Eloquent Images by Gary Hart
Insight, information, and inspiration for the inquisitive nature photographer
Super? Moon
Posted on November 8, 2025
November Moon, Half Dome from Tunnel View, Yosemite
Sony a7R V
Sony 200-600 G
Sony 1.4x teleconverter
ISO 200
f/9
1/80 second
This week’s full moon was a “supermoon”—or, as the media frequently proclaimed, “The biggest moon of 2025!” And while that is technically true, the size difference between a super and average moon is barely perceptible.
So, as a public service, I’ve dusted off and updated a prior article explaining the supermoon phenomenon (any hyperbole)—and what better time to share it than just days after photographing the November supermoon?
What’s the big deal?
So what exactly is so “super” about a “supermoon?” Answer: Not much. Or, maybe a better way to answer the question would be: When presented with a random series of full moon images, would you in fact be able to identify the supermoon? Doubtful. So why the media frenzy? And why do we see so many huge moon images every time there’s a supermoon? So many questions….
Celestial choreography: Supermoon explained
To understand what a supermoon is, you first have to understand that all orbiting celestial bodies travel in an ellipse, not a circle. That’s because, for two (or more) objects to have the gravitational relationship an orbit requires, each must have mass. And if they have mass, each has a gravitational influence on the other. Without getting too deep into the gravitational weeds, let’s just say that the mutual influence the earth and moon have on each other causes the moon’s orbit to deviate ever so slightly from the circle it seems to be (without precise measurement): an ellipse. And because its orbit isn’t round, as the moon circles Earth, its distance varies with the position in its orbit.
An orbiting object’s closest approach to the center of its ellipse (and the object it orbits) is at perigee; its greatest distance from the ellipse’s center is apogee. And the time it takes an object to complete one revolution of its orbit is its period. For example, earth’s orbital period around the sun is one year (365.25-ish days), while the period of our moon’s orbit is slightly more than 27 days.
But if the moon reaches perigee every 27 days, why don’t we have a supermoon every month? That’s because we’ve also added “syzygy” to the supermoon definition. In addition to being a great Scrabble word, syzygy (though it would cost you 2 blank tiles) is the alignment of celestial bodies—in this case it’s the alignment of the sun, moon, and earth (not necessarily in that order). Not only does a supermoon need to be at perigee, it must also be syzygy.
Syzygy happens twice each month, once when the moon is new (moon between the sun and Earth), and again when it’s full (Earth between the sun and moon). While technically a supermoon can also be a new moon, the full moon that gets all the press because a new moon is lost in the sun’s brightness and never visible, so no one cares. Since Earth circles the sun while the moon revolves around Earth, to achieve syzygy, with each orbit the moon has to travel a couple extra days to catch up. That’s why the moon reaches perigee evey 27 days, but syzygy comes every 29.5 days—the moon’s distance from earth is different with each syzygy because it comes at different points in the orbit.
The view from earth: Supermoon observed
While lunar perigee, apogee, and period are precise terms that can be measured to the microsecond, a supermoon is a non-scientific, media-fueled phenomenon loosely defined as a moon that happens to be at or near perigee when it’s full. To you, the viewer, a full moon at perigee (the largest possible supermoon) will appear about 14% larger and 30% brighter than a full moon at the average distance. The rather arbitrary consensus definition of the distance that qualifies a moon as a supermoon is a full moon that is within 90 percent of its closest approach to earth.
I really doubt that the average viewer could look up at even the largest possible supermoon and be certain that it’s larger than an average moon. And all those mega-moon photos that confuse people into expecting a spectacular sight when there’s a supermoon? They’re either composites—a picture of a large moon inserted into a different scene—or long telephoto images. (I don’t do composites, but they’re a creative choice that I’m fine with others doing as long as they’re clearly identified as composites.)
For an image that’s not a composite, the moon’s size in the frame is almost entirely a function of the focal length used. I have no idea whether most of the moons in the full moon gallery below were super, average, or small.
Can you identify the supermoon?
Well, if you said the big moon is a supermoon, you’d be right. But it’s kind of a trick question, because these are both images of Tuesday’s supermoon. The size difference is entirely a function of the focal length I used: around 100 mm for the small moon, more than 800 mm for the large one. What these images also make clear is that what I gain in moon size, I lose in field of view—you can’t have both. So when you see a wide angle scene with a huge moon, don’t think supermoon, think composite: a big moon dropped into a wide scene. Or worse still: AI. (Yuck.)
Every full moon is super
As far as I’m concerned, a rising or setting full moon is one of the most beautiful things in nature. But because a full moon rises around sunset and sets around sunrise, when most people are eating dinner or sleeping, seeing it is often an accident—maybe the moon catches your eye as you walk out of the store, or you spot it in near the horizon when your car rounds a bend. But viewing a moonrise or moonset doesn’t need to be an accident. There’s loads of information available online that will tell you which night to look for a full moon, and the general time and direction to look. And for people like me, who try to photograph moonrises and moonsets around an alignment with a terrestrial feature, there is also slightly more technical info that enables more precise planning.
About this image
Which brings me to this week’s image (images), captured Tuesday evening from my very favorite location to view a moonrise: Tunnel View in Yosemite. Why is Tunnel View my favorite moonrise location? Because I can’t think of a better combination beautiful subjects and distant view (nearly 9 miles to Half Dome), that allows me to photography the moon large with with a long telephoto lens and include a striking foreground subject. And if I just want to use the moon to accent a broader scene, the wide angle view at Tunnel View is not too shabby either.
As with most of my moonrise images, this one had been on my radar for over a year. And like many of my moonrise opportunities, I scheduled a workshop so I could share it with other enthusiastic nature photographers. But, since I don’t care about supermoons, I had no idea this November full moon would be a supermoon—and as I grew tired of hearing in the preceding weeks, the largest full moon of 2025! (Yawn.)
The way this month’s full moon set up, I was able to get my group a couple of practice moonrises from other Yosemite locations leading up the Tuesday moonrise—one with a reflection of Half Dome, and another from Glacier Point. Not only did they lear exposure and processing techniques that allow the capture of lunar and landscape detail with a single click, they got beautiful (albeit wider, with a small moon) moon images. I also demonstrated in a training session how I plot the moonrise (without using celestial plotting apps like Photographer’s Ephemeris and Photo Pills).
There’s often drama surrounding an impending moonrise as I stress about forecasts that promise clouds, or a sky filled with more clouds than forecast. This year, despite the threat of rain the following day, the Tuesday evening forecast was clear skies. And true to expectations, the entire afternoon was cloud free.
I got my group up to Tunnel View about a half hour before the moon’s expected arrival, so we all had plenty of time to get set up and settled in. About half of the group joined me on a granite slab above the Tunnel View parking lot, with the rest of the group setting up with my brother Jay and the hoards of other photographers at the wall in front of the parking lot (the standard Tunnel View vista).
I had two tripods set up: one with my (big and sturdy) RRS TVC-24L, with my Sony a7R V and 1.4X teleconverter; one with my Sony a1 and 100-400. My plan was to switch between the two bodies, and to switch out the 200-600 for my 24-105 once the moon separated from the landscape. In other words, I’d be using the a1 with the 100-400 for the entire shoot, and the a7R V with the 200-600 (first) and 24-105 (after a few minutes).
As we waited, I reminded my group that the moon would appear just a little left of Half Dome at around 4:45 (about 15 minutes before sunset), plus/minus 5 minutes. I also told my group that, depending on their camera and metering skills, we’d be able to continue photographing up to 15 minutes after sunset before the foreground became too dark to capture both lunar and landscape detail with one click. The moon arrived right on schedule, right around 4:44 and we were in business….
So maybe the best thing to come of the recent supermoon hype is that it’s gotten people, cameras or not, to appreciate the beauty of a full moon. If you like what you see, mark your calendar for every full moon and make it a regular part of your life—you won’t be sorry.
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Tunnel View Moonrise Collection (Super and Otherwise)
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Grand Finale
Posted on February 6, 2025
Lunar Lift Off, El Capitan, Yosemite
Sony α1
Sony 200-600 G
Sony 1.4x teleconverter
ISO 800
f/13
1/25 second
For most of my full moon workshops, I try to schedule the moonrise main event for the workshop’s final sunset. Sometimes other factors prevent this (for example, in Yosemite I try to avoid weekends), but when the schedule works, a nice moonrise gives the group something exciting to anticipate throughout the workshop. This becomes especially important when some or all of the workshop’s hoped-for conditions fail to materialize.
Last month’s Yosemite Winter Moon workshop lacked to winter snow and cloudy skies we hope for in a Yosemite winter workshop, but the moon (among other things) saved the day for us by not only giving us something to look forward to, but also by photobombing an earlier sunset. The true star of that prior sunset was the clouds and color, and as nice as it was to accent the scene with the moon, it was the final night moonrise that I most looked forward to.
As I’ve written before, despite all the unjustified “supermoon” hype, the key to photographing a big moon is focal length—the longer the better. Period. If you don’t care about what’s in the foreground, or for that matter choose not to include any foreground at all, any location where the moon is visible will do. But if you want to complement your legitimate big moon (a moon image that happens in one click) with a striking landscape feature, the farther you position yourself from your landscape subject, the longer the focal length you can use, and the bigger the moon will be. Of course if you make the moon bigger with a longer focal length, the less of your foreground you can include, and the more precise the moon/foreground alignment must be.
In Yosemite, the best place to set up for a telephoto moonrise that also includes photo-worthy foreground features, is Tunnel View. At Tunnel View, the prime moonrise subjects are El Capitan and Half Dome, three and eight miles distant. From there, I can include all of Half Dome with a focal length up to 400mm; with a longer lens, I can enlarge the moon further, while still including some of Half Dome—if the alignment is right.
The most important part of photographing a moonrise from Tunnel View is to align it with a desirable foreground subject. Most of the year, the moon rises much too far south to include in a Tunnel View scene, but for 2 or 3 months each winter, the full moon rises far enough north to align beautifully with Tunnel View’s magnificent monoliths.
But success is not simply a matter of showing up at Tunnel View the night of the full moon. Each winter the solar/lunar choreography is different, which is why the moon is all over the place in my many Tunnel View moonrise images in the gallery below: left of Half Dome, right of Half Dome, directly aligned with Half Dome, and occasionally closer to El Capitan than Half Dome.
This winter’s geometry was especially exciting to me when I realized the January moon would rise farther north, and therefore closer to El Capitan, than I’d ever photographed it. I have photographed the moon arriving from behind El Capitan’s vertical face, but I’d never seen it come up from behind the top of El Capitan. Always up for photographing something new (especially in Yosemite), I scheduled a workshop for it.
Which is how my workshop group and I ended up at my favorite Tunnel View vantage point on a Sunday evening last month. Sunset that evening was 5:05, and my calculations said the moon would at just about the same time—pretty much perfect timing for a moonrise, because you want the sky dark enough for the moon to stand out in contrast, while still bright enough that the landscape has enough light to reveal detail without blowing out the moon.
I’d set up with two tripods and cameras, one with my 200-600 lens, the other my 24-205 lens. The long telephoto was for the moon’s arrival; the wider lens was for when the moon elevated enough to separate from El Capitan. I’d planned to increase the magnification of the telephoto with my 2x teleconverter, but trying to attach the teleconverter to the lens, I fumbled it and helplessly watched it roll down the steep granite toward a vertical drop of several hundred feet. Fortunately, it lodged in small crack just before taking the plunge, but when I put it on the view was completely blurred, so I switched to my 1.4X teleconverter, giving me a focal range of 280-840.
As the sun dropped and the time approached, I became aware that a thin film of clouds had drifted across the eastern horizon above El Capitan—so thin that they weren’t visible at all in daylight brightness, but just substantial enough to reflect some color as sunset approached.
The moon arrived right on schedule, and we immediately started clicking. My earliest shots were almost entirely long telephotos, like this one at 840mm. It’s always shocking to see how fast the moon moves across a long telephoto frame, but I soon started mixing in a few wider frames (that required less frequent adjustments) as the moon started separating from El Capitan. By this time sky had pinked up beautifully, adding an element of color I hadn’t expected.
We all come to a workshop with expectations, students and leaders alike, but rarely are all of them met. And while the January group’s hopes for snowy winter scenes were dashed, I think that loss was more than made up for by other things we witnessed, some complete surprises, and some just a little better than our already high expectations—like this sunset moonrise to finish the workshop.
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Yosemite Moonrise Collection
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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
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Moon Swoon
Posted on March 6, 2024
Moonrise, Half Dome, Yosemite
Sony α1
Sony 200-600 G
ISO 200
f/8
1/50 second
Given an especially intense workshop schedule to start my year, the only Yosemite workshop I originally planned for February was my annual Horsetail Fall workshop. But in early 2023 I plotted the 2024 February full moon and saw that it would appear above Yosemite Valley, directly behind Half Dome (viewed from Tunnel View), at exactly sunset on Friday, February 23. Hmmm…
Checking my 2024 schedule, I noted that the year’s workshop fun started on January 22 with five days in Death Valley, followed by just a two-day break before I flew to Iceland for eleven days. After returning from Iceland, I had only two days to catch my breath before my four-day Horsetail Fall workshop. Avoiding Yosemite’s weekend crowds (always a problem, but magnified significantly by Horsetail Fall) while including the moonrise, meant the February moon workshop could only start on February 20. That would give me just three days between Yosemite workshops to recharge and recover from jet lag. But that moonrise…
(All this probably isn’t terribly interesting, but surely there’s someone out there interested in the calculus that goes into scheduling photo workshops.) In general, any photo shoot should be timed to pair the static landscape feature (one we know exactly where it is, and that it’s not going anywhere) of your choice with some dynamic natural element (great light, dramatic weather, seasonal features, celestial elements, and so on) that will take the scene (cliché alert) “to the next level.” And while I can’t speak for other workshop leaders, my own scheduling process follows the same rule: start with a beautiful location I’m extremely familiar with, then identify those special external phenomena that I’d travel to photograph even without a workshop.
While personal trips can happen at the last minute, workshops need to be scheduled at least a year in advance, which of course adds an element of uncertainty because I can’t actually promise the event I scheduled the workshop for. And that doesn’t even take into account the other unforeseen events that can shut down a location with little notice. Case(s) in point: since 2020 I’ve lost workshops to a global pandemic (perhaps you remember that), extreme wildfire potential, and a flood threat. And just this week a forecast of extreme snow closed Yosemite for the weekend with very short notice—a bullet narrowly dodged by my February workshops. But none of that stress can trump the potential for a perfectly timed and placed Tunnel View moonrise that I wouldn’t dream of missing myself—so why not share it?
Worst case, I rationalized, I’d be delaying my post-workshop recovery for a week to get four more winter days of Yosemite beauty without having to battle any crowds (who’d be camped out beneath Horsetail Fall) at all my sunset spots. And best case, in addition to all of the above, we’d enjoy two beautiful moonrises, capped by the Tunnel View grand finale on our last shoot.
So schedule it I did. After an inauspicious beginning to the 2024 workshops—forgotten computer in Death Valley, traumatic reindeer encounter in Iceland, and a last-day power outage in the Horsetail workshop—I figured I’d gotten all the bad stuff out of the way just in time for the moon workshop. And despite the inconveniences, the photography in those first three workshops was off the charts—could I keep that photography streak alive in workshop number four?
That question was answered early. On the workshop’s first morning we drove into the park for sunrise and discovered that an unforecast overnight snowfall had decorated Yosemite Valley with a couple of inches of fresh snow. Better still, that storm was just departing as we set up for sunrise at Tunnel View, so my group got to enjoy a truly classic Yosemite clearing storm, followed by an intense dash to capture as much of Yosemite Valley as possible before the snow melted. After that morning, it felt like I was playing with house money. But I still wanted that moon…
One of the unfortunate side-effects of dependence on fickle, ephemeral natural phenomena is the urge to compulsively check their status as the target time approaches. In this case, since I knew exactly when and where the moon would rise (which of course didn’t prevent me from compulsively plotting and replotting, just to be sure), I was wholly dependent on the clouds to cooperate and couldn’t keep my eyes off the weather forecast (as if that would do any good).
On Monday of that week the forecast for Friday was clear. Excellent! By Tuesday, it changed to mostly clear—uh-oh (I always hate to see my weather forecasts trending in the wrong direction.) Sure enough, on Wednesday, Friday was forecast to be partly cloudy. And by the time I went to bed Thursday night, the NWS was calling for mostly cloudy on Friday. Sweet dreams…
We still had a nice moonrise shoot on the valley floor Thursday evening, so technically I’d delivered the “Yosemite Winter Moon” the workshop name promised. Not only was that moonrise a visual treat, it provided an opportunity for everyone to practice the surprisingly tricky exposure techniques a sunset moonrise requires. The tendency is to expose the scene so the darkening foreground looks good on the camera’s LCD, which pretty much guarantees the moon will be an overexposed white blob. The solution is to base the exposure on the moon, making the moon as bright as possible without blowing it out, and trusting that the foreground that looks much too dark on the camera’s LCD can be fixed in Lightroom/Photoshop. (Or you could just take one picture for the moon and one for the foreground, then combine them later in the image processor—but what fun is that?)
After building up the Friday moonrise promised in the workshop’s name, preparation material, and orientation, there was no turning back. And while everyone in the group knew I had no control over the weather, and the Wednesday morning snow and clearing storm guaranteed the workshop was already a huge photographic success, that was old news, and I couldn’t help stressing about the moonrise I’d built this workshop around.
The clouds arrived and lingered on Friday as promised. Throughout the day we got a few glimpses of blue overhead, but nothing that gave me a lot of optimism. Nevertheless, after a nice day of photography, with sunset and the moonrise both at 5:45, I got my people up to Tunnel View a little after 5:00 so they’d have plenty of time to stake out a good spot and get comfortable with the conditions. But there were those clouds…
About half the group followed me to a sloping granite slab behind Tunnel View, while the other half chose to stay with my brother Jay at the more accessible, less vertically exposed regular view in front of the parking lot. Before setting up, I bounced back and forth between the two spots a couple times to be sure everyone was settled in and knew exactly when and where the moon would appear (if the sky were clear).
Ever the optimist, I settled down on my little patch of granite with two tripods, cameras, and lenses. On my (large) Really Right Stuff 24L tripod (with the BH-55 head) was my Sony a1 and 200-600 lens; on my (compact) RRS Ascend 14L was my Sony a7R V and 24-105 lens. I pointed the 200-600 at Half Dome and zoomed to around 450mm to fill the frame with the snow-capped monolith; with the 24-105 I composed a wider scene that included El Capitan, Half Dome, and Bridalveil Fall. The plan, should the moon actually appear, was to start with tight telephotos of just Half Dome, then, as the moon separates from Half Dome, switch to wider frames of the entire scene. But those clouds…
Thinner clouds covered most of Yosemite Valley, but my primary concern was a large stratus blob above and a little west of Half Dome, with the thickest clouds approaching the rock from the west. Not a good setup. A lifetime of photographing Yosemite has taught me that the clouds above Yosemite Valley arrive from the west and exit in the east, which meant the heavier cloud cover was bearing down on the very area of the sky where the moon would appear. But a lifetime of photographing Yosemite has also taught me that as soon as you think you have the weather there figured out, it will prove you wrong.
Around 5:30 I noticed a small patch of blue behind Half Dome, low on the right side where it intersects the tree-lined ridge. This is the area the thicker clouds should be filling, but as I watched, rather than advancing, those clouds seemed to be lifting. Soon it became apparent that the blue behind Half Dome was expanding. With a couple of minutes to go, not only was all the sky directly behind and above Half Dome clear, even the clouds above that appeared to be thinning.
This is probably a good time to say that few sights thrill me more than the first appearance of the moon above any landscape. As the time for the moonrise approaches, I lock my eyes on the spot and don’t move them, even when talking to others—I don’t want to miss a single photon of the moon’s arrival.
And I didn’t. The instant I saw the first molecule of moon nudge above Half Dome I called out to everyone with me and the clicking commenced. I waited about 30 seconds just to enjoy the view a bit, then went to work with my 200-600. As soon as the moon separated from Half Dome, I switched to my a7R V 24-105 as planned and spent the next 15 or so minutes with wider views of the scene. The rising moon soon encountered some clouds, but most weren’t thick enough to completely obscured it, and most actually enhanced the view.
I realize this zoomed image isn’t a compositional masterpiece—I just wanted to get the tightest zoom possible (to make the moon as large as possible), without cutting off any of Half Dome (easy to do if you’re not paying attention). Mission accomplished.
Epilogue
Just when I thought I’d put the inauspicious behind me, I was notified by one of the people in the Yosemite moon group that he’d tested positive for COVID. The next day, I too tested positive for COVID, as did three others in the group. Fortunately, we were all sufficiently vaccinated and no one got terribly sick. For three days I felt pretty miserable (bad cold miserable, nothing that sent me to bed), but was back to my regular morning workout after four days.
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Yosemite Moonrise
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Searching for Serendipity
Posted on February 8, 2024
Dante’s Moon, Badwater, Death ValleySony a7R V
Sony 24-105 f/4 G
ISO 100
f/11
1/30 second
Miriam-Webster defines serendipity as, “Finding valuable or agreeable things not sought for.” Wikipedia calls it, “An unplanned fortunate discovery.” Though I can’t quibble with these definitions, I think photographers can create their own serendipity by keeping their eyes and mind open to unexpected opportunities.
Sometimes Mother Nature bludgeons us with serendipitous events that are too obvious to ignore—for example, a double rainbow suddenly coloring a gray downpour, a sunset that ramps up just as you’re about to pack up your gear, or maybe a rocket streaking through your Milky Way scene. But Nature’s more subtle gifts usually require our internal serendipity receivers to be tuned a little more sensitively—the unexpected is there if we keep an open mind.
Unexpected gifts from Nature are probably the single greatest joy I get from photography. But given the importance of planning and execution nature photography requires, it’s easy to understand how we might become so fixated on a specific plan that serendipity slips by undetected. The intense focus on a subject that shrinks the world and enables photographers to extract the best from one scene, also leads to overlooked scenes.
Over my many years photographing Nature, I’ve learned that rather than being mutually exclusive, laser focus and openminded awareness not only can coexist, they can actually collaborate to create photographic synergy.
Toward this goal, I’ve established a few techniques that nudge me into examining my surroundings more closely. These simple steps have become so ingrained in my photographic process that they no longer require conscious thought—in other words, the mere act of concentrating on my primary subject doesn’t mean my surroundings are denied the attention they deserve as well.
The first, and simplest, of these techniques is to periodically stop and do a slow 360, keeping a few questions in mind: What’s going on with the light, sky, shadows? What in the surrounding landscape draws my eye? Is anything moving? Then, to force myself to consider these observations even more closely, I try to anticipate what each of these factors will be doing over the next few minutes.
Another way to shake my single-minded focus while working any given scene is making sure I don’t move on without checking in on different perspectives: switch my camera’s orientation, zoom tighter and wider, reframe and/or adjust focus to emphasize different elements in my composition, and reposition my camera to change foreground/background relationships. I can’t tell you the number of times something unexpected and even better has magically appeared just because I adjusted some aspect of my perspective.
Despite these tools, extended periods away from my camera can make my serendipity generator a little creaky. So, following my recent two-and-a-half month workshop break, last month’s Death Valley / Alabama Hills workshop proved to be just what I needed.
Both locations, with their unique and diverse features, are great places to oil up the works and get my vision humming. And this workshop group in particular showed strong and varied vision that inspired everyone (myself included) during our daily image reviews.
I time this workshop to coincide with the full moon. Because the best full moon views in both Death Valley and the Alabama Hills face west, our moonsets come at sunrise. But that doesn’t mean we never see a sunset moonrise too. Even though the view isn’t great, and I never actually plot and plan a Death Valley moonrise, wherever I photograph a Death Valley sunset, I try to keep an eye on the east horizon for the moon’s arrival.
On our second evening, I took the group out to Badwater for sunset and the rare opportunity to photograph Lake Manly. Badwater Basin is almost always dry, but every once in a while extreme runoff will briefly restore it, adding a few inches of water that can stretch for miles, and for a few weeks or months transform the arid basin into a vast mirror. This version of Lake Manly is the vestigial runoff of Tropical Storm (and former hurricane) Hilary that laid waste to Death Valley last August.
The photography this evening was everything we’d hoped for—calm winds for a pristine reflection, and just enough nice clouds to catch the sunset color. The best Badwater views face west, toward 11,000 foot Telescope Peak, and north, up the valley. So while I knew the nearly full moon would be rising above the valley’s east wall this evening, lacking any kind of a view in that direction, the moon’s arrival wasn’t really a priority. Nevertheless, I occasionally glanced that way, and doubled-down when a cohort of clouds scooted across the eastern horizon and started catching sunset light.
And suddenly there it was, edging above the shear valley wall a little north of Dante’s View. With nothing beneath the moon but nondescript brown cliffs, at first I was content to simply watch it climb, but as the clouds closed in on the moon and their pink continued to intensify, I couldn’t help repositioning my camera.
With the clouds, moon, and color moving fast, the composition I ended up with was as simple as the scene was serendipitous. Since the scene really was all about the pink clouds and rising moon, I zoomed my 24-105 lens until my frame included as little of the surrounding (less appealing) elements as possible, and underexposed slightly to ensure lunar detail, emphasize the color, and darken (deemphasize) the barren mountain ridges.
The Badwater view and reflection this evening was so spectacular, especially when sunset started to color the sky, it would have been easy for this convergence of moon, clouds, and color to have unfolded behind my back, completely unseen. Instead, on an evening filled with the beautiful conditions I’d hoped for, I also got to enjoy one of those serendipity moments I love so much.
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A Gallery of Serendipity Scenes (That I Didn’t Come Looking For)
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Perfect Timing
Posted on March 14, 2023
Big Moon, Mt. Williamson, California
Sony α1
Sony 200-600 G
Sony 2x teleconverter
ISO 800
f/13
1/500 second
In the Alabama Hills to photograph sunrise in neck-craning proximity to the Sierra Crest, I knew precisely what time, on this date, the sun’s first rays would color the towering granite, and exactly when a 98% moon would would disappear behind the left flank of Mt. Williamson, California’s second highest peak.
Clocks and calendars enable us to time some aspects of our lives, like sunrises and moonsets, to within microseconds. But when I scheduled this sunrise moonset more than a year ago, I had no idea whether the sky would be clear, perhaps feature a few clouds that would catch the sunrise hues, or be completely filled with overcast that would block sunlight and hide the moon. I didn’t know how much snow would drape the peaks, or whether the peaks even would be visible at all.
Clocks and calendars are essential, but as a self-employed landscape photographer, I’m beholden to far more fundamental constructs than the bustling majority is. I work when there’s work to be worked, and play when (fingers crossed) there’s play to be played. The business side of my life sometimes requires a clock and calendar, but the actual photography part is governed by fundamental laws of nature that transcend the rest of the world’s clocks and calendars.
The irrelevance of conventional time measurement is never more clear than immediately following a time change. On the second Sunday of each March, when “normal” people moan about lost sleep and having to rise an hour earlier, the sun thumbs its nose at Daylight Saving Time and rises a mere minute (or so) earlier than it did the day before. So do I. And on the first Sunday of November, as others bask in their extra hour of sleep, I’ll get to sleep an entire minute longer. Yippee.
The immutable natural laws that are the foundation of our clocks and calendars, that keep the world on schedule and enable us to precisely predict events like sunrise/sunset, the moon’s phase and position, as well as countless other celestial phenomena, are also solely responsible for the uncertainty that torments the lives of landscape photographers. While I can’t tell you what thrills me more, the impeccably punctual appearance (or disappearance) of a full moon, or the unpredictable explosion of a lightning bolt, I find it ironic that the precision of a moonset and the (apparent) randomness of a lightning strike are ultimately the product of the same celestial choreography.
Earth’s rotation on its inclined axis and revolution about the Sun, the Moon’s monthly journey around Earth, are are timed to microseconds. But this celestial dance also drives the atmospheric and tidal machinations that generate weather, stir oceans, and make every day unique and unpredictable.
This year the mercurial photography gods smiled on me and my Death Valley workshop group. For our 3 days in Death Valley, instead of the blank blue sky that often greets me here, we had a wonderful mix of clouds and sky—enough clouds to make the sky interesting, but enough sky to allow the sun to color the clouds at sunrise and sunset.
On the workshop’s penultimate day we drove to Lone Pine to wrap up with a sunset and sunrise shoot in the Alabama Hills. The highlight of this trip is always the Alabama Hills sunrise that I try to accent with the moon, just a day past full, setting behind the Sierra Crest. But this is winter, and these are the Sierra Mountains, so success is far from guaranteed.
A few years ago I drove to Yosemite on New Year’s Eve (because what else is there to do on New Year’s Eve?) to photograph a full moon rising between El Capitan and Half Dome. After a successful shoot (nearly thwarted by clouds), I hopped in my car and made the 6 1/2 hour drive to Lone Pine to photograph the moon setting behind Mt. Whitney.
I’d picked out a location along Highway 136 where I could align the moon and Mt. Whitney, and far enough back to allow an extreme telephoto big moon while still including all of Whitney. I went to bed really looking forward to this opportunity to get an image I’d thought about for years, and woke to clouds that completely obscured the moon and Sierra Crest. With nothing better to do, I still drove out to my spot, and even caught a very brief glimpse of the moon about 1/2 hour before zero-hour, but ended up not clicking a single frame. Such are the travails of anyone who pins their hopes on Nature’s fickle whims.
My plan this morning was far less grand. Since I was leading a workshop group, the goal was to get everyone in place for the best possible photography, not to assuage my own failed moonset wounds. And the good fortune that blessed us in Death Valley followed us to Lone Pine. (You can read more about this morning here.) In addition to a clear view of the moon and mountains, I was especially grateful to find the entire Sierra Crest frosted top-to-bottom with snow.
My photography day began in near darkness with my Sony a7R V and Sony 100-400 GM lens, photographing the descending moon throughout the morning’s many stages of advancing light. My starting focal length was 100mm, wide enough to include some of the Alabama Hills, then went progressively tighter as the moon dropped.
My favorite big moon images don’t usually happen until the moon is within a moon-width of the horizon, but I like to give myself a little wiggle room to get the composition balanced and focus just right. So when the moon got about 3 diameters from Mt. Williamson, I turned to my Sony α1, which was standing by with my Sony 200-600 G lens and Sony 2X Teleconverter already attached. And while 3 moon diameters might sound like a reasonable cushion, if you want to appreciate the speed at which the moon transits the sky, try pointing 1200mm at it and keeping it in your frame.
I love my Really Right Stuff Ascend tripod, but because the camera-shake margin of error is microscopic at 1200mm, I had the α1 pre-mounted on my (much more robust) RRS 24L Tripod with the RRS BH-55 ball head (carrying 2 tripods is a luxury I allow myself when I don’t have to fly to my location). I bumped to ISO 800 for a 1/500 second shutter speed, and switched from my standard 2-second timer (beep, beep, beep, BEEEEEEP—the Sony mating call) to a 5-second timer (I’m not crazy about any of Sony’s remote options, wired or wireless), to give the whole setup plenty of time to settle down—probably overkill, but I was taking no chances.
With my composition ready and focused, I just let the moon slide through my frame and started clicking. The alpenglow on Mt. Williamson was just about peaking when to moon first touched it. Perfect timing.
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More Massive Moons
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The Third Time’s the Charm
Posted on December 12, 2022
Moonrise and Clouds, Tunnel View, Yosemite
Sony a7R IV
Sony 24-105 G
1/4 second
F/11
ISO 100
Large or small, crescent or full, I love photographing the moon rising above Yosemite. I truly believe it’s one of the most beautiful sights on Earth. The moon’s alignment with Yosemite Valley changes from month-to-month, with my favorite full moon alignment coming in the short-day months near the winter solstice when it rises between El Capitan and Half Dome (from Tunnel View), but I have a plan for each season. Some years the position and timing are better than others, but when everything clicks, I do my best to be there. And if I’m going to be there anyway, why not schedule a workshop? (He asked rhetorically.)
Strike one, strike two
For last week’s Yosemite Winter Moon photo workshop, I’d planned three moonrises, from three increasingly distant vantage points. On our first night, despite the cloudy vestiges of a departing storm, I got the group in position for a moonrise at a favorite Merced River sunset spot, hoping the promised clearing would arrive before the moon. The main feature here is Half Dome, but the clouds had other ideas. Though they eventually relented just enough to reveal Half Dome’s ethereal outline and prevent the shoot from being a complete loss, the moon never appeared. Strike one.
With a better forecast for the second evening, we headed into the park that afternoon with high hopes. But as the sun dropped, the clouds thickened to the point where not only did I fear we’d miss the moon again, I was pretty sure Half Dome would be a no-show as well. So I completely aborted the moonrise shoot and opted for sunset at Valley View, where El Capitan and freshly recharged Bridalveil Fall were on their best behavior. The result was a spectacular sunset that made me look like a genius (phew), but still no moon. Strike two.
Revisiting nature photography’s 3 P’s
Because the right mindset is such an important part of successful photography, many years ago I identified three essential qualities that I call the 3 P’s of Nature Photography:
- Preparation is (among many things) your foundation; it’s the research you do that gets you in the right place at the right time, the mastery of your camera and exposure variables that allow you to wring the most from the moment, and the creative vision, refined by years of experience, and conscious out-side-the-box thinking.
- Persistence is patience with a dash of stubbornness. It’s what keeps you going back when the first, second, or hundredth attempt has been thwarted by unexpected light, weather, or a host of other frustrations, and keeps you out there long after any sane person would have given up.
- Pain is the willingness to suffer for your craft. I’m not suggesting that you risk your life for the sake of a coveted capture, but you do need to be able to ignore the tug of a warm fire, full stomach, sound sleep, and dry clothes, because the unfortunate truth is that the best photographs almost always seem to happen when most of the world would rather be inside.
Most successful images require one or more of these three essential elements. Chasing the moon last week in frigid, sometimes wet, Yosemite got me thinking about the 3 P’s again, and how their application led to a (spoiler alert) success on our third and final moonrise opportunity.
Meanwhile…
As we drove into the Tunnel View parking lot, about 45 minutes before sunset, our chances for the moon looked excellent. There were a few clouds overhead, with more hanging low on the eastern horizon behind Half Dome, but nothing too ominous. My preparation (there’s one) had told me that the moon this evening would appear from behind El Capitan’s diagonal shoulder, about halfway up the face, and that area of the sky was perfectly clear. So far so good.
Organizing my group along the Tunnel View wall, I pointed out where the moon would appear, and reminded them of the previously covered exposure technique for capturing a daylight-bright moon above a darkening landscape. Eventually I set up my own tripod and Sony a7R IV, with my Sony 200 – 600 G lens with the 2X Teleconverter pointed at ground 0. In my pocket was my Sony 24 – 105 G lens, which I planned to switch to as soon as the moon separated from El Capitan. Then we all just bundled up against the elements and enjoyed the view, waiting for the real show…
But, as if summoned by some sinister force determined to frustrate me, the seemingly benign clouds hailed reinforcements that expanded and thickened right before our eyes. Their first victim was Half Dome, and it looked like they’d set their sights on El Capitan next. By the time sunset rolled around, my optimism had dropped from a solid 9 to a wavering 2. I knew the moon was up somewhere behind the curtain and tried to stay positive, but let everyone know that our chances for actually seeing it were no longer very good. I reminded them not to get so locked in on waiting for the moon that they miss out on the beauty happening right now. Ever the optimist, I switched to my 24-105, privately rationalizing that even without the moon, we’d had so much spectacular non-moon photography already, nobody could be unhappy. But still…
At that point it would have been easy to cut our losses, come in out of the cold (pain), and head to dinner. But I have enough experience with Yosemite to know that it’s full of surprises, and never to go all-in on it’s next move. So we stayed. And our persistence (we’ve checked all three now) was rewarded when, seemingly out of nowhere, a hole opened in the clouds and there was the moon. The next 10 minutes were a blur of frantic clicking and excited exclamation as my group enjoyed this gift we’d all just about given up on.
A few full moon photography tips
- Sun and moon rise/set times always assume a flat horizon, which means the sun usually disappears behind the local terrain before the “official” sunset, while the moon appears after moonrise. When that happens, there’s usually not enough light to capture landscape detail in the moon and landscape, always my goal. To capture the entire scene with a single click (no image blending), I usually try to photograph the rising full moon on the day before it’s full, when the nearly full (99% or so illuminated) moon rises before the landscape has darkened significantly.
- The moon’s size in an image is determined by the focal length—the longer the lens, the larger the moon appears. Photographing a large moon above a particular subject requires not only the correct alignment, it also requires distance from the subject—the farther back your position, the longer the lens you can use without cutting your landscape subject.
- To capture detail in a rising full moon and the landscape (in a single click), increase the exposure until the highlight alert appears on your LCD (any more exposure blows out the moon). At that point, you can’t increase the exposure any more, even though the landscape is darkening. You’ll be amazed by how much useable data you’ll be able to pull from the in nearly black shadows in Lightroom/Photoshop (or whatever your processing software). In the image I share above, my LCD looked nearly black except for the single white dot of moon. Eventually the scene will become too dark—exactly when that happens depends on your camera, but if you’re careful, you can keep shooting until at least 15 minutes after sunset.
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Moon Over Yosemite
I Can Relate (You Can Too)
Posted on April 24, 2022
Peek-a-Boo Moon, Merced River Canyon and Bridalveil Fall, Yosemite
Sony a7RIV
Sony 24-105 G
1/4 second
F/10
ISO 100
Our lives revolve around relationships: romance, family, friends, work, pets…. Even that clown who cut you off on the freeway, for a few brief (I hope) seconds, might just be the most powerful influence in your life.
Like most words in the English language, “relationship” can mean more than one thing. On the macro scale are the specific personal connections that matter to us—not just people, but also places, things (I actually love my new dishwasher), music, sports teams, and so on. On a micro scale, we have spacial juxtapositions that can be either planned or random, and the realization that it’s possible to draw a straight line relating any two objects on Earth (or in the Universe, for that matter).
I know this isn’t first time I’ve written about relationships (it won’t be the last), but they’re very important to photography because they play a significant role in literally every image we capture. My image choices are very much determined my relationship with my subjects, while my images’ ability to connect with others is a function of the relationships, both conscious and unconscious, they tap in the minds of my viewers.
In addition to finding those personal connections, as I wrote in last week’s post, spacial relationships that connect visual elements and guide the eye have the power to move viewers’ through the frame (good), pull them out of the frame (bad), and to signal viewers what it is they’re supposed to see and do in the image (good).
Laying the foundation
In this image from the final shoot of last week’s Yosemite workshop, it’s easy to see how all those relationship factors combine to create an image. It all starts with a life-long relationship with Yosemite that predates my oldest memories. Campfires, hiking, the Firefall, bear watching, transient friendships with kids in nearby campsites, fishing with my dad, are all among the many vivid contributors to my Yosemite memory mosaic.
My love of the night sky is related (there’s that word again) to this Yosemite connection, and started just a few years later. Its seeds, sown on summer nights falling asleep beneath a sky full of stars on family camping trips, germinated with my first telescope when I was 9 or 10, and flourished under the dark skies of the High Sierra backcountry.
Putting it all together
When I started getting serious about photography, my love for (and proximity to) Yosemite made it the ideal place to start. It’s hard to take a bad picture in Yosemite, so at first I was content with my own version of the more conventional scenes seen in postcards, calendars, and travel brochures.
Soon I grew to appreciate the importance of light, and started timing my Yosemite visits around the best opportunities for sunrise/sunset color, warm light, and waterfall rainbows—my first conscious attempts to create relationships between fixed terrestrial subjects and ephemeral natural conditions. This epiphany led to the realization that instead of being satisfied with great light on Half Dome, a tumbling cascade, or mirror reflection, why not accent the scene with fall color or elegant dogwood? Whether not I was conscious of it at the time, I’d gone all-in on creating my own visual relationships: disparate elements connected in a shared moment.
Incorporating the night sky came later, but at some point I realized that, while a Yosemite sunset is nice, a Yosemite sunset that includes the moon might be especially nice. Suddenly I found myself obsessively calculating and logging the horizontal and vertical angles at every conceivable Yosemite vista, and plotting the moon’s altitude and azimuth to determine when and where it would appear above Yosemite Valley. (This was long before the days of the Photographer’s Ephemeris, Photo Pills, and other tools of that ilk.)
Back to the present
Somehow, that long and continuous thread lead me and my workshop group to the Bridalveil Fall vista on Big Oak Flat Road in Yosemite last Friday evening. More than a year earlier, I’d plotted this moonrise and scheduled a workshop to photograph it—among other things, like the moonbow beneath Lower Yosemite Fall and the poppy bloom in the Merced River Canyon.
But simply planning for a relationship doesn’t make it so. This year’s poppy bloom was a complete swing-and-miss, and clouds dogged our entire workshop, wiping out our moonbow.
But all was not lost. The clouds made for spectacular skies, while the sun came out enough for the group to capture a variety of waterfall rainbows on Bridalveil and Yosemite Falls. And there was enough water in Tenaya Creek to justify the 1 1/2 mile hike up to Mirror Lake for the Half Dome Reflection. We even got to photograph the earliest dogwood that had just started to pop out near Valley View, an unexpected treat.
And I still had one relationship ace up my sleeve: the moonrise on our final night. As often happens in Yosemite, the Friday forecast was frustratingly noncommittal: partly sunny. So it’s no wonder my moonrise optimism waxed and waned all day as the sky wavered between blue (yay!) and gray (boo!).
I’d figured that the moon would appear above Leaning Tower (above and just right of Bridalveil Fall) at around 7:15 p.m., so I got the group in place about 7:00. Even though we had more clouds than sky, a small gap on the western horizon let just enough sun through to spotlight Bridalveil Fall. There was even enough of an opening above the fall to give me hope that we’d see the moonrise right on schedule, and I set up my (brand new!) Sony a1 with the Sony 200-600 lens and 2X Teleconverter in anticipation. But by the time 7:15 arrived, that window had slammed shut.
The next opportunity was another opening in the clouds about 2 degrees higher, and I kept my eyes on it knowing the moon would probably rise into it around 7:25—about 10 minutes before sunset. With the moon higher, I set aside the a1 and 200-600 in favor of (one of) my Sony a7RIVs and my Sony 24-105. As I watched the small patch of blue sky, I realized it was shrinking, further delaying (and threatening to completely wipe out) the moon’s appearance.
We experienced brief euphoria when the moon finally peeked above the clouds at around 7:30, just long enough to capture 2 frames that had it more than 1/2 visible. Then it was gone.
I still faced a 4-hour drive home, but since the clouds were changing so fast and we were already there, I decided not to call the workshop quite yet. About 20 minutes later, right at the tail end of the window when there’s still enough light to capture detail in the moon and foreground (with one click), I was starting to consider pulling the plug for good when a small bright patch got my attention. Suddenly the clouds parted just long enough for me to grab 2 more frames that included most of the moon, before snapping shut for good.
Yosemite Relationships
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Yosemite Moonrise
Posted on February 27, 2022
Twilight Moon, Tunnel View, Yosemite
Sony a7RIV
Sony 24-105 f/4 G
1/3 second
F/11
ISO 100
Though last week’s harrowing story of a sneaker wave that drenched members of the Iceland photo workshop group had a (relatively) happy ending (R.I.P., 3 cameras and lenses), it generated more responses than any blog post in recent memory. Exactly one week later, that sobering reminder of Nature’s power and ability to surprise was still on my mind when I was gifted a reminder of Nature’s ability to also soothe and inspire.
This epiphany struck me as I reclined on a granite slab above Tunnel View, waiting for the full moon to grace the most beautiful view on Earth. Just as in Iceland, I was with a workshop group. Unseen in Yosemite Valley below us, I knew thousands of photographers were assembled with eyes glued to a section of granite stained by Horsetail Fall’s trickle, praying to avoid a reminder of Nature’s ability to disappoint. If all went as hoped, the moon would appear at about the same time light from the setting sun colored the waterfall some shade of orange or (fingers crossed) red.
While clouds were a factor for both events, I wasn’t concerned about the moonrise because I could see there was only one cloud that might delay the moon’s appearance, but certainly wouldn’t wipe it out. On the other hand, I knew from experience that the people on the ground beneath Horsetail Fall would have no idea of the clouds poised to block the sun, and ultimate fate that evening’s light, until it actually happened (or didn’t). For me and my group, the light on Horsetail Fall would be tomorrow night’s anxiety; tonight was our opportunity to bask and marvel.
My general moonrise approach is to start with max telephoto until the moon gets some separation from the landscape, then go wider as the moon climbs. This evening my tripod was mounted with my Sony a7RIV and Sony 200-600 composed at full magnification on Cloud’s Rest, the peak between El Capitan and Half Dome, behind which the moon should appear about 25 minutes before sunset. Within arm’s reach was my other a7RIV with my Sony 24-105.
Once everyone was set up with lenses trained, we had time to sit and appreciate the view. From our perch not only could we see the spot behind which the moon would appear, we also could see the part of El Capitan where Horsetail flowed (though there wasn’t enough water to actually see the fall from this distance). As we waited for the moon, we watched the shadow cast by the setting sun move across the face of El Capitan, gradually warming the granite as it advanced.
My eyes were trained more on the cloud taking a breather atop Cloud’s Rest—more specifically, trying to figure out if the cloud was dense enough to completely block the moon. I got my answer when the time for moonrise came and passed, and adjusted my composition by widening my composition somewhat.
The moon came out from behind the cloud about 10 minutes before sunset, still close enough to Horsetail Fall to include both at 400mm. Meanwhile, the light on Horsetail Fall faded as the sun dropped into thin clouds near the horizon—faded just enough to subdue the color and disappoint the massed throngs below.
From our vantage point the light on El Capitan was good, but I could tell that the color wasn’t what people came for. As pretty as our scene was was, my favorite time to photograph a full moon isn’t until after the sun has set and the blue and pink pastels of Earth’s shadow starts to paint the sky. By this time the daylight-bright moon stands out strikingly against the darkening sky. Waiting for this to happen, I switched to my 24-105 and started playing with a variety of compositions that included some combination of El Capitan, Half Dome, and Bridalveil Fall.
Since I need to capture detail in both the moon and the foreground, and I never blend images (combine exposures to make a single image), the exposure margin for error shrinks significantly as the sky darkens around the moon. I captured this image more than 15 minutes after sunset, when the scene looked much better to my eyes than it did on my LCD. This is where I especially appreciate the dynamic range of my Sony sensors—I just monitor the moon, making it as bright possible without blowing it out, then rely on Lightroom and Photoshop to reveal the unbelievable amount of usable detail hidden in the shadows and highlights.
Large or small, crescent or full, I love photographing the moon rising above Yosemite as much as ever. I’m fully aware that I have far more than my share of these images, but it just makes me so happy, I have no plans to stop.
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Yosemite Moonrise
2021 In Review: Pedal to the Metal, While Tapping the Brakes…
Posted on December 26, 2021
Massive Moonrise, El Capitan, Yosemite
Sony a7RIV
Sony 200-600 G
Sony 2x teleconverter
ISO 400
f/16
1/80 second
As COVID started ravaging my workshop schedule way back in March 2020, my private mantra was, “Just hang on until August.” As we approach our third pandemic year with the Omicron variant raging, how misguided that dream feels today. While 2020 was pretty much lost to COVID, 2021 was the year things seemed poised to return to normal. And while not the Disney happy ending I’d envisioned, in many ways that proved true.
Even though I had to postpone my 2021 January workshops—one in Death Valley, as well as the Iceland workshop I do with Don Smith—it seemed things were improving. And improve they did: In quick succession I did two Yosemite workshops in February, followed by three more Yosemite workshops, one each in March, April, and May. Another 2021 spring highlight came in May, when I returned to the Grand Canyon for my beloved raft trip. Amidst all this, Don Smith and I managed to get in our April Oregon Coast and Columbia River Gorge workshops. So far, so good.
Despite missing most of 2020 and a few COVID-related inconveniences, these resurrected workshops felt surprisingly normal—not only was I thrilled to get back to my locations, spending time with the groups reminded me how much I missed having people to share the beauty with. And it seemed the people in my groups were just as happy to return to nature, and to interact with others in the relative safety of the great outdoors, as I was.
Approaching mid-year, Don and I did lose our spectacular New Zealand workshop for the second year in a row, but we’d been resigned to that for many months and had a solid plan in place. I was actually philosophical about the New Zealand loss, rationalizing that I was ready for a breather following my brutal spring schedule, and the similarly ambitious schedule coming in the second half of the year (trying to make up for my 2020 losses).
The second half of the summer was back to pedal-to-the-metal mode, with three Grand Canyon workshops (back-to-back-to-back) in July and August, followed by a return to the Big Island of Hawaii in September. Autumn didn’t get any easier, with back-to-back Eastern Sierra workshops in September and October, and another Yosemite workshop in November.
If all this seems like a lot, let me assure you, it was. But, in the midst of this breakneck pace, October brought a real tap-the-brakes moment: Despite COVID precautions and all 11 participants/leaders fully vaccinated, following my second Eastern Sierra workshop, 7 people (including me) tested positive for COVID. Fortunately, no one became seriously ill (I felt like I had a moderate cold for less than a week—no fever, headache, or fatigue, but 4 days with absolutely no sense of smell). I know it would have been far worse had we not been vaccinated—a blessing for which I’ll be eternally grateful—but it was a reminder to stay vigilant.
The grand finale
Fully recovered, I wrapped up my busy year in December with a spectacular Yosemite workshop. This “Winter Moon” workshop delivered ample portions of both winter and moon—lots of snowfall that gave way to clear sky just in time for the full moon on our final shoot.
Fellow Yosemite (among other places) photographer Michael Frye was doing a workshop at the same time, but we communicated regularly and adjusted our plans to prevent our groups from ending up at the same spots at the same time. After learning that we both planned to be at Tunnel View for Friday’s sunset moonrise (we agreed there’d be enough room to make it work), an event that was no secret to the photography community in general, I knew it would be crowded.
While there’s quite a bit of room at Tunnel View, it’s not infinite, and parking can sometimes be a problem, so I got my group up there about 90 minutes before sunset (and about 75 minutes before the moon would appear). While we waited, I made sure everyone knew when and where the moon would appear, and encouraged them to work on compositions before the moon appeared.
Though I had two tripods with me, I didn’t think it would be fair for one person to take two spots and instead just set up one tripod and readied two bodies and lenses: a Sony a7RIV with my Sony 200-600 G and Sony 2X Teleconverter (1200mm), and a Sony a7RIV with my Sony 24-105 G. My plan was to start with the telephoto body as the moon appeared, then switch to the wider body as the moon climbed and moved away from El Capitan.
As you can see, the workshop grand finale was a spectacular success. The moon appeared near the (barely visible) frozen trickle that will become Horsetail Fall just a few minutes before sunset, just as the day’s last light kissed El Capitan. I shared one of the wider images in last week’s post; this week I’m sharing a 1200mm image from shortly after the moon’s arrival.
Note the size of the moon in these two images that were taken on the same night, from the same location. While it would be spectacular to have the large moon in the scene with both El Capitan and Half Dome, that would be impossible from any earthbound vantage point. From Tunnel View, magnifying the moon with a 1200mm focal length only gives me a small fraction of El Capitan, while widening the scene enough to include both of Yosemite’s granite icons shrinks the moon to small disk. The results are so different, I won’t even try to suggest that one is “better” than the other.
Epilogue
So, in case you weren’t keeping score, in 2021 I had 3 workshops rescheduled, while adding 16 workshops notches to my belt—a personal record. Yet despite this very productive year, 2021 didn’t usher in the Disney happy ending I’d hoped for. It seems very possible that Don and I will lose New Zealand again in 2022, and Omicron has forces to reschedule one of the two Iceland workshops scheduled for January.
My other 2022 workshops are still on schedule, but I’m monitoring Omicron closely and hoping it fades as quickly as it started (monitoring positive signs from South Africa and other countries ahead of us—with fingers crossed).
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2021 Highlights
Eloquent Images by Gary Hart 