Reflections on the polarizer
Posted on December 1, 2011
Autumn Reflection, North Lake, Eastern Sierra
Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III
1/5 second
F/16.0
ISO 200
22 mm
Polarizer 101
Photographers who think a polarizer is only for darkening the sky miss opportunities to saturate color and and emphasize texture in shade or overcast. Even worse, some photographers screw on a polarizer without understanding how it works, mistakenly believing that merely having it attached is sufficient.
The amount of polarization any composition calls for is a creative decision that can make or break an image. And unfortunately, a mis-oriented polarizer is worse than no polarizer. With no Photoshop substitute to help you recover, your only option is to get the polarization right at capture.
This won’t be on the test
So what does a polarizer do?
It helps some people to understand that a wave of light oscillates perpendicular to its direction of motion–picture the way a wave in the middle of the ocean rises and falls as it advances: the wave moves forward, but the water moves up and down. In very simple terms, by removing light that oscillates in a specific direction, a polarizing filter removes reflection. Polarization (reflection reduction) is most pronounced when your lens points 90 degrees (perpendicular) to the direction of the sun (or other light source); its least effective when the lens points directly toward or away from the sun.
A circular polarizer (what you want for today’s digital SLR cameras) screws to the front of your lens. Rotating the polarizer’s outer element relative to its fixed, inner element, varies the orientation and amount of polarization. You can see its effect (sometimes large, sometimes small) through your viewfinder or on your live-view LCD.
What a polarizer does for you
With reflections minimized by a polarizer, pale blue sky is transformed to a deep blue, the natural color and texture of rocks and foliage pops, and clouds that were barely visible suddenly snap into prominence. Or, imagine mountains reflected in a still alpine lake: As you rotate your polarize, the reflection is replaced by rocks and leaves dotting the lakebed; keep turning and the reflection returns.
So what’s the catch?
Lost light
A polarizer costs you one to two stops of exposure, depending on the polarizer and the amount of polarization you dial in. Since aperture manages depth, landscape photographers usually compensate for the lost light with a longer shutter speed–one more reason to use a tripod.
Differential polarization
Because a polarizer’s effect varies with the direction of the light, and wide lenses cover such a broad field of view, light strikes different parts of a wide scene from different angles. The result is “differential polarization”: parts of the scene that are more polarized than others.
Differential polarization is particularly troublesome in the sky, appearing as an unnatural transition from light to dark blue across a single frame. This effect can often be reduced, but rarely eliminated, with careful dodging and burning in Photoshop. Better yet, avoid images with lots of (boring) blue sky.
Vignetting
A standard polarizer is comprised of a circle of polarized glass mounted in a frame that screws into, and rotates relative to, the fixed lens beneath. Many also include an outer ring with threads for attaching other filters. The field of view of ultra-wide lenses can be so great that, at their wider focal lengths, they include the polarizer’s frame: vignetting. Polarizer vignetting manifests as dark edges on your images, particularly at the corners.
Most of the best polarizer manufacturers offer a low-profile version that mitigates vignetting. Low profile polarizers are more money (oh well), usually require a special lens cap (usually just a minor annoyance), and don’t have external threads (not an issue for me).
Where’s the rainbow?
A polarizer oriented to minimize reflections will completely erase a rainbow. So if you’re shooting a photographing a rainbow, turn your polarizer until you see the rainbow at its brightest. And if you’re photographing scene that could get a rainbow, pull away from your viewfinder from time-to-time just to be sure that you’re not missing something special.
Me and my polarizer(s)
Always on
Since I’m all about simplicity in the field, and determining whether or not I need a polarizer and then installing or removing it as needed is more trouble than it’s worth, each lens has its own polarizer that never comes off during daylight hours. I remove my polarizer only when I need more light; but remember, I’m always on a tripod, so unless it’s night, or I’m dealing with wind or water motion, the light lost to the polarizer isn’t a concern for me.
But. Shooting with no polarizer is better than using an incorrectly oriented polarizer. If you’re going to follow my “always on” polarizer approach, you must be diligent about rotating the polarizer and checking its effect on each composition, or risk doing more harm than good to your image.
Protection
Like many photographers, I always use a filter as protection for my front lens element; unlike many photographers, I don’t use UV or skylight filters. While it’s possible to stack a polarizer with a UV or skylight filter, I don’t. Instead, (because it never comes off) my polarizer doubles as protection for the front lens element.
Given that my polarizers are in the $200 range, this gets a little expensive when a filter “takes one for the team,” but it’s cheaper than replacing an entire lens, and more desirable than stacking superfluous glass between my subject and my sensor, not to mention the vignetting stacking causes. On the other hand, I will use a graduated neutral density filter with a polarizer, because GNDs perform a specific (not superfluous) function.
The polarizer and lens hoods
To those photographers who complain that it’s a real pain to rotate a polarizer with a lens hood in the way, I have a simple solution: remove the lens hood. I never use a lens hood. Ever. This is blasphemy to many photographers, but I hate lens hoods, which always seem to be in the way (see my “simplicity in the field” comment above). But (there’s that word again), jettisoning the lens hood must come with the understanding that lens flare is real and sometimes impossible to correct after the fact.
When there’s a chance direct sunlight will strike my front lens element, I check to see if shielding the lens helps. With my composition ready (on my tripod!), I peer through my viewfinder and shield my lens with my hand or hat (or whatever’s handy). If the scene becomes darker and more contrasty, and/or random fragments of light disappear, when my lens is shaded, I know I have lens flare and need to manually shield my lens while exposing. Of course if the sun is part of the composition, no shading in the world will eliminate lens flare.
Polarizer techniques
Polarizer on a budget
All scenes don’t benefit equally from a polarizer, and photographers on a budget can’t always afford one for every lens. If you’re only going to go with one polarizer, buy one for your largest lens–as long as you’re on a tripod, it’s not hard to hold (and rotate) a larger polarizer in front of a smaller lens.
Does this scene call for a polarizer?
To determine the polarizer’s effect, rotate the outer element 360 degrees as you peer through your viewfinder (or while viewing the LCD in live-view). Often just holding the polarizer to your eye and rotating it slowly is enough to determine its benefit. Either way, if you can’t see a change, you probably don’t need to worry about a polarizer.
Because a polarizer can also enhance reflections (and glare), whenever the polarizer is on, you must, must, must test its effect with every composition (and especially after switching from horizontal to vertical orientation). Unless I’m trying to maximize a reflection, I rotate the polarizer until the scene appears darkest. If there’s no apparent change, I watch specific objects that might have a slight sheen (water, a leaf, or a rock) as I rotate the polarizer–I almost always can find some change.
It’s not just for the sky
As nice as the the effect on the sky is, it’s the polarizer’s more subtle ability to reduce glare in overcast or shade that I find irreplaceable. Peering through your viewfinder (or watching your LCD if you’re using live-view), lock your eyes on a reflective surface and rotate the polarizer. The effect is most obvious on water, or wet rocks and leaves, but even when completely dry, most rocks and leaves have a discernible sheen. As you rotate the polarizer, harsh glare is replaced by natural color and texture; continue rotating and the glare reappears. The glare is minimized when the scene is darkest.
Regardless of the effect, there’s no rule that requires you to turn the polarizer to one extreme or anther (maximum or minimum reflection). Rotate the outer element slowly and watch the scene change, stopping when you achieve the desired effect.
In the North Lake autumn reflection scene at the top of the page, I was able to find a midpoint in the polarization that kept the best part of the reflection (the mountains and trees), while still revealing the submerged granite rocks at my feet.
Floating Leaves, Merced River, Yosemite
In the above image of autumn leaves floating in the Merced River, I used my polarizer to completely dial down the reflection, creating the illusion of leaves suspended in empty space. Polarizing away the reflection also helped the leaves’ color stand out by eliminating distracting glare.
Redbud, Merced River
An emergency neutral density filter
A polarizer can also be used as a two-stop neutral density filter by dialing it to maximum polarization (minimum light). In this image of a redbud above the surging Merced River, even at ISO 100 and f32, I couldn’t reach the 3/4 second shutter speed that would give me the motion blur I wanted. But the two stops of light I lost to my polarizer was just enough to get me where I wanted to be.
If you’re serious about your photography
Use only quality polarizers; you don’t need to spend a fortune, but neither should you skimp. Not only does the quality of the optics affect the quality of your results, I’ve also seen many poorly made polarizers simply fall apart for no apparent reason.
I advise buying polarizers that are commensurate with your glass–in other words, if you have top-of-the-line lenses, it makes no sense to use anything but top-of-the-line polarizers. I use Heliopan, Rodenstock, and Singh-Ray (I refuse to purchase anything from B+W until they fix their low profile lens cap, a problem they’ve know about for years).
My personal recipe for using a polarizer
- Always on during the day (but if you do this, you must check the orientation with each composition)
- No other filters except a graduated neutral density filter, when needed
- Compose my shot and lock it in place on my tripod
- Turn the polarizer to get the effect I want
- Expose the scene
- Check for lens flare and shield if necessary
- Click
Just do it
Like anything else in photography, using a polarizer is an acquired skill that improves with use. You don’t need to immediately jump in with both feet, but I suspect once you tune in to the polarizer’s benefits, you’ll have a hard time photographing nature without one.
Seeing the small stuff
Posted on November 28, 2011
Leaves and Light, Yosemite
* * * *
In a recent post I mentioned that I don’t photograph Yosemite’s Tunnel View much anymore. It’s not that I visit Tunnel View any less frequently, or love being there any less than I once did; it’s more the growing realization collecting images already done (by myself or others) doesn’t really excite me. The longer I do this, the more I appreciate the simple pleasure of capturing a moment in nature, of finding a small detail or ephemeral scene that’s often overlooked and will never be repeated.
On a recent fall visit to Yosemite I meandered the bank of the Merced River near the Pohono Bridge and Fern Spring. As is often the case this time of year, a number of photographers were stationed on and near the bridge, and the usual swarm of tripods jockeyed for position around the spring. But the world was blissfully quiet among the trees. While the dogwood, usually fiery red in early November, were still mostly green, the maples flashed brilliant yellow. Even the slightest breeze sent a few leaves wafting, but closer scrutiny of those still holding tight showed many with a few molecules of spring green, a sign that the fall display wasn’t quite finished.
Positioning myself beneath an overhanging branch, I zoomed my 70-200 tight, separating the branch from its surroundings to make it appear suspended in midair. Despite a gray overcast and dark evergreen canopy, a few dots of light leaked through overhead. Usually I’ll compose bright sky out of a frame like this, but here I decided to feature it, dialing in a large aperture (f5.6) to soften the individual pinpoints into overlapping jewels. Because a narrow depth of field makes the focus point particularly critical, I switched to live-view and magnified my LCD to ensure precise focus. The narrow depth of field also smoothed the background trees, erasing distractions and setting the sharp foreground leaves against a complementary canvas of color, shape, and light.
These leaves are brown now, decomposing on the forest floor, or perhaps far downriver. While there’s no doubt in my mind that as I clicked this frame many simultaneous clicks captured whatever was going on at Tunnel View, I’m pretty sure I’m the only person in the world with this image. That’s a nice thought for sure, until I remember that within a few feet of where I stood were an infinite number of other unrepeatable images that I missed. Guess I’ll just have to keep trying….
Magenta moonrise, Half Dome, Yosemite
Posted on November 21, 2011
Magenta Moonrise, Half Dome, Yosemite
With my camera I’m able to create my own version of any view, adjusting focal length (the amount of magnification) and composition to emphasize whatever elements and relationships I find most compelling. Today’s image was captured on the final shoot ofmy most recent fall workshop, three sunsets after my previous image, from virtually the same location.
On Sunday evening (the first sunset), with Yosemite Valley emerging from swirling clouds and the moon high above Leaning Tower, I chose a wide composition that encompassed the entire scene. Wednesday evening the eastern horizon was partially obscured by a uniform layer of translucent clouds. As the sunset progressed, we watched the moon’s glow rise through the throbbing pink clouds. When it slipped into a small opening I quickly tightened my composition to create a frame that was all about Half Dome and the moon. I made the Sunday moon a delicate accent, the Wednesday moon a bold exclamation point. These decisions remind me that photography is more than simply documenting a moment; it’s taking that moment and using the camera’s unique vision to convey its essence.
One more thing: By the last day of a workshop, relationships have been forged and inside jokes have blossomed. The group interaction feels more like a family gathering (minus the disfunction) than the assembly of diverse strangers we were three-and-a-half days earlier. On this evening in particular we had a great time laughing about things that anyone who hadn’t been in the workshop couldn’t appreciate. It was lots of fun, and a wonderful way for me to wrap up this year’s fall workshop season.
(More) Tunnel View magic
Posted on November 17, 2011
Moon at Twilight, Yosemite Valley from Tunnel View
This post is for everyone who woke up this morning thinking, “Gee, I sure wish there were more pictures from Tunnel View in Yosemite.” Well, you’ve come to the right place.
Okay, seriously, the world really doesn’t need any more Tunnel View pictures, but sometimes I just can’t help myself. Call me biased, but I’ll put this view up against any in the world. I’ve been here hundreds (thousands?) of times, but still try to make it my first stop every time I enter Yosemite Valley (even though it’s a slight detour from my standard route into the park). And Tunnel View’s position overlooking the west end of the valley makes it the first place to clear after a storm, so it’s usually where I wait out any weather.
Since most of my workshops usually include a few people who have never experienced Yosemite, I get vicarious thrills by making Tunnel View my first workshop stop. Of course we usually return as I have many favorite times to share this view: any clearing storm, a crescent moon rising in the predawn twilight, a fiery sunset, Bridalveil Fall’s colorful ascending prism each spring afternoon, Half Dome and El Capitan against a post-sunset pink and blue pastel sky, a rainbow arcing across Yosemite Valley, and a full moon rising above Half Dome at sunset. Nevertheless, with a vast portfolio of all these magic moments, I rarely photograph here anymore.
So what possessed me to take out my camera on the first sunset of last week’s Yosemite workshop? I’m guess still a hopeless sucker for a clearing storm, but the tipping point for me that evening came when I moon popped out, a rare opportunity to photograph something a little different from anything else I have. Including the moon in my frame required going a little wider than I normally do here, about 30mm in this case, which reduced the moon to a small accent punctuating the scene. If you read my post on visual balance, you understand why I like a small moon that’s not necessarily the focal point the frame.
But enough about me. As much as I enjoyed photographing this, it was more fun watching everyone else watch the sunset unfold. The swirling clouds went from gray, to white, and then pink, before finally parting to reveal blue sky and the moon suspended above Leaning Tower. Between clicks I heard giggles of excitement and even a few audible gasps. Pretty cool.
Isolation
Posted on November 11, 2011
Forest Autumn, Yosemite
Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III
200 mm
1/25 second
F/4
ISO 200
I love sweeping panoramas, but when I’m alone I often gravitate to the intimate locations that make nature so personal. In Yosemite’s dark corners, places like Bridalveil Creek beneath Bridalveil Fall, and the dense mix of evergreen and deciduous trees lining Merced River near Fern Spring and the Pohono Bridge, I scour the trees and forest floor for subjects to isolate from their surroundings.
Helping your subjects stand out is often the key to a successful image. Sometimes subject isolation is a simple matter of finding something that stands out from its surroundings, an object that’s physically separated far from other distractions. But more often than not, effective isolation requires a little help from your camera settings, using contrast, focus, and/or motion to distinguish it from nearby distractions.
A disorganized tangle of weeds or branches can become a soft blur of color when you narrow your depth of field with a large aperture, close focus point, and/or long focal length. Likewise with motion, where a long shutter speed can smooth a rushing creek into a silky white ribbon. And a camera’s inherently limited dynamic range can render shadows black, and highlights white, creating a perfect background for your subject.
After finding these dangling leaves, just across the road and a little downriver from Fern Spring in Yosemite Valley, I juxtaposed them against the vertical trunks of background maples and evergreens. Zooming to 200mm reduced my depth of field, separating the sharp leaves from the soft background of trunks and branches. A large aperture further blurred the background to a simple, complementary canvas of color and shape. Slight underexposure and a polarizer (to remove glare) helped the color pop.
On my website you can read more about my favorite Yosemite photo locations.
A gallery of isolation
Sweet moment
Posted on November 6, 2011
Winter Moon, Half Dome, Yosemite
Last November I planned a trip to Yosemite to coincide with the full moon rising above Half Dome at sunset. When a prematurely cold storm blew through and blanketed Yosemite with snow. While the photography was fantastic, I resigned myself to waiting another year for the moonrise I’d hoped for. And I certainly didn’t complain. After a full day of photography in conditions than ranged from overcast to downright stormy, as sunset approach I saw nothing to give me hope for the anticipated moonrise. Nevertheless, I headed to Tunnel View to finish the day.
What happened next was a reminder of why I never try to predict Yosemite’s weather in five minutes based on Yosemite’s weather right now. As many times as I’ve visited Tunnel View (surely it must be in the thousands), the view as a storm clears can still take my breath away. That evening I arrived to find Yosemite Valley coated in a sugary glaze; within minutes Mother Nature served up the next course, turning the clouds above Half Dome cotton candy pink. Then, as if by magic, a gap materialized in the clouds to the right of El Capitan to reveal the moon, like a glowing lollipop. Within sixty seconds the clouds had swallowed the moon and the visual feast was over.
Making sense of nature
Posted on November 2, 2011
Cascades, Bridalveil Creek, Yosemite
I love the iconic captures as much as the next person–scenes like Yosemite’s Horsetail Fall in February, Antelope Canyon’s heavenly beam, or McWay Fall’s tumble into the Pacific, are gorgeous and a thrill to photograph. But standing elbow-to-elbow with tens (or hundreds!) of photographers, each recording identical images that are already duplicates of thousands of prior images, while lots of fun, isn’t enough to stimulate my creative juices. What keeps me going is the opportunity to experience nature with more than just my eyes. Nothing in photography makes me happier than enduring images (my own or others’) that stir the non-visual senses, evoke emotion, and soothe the soul. Colorful sunsets and dramatic clouds might draw the ooohs and ahhhs so many photographers covet, but give me images that convey the sound of running water, the fragrance of evergreen, the texture of granite.
Once upon a time photographing even the most popular scenes in solitude wasn’t difficult. The tourists who overwhelm the best known views during the comfortable times of day would vacate just when the photography started getting good. But the proliferation of digital photographers, combined with the easy exchange of information in our connected world, means there are no secrets anymore and opportunities for solitude have become few and far between. Today if you capture a beautiful image, posting it anywhere is sure to immediately draw photographers like cats to a can-opener.
Given that Yosemite Valley’s eight square miles attracts nearly four million visitors each year, you’d think it would be impossible to find the solitude I crave. But on even the busiest summer day, rising for sunrise will give you at least a couple of peaceful hours. And of course in Yosemite’s backcountry, while relatively crowded by wilderness standards, solitude is always just a short detour away. But even when I’m not in the backcountry, and the sun is up and tourists teem like ants at a picnic, I still have a few quiet spots that get my creative juices flowing.
Near the top of my list are the cascades beneath Bridalveil Fall. Here in the shadow of Yosemite Valley’s shear south wall, with just a little bit of scrambling I can photograph in hours of quiet (contrast-soothing) shade. Variety is no problem here because Bridalveil Creek is different each time I visit: In February it might be frozen solid or smothered by snow; in May the creek roars with snowmelt; in August it’s a quiet trickle beneath a canopy of green. My favorite month might be October, when the gentle stream tumbles through a carpet of colorful leaves.
This fall Yosemite’s color was a little late. Rather than the explosion of color I often find in late October, the leaves were simple accents for the whispering cascades. After playing with some tighter compositions that featured individual leaves among the rocks, I spent at least an hour with this set of cascades–the longer I stayed, the more I felt there would never be enough time to capture everything I saw. I’ve been doing this long enough to know that images like this won’t excite people the way my more dramatic images do, but they make me happy, and that’s what matters most.
Chasing the moon (the cure for boring skies)
Posted on October 31, 2011
Twilight Crescent, Olmsted Point, Yosemite
Whether I’m shooting on my own or (especially) leading a photo workshop, there are no weather conditions I stress about more than blue skies. As nice as it is to be outside on a sunny day, cloudless skies are not a photographer’s friend. Not only do blue skies limit productive photography time to a ninety minute (or so) window sandwiching sunrise and sunset, even in the best light, they’re just plain boring.
In recent years my antidote for blue skies has been to plan as many trips as possible around the moon. The obvious example is Death Valley, which averages about one inch of rain per year and is therefore quite possibly the blue sky capital of the world. Scheduling my Death Valley workshop to include a full moon ensures that, even with cloudless skies, we’re at least able to do moon and moonlight photography. With careful planning I’m able to get the group in position for two sunset moonrises and two sunrise moonsets–always a big hit (for students and instructor).
Of course Death Valley isn’t the only place I photograph that suffers from blue skies. Yosemite is much more likely to have interesting weather, but it’s by no means a sure thing. To hedge my bet in Yosemite I try to time as many workshops there around the moon. For example, I love the way the autumn full moon aligns with Yosemite’s Half Dome and always schedule a fall workshop to coincide with this. But since I can usually fill at least two fall workshops in Yosemite, and there’s only one full moon per month (who do I talk to about that?), I try to plan a second Yosemite fall workshop around a crescent moon.
Because it’s always in the sky opposite the sun, a full moon is relatively easy to photograph if you know what you’re doing. But a crescent moon is always in the brightest part of the sky–the thinner the crescent, the closer to the sun it is. A waning crescent precedes the sun in the east at sunrise, shrinking each day until one morning it’s obliterated by the rising sun. A day or two later the “new” moon reappears at sunset as a waxing crescent, trailing the sun to the western horizon just after sunset–each evening it sets a little later and larger (and “older”).
The crescent moon’s proximity to the sun is a particular problem in Yosemite, as Yosemite Valley is a bowl that’s in deep shade when a crescent moon is in the sky. My solution is to find an elevated location–such as Tunnel View, Glacier Point, Sentinel Dome, or Olmsted Point–with a view of Half Dome (which is elevated and always brighter than the valley floor).
The trick is to align the moon with Half Dome. For the workshop that just ended Sunday, I determined that the best moon location was Olmsted Point where, on Saturday night, a 12% crescent would hang high above Half Dome at sunset. Moon or not, Olmsted Point is one of my favorite easily accessible locations in Yosemite–it offers a perspective of Half Dome that’s different from the standard views, and glacial erratics (boulders deposited by retreating glaciers) on Olmsted’s sloping granite make great foreground subjects. I knew a thin moon in an otherwise empty sky above Half Dome would make a perfect accent.
I got my group up to Olmsted early so everyone had time to get familiar with the surroundings and find their compositions. The moon was visible when we arrived, but wasn’t prominent enough to photograph until close to sunset, when the sky darkened enough to allow the daylight-bright crescent to stand out. We photographed until darkness was nearly complete, starting with wider shots that included the moon and the reflective granite foreground illuminated by the glowing sky, and continuing until the only shots remaining were moderate vertical telephotos that featured the descending moon above the darkening Half Dome.
Staying out this late, gazing toward the horizon where the sun just disappeared, is a great reminder of how vivid sunset color is, even when there are no clouds. (Next time you watch a sunset, don’t leave when the sun leaves–stay out at least a half hour longer and watch the color in all directions–if you didn’t know better, you’d swear God was taking liberties with the saturation slider.) Eventually our scene became too dark to photograph, but the color just kept getting deeper and deeper. The last few minutes were spent not photographing but appreciating.
You had to be there
Posted on October 22, 2011
Moonset, Candlestick Butte, Canyonlands National Park
If you read my blog enough, you know that I do lots of advance planning, particularly when I want to put the moon in my frame. I have my own workflow for determining the moon’s position relative to the landscape, a workflow I established long before tools like “The Photographer’s Ephemeris” simplified the process immensely. (TPE is a new trick, and I’m an old dog, so I stick with my tried-and-true methods.) But even the best resources and plotting are no substitute for familiarity, not a big problem at nearby locations like Yosemite or the mountains, but not quite so easy at the spots I only get to once a year.
After two years of co-leading Don Smith’s Arches/Canyonlands workshop with mostly boring blue skies, I suggested to Don that we try the approach I use for my Death Valley workshop. Death Valley is notorious for its blue skies (it averages one inch of rain per year), so despite the fact that I schedule that workshop for the middle of winter to maximize the chance for weather, I also synchronize it around the full moon–even if we get shut out in the weather department, we can still add interest to the sky by including the moon in several sunrise and sunset shoots. And moonlight photography beneath clear desert skies is always a highlight.
So this year Don scheduled his Arches/Canyonlands trip for the October full moon, and as feared, a few days before we started the National Weather Service confirmed that Mother Nature would be serving us a week of blue skies. This time, rather than stress, we found solace in our secret weapon: the moon.
As we always do, Don and I arrived a day early to re-familiarize ourselves with the area we hadn’t seen in a year. That night we made the trek up Delicate Arch for sunset, and to get an idea of where the moon would rise relative to the arch. We saw immediately that we’d need to get creative with our position to line the moon up with the arch (that’ll be a post for a different day).
Since I’m the designated “moon guy” on our trips, following the Delicate Arch shoot I immediately started thinking about locations for moonrise and moonset for the rest of the week. The next morning I purchased a topo map (my trusty topo software doesn’t include Utah) and started studying the options. Don and I hate taking groups to spots we haven’t scouted thoroughly in advance, so after an hour or so with the map, I decided to forego the workshop orientation and head up to the Canyonlands’ Island in the Sky district to scout the possibilities.
I returned three hours later feeling giddy. Not had I found the above unmarked vista that would align the setting moon with the Candlestick on our penultimate sunrise, I also found a great sunset spot that would allow us to photograph the full moon rising above the La Sal Mountains the evening before. Those two shoots turned out to be the highlight of the workshop, not just because of the moon, but also because we got a perfect mix of unexpected (and welcome!) clouds to catch the color.
On the drive to this sunrise shoot the group was still buzzing about the sunset shoot the night before, but quickly forgot as we made our way to the canyon’s rim and saw the moon hanging low above the Candlestick. There was room here for everyone to spread out, and while the foreground when we started was too dark to allow lunar detail, the light rose quickly, filling the sky with glorious pink pastels to complement the red canyon below. We found something for every focal length, from ultra-wide compositions with lots of foreground (like this image), to long telephoto frames that isolated the moon above the Candlestick. Don and I spent a great deal of time reminding people to bracket their compositions, but in between we managed to capture a few frames of our own.
One of the great pleasures of these workshops is seeing the variety of compositions possible at a single location. At image review that afternoon it was clear that everyone had not only captured the scene well, but had also found their own unique perspective. Pretty cool.
Monument Valley by moonlight
Posted on October 19, 2011
Big Dipper Above Monument Valley, Utah/Arizona border
After a successful and satisfying week co-leading Don Smith’s Arches/Canyonlands workshop, Don and I detoured to Monument Valley on our way home. The evening of our arrival we hired a guide to take us to Teardrop Arch at sunset, but with cloudless skies and a 14+ hour drive home to Central California, we decided to pass on a sunrise shoot that was unlikely to yield anything the world hadn’t seen before. Instead, we rose at 4:30 to photograph Monument Valley by moonlight.
Monument Valley is part of the Navajo Nation; access to pretty much any location off the main road or hotel grounds requires a Navajo guide. Unable to explore, Don and I trekked, still bleary-eyed, to the vista platform adjacent to the hotel restaurant, a hike of at least 150 feet from our room (not to mention a 10 foot elevation gain).
The first thing I saw from the platform was the Big Dipper, to the left of the Mittens, but not so far left that I wouldn’t be able to use it in a composition. I do so much moonlight photography that exposure and focus are routine, so almost all of my time was spent cycling through a variety of horizontal and vertical compositions covered the entire scene and most of the focal range of my 24-105 lens.
Whether it’s extreme weather, a strenuous hike, or sleep deprivation, I find it interesting how frequently the most memorable shoots result from the most difficult conditions. It wasn’t easy to get out of bed at 4:30 a.m., but the experience that followed was one of my most memorable in a long time, and surely had lots to do with the drive home being much better than we expected.
Tuba City, Flagstaff, Kingman, Needles, Barstow, Tehachapi, Bakersfield, Kettleman City, Santa Nella…. Home!
Eloquent Images by Gary Hart 