Day’s End, Ke’e Beach, Hawaii
Posted on November 29, 2013
Day’s End, Ke’e Beach, Hawaii
Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III
3/5 seconds
F/16.0
ISO 200
17 mm
Is there ever a bad sunset in Hawaii? My preliminary investigation seems to indicate that the answer is probably no, but I think a definitive answer requires more research—a task for which I’m more than happy to volunteer (that’s just the kind of guy I am). As far as I can determine, most every day in Hawaii seems to include some combination of clouds and sunlight—enough clouds to make gorgeous skies, and enough sunlight to make spectacular color. In other words, a photographer’s paradise.
In case you missed it, I recently returned from Hawaii where I assisted Don Smith’s Kauai workshop. Each day we’d rise before the sun, head to some east-facing beach (either by car or simply by taking the 50 yard stroll to the beach behind our room), pick a composition, and wait for the inevitable show to begin. Color, shafts of light, rainbows–we saw it all, and while each was different, it was pretty difficult to say any one was better than any other. In the evening we’d repeat the process at a west-facing beach, then go to dinner. Not a bad gig.
Ke’e Beach is a sunset destination, literally the end of the road, a spectacular exclamation point punctuating Hawaii’s State Highway 560 on the northwest side of Kauai. Just beyond, accessible only by foot, water, or air, the sheer Nā Pali cliffs jut from the Pacific and disappear into the clouds. A coral reef protects the beach, calming the surf and creating an ideal environment for swimming, snorkeling, and fishing. Many visitors forego those activities in favor of simply sitting on the beach waiting for the sun to disappear.
This was the evening before the workshop began, my first visit here. Scanning the scene for composition options I decided frames including the bay and cliffs would require working around too many people, so I turned my attention the beautiful sky around the sun. As nice as the sky was, I still wanted something in the foreground for depth. The pristine sand was a good start, but wanting more I chose this flat rock outcrop as my foreground anchor. I set up my tripod close enough to the surf that an occasional wave would swirl about my ankles, etching ephemeral arcs in the sand. I went with my 17-40 lens, dialing it wide to exaggerate the beach and give the background an expansive feel.
While waiting for the sun to drop to the horizon I readied my graduated neutral density filters, set my camera to f16 to ensure a sunburst, and determined that ISO 200 would give me the shutter speed with just the right amount of motion blur. Next I played with compositions, deciding that (despite “rules” to the contrary), I wanted the horizon in the middle and the sun bullseyed. With everything ready, I was able just stand and enjoy the view.
When the sun popped from the clouds I started clicking, timing my exposures with the waves, some with the surf flat and others with of motion around the rock. After a few frames I’d adjust the composition, keeping the scene centered but playing with variations between horizontal, vertical, wide, and tight. I ended up with several I like, and who knows, maybe tomorrow I’ll decide I like the vertical version better.
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More Hawaii
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Moon chasing: The rest of the story
Posted on November 19, 2013
Moon!, Half Dome, Yosemite
Canon EOS 5D Mark III
1/13 second
F/11
ISO 200
400 mm (slightly cropped)
Wow, it seems like only yesterday that the moon was just tiny dot hovering above Half Dome.
Moonrise Reflection, Half Dome and the Merced River, Yosemite
What happened?
No, the moon didn’t magically expand, nor did I enlarge it digitally and plop it into this image. What happened is that I waited two days and moved back; what happened is the difference between 40mm and 400mm; what happened is a perfect illustration of the photographer’s power to influence viewers’ reaction to a scene through understanding and execution of the camera’s unique view of the world.
The rest of the story
My workshop group captured the “small” moon at sunset on Thursday, when it was 93% full and the “official” (assumes a flat, unobstructed horizon) moonrise was 3:09 p.m (an hour and 40 minutes before sunset). That night the moon didn’t rise to 16 degrees above the horizon, the angle to Half Dome’s summit as viewed from our location beside the Merced River, until almost exactly sunset. Because it’s so much higher than anything to the west, Half Dome gets light pretty much right up until sunset—look closely and you can see the day’s last rays kissing Half Dome’s summit.
Flat horizon moonrise on Saturday, when the moon was 100% full, was at 4:24 p.m., only about twenty minutes before sunset. But Tunnel View is nearly 500 feet above Yosemite Valley; it’s also 5 1/2 miles farther than Half Dome than Thursday’s location—this increased elevation and distance reduces the angle to the top of Half Dome to just 6 degrees. So, despite rising over an hour later, when viewed from Tunnel View, the moon peeked above the ridge behind Half Dome just a couple of minutes after sunset (if we’d stayed at Thursday night’s location, in addition to being hungry and cold, by Saturday we’ have had to wait until after 6:00 for the moon to appear).
Exposure
My objective for full moon photography is always to get the detail in the moon and the foreground. As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, these were workshop shoots, and experience has shown me that the most frequent failure when photographing a rising moon in fading twilight is getting the exposure right—the tendency is to perfectly expose the foreground, which overexposes the daylight-bright moon (leaving a pure white disk). This problem is magnified when the moon catches everyone unprepared.
So, both evenings I had my group on location about 30 minutes before the moon. While we waited I made sure everyone had their blinking highlights (highlight alert) turned on, and understood that their top priority would be capturing detail in the moon. I warned them that an exposure without a blinking (overexposed) moon would slightly underexpose the foreground. And I told them that once they had the moon properly exposed (as bright as possible without significant blinking highlights), they shouldn’t adjust their exposure because the moon’s brightness wouldn’t change and they’d already made it as bright as they could. This meant that as we shot, the foreground would get continually darker until it just became too dark to photograph.
(A graduated neutral density filter would have extended the time we could have photographed the scene, but the vertical component of Yosemite’s horizon made a GND pretty useless. A composite of two frames, one exposed for the moon and one exposed for the landscape would have been a better way to overcome the scene’s increasing dynamic range.)
Compare and contrast
Winter Moonrise, Half Dome, Yosemite
Thursday night’s scene, which would have been beautiful by itself, was simply accented by the (nearly) full moon. Contrast that with my visit a few years ago, when I photographed a full moon rising slightly to the left of its position last Saturday’s night. But more significant than the moon’s position that evening was the rest of the scene, which was so spectacular that it called for a somewhat wider composition that included the pink sky and fresh snow. And then there’s the above image, from last Saturday night—because the sky was cloudless (boring), and snow was nowhere to be seen, I opted for a maximum telephoto composition that was all about the moon and Half Dome.
The wide angle perspective I chose Thursday night emphasized the foreground by exaggerating the distance separating me, Half Dome, and the moon; the snowy moonrise image found a middle ground that went as tight as possible while still conveying the rest of the scene’s beauty. Saturday night’s telephoto perspective compressed that distance, bringing the moon front and center. Same moon, same primary subject: If Thursday night’s moon was a garnish, Saturday’s was the main course.
Learn more about photographing a full moon
Join me next fall as we do this all over again
A gallery of Yosemite moons
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Chasing the moon in Yosemite
Posted on November 18, 2013
Moonrise Reflection, Half Dome and the Merced River, Yosemite
Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III
1.3 seconds
F/16.0
ISO 200
40 mm
The highlight of my just completed Yosemite Autumn Moon photo workshop was a full moon rising above Half Dome at sunset. But rather than settle for just one Half Dome sunset moonrise, I’d “arranged for” three. Clouds shut us out on sunset-moonrise number two, but sunset-moonrise number one was a huge success. (And sunset-moonrise number three, from Tunnel View, was so special that I’ll dedicate a whole blog post to it.)
Any location’s “official” sun and moon rise/set times assume a flat horizon—if you read that today’s moonrise is at 5:00 p.m., you need to account for the time it takes for the moon to rise above whatever obstacles (mountains, hills, trees) are between you and the flat horizon. And due to the same motion around Earth that causes the moon’s phases, anyone planted in the same location night after night would see the moon rise about fifty minutes later each day (this is an average—the nightly lag varies with many factors). For example, a moon that hovered right on the horizon at sunset last night will rise too late to photograph tonight.
While you can’t do anything about the moon’s absolute position in the sky, you can control the elevation of your horizon simply by changing your location. In other words, careful positioning makes it possible to photograph a moonrise at sunset on multiple nights—move lower and/or closer to the horizon to delay the moon’s appearance, higher and/or farther to view the moon sooner.
The earlier the moon will rise, the closer to your subject (for example, Half Dome) you should be to increase the angle of view; the later the moonrise, the farther back and higher you should be. So, positioning ourselves on the valley floor, close to Half Dome, provided a steep angle of view that delayed the moon’s appearance on Thursday night, when it rose (above a flat horizon) several hours before sunset. Conversely, standing at elevated Tunnel View a couple of nights later decreased our angle of view, enabling us to see the moon sooner when official moonrise is closer to sunset.
Last Saturday night, from Tunnel View on Yosemite Valley’s west side (farthest from Half Dome) the moon was “scheduled” to appear about five minutes after sunset—that would put it in the magenta, post-sunset band with just enough light for about ten minutes of shooting before the dynamic range (the brightness difference between the sunlit moon and darkening foreground) shut us down. While that was the shoot we were most looking forward to, for Friday night I’d picked a mid-valley spot by the Merced River that would put the moon above Half Dome just about sunset. And for our initial sunset on Thursday evening, I took the group to a riverside spot on Yosemite Valley’s east side, much closer to Half Dome.
Clouds obscured the moon Friday night, but Thursday night was a real treat. Not only did we find the fall color in the cottonwood trees upriver still hanging in there (despite a fairly early autumn in most of Yosemite Valley), the clouds parted just in time for the moon’s arrival. In addition to Half Dome, the trees, and the moon in the distance, we were able to get a mirror image of the scene reflected on the glassy surface of the Merced River at our feet.
While the downside of moving closer to Half Dome (or whatever your subject is) is that the wider focal length necessary to include the entire scene also shrinks the moon, I’ve always believed a small moon adds a powerful accent that makes an already beautiful scene even more special. But what if you prefer your moon big? Simple: just wait a day or two, and move back as far as possible. Stay tuned….
Join me next fall as we do this all over again.
* * *
One final point: Notice the cool (blue) color cast of this scene. This is an indication of not just the rapidly advancing twilight, but also the depth of the shade there in the shadow of the steep valley walls and dense evergreens. An image’s color temperature is a creative choice made during processing by photographers capturing in raw (unprocessed) mode. While warming the light would have made the trees more yellow, I decided that the coolness adds a soothing calmness that is lost in the warmth of a daylight scene.
A Yosemite Autumn Moon Gallery
Up a creek…
Posted on November 13, 2013
Rapids in Autumn, The Narrows, Zion National Park
Canon EOS 5D Mark III
3.2 seconds
F/16
ISO 100
16 mm
(Okay, so technically it’s a river.)
Spending last week co-leading Don Smith’s Bryce/Zion workshop, I got a taste of my own medicine: the first opportunity to photograph something I’ve long wanted to photograph (usually I’m the one showing others something for the first time). In this case it was Zion’s (aptly named) Narrows, a deep gouge carved in red sandstone by millions of years of Virgin River flow and flood. So vertical and narrow is the canyon that most of the route is wall-to-wall river that requires spending about eighty percent of your time walking through the river rather than beside it. Unfortunately, this hardship appears to be no deterrent to swarms of hikers of all ages, shapes, and fitness levels.
I’ve wanted to photograph the Narrows for a long time, but didn’t think this would be the year because Don and I usually head home immediately after a fall workshop (to allow time to recover before the next workshop—starting Thursday we’ll be in Yosemite for my Yosemite Autumn Moon workshop). But when several of our long-time workshop participants (now as much friends as customers) invited Don and me to join them on their post-workshop hike up the Narrows, we couldn’t resist.
So, when the workshop ended mid-morning Friday, seven of us donned our rented “waterproof” (ish) socks, shoes, and pants and headed upstream from the Temple of Sinawava. I’d been to Zion a few years ago, but on that visit only walked up as far as the entrance to the Narrows before time and equipment limitations (I wasn’t dressed for hiking through cold, hip-deep water) forced me to turn back. While the paved, one-mile trail to the start of the Narrows is quite beautiful as well, I was able to resist the temptation to pull out my camera. But from the instant I put my feet in the water and started upstream at trail’s end, I found myself overwhelmed both by nature’s ability to amaze, and its power to impose its will. Taking in the magnificence of time’s handiwork, I was also reminded of nature’s ability to do pretty much whatever it wants—it took about a half hour to adjust to the river’s inexorable push and overcome the feeling that the next step would be the one that would douse me from head to toe. But adjust I did, eventually reaching the point where the relatively short detours onto dry land felt unnatural.
We stayed more or less together for a short distance before separating to appreciate and photograph this wonder at a more personal pace. With frequent stops to photograph and gape, plus a short detour into a side canyon, I made it partway through Wall Street, a stretch of canyon where the walls squeeze the river like towering high-rises, before turning around.
About a mile downstream from Wall Street, the river bends abruptly and the canyon widens enough to allow a few deciduous trees to take root. After working this scene from across the river for a few minutes, it became pretty clear that the shots I most wanted would require getting as close as possible to the rapids slithering through a bed of river-rounded rocks that are no doubt completely submerged in spring.
Camera and tripod raised high, I forded at a shallower place just downstream and slowly navigated into a deeper channel in front of the rocks, eventually finding myself hip deep on a sloping, sandy bank. Perfect. I set up my tripod and commenced composing, until a vague sense of disorientation alerted me to the fact that I was sinking like Tarzan in quicksand. Yikes. While I didn’t need to worry about a crocodiles and blow-gun wielding natives, the rapid current and unstable riverbed made keeping my tripod steady quite difficult. I found that it was possible to plant the tripod securely enough, but after each exposure I needed to reposition myself or risk sliding into the chest-deep water behind me (which wouldn’t have swept me to my death, but it would certainly have gotten me and my gear far wetter than I preferred).
Epilogue
Stage two of our adventure was to take place the next day, when Don, Don’s wife Beri (who’d flown out to join our hikes following the workshop), and me were to join some of the Narrows’ group on their hike to the Subway. Zion limits the Subway hike to eighty hikers per day, but we navigated the permit process without complication. Or so we thought.
Arriving, permits in hand, at the trailhead in the pre-sunrise darkness, we found a ranger waiting to accuse Don of running a commercial venture in a restricted area. No amount of reasoning could get him to comprehend that this hike was not part of Don’s workshop (Don recently had knee replacement surgery and wasn’t even sure how far he’d be able to go), that absolutely no money (or other financial considerations) was involved (an e-mail from Don making that clear didn’t sway him), that we were actually just tagging along on the other guys’ hike, and that we were all planning to go at our own pace (in addition to Don’s recent surgery, we represented a pretty wide age and fitness range).
Since we truly were doing nothing wrong, Don could have made things difficult and insisted on his right to continue, but taking the high road, he and Beri simply opted out. And despite the fact that I’m a pro photographer who guides my own workshops, for some reason the ranger would have allowed me to go, but I chose to stick with Don and Beri.
While I’m all for stronger enforcement of the National Parks permit process (something we seriously need given some of the behavior I’ve observed), I found this particular action a little overzealous. While I completely understand why the ranger had questions, and his right to ask them, this kind of blind enforcement of the good guys who follow the rules risks a National Park system with photo workshops guided only by rule breakers who know how to fly under the radar. Nevertheless, in this case I’ll give the ranger a pass because he was quite young and clearly lacked the either experience (or wisdom) to recognize that we weren’t breaking any rules, or the authority to use his better judgment. And as it turns out, we three outlaws ended up having a very nice (albeit more leisurely) day that included a far less strenuous hike up to the Emerald Pools.
Variations on a stream
Posted on November 7, 2013
Leaf and Rocks, Bridalveil Creek, Yosemite
Canon EOS 5D Mark III
5 seconds
F/11
ISO 200
100 mm
In my November 4 post, I wrote at length about a recent morning spent photographing a single leaf I found plastered to a rock beside Bridalveil Creek in Yosemite (and my feelings about staged scenes). While my entire shoot that morning was all about one found leaf, it was just the latest in a long succession of focused visits to Bridalveil Creek. Each time I visit here the creek is different: In spring Bridalveil Creek spills into three distinct branches, each bulging with rushing snowmelt; most autumns, the creek has shrunk one branch, a trickle of its former self, decorated with yellow leaves; in winter the banks are lined with snow and ice crusts the surface. On each visit I usually choose a scene and work it to within an inch of its life. On this most recent morning I spent an hour photographing this one leaf, making sure I left no shot un-shot: Multiple lenses, a range of focal lengths, horizontal and vertical orientation, and a variety of perspectives.
Here are more samples:
Here’s the version of the leaf I featured in my November 4 post. I started with wider compositions and gradually moved to tighter frames like this one. (If I were one to arrange leaves in my scenes, I might have been tempted to place one about where the pine needle sits on the rock opposite the leaf.)
Here’s the same image rotated into a vertical. Whenever possible, I like to horizontal and vertical version of each scene I photography, but rarely do they come out identical because each orientation requires its own crop. But an advantage of photographing a scene from directly above is that there’s no top or bottom to the scene. To make the horizontal scene into a vertical, I could have rotated my camera 90 degrees and re-shot, but it was much easier to simply rotate the image in Photoshop.
Shortly after I started working on the scene, a breeze kicked up and deposited a green leaf right on top of the pine needle mentioned above. Not only was it a not particularly photogenic leaf, it was upside-down (clearly I need to work on my powers of telepathic manifestation). But rather than knock the rogue leaf into the creek, I included it in my composition, capturing several frames before the breeze returned and did the dirty work for me.
No leaves were harmed in the making of this image
Posted on November 4, 2013
Leaf, Bridalveil Creek, Yosemite
Canon EOS 5D Mark III
10 seconds
F/16
ISO 200
78 mm
“Did you put that leaf there?”
I’m not sure how many more times I’ll need to answer that question, but let me just say that my answer will never change: No. I feel very strongly that photography needs to be a source of pleasure, and my pleasure from photography comes from discovering beauty in its natural state. But that’s just me—others enjoy staging images by adding or moving elements to suit their composition, which, as far as I’m concerned, is fine as long as the photographer is forthright about what she’s done.
Sadly, the ease of digital manipulation has made people hyper-sensitive to the possibility that an image might not be “real” (whatever that means). Analog manipulation (like arranging leaves) has gone on since the first photon/film connection. And darkroom manipulation, while not nearly as easy as digital manipulation, has been around since the first darkroom—Ansel Adams was a notorious darkroom manipulator who often revisited older images and re-printed vastly different versions. Adams actually got a kick out of people who believed he was capturing the world exactly as he saw it.
Whatever the “manipulation” (a word with a much more negative implication than it deserves in this context), the ultimate litmus test is whether deception is involved. Most people who arrange the elements in their scenes do so without devious intent; while I may not be as excited about an image when I learn that the photographer placed the leaf on that rock, or Photoshopped the moon above between those mountains, I won’t think less of him as a person or photographer if he’s honest about it.
Nevertheless I sometimes find myself getting a little defensive when the “Did you put that leaf there?” question is posed. It’s not so much the question itself (which I understand), as it is the implication that I’ve been caught in a deception that so frequently wraps the question. Nevertheless, regardless of the questioner’s tone, I just smile and affirm my innocence of whatever nefarious act they might suspect me of. I try my best not to expose their ignorance, and when I’m in a more patient frame of mind, I’ll even attempt to educate anyone who wants to be educated. But sometimes I just feel like asking, “Do you really not believe that nature can be this beautiful?”
Fallen Color, Rock Creek Canyon, Eastern Sierra
Here’s one that gets the “Did you do that?” question all the time. I didn’t touch the leaves, but because any two objects in the Universe can be connected by a straight line, I did position myself to emphasize the line connecting this pair.
Oh well. I’m sure I get the question so much because of what and how I shoot—browse my galleries and you’ll see many images with a single leaf, or maybe a small group of leaves. But that’s because I aggressively seek solitary elements to isolate from whatever larger scene I’m in, or multiple elements that I can compose into a natural pattern by simply positioning my camera a certain way.
When I find a compositional element I think will work, I stick with it until I’m sure I’ve found every possible way to shoot it, then continue just a little longer. Which brings me to today’s leaf. I photographed it and nothing else for a full hour—it was the only thing I photographed that morning.
On the final morning of last week’s Yosemite Fall Color and Reflections workshop I guided those workshop students who didn’t mind a little rock scrambling to my favorite spot on Bridalveil Creek. Within easy earshot of the fall, the creek back here tumbles between boulders as large as cars, descending in cascading steps interrupted by quiet pools. In autumn, the scene is augmented by yellow leaves that dart through the cascades, drift on the pools, and cling to wet rocks.
While the others zeroed in on a triple cascade (that I’d photographed many times before), I hopped nearby boulders in search of something new. My search ended when I found this single, rock hugging leaf. Unfortunately, the star of my show was in a most inaccessible spot, inches from the rushing water at the bottom of a steep and slippery rock, deep in a narrow notch between a trio of large boulders.
From atop a nearby rock I could shoot down at about 45 degrees from maybe fifteen feet away, but I soon realized that a tighter composition from directly above was really the shot I wanted. Getting in position for this required angles I didn’t know my tripod legs were capable of, and gymnastic contortions this body hasn’t attempted in years. I can’t even begin to describe how awkward this was, but of course that won’t stop me from trying:
It was clear from the outset that securing my tripod in the open air above the leaf would require help from three widely separated rocks. After much trial, error, and imminent mishap, I finally managed to splay each tripod leg onto its own rock with the camera in positioned directly above the leaf. Okay, now what? There was no way I could even get close to the viewfinder, but spread-eagled between two rocks and using the tripod for balance (but not for support), through the genius of live-view, I was able to get close enough to my LCD that I was pretty sure I could compose and focus. So far so good.
I next removed the camera from the tripod to meter. With Bridalveil Creek in the shadow of six-hundred vertical feet of granite (in these low-sun months I can photograph here in low contrast, full shade for most of the morning), my exposure choices were pretty straightforward. I guessed that I’d need a least a foot of depth of field, that my camera would be about five feet above the leaf, and that my focal length would be around 80mm. Plugging these values into my hyperfocal app told me f16 would give me the one-and-a-half feet of depth of field I thought I’d need.
Experience with workshop students has shown me that many photographers vastly underrate the value of a polarizer in a shaded scene like this (and vastly overrate its value for the sky!). Without a polarizer, the glare on the wet rocks and leaf risked rendering this image unusable (even with the scene fully polarized, the glare remains quite noticeable). So, before returning my camera to the tripod, I oriented my polarizer by pointing my camera in the direction of my scene, looking through the viewfinder, and turning the polarizer’s outer ring until the wet rocks darkened.
At this distance and focal length, with water moving as fast as this, there’s virtually no difference in the blur effect between 2 and 20 seconds. Given that I see little noise difference between 100 and 200 ISO, rather than exposing 20 seconds at 100 ISO, I went with 10 seconds at 200 ISO for no better reason than it halved the wait time for each image.
Okay. Camera back on the tripod, I switched on live-view and found my composition. Moving the focus box to the leaf, I magnified 10x and focused carefully. Almost ready, but before clicking I returned to 1x view and reevaluated my composition. Then I clicked, evaluated, refined, and clicked again. But even with the LCD a few feet away I could see that those first couple of meticulously composed and focused attempts were slightly soft and framed wider than I knew I’d composed them. Hmmm. I double-checked my tripod and confirmed that everything was solid. Scratching my head, I recomposed and focused once more. Watching my camera closely this time, I saw that the extreme downward angle was causing the telescoping barrel of my 24-105 lens to slowly extend during my exposure. Crap. Camera back off the tripod, I retreated from my perch. Returning to my camera bag, which was safely balanced on a rock about ten feet away, I switched to my 70-200 lens.
While switching lenses was a pain, not only did it solve the drifting problem, the longer lens forced me to tighten and simplify my composition to its most basic elements: one leaf, two rocks, water. And variations on those elements are pretty much what I did for the next hour or so. The longer I worked the scene, the more variations I found, and also the more adept I became at adjusting my tripod, camera angle, and even myself, to achieve whatever shot I wanted. Every once in a while I descended to assist someone in the group (leaving the tripod and camera, thank-you-very-much), taking advantage of the break to relieve my cramping legs, back, and neck. By the time I finished my muscles were screaming and my hands were little pink ice cubes, but I was happy.
I walked back to the parking lot knowing I had some really nice images. And despite all the effort and discomfort, I had a complete blast. But please, please don’t ask me if I put that leaf there.
Cliché for a reason
Posted on October 29, 2013
Autumn Snow, Valley View, Yosemite
Canon EOS 5D Mark III
1/15 second
F/16
ISO 100
24 mm
It’s actually even a cliché just to say it, but some things really are “cliché for a reason.” And as much as I try to avoid the cliché shots in Yosemite, sometimes they just can’t be helped.
My Yosemite Fall Color workshop began yesterday, and even though I’d spent all day Saturday in the park, yesterday morning a storm filled Saturday’s blue skies with rain and I felt like I should go check on the conditions before we started. The wet weather had slowed me enough that I didn’t really have time to take pictures, but when I found not only the red and yellow leaves I’d seen on Saturday, and the swirling clouds I’d hoped for, but also Yosemite Valley’s colorful trees and meadows etched with snow, I was tempted at every turn to reach for my camera. Nevertheless, with the exception of a brief breakdown at Cook’s Meadow, I managed to resist temptation.
Unfortunately, the Cook’s Meadow stop had put me even more behind schedule, so I told myself while approaching Valley View that any stop here would be just reconnaissance. And anyway, Valley View images are a dime a dozen, clichés that I’d done more than my share to perpetuate over the years. Then I got there….
I mean seriously, cliché or not (deadline or not), how does a photographer pass up a scene like this? With my group meeting me in just an hour, I really, really didn’t have time for pictures, which is exactly what I kept reminding myself as I leaped from my car, snatched my camera and tripod, and sprinted down to the river. I only snapped four frames, two vertical and two horizontal, before racing back to the car and toward my impending rendezvous.
It’s images like this that remind me that nature’s beauty transcends any human judgement of “cliché.” Pro photographers, myself included, can get a little snobbish about frequently photographed scenes. And while I think it’s important to take the time to find a unique perspective, sometimes it’s best to let Mother Nature speak for herself.
Happy ending
I made it to my workshop with minutes to spare, conducted a lightning-fast orientation, and hustled everyone back outside as quickly as possible. We ended up circling Yosemite Valley several times, photographing without a break until dark. I heard no complaints.
A gallery of clichés
Shocking truths about lightning
Posted on October 23, 2013
Color and Light, Bright Angel Point, North Rim, Grand Canyon
Canon EOS 5D Mark III
1/3 second
F/11
ISO 100
24-105 f4L lens
While working on an upcoming “Outdoor Photographer” magazine article on photographing lightning at the Grand Canyon, I’ve been revisiting the images from my August workshop with Don Smith. While I still feel like I’ve only scratched the surface with the trip’s lighting images, it’s clear that at least half of my captures came on that amazing final morning, when we witness two hours of virtually nonstop lightning punctuated by a vivid section of rainbow balanced atop Powell Point. The first image I posted from that morning included the rainbow sharing the rim a trio of simultaneous, parallel strikes. The difficulty I’m having now is choosing which of the other pretty spectacular images to feature (FYI, this is a great problem to have).
Fortunately, I varied my compositions enough that many of my favorite captures are different from each other. Here, a single strike lands just east of the rainbow, close enough that they somehow seem related. This image is an example of why I’m constantly preaching to my workshop participants to switch between horizontal and vertical, even (especially) when one orientation seems more obvious than the other. Fortunately, I practiced what I preached (not always a sure thing) throughout the morning—instead of having one great capture of lighting with that morning’s rainbow, I now have two (and counting) that are different enough from each other to share.
Another byproduct of my magazine article is the research I’ve been doing on lightning. I’ve always been something of a weather geek, but it seems each time I revisit a topic, I learn something new. So, while I doubt you’ll find this stuff quite as fascinating as I do, here are some cool lightning facts I just can’t resist sharing:
- Earth is struck by lightning eight million times each day.
- While lightning is still not completely understood, scientists know that the rapid upward and downward motion of raindrops in a thunderstorm creates extreme electrical polarity—a negative/positive imbalance within a cloud, between clouds, or between a cloud and the ground. Nature abhors any imbalance and will remedy the problem as efficiently as possible: Lightning.
- The visible portion of a lightning strike originates on the ground and travels up to the cloud.
- In a lifespan measured milliseconds, a lightning bolt can release 200 million volts and heat the surrounding air to 50,000 degrees. More than enough to fry a photographer.
- Most of us know that lightning and thunder occur simultaneously. What many don’t know is that you can’t have one without the other—it’s the lightning that causes the thunder, and if you see lightning but hear no thunder, you’re just too far away. This even applies to what is often called “heat lightning,” which still generates thunder you’d hear if you were close enough.
- The fact that lightning and thunder occur simultaneously, but light travels much faster than sound, allows us to roughly establish the distance of the lightning. For all intents and purposes, we see the lightning the instant it happens, while the thunder pokes along at the speed of sound, a pedestrian 1,100 feet per second. That works out to about five seconds to travel one mile. So, if you start counting as soon as you see lightning (one-thousand-one, one-thousand-two, …), dividing by five the number you’re at when the thunder arrives gives you the approximate distance in miles.
- Let’s say you get all the way to fifty before the thunder arrives—that would be ten miles. You’re safe, right? Wrong. Lightning bolts exceeding one hundred miles in length have been documented, as have bolts with no rain and even with blue skies overhead. That’s why we’re warned to stay inside whenever you can see lightning or hear thunder. (It’s also why I say do as I say, not as I do.)
- A car is not a magic lightning sanctuary, and the safety a car does offer is because of its metal frame, not its rubber tires. (Don’t believe me? Go stand on a couple of rubber tires in the next lightning storm and have your next of kin report back to me.) Even when you’re inside a car, you need to keep the windows up and don’t touch anything metal. And stay away from convertibles.
Here are a couple of lightning safety websites:
Are you interested in risking your life to photograph lightning? Join me in a Grand Canyon photo workshop.
A Lightning Gallery
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Favorite: Sunset Palette
Posted on October 17, 2013
Sunset Palette, Half Dome from Sentinel Dome, Yosemite
Canon EOS-1Ds Mark II
Canon 24-105
2 seconds
F/20.0
ISO 100
Usually an image comes together on the spot, an organic blend of location and light unique to the moment. But some images I carry around in my brain for years, fully aware of the elements and how I want them assembled, and hopeful to be present when that happens. I have a number of these “dream” images rattling around between my ears, and every once in a while the stars align and I actually get to capture one. For example, on every visit to Sentinel Dome I would eye the granite indentations on the southeast flank and picture them as pools of rainwater reflecting the sunset sky, framing Half Dome in the distance. Wouldn’t it be great if….
One showery October afternoon a few years ago I made the hike to Sentinel Dome with these indentations in mind. I knew that the recent rain would quite likely have filled them, allowing at least part of my dream to come true. After summiting the dome I beelined to the other side and found “my” pools exactly as I’d hoped. The sky was a promising mix of blue and gray, but the sun was still at least an hour above the horizon. Nevertheless, the air was clean and western horizon was clear, essential ingredients for the colorful sunset I so wanted. Dare I hope?
I walked around a bit and mentally refined my composition—rather than set up close and use an ultra wide-angle, I moved back as far as the terrain would permit. This allowed me to fit the pools in the frame at a longer a focal length, which would compress the distance separating Half Dome and the pools. To reduce the expanse of granite behind the pools, I flattened my tripod as far as it would go and framed my shot. With closest pool about six feet in front of me, stopping down to f20 and focusing on a point about twelve feet away gave me sharpness throughout the frame. With my composition set and waiting on my tripod, I readied my two-stop hard graduated neutral density filter and adjusted my polarizer, then sat down on the (hard) granite, and waited.
The sunset color that finally came was more than I dared hope for. The sun was at my back, but with clouds overhead and the western horizon wide open, the crimson glow stretched all the way to the eastern horizon. I clicked this frame when the color was at its most intense, so brilliant in fact that every exposed surface seemed to throb with its glow.
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A Few Images On or Including Sentinel Dome
Night and Day
Posted on October 9, 2013
Night and Day, Crescent Moon Rising Above Mono Lake
Canon EOS 5D Mark III
3.2 seconds
F/5.6
ISO 800
40 mm
October 2013
It’s dark. It’s cold. It’s early—so early that some would still consider it late. But you drag yourself out of bed anyway, for the promise of something most people never experience. And experience is the operative word here, because it’s much more than just the view. Or the photography. It’s the opportunity to witness the transition from night to day, to bask in a quiet that’s impossible in our metropolitan mayhem, to inhale clean, chilled air, and to watch the rising sun’s warm hues push back Earth’s indigo shadow to devour the twinkling vestiges of night. Of course you can watch this happen in reverse after sunset, but it’s just not the same in a world has been lived in for a dozen or so hours.
I’d scheduled this year’s Eastern Sierra workshop to conclude on the one day each month when a sliver of moon floats in the transition between night and day. To photograph the moon this small and close to the sun, I try to be in place an hour before “official” sunrise (the posted sunrise time, when the sun would crest a flat horizon), when darkness still predominates. With a five mile drive on a rugged, unpaved road, and a half mile (or so) trail-less walk through sand and mud, I got the group on the road at 5:15 for our 7:00 a.m. sunrise. Despite some blurry eyes, there was no grumbling; and by the time we were ready to trek to the lake, everyone was in great spirits.
On this morning Mother Nature rewarded us by chasing away the clouds that had dogged the horizon the last couple of days. These clouds had given us brilliant color, but had also preempted our night photography shoot just ten hours earlier; I was concerned that they’d obscure the moon I’d been so looking forward to. No problem—in the clouds’ place we found this two-percent slice of old moon, one day removed from new, just as I’d ordered. Phew.
Because this was the last day of the workshop, everyone had pretty much mastered the difficulty of exposing for a dark foreground beneath a bright horizon—some blended multiple exposures, others reached for their graduated neutral density filters—allowing them to concentrate on creativity. I tried a variety of compositions, horizontal and vertical orientations from wide to tight, and encouraged the rest of the group to do the same (though I suspect that by now they’d all learned to tune me out).
This is one of the first images I captured that morning. It was still dark enough that the amount of light required to bring out any detail in the foreground also revealed lots of lunar detail in the earth-shadow, and stars still pierced much of the sky. Nice. To ensure that I didn’t get motion blur in the moon, I made some compromises: I dropped to f5.6 (depth of field wasn’t a concern, but lenses are slightly slightly less sharp as the approach their extreme apertures) and bumped to ISO 800 (with my 5D Mark III and today’s noise reduction software, noise at ISO 800 is no longer much of a concern). For most of my images that morning I used a two-stop hard-transition graduated neutral density filter to subdue the bright horizon, but this was one of my earliest images, captured before that was necessary.
The group was pretty quiet for most of this sunrise, usually a sign that they’re pretty happy with what they see and the images they’re capturing. Every once in a while I’d answer a question, or offer suggestions, but it seemed like people were pretty much “in the zone.” Nevertheless, I did pause couple of times to remind everyone not to get so caught up in their photography that they forget to appreciate what we’re witnessing.
These ephemeral moments in nature change subtly but quickly—soon the stars disappeared and moon faded into the advancing daylight. By the time the sun crested the horizon, our attention had turned to the warmly lit peaks behind us. And then it was over.
Eloquent Images by Gary Hart 