dark Polarizer to smooth the water with a long exposure.
This sunset was only the first of many off the charts scenes this year’s group enjoyed. Rain forests, snow-capped peaks, glaciers, fiords (the New Zealand spelling), glacial lakes, waterfalls—what’s not to love? Here’s a gallery with just a few of the sights we enjoyed this year.
Iceland
When Don Smith and I first considered offering an Iceland workshop, our primary goal was the northern lights. We had no idea that we’d make it an annual thing, and even though the northern lights turned out to be even more breathtaking than we’d imagined, it’s the scenery that keeps us coming back to Iceland. Given our new infatuation with New Zealand, it would be easy to mentally pit the two islands against each other. But much like picking a favorite child, doing so would be both unfair and impossible.
The things I love most about Iceland are also the things that differ most significantly from New Zealand. Though both islands are ribbed with snow-capped peaks, New Zealand’s beauty skews to lush and verdant, while Iceland’s beauty is stark and monochrome.
Iceland is a volcanic island that first emerged from the North Atlantic around 18 million years ago. Countless eruptions since have expanded the island with layers of hard black lava, building mountains that continue growing only slightly faster than the harsh conditions can wear them down. In winter, all that’s green on Iceland has died or been covered with snow and ice, creating a landscape that’s mostly white with black accents (or, in low-snow years, black with white accents).
But it’s the binary color palette of Iceland’s frosty, volcanic terrain that makes its (surprisingly frequent) ephemeral color especially stand out: The northern lights for sure, but also the glacial rivers and streams, sapphire ice caves, and, thanks to a winter sun that never rises higher than 10 degrees above the horizon, two-hour sunrises and sunsets. All this, plus the relentless pounding by violent surf, makes Iceland hands-down the most dramatic landscape I’ve ever photographed.
Check out this small gallery with an assortment of images from my 2024 Iceland visit.
Visiting these two contrasting islands, even once, is a gift. But doing it year-in and year-out has not only enabled me to appreciate their beauty more, my love for the people and their culture grows with each visit.
New Zealand and Iceland Through the Years
Click any image to scroll through the gallery LARGE
2024 In the Mirror: ‘Tis the Season…
Posted on December 16, 2024
Night Moves, Comet Tsuchinshan–ATLAS and Mt. Whitney, Alabama Hills (California)
Sony a7R V
Sony 24-105 f/4 G
ISO 1600
f/5.6
5 seconds
… for reflection and appreciation.
It’s that time of year again, when the business/creative side of my life shrinks into the background and I get to enjoy quality time with family, and (for the next few weeks) my blogs become less frequent and/or shorter. It’s also the time of year when my photography focus shifts to my rearview mirror, as I start looking back on the rapidly diminishing year.
If my social media feeds are any indication, it appears that 2024 might turn out to be the tipping point when AI and other artificially created images made it into the mainstream consciousness. This saddens me because, as far as I’m concerned, photography is as much about the experience of capture as it is about the images produced. Not only my own experiences witnessing a special locations and moments in Nature, but also the connection I feel to other photographer’s images knowing that their special moment was real.
One of the most frequent defenses I see for artificial images is some version of, “But it’s still beautiful.” Since beauty truly is in the eye of the beholder, that’s an argument I can’t win. But I can say that I don’t see any beauty in an image with no connection to some literal or personal truth. Which is why I, and thousands of other photographers, insist on experiences our creations.
With that thought in mind, starting with this post, my next two or three blogs will focus on a few of my favorite memories of 2024. Rather than simply sharing my own favorite images of the year (that’s coming too), I want to share the experiences that made 2024 special for me. Some of these memories center on specific shoots, while others are associated with trips that provided a variety of special moments impossible to separate into one experience.
October: Comet Tsuchinshan–ATLAS
Some years I have a hard time choosing a single most memorable experience, but 2024 isn’t one of those years. In October my wife and I drove 8 hours to the Alabama Hills for a 30-minute view of Comet Tsuchinshan–ATLAS before it slipped behind Mt. Whitney. You can read about this trip here:
At the top of this post I share a newly processed image from that night. Captured nearly 15 minutes earlier than the other two images, the amount of extra light in the still darkening sky is obvious in the image. Also, the rising moon was much lower than it was in the later images, and you can see that difference in illumination of the Sierra granite. Since these differences weren’t visible to my eye, I spent (wasted) a lot of time trying to process the new image to look closer to the other two. I’m embarrassed to admit how long it took me to realize I can’t get there from here, but as soon as I recognized that the light was in fact significantly different, I changed my processing to account for that and am (finally) pleased with the result.
February: Yosemite clearing storms
A clearing storm is the Holy Grail of Yosemite photography. In February I had two workshops, one centered around Horsetail Fall, the other featuring a full moon, and each enjoyed its very own clearing storm experience.
Having photographed countless Yosemite clearing storms, I never tire of the unique personality of each. While a clearing storm can happen any time of day, each of these came at sunrise. The first clearing storm featured mostly empty skies above shifting tendrils of low fog and a light dusting of snow in Yosemite Valley; the second came with a brooding sky and more low fog than its predecessor. I honestly can’t tell you which one I enjoyed more.
Here are the stories:
August: Grand Canyon lightning show
The Southwest summer monsoon offers spectacular clouds, vivid rainbows, and colorful sunrises and sunsets, but for most of my workshop students, the primary goal of my Grand Canyon Monsoon photo workshop is lightning. Usually we get it—sometimes a lot of it—but not always. This year turned out to be one of those “not” years, but for those in the group who were able to to hang out for a few hours after the workshop’s final shoot (about half the group), a classic monsoon storm sprung up across the canyon, allowing all present to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.
Check out the details:
I’ll be back in a few days with more memorable 2024 experiences. And keep a lookout for my annual Highlights post, where I’ll share my favorite images of 2024 (including some from this post). In the meantime, remember that photography’s greatest gift isn’t the images it produces, it’s the experiences that go with them. I hope you have a joyful Holiday season.
Workshop Schedule || Purchase Prints ||Instagram
It’s Not All Skill and Hard Work
Posted on December 7, 2024
Molten Churn, Kilauea, Hawaii
Sony a7R V
Sony 100-400 GM
ISO 800
f/5.6
1/1250 second
There’s not a nature photographer alive who hasn’t heard someone exclaim about a coveted capture, “Wow, you were so lucky!” And indeed we are lucky—but that sentiment completely discounts the time and effort that put us in the right place at the right time.
Louis Pasteur’s assertion that chance favors the prepared mind has been co-opted by photographers—mostly, I suspect, to reclaim some (much deserved) credit for capturing Nature’s ephemeral beauty: vivid sunrises/sunsets, rainbows, lightning, the aurora and other celestial displays, volcanic eruptions, and on, and on….
Yes, it was indeed very lucky when that rainbow appeared, or the sky turned crimson, or the clouds parted to reveal a rising full moon—at just the moment I happened to be there with my camera. Most of those times, despite insinuations to the contrary, my presence wasn’t a total fluke and I’d like credit for it thankyouverymuch.
On the other hand…
Let’s not forget that two things can be equally true. I fear that some photographers become so defensive of the effort they put into capturing a special moment, they fail to appreciate that there was indeed luck involved too. But conceding our good fortune doesn’t diminish our skill and vision, it just acknowledges that we are never in complete control of Nature’s fickle whims. Not only that, appreciating the luck involved helps bolster the sense of wonder and awe a nature photographer must have.
As hard as I try to anticipate an outcome, and the number of times that effort has succeeded, I have to admit that sometimes my presence for a beautiful moment was an absolute fluke. I mean, I still had to know how to work my camera and frame a composition, but what I witnessed was not part of the original plan.
For example, scheduling my 2013 Maui workshop more than a year in advance, I had no inkling of Comet PanSTARRS. When I did learn about the approaching potential naked-eye comet, and that it would be paired with a crescent moon on possibly the best day for viewing, I checked my schedule and discovered that I’d be on Maui for a workshop. In fact, the day the comet would appear closest to the moon just happened to be the day I’d planned to photograph sunset from the summit of Haleakala—coincidentally, the site of the very telescope that discovered PanSTARRS more than a year earlier.
Another special experience I can’t take much credit for was morning I got to photograph the most active, longest lasting Grand Canyon lightning display (that included a rainbow right at sunrise) I’ve ever seen. Based on that morning’s weather forecast (clear skies, 0% chance of rain), and the 12-hour drive home following the shoot, I’d probably have stayed in bed had there not been a workshop group counting on me.
I’m thinking about these unexpected blessings because recently I’ve been going through old, unprocessed images and came across this one (of many) from the September 2023 Kilauea eruption. I’d love to be labeled a Pele-whisperer capable of anticipating a Hawaiian eruption early enough to get myself to the Big Island, blessed with prescient insight into the ideal vantage point before the lava fountains appear. But alas….
I’ve been leading a Hawaii Big Island workshop every year since 2010 (minus the 2020 COVID year). Since Halemaʻumaʻu (Kilauea’s summit caldera) had been erupting continuously since 2008, for the first eight of those years it was easy to take Kilauea for granted. I’d show up, take my group at least one time (often more) to the spot I’d found that perfectly aligned the eruption with the Milky Way. As long as the clouds didn’t deny us, I’d have a workshop full of thrilled photographers.
But in 2018 Pele sent a “don’t ever take me for granted” message, providing a dazzling, 4-month pyrotechnic display before rolling over and going to sleep less than a month before my workshop started. Since 2018, Kilauea has stirred only periodically, so scheduling workshops more than a year in advance has made it impossible to time my workshops to coincide with an eruption.
Putting a positive spin on it, that has made the good fortune of the eruptions we have witnessed even more special. For example, I completely lucked out in 2022 with a nice, albeit distant, eruption that included lava fountains and an opportunity to get the caldera and the Milky Way in the same wide frame.
And then there was 2023. As the workshop approached, things appeared to be back to business as (post-2018) usual. After a couple of minor eruptions over the past year or so, Kilauea had been quiet for several months leading up to my September workshop. Though it had been showing a few signs of stirring, by the day before my workshop, nothing seemed imminent. There’s so much more than enough to photograph on the Big Island, so this wasn’t a big concern, but it was still a minor personal disappointment because I never tire of viewing an erupting volcano.
With the workshop starting Monday, my brother Jay and I had arrived the Friday prior to check out all my workshop locations. We spent Sunday afternoon out of cell phone range, scouting along the Puna Coast, our final area before the workshop. Entering the relatively isolated Puna region, Kilauea was quiet when my phone went dark—so imagine my surprise when we emerged from the cellular void a few hours later to see two notifications from the USGS in my inbox. When I saw Kilauea in the subject line, my heart jumped, but when I opened the first e-mail and saw that it started with, “Kilauea is not erupting,” I scanned the message enough to see that it report signs of increased activity. Okay, then what’s this second message about?
The first sentence grabbed my eyeballs and I didn’t bother to read further: “Kilauea is erupting.” I instantly punched the gas detoured straight to the volcano. The eruption had started at 3:15 p.m., and at exactly 5:00 p.m. we were rolling up to the Visitor Center. There we learned that we could view the eruption right across the street, from Volcano House.
Racing over there, we joined the crowd oooh-ing and ahhh-ing at the billowing smoke, orange glow, and occasional bursts of lava that jumped high enough to be visible the steep crater wall. Rather than photograph from there, I decided to see if there might be a better view. We found more of the same at the steam vents: spurts of lava, lots of smoke, and a distinct orange glow. But while there we ran into a couple who told us the best view was at Keanakakoi, on the other side of caldera. So off we went.
At Keanakakoi we snagged one of the last parking spots, grabbed our camera bags, and bolted down the trail (a paved road now closed to non-official vehicles). After a brisk (understatement) one-mile walk, we made it to the vista about 10 minutes before sunset.
I’ll never forget the sight that greeted us. On the caldera floor clearly visible directly below us were at least a two-dozen lava fountains of varying size, churning among a honeycomb of just-cooled black lava that appeared etched by thin, glowing cracks. Splitting this fiery orgy was a broad lava river, and several narrower streams. We quickly joined the throngs who had jumped the improvised rope that had not doubt been placed to prevent us gawkers from plunging to our deaths (safety-schmafety).
What followed was a clicking frenzy. I started with my 24-105 lens, eventually switching to my 100-400. (I also snuck in a couple of quick iPhone photos—the lava field was close enough to fill the frame without cropping). Monitoring my RGB histogram, I quickly determined that an exposure that completely spared the red channel skewed the rest of the histogram far to the left, which of course made perfect sense and was no problem because pretty much the only thing that mattered in this scene was the orange lava.
So focused was I on scene below me that it was a couple of minutes before I registered that I was working in what might be the windiest conditions I’ve ever photographed in. I’ve probably experienced stronger gusts (I’m looking at you, Iceland), but this wind was steady, brutal, and relentless. So strong in fact that it nearly ripped the glasses of my face, and forced me to actually keep one hand on them most of the time.
Given the rapidly approaching darkness, with most subjects this wind would have been a significant problem. But because my primary (only?) subject was imbued with its own built-in light source, and was in constant, frenetic motion that required an extremely fast shutter speed anyway, I found it all quite manageable—I was actually more concerned about getting blown into the maelstrom than I was about camera shake.
Throughout the evening I varied my exposure settings, shooting wide open with shutter speeds varying between 1/500 and 1/1500 second, and ISOs ranging from 800 to 3200. Focal lengths ranged from fairly wide (wider than 50mm at the start) to 400. In fact, many of my 100-400mm frames were closer to the 100mm range so I could include groups of fountains. I tried to time each shot for peak explosiveness in whatever fountain or fountains I’d targeted, but honestly, since these peaks came every second or two, that wasn’t much of a challenge.
Every once in a while I got a strong whiff of sulfur, a reminder of the risks of being so close to a volcanic eruption. It seemed like we’d been out there at least an hour when I was aware of shouting behind me. I turned to see rangers running around shoeing us from the edge. At first I thought all of us who had crossed the rope barrier were in trouble, but it turns out we were being evacuated—and they meant business. A review of the timestamps on my images showed that what seemed like more than an hour was in fact only 33 minutes.
How close were we to the eruption? I calculated later that we’d been only 1/2 mile away from the lava field, but it seemed much closer. Unfortunately, the closure that caused us to be evacuated wasn’t lifted until the eruption ended, so I wasn’t able to take my group out there. But I did learn about other vantage points that were nearly as good, and got my group out there two more times.
How lucky was I (and my workshop group)? This eruption that started the day before the workshop started, was finished the day after the workshop ended.
Join me in Hawaii
Workshop Schedule || Purchase Prints || Instagram
Lucky Shots
Click any image to scroll through the gallery LARGE
One Night, Two Moons
Posted on November 27, 2024
Through the Clouds, Tunnel View Moonrise, Yosemite
Sony a7R V
Sony 24-105 f/4 G
ISO 100
f/10
1/3 second
I wrapped up this year’s workshop schedule at the beginning of this month and am now enjoying a much anticipated Holiday breather before my schedule ramps up again in January. This isn’t exactly a vacation, because the end of the year is when all my permit reporting and next year’s permit applications are due, and my 2025 workshop prep starts to ramp up, but my schedule does get a bit less frenetic when the travel (and all its prep and recovery) is over.
As I often do when my travel schedule eases around the Holidays, I prioritize family over photography. That doesn’t mean no new pictures, but it does mean that most (all?) of the new pictures I share over the next couple of months will probably be pictures captured months, or even years, ago, but never got around to processing.
Going through my vast repository of unprocessed images is something I started doing while isolated during the early months of the pandemic (has it really been 4 1/2 years?!). I’d always been aware that I had lots of untapped gems languishing on my hard drive(s), but was nevertheless surprised by how much I enjoyed searching them out. Sometimes I’ll start by randomly picking a photo trip and scanning the Lightroom thumbnails for something that stops me, but the most productive approach has been going through my collection of already processed favorites to identify particularly special shoots, reasoning that there must certainly be more there. (I write more about this in my Back to the Future blog post.)
It always surprises me how much I enjoy revisiting past photo trips and workshops. Not only does the experience revive memories of special moments in Nature, lots of the best memories are of the people I was with. Sometimes that’s been other photo buddies, but since so much of my photography is centered around my workshops, the majority of those memories are actually my workshop groups.
Moonrise, Half Dome, Yosemite
Case in point: The seed for this “new” image was my “Moonrise, Half Dome, Yosemite” image from my February 2024 Yosemite Winter Moon workshop. Going through this workshop’s image folder, all the cloud-induced stress surrounding this particular moonrise came flooding back. And with it also came memories of the euphoria we all felt when the clouds opened just enough, at exactly the right time, to reveal the Half-Dome/moon/sunset alignment I’d been thinking about for more than a year. (Read the details here: Moon Swoon.)
Within minutes, the moon had climbed into the rapidly thickening clouds, and it looked like the show might be over—until, shortly before darkness was complete (or at least too dark to photograph the moon and foreground in one frame), it rose into a patch of slightly thinner clouds and briefly reappeared.
My strategy for moonrises is to go long until the moon separates from the landscape, then go progressively wider as it rises. This evening I’d set up two tripods, one with my Sony α1 and 200-600 lens, the other with my a7RV and 24-105 lens. So when the moon made its brief return, I was instantly ready to start clicking.
I chose a vertical composition to emphasize the foreground and minimize the lateral aspects of the scene. I also tried a few that were wide enough to include more of El Capitan, but ultimately decided to process this one to avoid shrinking the moon too much with a wider focal length.
Viewing these two images together provides a fantastic opportunity to make a point I’ve tried to make many times before: how to photograph a large moon. Thanks to the continued emphasis (and hype) focused on the largely irrelevant “supermoon” phenomenon, many people seem to believe the size of the moon in the sky is the most import part of a large moon image. It’s not.
The size of the moon in any image is almost entirely a function of the focal length used, not the relatively small difference between a “regular” size moon and a supermoon. Compare the size of the moon in these two images, noting that they were captured from the same location, on the same night, less than 10 minutes apart. For the big moon image, I used a 450mm focal length that magnified both Half Dome and the moon and eliminated everything else. For today’s smaller moon image, I chose a 50mm focal length that enabled me to fit far more of the surrounding beauty, but also shrunk the moon.
I should add that as far as I’m concerned, the absolutely best light for photography is the shadowless light that starts 10-15 minutes after sunset. I captured my (wide) image about 15 minutes after sunset. To my eyes, the scene appeared much darker than what you see in the image. I had to be careful with the exposure to avoid blowing out the moon, making the foreground in my raw original nearly black, but by monitoring my histogram and knowing my camera, I knew that the shadows would be recoverable. And I think the thin clouds helped subdue some of the lunar highlights, enabling to give the scene a little more exposure.
I still have a few openings in my 2025 Yosemite photo workshops
The Moon Large and Small, from Full to Crescent
Click any image to scroll through the gallery LARGE
Do You Really Need a New Camera?
Posted on November 22, 2024
Dancing Aspen, North Lake, Eastern Sierra
Sony a7R V
Sony 24-105 f/4 G
ISO 800
f/16
1/3 second
I had an idea germinating for this week’s blog post, but when Sony announced the brand new α1 II Tuesday, I pivoted to an experienced-based public service message. (You’re welcome.)
As you may have noticed, a new camera purchase is a significant investment. Nevertheless, for many photographers the new camera decision seems more emotional than rational. Case in point: Me. That is, once upon a time (okay, as recently as a couple of years ago), I’d have been all over this week’s Sony announcement, and by now almost certainly would have already ordered my new camera—regardless of how great my current camera is.
This new-camera purchase reflex takes me back to my first grown-up job, working for a small independent vehicle leasing company in the San Francisco Bay Area. “Independent” meant we were not affiliated with any auto manufacturer or dealership, which enabled us to offer our customers any make or model of vehicle and freed me to make honest recommendations rather than push a particular model. Handling every kind of car imaginable, from Toyota to Porsche to Rolls Royce, I soon noticed that many of my leasing customers seemed to be intent on replacing their perfectly excellent car (or truck) that still had lots of useful years remaining. It seemed they’d become so blinded by the allure of “new” that they’d lost contact with rational thought. Though their lease payments would persist for years after the car’s “new” wore off, they seemed to believe that driving this new Whatever would somehow make their life complete—trying to talk them down was fruitless. Sigh.
You’d think that experience would have immunized me against making similar emotional purchases, but sadly, I too have fallen into the trap of coveting the latest and greatest. In my case it hasn’t been cars (I do love new cars, but I usually wait 8-10 years between purchases, and only when I have enough saved to avoid car payments). No, my irrational exuberance skews more toward technology.
For example, many years ago I got sucked into Apple’s iPhone upgrade program (pay a monthly fee for the newest model, then return it for the next model as soon as it’s released) and so far haven’t been able to extricate myself (this is my weakness—it’s not like leaving Apple’s upgrade program is like trying to cancel a gym membership). And for more than a decade, I replaced my Intel-based Macs every 2 or 3 years. Fortunately, this costly predisposition was cured by Apple’s M processors, which are good enough to prevent me from fabricating any kind of credible rationalization for upgrading. So yay me.
Anyway, back to the camera thing. Earning my living as a photographer, it’s always been easy to justify buying the latest camera model. But despite all the marketing hype to the contrary (this applies to all manufacturers, not just the brand I use, Sony), I realized long ago that I’ll probably notice very little (or no) practical improvement in image quality from the new model—especially since I’m almost always replacing the model immediately preceding the new one. So what was my motivation? Being completely honest with myself, a large part of the appeal was simply the idea of owning the latest and greatest.
Given that my current cameras, a Sony a7RV and Sony α1, are everything I need (and more), my rational mind tells me that simply can’t justify spending $6500 to replace one. This isn’t a new insight, but what is new is that this time my rational mind is winning. In previous upgrade iterations, I’ve sometimes used the “photography needs to make you happy” mantra to rationalize the new purchase. After trying that on for this camera, I had to acknowledge that the is fallacy in my argument is confusing pleasure for happiness: Yes, getting that new camera will indeed give me a great deal of pleasure, but when transient pleasure comes at the price of enduring happiness, the biggest winner is Sony (or whoever your camera manufacturer is).
The truth is, regardless of who makes your camera (they’re all great), today’s (and yesterday’s as well) cameras capabilities surpassed the needs of most photographers many years ago. And no matter how great the marketing promoting the latest upgrade makes the camera sound, most photographers have better things to do with their money.
Am I saying you shouldn’t upgrade your camera? Absolutely not. I’m saying the criterion for springing for a camera upgrade shouldn’t simply be, “Is the new camera better than the camera I have?” (it almost certainly is); it should be, “Will the new camera make an appreciable difference in my photography?” (it probably won’t).
Here are some thoughts to bring to your next camera purchase:
- Filter the hype. Manufacturers are really good at spinning modest improvements into “game changing” essentials. Don’t buy it.
- Never, never, never chase megapixels. I can pretty much guarantee that you already have more megapixels than you’ll ever need, but megapixels sell. Until the photography public gets wise to the fact that adding resolution comes at the cost of image quality (really), manufacturers will keep giving us pixels we don’t need.
- Upgrade your more permanent gear first. Lenses and tripods might not be as sexy as a new camera, but there’s a decent chance you’ll notice more improvement in your images by upgrading your lenses and tripod than upgrading your camera.
- Take a trip. If you have all the lenses you need and already own the tripod of your dreams, consider spending that new camera money visiting locations you’ve always wanted to photograph. (Or sign up for that photo workshop you’ve had your eye on. Just sayin’….)
- And don’t forget, the longer you wait, the better your next camera will be. Seriously, your new camera, no matter how great, will probably be “obsolete” within a couple of years.
I need to make it clear that this is in not a review, or an indictment, of the Sony α1 II. I haven’t seen the camera, and have only scanned the (impressive) specs and (predictably hyperbolic) marketing claims. It looks like a fantastic camera. But as with any new camera, if it doesn’t add something that you believe will make a significant difference in your photography, there are probably better things to do with your money.
So what would induce me to replace one of my cameras? Believe it or not, fewer megapixels. Despite the perception (and marketing claims) to the contrary, megapixels are not a measure of image quality, they’re a measure of image size. Period. For any given technology, the fewer the number of photosites (measured in megapixels), the better the camera’s image quality will be. That camera manufacturers can continue cramming more and more photosites onto a 35mm sensor without sacrificing image quality speaks to the progress of technology. But the only way they can add photosites to a fixed space (like a 35mm sensor) is to shrink them, and/or reduce the distance separating them. Imagine the image quality spike we’d see if instead more photosites, they took the technological advances that enables more photosites without sacrificing dynamic range and high ISO performance, and created a sensor with larger (better light gathering) and more spread out (cooler) photosites.
Of course your priorities may (probably are) be different from mine, so I can’t tell you whether any new camera is right for you and your situation. Just don’t fall into the trap of buying the next model simply because it’s “better,” because where technology is concerned, better is quite possibly not good enough.
I return you now to your regular programming…
Dancing Aspen, North Lake, Eastern Sierra
On my way back to the parking area following an especially nice North Lake sunrise shoot, a stand of aspen grabbed my eye. I knew I was well into the 1o minutes I’d given the group to wrap up and make the short walk back to the cars (the light was changing fast and I had two more stops in mind), but these aspen were just too perfect to resist: backlit leaves at peak fall color, parallel trunks, and pristine white bark.
With the clock ticking (it’s never a good look when the leader is one everyone is waiting for), I’d normally just take a couple of iPhone snaps to preserve a beautiful scene I don’t have the time to do justice with a “serious” image. Even though I rarely do anything with these quick iPhone snaps, I find it hard to just walk away from scenes like this without a record of having witnessed it.
But in this case, my phone was buried deep in a pocket of one of my seemingly infinite layers of clothing. On the other hand, I (for some reason I can’t remember) was carrying my camera (which I usually return to my camera bag when I finish a shoot). So rather than mine for my phone, I turned my camera on, put it to my eye, and squeezed off a couple of frames, before continuing to the cars.
Because I have such a strong (irrational?) tripod bias (click, evaluate, refine, repeat…), I honestly didn’t think about these pictures again for the rest of the workshop. But going through my images after the trip, these aspen images stopped me. Slowly the memory of my quick stop returned, and as I spent more time with them, the more I liked what I saw.
Processing this image, and as much as I liked it, I could also tell that I didn’t give the scene my usual (obsessive) attention to detail, quickly identifying a few things I’d have done differently if I’d taken a little more time. For example, I’d probably have shifted around a bit to see if I could eliminate, or at least minimize, some of the gaps in the foliage, and to get a little more separation between some of the trunks. And I’d definitely have paid more attention to some of the minor distractions on the frame’s border. But despite these oversights, I was surprised by how much I like this image, and how well it captures so much about what I love about aspen.
So I guess the moral of this story is, even though a tripod almost always makes my pictures better, just because I can’t use one doesn’t mean I shouldn’t take the picture.
Join my next Eastern Sierra photo workshop
Workshop Schedule || Purchase Prints || Instagram
If you’ve made it this far, thank you. If you enjoy reading my blog, please share it with your friends.
More Aspen
Click any image to scroll through the gallery LARGE
Dome Sweet Dome
Posted on November 15, 2024
Sunset Sentinel, Half Dome, Yosemite Glacier Point
Sony a7R V
Sony 24-105 f/4 G
ISO 100
f/13
1 second
Poll 100 random people about the feature they most associate with Yosemite, and you’ll probably get a variety of answers. Near the top of the list will be El Capitan and Yosemite Falls. Bridalveil Fall might get some love too. But I’d wager more than half of the votes would go to Half Dome, both for its striking profile, and for the way it towers in prominent magnificence over its granite domain.
The Half Dome story began more than 150 million years ago, with the start of the slow-motion collision between the oceanic Farallon, and continental American, tectonic plates. The Farallon Plate, being heavier, was subducted beneath the westward plowing American Plate. Over the next 100 million or so years, the Farallon Plate was driven deeper, toward the super-hot mantle, where it became hot enough melt and form large pockets of magma. Some of this magma made it to the surface as volcanic eruptions. The magma that didn’t reach the surface slowly cooled and hardened into the granitic batholith (a large, subterranean mass of igneous rock) that forms today’s Sierra Nevada range.
But how did this subterranean granite, still miles beneath Earth’s surface, come to rise to the nearly 3 miles above sea level we see today? I thought you’d never ask.
Deep beneath Earth’s surface, the same inexorable tectonic forces that initiated the subduction process continued (and continues to this day), slowly deforming and pushing upward the crust and underlying granite. The uplifted overlying sedimentary rock was far more easily eroded than the much harder granite and eventually swept away, exposing the Sierra’s signature granite backbone.
Once exposed to wind, rain, and snow on the surface, granite is subject to its own form of erosion. Rather than consisting of a single molecular structure, granitic rock is made up of a variety of minerals in varying percentages (for simplicity, I’ve just lumped all the various granitic rocks into a single “granite” designation). Depending on its composition, some granites are prone to horizontal jointing that causes it to break along parallel planes. Other granites experience exfoliation, breaking away in concentric sheets. The jagged granite of the Sierra Crest near Mt. Whitney is the result of jointing; Yosemite’s rounded granite domes (like Half Dome) are the result of exfoliative sheeting.
The granite that would eventually become Half Dome formed deep beneath Earth’s surface nearly 90 million years ago. Of course at formation it was just a blob of granite that didn’t resemble the Half Dome we know today, but through millions of years of uplift, exfoliation, and exposure to the elements, a rounded granite pedestal began to take shape. But it still wasn’t Half Dome.
Though one look will tell you why it’s called Half Dome, the truth is, that’s a misnomer. A better, albeit less glamorous, name would be Eighty-Percent Dome. That’s because there is no missing half—we still enjoy about 80 percent of this prestigious monolith’s original form.
Another common misconception is that Half Dome was carved by glaciers: it was not. Instead of half of its bulk being carved off by glaciers, Half Dome’s flat northeast face got that way incrementally, as the most exposed of many preexisting parallel cracks filled with water, that froze and expanded each winter. Each freezing cycle expanded the crack a bit more, until eventually the exposed sheet of granite fell away. This exposed another crack, and the freeze/expand cycle continued, until about 20 percent of the rock was lost.
Many people are surprised to learn that no glacier ever reached the top of Half Dome—the largest, the Sherwin Glacier, which receded about one million years ago, still left 800 feet of Half Dome’s summit exposed; subsequent glaciers were much smaller. But while glaciation didn’t carve and polish Half Dome, glaciers did sweep away the granite debris that had fallen from what we now call the face.
It’s fun to travel around Yosemite and photograph the product of all this natural sculpting from as many angles as possible. Since I time my personal trips and Yosemite workshops to avoid summer crowds, my viewing locations are mostly limited to Yosemite Valley. But even from the valley, there are extreme differences: compare the Tunnel View perspective in the west, to the many views from the valley’s east side: Sentinel Bridge, Cook’s Meadow, Ahwahnee Meadow, and (especially) Mirror Lake.
I do get to see Half Dome from Olmsted Point each October, and when a fall color trip happens before Glacier Point closes for the winter. This year’s Yosemite Fall Color and Reflections workshop threaded the needle between a couple of temporary snow closures (it will close for the season with the next major storm) and I managed to get my group up there for sunset one evening.
I love the face-to-face relationship with Half Dome that Glacier Point offers, but I’ve been here enough that I rarely photograph this view anymore. But when the sunset sky started to pink up this evening, I couldn’t resist clicking off a few frames. As you can see, I didn’t really come up with anything terribly unique, but I enjoyed creating a close-up portrait of Half Dome beneath a beautiful sky. In fact, as I took this picture, I thought the composition was so ordinary that I’d probably never process it. But going through my images while trying to view them through the eyes of people much less familiar with Yosemite’s magic, I decided to go ahead and share it.
Let me share Yosemite’s beauty with you in a photo workshop
The Many Views of Half Dome
Click any image to scroll through the gallery LARGE
Isolate and Conquer
Posted on November 8, 2024
Autumn On the Rocks, Bridalveil Creek, Yosemite
Sony α1
Sony 100-400 GM
3.2 seconds
f/16
ISO 200
This year marked my second autumn visit since the reopening, and everything still feels gloriously new to me. Arriving at Bridalveil Creek on the final morning of last week’s Yosemite Fall Color photo workshop, I started with a brief orientation, then guided the group along the main trail, pointing out the many photography opportunities here. I wrapped up the introduction by inviting anyone who doesn’t mind a little bush-whacking and rock scrambling to follow me to one more spot.
Off the beaten path and often jammed with fallen trees and branches, the scene here is a little different each time I visit. The amount of water in the creek varies, as does the number of leaves on the ground and in the pools. This year the water was nice, but the leaves hadn’t quite reached peak blanket status. But these annual variations are part of what I love about photographing here.
Autumn Leaf and Cascade, Bridalveil Creek, Yosemite
Sony α1
Sony 100-400 GM
8 seconds
f/16
ISO 100
Probably my favorite thing to do at Bridalveil Creek is to find a leaf or leaves swirling in a pool and capture their colorful spiral with a long exposure. But when I couldn’t find any candidates for swirling color on this visit, I went to Plan B and scanned the scene for a leaf I could isolate. Despite lots of beautiful yellow leaves overhead, I only found two candidates on the ground.
Usually I try to get within 10 feet of subjects like this, because the closer I am, the more even a small amount of repositioning affects my foreground/background relationships. But closer access to these leaves was blocked by water, rocks, and downed branches (plus I didn’t want to risk getting in someone else’s frame), so I put away my 24-105 lens in favor of my 100-400, and went to work from an open vantage point about 30 feet back.
As I worked this scene, I couldn’t help remembering that every time I share an autumn image from Bridalveil Creek in Yosemite, I need to brace for the questions: some version of, “Did you place that leaf there?” Usually the tone is friendly curiosity, but sometimes it includes an undercurrent of suspicion bordering on accusation. While these questions are an inevitable part of being a nature photographer, I suspect that I get more than my share because I aggressively seek naturally occurring subjects to isolate and emphasize—and Bridalveil Creek in autumn has them in spades. But regardless of the questioner’s tone, my answer is always a cheerful, unapologetic, and honest, “No.”
I digress
We all know photographers who have no qualms about arranging their scenes to suit their personal aesthetics. The rights and wrongs of that are an endless debate I won’t wade into, other than to say that I have no problem when photographers arrange their subjects openly, without intent to deceive. But photography has to make you happy, and I create my photographic happiness by discovering and revealing Nature, not manufacturing it. I don’t like arranging scenes because I have no illusions that I can improve Nature’s order, and am confident that there’s enough naturally occurring beauty to keep me occupied for the rest of my life.
Order vs. chaos
Nature is inherently ordered. In fact, in the grand scheme, “Nature” and “order” are synonyms. But humans go to such lengths to control, contain, and manage the natural world, we’ve created a label for our failure to control nature: chaos. Despite its negative connotation, what humans perceive as “chaos” is actually just a manifestation of the Universe’s inexorable push toward natural order.
Let’s Take a Trip…
For example, imagine that all humans leave Earth for a scenic tour of the Milky Way. While we’re gone, no lawns are mowed, no buildings maintained, no fires extinguished, no floods controlled, no Starbucks built. Let’s say we return to Earth in 100 years*. While the state of things would no doubt be perceived as chaotic, the reality is that our planet would in fact be closer to its natural state. And the longer we’re away, the more human-imposed “order” would be replaced by natural order.
* Since this is my fantasy, I’ve chartered a spaceship that accommodates all of humankind and travels at 90 percent of the speed of light. While Earth has indeed aged 100 years during our holiday, we travelers return only a year older. (Dubious? Don’t take my word for it, ask Albert Einstein.)
What’s it all about?
Instead of manufacturing false order, I prefer organizing my scenes around naturally occurring relationships in a way that makes the image about something—in other words, finding the natural order and interpreting (translating) it in a way that resonates with humans. To distill this natural order from perceived chaos, nature photographers have a couple of compositional tools in our creative toolbox.
With a wide lens and careful positioning and framing, we can guide viewers’ eye with relationships that start in the close foreground and extend to the distant background, connecting elements to create virtual lines that guide the viewers through the frame. I think most photographers are biased toward these wide landscape images because the wider frame is closer to the way we see the scene with our eyes. But going wide also risks introducing unwanted elements that clutter the frame and pull the viewers’ eyes off their prescribed visual path.
Enter the telephoto lens, an underused landscape tool by most (but not all) photographers. A telephoto lens lets us be more surgical in our subject choice by simplifying the scene to its most essential elements that emphasizes our scene’s most prominent feature or features, and eliminates peripheral distractions. Nevertheless, despite the telephoto’s effectiveness, I often catch myself automatically defaulting to my wide lenses. But I’ve learned that those times when I’m struggling to find a shot, the easiest way to reset my creative instincts in the field is to simply view the scene through a telephoto lens, just to see what might be lost in the visual discord of the wide scene.
Still not convinced? In addition to providing a fresh perspective, telephoto lenses offer undeniable, tangible advantages in landscape photography:
- Bigger subject: Bigger isn’t always better, but there’s often no more effective way to emphasize your subject than to magnify it in your frame.
- Isolate: By zooming closer, you can banish distractions and unwanted objects to the world outside the frame, distilling the scene to its most essential elements.
- Highlight the less obvious: Sometimes a scene’s compelling, but more subtle, qualities are overwhelmed by the cacophony of dramatic qualities that drew you in the first place. By all means, shoot the grand drama that drew you in the first place, but take the time to discover the smaller stuff that’s there as well.
- Selective focus: The longer your focal length, the shallower your depth of field. One of my favorite ways to emphasize a subject that might otherwise be overlooked is to render it as the only sharp object surrounded by a sea of soft color and shape.
If telephoto vision doesn’t come naturally to you in the field, try training your eye in the comfort of your own home by opening any wide angle image in Photoshop (or your photo editor of choice), setting the crop tool to 2/3 aspect ratio (to match what you see in your viewfinder), and see how many new compositions you can find. (I’m not suggesting that you shoot everything wide and crop later—this crop tool suggestion is simply a method to train your eye.) But whether you do it in the field, or later in Photoshop, once your eye gets used to seeing in telephoto, you’ll find virtually every scene you photograph has telephoto possibilities you never imagined existed.
Meanwhile, back at Bridalveil Creek…
On this morning, I shot these leaves—one, the other, and both—horizontal and vertical, from wide to tight (horizontal version shared above). I even experimented with a variety of shutter speeds, but it was so dark back here in the early morning shadow beneath towering granite, darkened further by a canopy of leaves, and with a polarizer essential to mitigate the glare on the wet rocks and leaves, that any reasonable ISO didn’t allow a shutter speed that made a noticeable difference in the water’s blur—the water was moving so fast, 1 second and 10 seconds were virtually identical. So I just went with whatever shutter speed I needed to get the exposure I wanted (the fact that I ended up shooting this frame at ISO 200 instead of ISO 100 was just small oversight, left over from earlier shutter speed experiments).
My starting position was more-or-less at eye level with the cascade, putting the leaves more edge-on. Though they were clearly visible, but their classic maple leaf shape was somewhat obscured by the angle of view. So after exhausting all compositional variations, I scanned my surroundings for a higher vantage point and spotted a rock that would take a little effort to scale (nothing dangerous—mostly navigating a lot of downed trees and branches), but that might work if the view from there was unobstructed.
Turns out shifting those few feet was worth the effort, providing a much better angle that clearly revealed the leaves’ shape. I proceeded to run through another series of compositions similar to what I’d done at the first spot.
I’ve learned to wait until the workshop’s final day to take my groups to Bridalveil Creek. The photography here isn’t as obvious as the rest of Yosemite, so as excited as I am to share it, it takes a while for everyone to refamiliarize themselves with their cameras and warm up their creative muscles. This group was no exception, but when we gathered at the cars after the shoot, I heard the same “I could have stayed here all day!” responses I always get at Bridalveil Creek. Me too!
Join me in Yosemite
Workshop Schedule || Purchase Prints || Instagram
Isolate and Conquer
Click any image to scroll through the gallery LARGE
Gifts From Heaven
Posted on November 3, 2024
Heaven Sent, Comet Tsuchinshan–ATLAS Above the Sierra Crest, Alabama Hills
Sony a7R V
Sony 24-105 f/4 G
ISO 3200
f/4
5 seconds
As much for its (apparently) random arrival as its ethereal beauty, the appearance of a comet has always felt to me like a gift from the heaven. Once a harbinger of great portent, scientific knowledge has eased those comet fears, allowing Earthlings to simply appreciate the breathtaking display.
Unfortunately, scientific knowledge does not equal perfect knowledge. So, while a great comet gives us weeks, months, or even years advance notice of its approach, we can never be certain of how the show will manifest until the comet actually arrives. For every Comet Hale-Bopp, that gave us nearly two years warning before becoming one of the most widely viewed comets in human history, we get many Comet ISONs, which ignited a media frenzy more than a year before its arrival, then completely fizzled just as the promised showtime arrived. ISON’s demise, as well as many highly anticipated comets before and after, taught me not to temper my comet hopes until I actually put eyes on the next proclaimed “comet of the century.” Nevertheless, great show or not, the things we do know about comets—their composition, journey, arrival, and (sometimes) demise—provide a fascinating backstory.
In the simplest possible terms, a comet is a ball of ice and dust that’s (more or less) a few miles across. After languishing for eons in the coldest, darkest reaches of the Solar System, perhaps since the Solar System’s formation, a gravitational nudge from a passing star sends the comet hurtling sunward, following an eccentric elliptical orbit—imagine a stretched rubber band. Looking down on the entire orbit, you’d see the sun tucked just inside one extreme end of the ellipse.
The farther a comet is from the sun, the slower it moves. Some comets take thousands, or even millions, of years to complete a single orbit, but as it approaches the sun, the comet’s frozen nucleus begins to melt. Initially, this just-released material expands only enough to create a mini-atmosphere that remains gravitationally bound to the nucleus, called a coma. At this point the tail-less comet looks like a fuzzy ball when viewed from Earth.
This fuzzy phase is usually the state a comet is in when it’s discovered. Comets are named after their discoverers—once upon a time this was always an astronomer, or astronomers (if discovered at the same time by different astronomers), but in recent years, most new comets are discovered by automated telescopes, or arrays of telescopes, that monitor the sky, like ISON, NEOWISE, PANSTARRS, and ATLAS. Because many comets can have the same common name, astronomers use a more specific code assembled from the year and order of discovery.
As the comet continues toward the sun, the heat increases further and more melting occurs, until some of the material set free is swept back by the rapidly moving charged particles of the solar wind, forming a tail. Pushed by the solar wind, not the comet’s forward motion, the tail always fans out on the side opposite the sun—behind the nucleus as the comet approaches the sun, in front of the comet as it recedes.
Despite accelerating throughout its entire inbound journey, a comet will never move so fast that we’re able to perceive its motion at any given moment. Rather, just like planets and our moon, a comet’s motion relative to the background stars will only be noticeable when viewed from one night to another. And like virtually every other object orbiting the sun, a comet doesn’t create its own light. Rather, the glow we see from the coma and tail is reflected sunlight. The brilliance of its display is determined by the volume and composition of the material freed and swept back by the sun, as well as the comet’s proximity to Earth. The color reflected by a comet’s tail varies somewhat depending on its molecular makeup, but usually appears as some shade of yellow-white.
In addition to the dust tail, some comets exhibit an ion tail that forms when molecules shed by the comet’s nucleus are stripped of electrons by the sun’s ultraviolet radiation. Being lighter than dust molecules, these ions are whisked straight back by the solar wind. Instead of fanning out like the dust tail, these gas ions form a narrow tail that points directly away from the sun. Also unlike the dust tail that shines by reflected light, the ion tail shines by fluorescence, taking on a blue color courtesy of the predominant CO (carbon monoxide) ion.
One significant unknown upon discovery of a new comet is whether it will survive its encounter with the sun at all. While comets that pass close to the sun are more likely to shed large volumes of ice and dust, many sun-grazing comets approach so close that they’re overwhelmed by the sun’s heat and completely disintegrate.
With millions of comets in our Solar System, it would be easy to wonder why they’re not a regular part of our night sky. Actually, Earth is visited by many comets each year, though most are so small, and/or have made so many trips around the sun that they no longer have enough material to put on much of a show. And many comets never get close enough to the sun to be profoundly affected by its heat, or close enough to Earth to shine brightly here.
Despite all the things that can go wrong, every once in a while, all the stars align (so to speak), and the heavens assuage the disappointment of prior underachievers with a brilliant comet. Early one morning in 1970, my dad woke me and we went out in our yard to see Comet Bennett. This was my first comet, a sight I’ll never forget. I was disappointed by the faint smudges of Comet Kohoutek in 1973 (a complete flop compared to its advance billing), and Halley’s Comet in 1986 (just bad orbital luck for Earthlings). Comet Hale-Bopp in 1996 and 1997 was wonderful, while Comet ISON in 2012 disintegrated before it could deliver on its hype.
In 2013 Comet PANSTARRS didn’t put on much of a naked-eye display, but on its day of perihelion, I had the extreme good fortune to be atop Haleakala on Maui, virtually in the shadow of the telescope that discovered it. Even though I couldn’t see the it, using a thin crescent moon I knew to be just 3 degrees from the comet to guide me, I was able to photograph PANSTARRS and the moon together. Then, in the dismal pandemic summer of 2020, Comet NEOWISE surprised us all to put on a beautiful show. I made two trips to Yosemite to photograph it, then was able to photograph it one last time at the Grand Canyon shortly before it faded from sight.
October 2024 promised the potential for two spectacular comets, Comet Tsuchinshan–ATLAS (C/2023 A3) in the first half of the month, and Comet ATLAS (C/2024 S1) at the end of the month. Alas, though this second comet had the potential to be much brighter, it pulled an Icarus and flew too close to the sun (RIP). But Comet Tsuchinshan–ATLAS was another story, brightening beyond expectations.
I shared the story of my trip to photograph Tsuchinshan–ATLAS in my October 16 I’m Not Crazy, I Swear… blog post, but have a couple of things to add about this image. First is how important it is to not get so locked into one great composition that you neglect capturing variety. I captured this wider composition before the image I shared a couple of weeks ago, and was pretty thrilled with it—thrilled enough to consider the night a great success. But I’m so glad that I changed lenses and got the tighter vertical composition shortly before the comet’s head dropped out of sight.
And second is the clearly visible anti-tail that was lost in thin haze near the peaks in my other image. An anti-tail is a faint, post-perihelion spike pointing toward the sun in some comets, caused when larger particles from the coma, too big to be pushed by the solar wind, are left behind. It’s only visible from Earth when we pass through the comet’s orbital plane. Pretty cool.
When will the next great comet arrive? No one knows, but whenever that is, I hope I’ve kindled enough interest that you make an effort to view it. But if you plan to chase comets, either to photograph or simply view, don’t forget the wisdom of astronomer and comet expert, David Levy: “Comets are like cats: they have tails, and do precisely what they want.”
Join me in my Eastern Sierra photo workshop
More Gifts From Heaven
Click any image to scroll through the gallery LARGE
Full Contact Photography
Posted on October 24, 2024
Vivid Dawn, Mono Lake
Sony a7R V
Sony 24-105 f/4 G
ISO 50
f/16
30 seconds
Years ago, my brother Jay and I were photographing an autumn sunrise at Mono Lake’s South Tufa. Among the first to arrive at the lake, we’d set up at the spot I’d chosen the prior evening, but soon South Tufa’s shoreline was jammed with jostling, elbow-to-elbow photographers. Scanning the line of overlapping tripod legs, I was baffled because, unlike many popular photo destinations, South Tufa has many beautiful places to set up, offering ample opportunity to create something unique. But the sole deciding criterion for these photographers seemed to be, Well, someone else is set up here, so this must be the spot. And they kept coming. It got so bad that at one point we witnessed two photographers who, rather than set out in search of something to make their own, almost come to blows over a 3-foot square of choice lakeside real estate. That was when I told myself there must be other locations at this special lake that aren’t saturated with photographers content to settle for barely distinguishable versions of the same scene.
Sunrise Mirror, Mono Lake
That afternoon Jay and I explored the network of rutted, unpaved roads encircling Mono Lake, ending up completely alone for sunset, across the lake at a remote beach dotted with low tufa platforms jutting from mirror reflections. Undeterred by the maze-like drive, and a half-mile or so walk to the lake that started in thick volcanic sand and ended in shoe-sucking mud, we were so pleased with our sunset experience that we vowed to return for sunrise the next morning.
But the story didn’t end there because, despite meticulously logging (in that pre-smart phone and GPS time) each odometer click between turns on the way back, the following morning we still got hopelessly lost trying to reverse-execute the prior night’s exit in the dark. With the eastern horizon starting to brighten, I stopped by the first wide spot that was relatively close to the lake, and we hoofed it cross-country through more sand and mud to beat the sunrise.
The show that morning was one of the most memorable sunrises of my life. The juxtaposition of those two mornings reinforced for me the joy of experiencing Nature in relative peace. And though I didn’t realize it at the time, that realization influences an approach to my subjects that continues to this day: rather than settle for the views most trampled, no matter how spectacular, I started challenging myself to seek less obvious places to plant my tripod.
Honestly, I enjoy sharing Nature’s beauty with kindred spirits almost (even just) as much as I do photographing in complete solitude. But sadly, the hostile display Jay and I witnessed that morning at South Tufa, fueled by the digital renaissance, was only the first in what feels like a growing epidemic of full-contact photography: the inevitable consequence of too many photographers trying to force themselves into spaces too small, simply so they can replicate images already captured many times.
For example, a collapsed riverbank caused the NPS to permanently close Southside Drive to Horsetail Fall aspirants, and the Navajo have justifiably banned tripods in Antelope Canyon. And I’m surprised that (as far as I know) no one has fallen, or been shoved, over the cliff in the Mesa Arch sunrise scrum.
Whether the agitation escalates to fisticuffs, or the governing entity closes the location or imposes Draconian restrictions, no one wins. And the “contact” doesn’t need to be physical—often mere proximity can escalate tension enough to ruin things for everyone.
Here are a few examples of bad photographer behavior, brought on by some photographers’ inability to play well with others, that I’ve witnessed myself:
- During one Grand Canyon sunset, a very well known photographer with a “Do you know who I am?” attitude set up with the railed vista between himself and the scene he wanted to photograph, then started ranting at a pair of European tourists (not even photographers) for walking into “his” scene. They were clearly taken aback—when I saw them timidly start to leave, I rushed over and apologized on behalf of all photographers and Americans, telling them they’d done nothing wrong and have every right to stand there and enjoy the view for as long as they’d like.
- In Iceland last February, a couple of photographers (who should know better!) walked out in front of the bridge where my and Don Smith’s workshop group had set up to photograph a waterfall. Not only did they turn deaf ears to our requests for them exit our scene, they trampled the formerly pristine snow that had made the scene so special. Adding insult to injury, one of them sent up a drone, completely ignoring the many signs forbidding them.
- One morning at North Lake (Eastern Sierra), some guy had his tripod set up far behind, and in direct line with, the section of lakeshore where dozens of photographers had set up. Then he proceeded to aggressively shoo everyone away, essentially claiming the entire North Lake scene for himself. I tried reasoning with him, but when he seemed unwilling to compromise, we all just ignored him. When he came rushing down, looking to punch someone, a photographer who was much larger than him (and pretty much everyone else there) calmly sauntered up and asked him what the problem was—at which point he suddenly remembered someplace else he had to be.
- And probably my personal “favorite” is the guy who, at everyone’s favorite Schwabacher Landing Grand Tetons reflection view, donned waders and walked out into the water in front 50 or so other photographers waiting for sunrise. Despite gentle requests, pleading, and eventually enraged threats, he refused to budge. I think the only thing that spared his life was the fact that low clouds obscured the peaks and sunrise light that morning.
All of these experiences have informed my approach to all my locations, whether I’m on my own or leading a group. Of course as a photo workshop leader, I need to balance that instinct with the understanding that for many of my students, my workshop might be the only time they’ve visited this location, and may very much want their own versions of the most popular scenes. So in a workshop, I always make sure to blend a combination of familiar spots with my own “secret” (few locations in nature photography are truly secret) spots.
But anyway…
Over the last two decades I’ve returned to this relatively untouched side of Mono Lake, both by myself and leading groups. With no trail from the road to the lake, each time I wind up at a slightly different spot, but so far have never been disappointed.
The October morning I captured this image was wonderfully calm, with the reflections only slightly disturbed by gentle undulations. I had to move around a bit to organize the relationships between the foreground tufa mounds, but quickly landed at this spot. With mostly clear skies, I limited the sky in my composition, emphasizing the graduated colors reflecting atop the lake instead.
I wanted to smooth the rolling swells into a flat, gauzy reflection, while underexposing enough to avoid washing out the sky’s pre-sunrise natural color. Still nearly 30 minutes before the sun arrived, the scene was still dark enough to allow a 30-second exposure without an ND filter. With a fairly wide lens and not a lot of close foreground detail, depth of field was pretty easy—it probably didn’t matter, but I focused on the right-most tufa mound.
I photographed until the sun appeared, but took enough time between frames to appreciate the utter solitude of my surroundings, and contrasted them with the mayhem I knew was happening across the lake. The irony of the full contact experience over there driving me to find the isolation here, wasn’t lost on me.
Photograph Mono Lake with me in my Eastern Sierra workshop
Workshop Schedule || Purchase Prints || Instagram
More Mono Magic
Click any image to scroll through the gallery LARGE
Eloquent Images by Gary Hart 