Eloquent Images by Gary Hart
Insight, information, and inspiration for the inquisitive nature photographer
A Moving Experience
Posted on December 18, 2025
Fire on High, Kilauea Eruption 33, Hawaii
Sony α1
Sony 16-35 GM II
1/50 seconds
F/8
ISO 200
I’ve been photographing Kilauea’s eruptions, in many forms, for 15 years, but never anything close to the spectacular display my workshop group and I witnessed in September. It wouldn’t be hyperbole to say that this was one of the most memorable experiences of my life. (I’ve said that about Kilauea eruptions before, but each time I say it, Kilauea seems to say, “Oh yeah? Hold my Mai Tai.”)
As a photographer who obsesses about controlling every pixel in my frame, and who (semi-) jokingly asserts that I don’t photograph anything that moves, there was a lot going on atop Kilauea this morning. Anybody up there with a camera could have snapped a few frames and captured something worthy of sharing, but whether it’s a vivid sunset, dancing aurora, or fountaining lava, serious photographers need to separate themselves from the “anybodys” and pay attention to the little things easily overlooked in the thrill of the moment. This morning on Kilauea, with an obvious focal point and empty foreground, the biggest (and most easily overlooked) challenge was the constant motion in the scene.
Let’s review: Photography is the futile attempt to convey a dynamic world using a static medium. Though that’s literally impossible, what is possible is conveying the illusion of motion—that is, capturing the scene in a way that enables viewers to infer its motion. Finding the shutter speed that freezes a moving subject in place or renders it with some degree of motion blur, while getting the light perfect, is a basic photography skill that simply requires mastery of the three exposure variables.
Motion in a landscape image can take many forms, some easier to address than others. Though waterfalls and whitewater rapids may move fast, at least they stay in one place while the water moves within. But other natural subjects move more unpredictably. Lightning, for example, comes and goes so suddenly, I never even consider using my own reflex/reaction skills to freeze its transient existence—I simply connect my Lightning Trigger, aim my camera, and wait for my trigger and camera to do the work. Ocean waves, while less organized than whitewater, are at least predictable enough to anticipate and time—that said, I generally prefer to simply shoot a series of wave images with varied timing and motion effects, then pick my favorite later.
Somewhere between lightning and waves on the predictable/random continuum are atmospheric phenomena like the northern lights, and regular old clouds. Though they’re in constant (seemingly) random motion, that motion is usually more my speed—slow enough to anticipate and adjust my composition and exposure without feeling too rushed.
But it’s not just about how you render the motion—another complicating factor is paying attention to subjects that don’t stay put: a composition that was perfect seconds ago could be completely out of whack right now. Which happens to be the biggest challenge this memorable morning in Hawaii.
Now might be a good time to mention that part of my desire to control my entire frame makes me especially obsessive about both the borders of my images, as well as the relationships of the elements in my frame that draw the eye. That means trying to avoid cutting strong elements on the edges of my frame, creating a sense of connection and balance between strong visual elements, and avoiding (or minimizing) visual elements that compete with my subject or subjects. So when my subjects are in motion, as they were on Kilauea this morning, I need to monitor and adjust continuously.
Arriving with my workshop group several hours before sunrise, the total darkness meant I only had to contend with 800-foot explosive lava fountains and the lava rivers surrounded by a sea of black. The lava fountains, while exploding violently and pretty much non-stop, were far enough away that they seemed to be moving in slow motion. The lava rivers, though constantly ebbing, flowing, and changing course, moved slowly enough to be relatively manageable too.
Fountain of Fire, Kilauea Eruption, Hawaii
My goal was to freeze the lava’s motion in place, and soon I settled on a shutter speed I was confident would do that even at my longest focal length. With the unchanging light (dark) and a shutter speed I knew was fine, it wasn’t long before I found a rhythm, complementing compositions centered on the “stationary” lava fountain (the lava was moving, but the fountain stayed in one place) with the current position of the flowing lava rivers, then timing my shutter click for when the latest fountain peaked or spread most dramatically. I worked this way for a couple of hours, mostly using my 100-400 and 1.4X teleconverter, zooming in and out and switching between horizontal and vertical compositions.
Things changed when sunrise started painting the sky pink and revealing a previously unseen plume of billowing smoke, vapor, and tephra. Suddenly, my priorities switched to wide angle to capture all the additional beauty brought by the increasing light. And just as suddenly, I had to adjust the compositional imperatives underlying my prior rhythm, now factoring into the mix the wind-whipped smoky plume tower that expanded and shifted by the second, the pink clouds, and even new detail on the caldera floor. And with the rapidly brightening sky, an exposure that worked 30 seconds ago, now blew out the sunlit highlights. Not only that, I knew the plume’s gorgeous warm light was peaking and would only last for another minute or two, further ratcheting up my urgency.
Switching to my 16-35 lens, I framed up a completely new composition and adjusted to a new combination of motion considerations. In this case, including the lava and rising plume were no-brainers, but the goal should be more than simply taking a picture that includes both—everything needs to work together to create something that stands out from the thousands of other images captured at the caldera that morning.
Managing all of a scene’s moving parts is what good photographers are supposed to do. That said, I notice—both in my workshops and online—that many photographers seem so focused on their scene’s one or two most prominent features that they lose track of still important secondary and tertiary elements. And when one or more of those less essential elements is moving, for example waves or clouds, their new position is easily overlooked, leading to random and often less than ideal results.
In this case, while keeping an eye on the active lava as I’d done all morning, I suddenly also needed to keep track of an expanding smoke plume that was in constant motion, illuminated by ever-changing sunlight. While not especially difficult if you’re paying attention, this doesn’t just happen automatically (and I have the pictures to prove it).
Keeping my borders as clean as possible became a prime concern, so I kept a constant eye on the shifting smoke plume to avoid cutting it off. On the left and top I just needed to keep the plume off the borders of my frame; since the wind had stretched the smoke far beyond any reasonable frame on the right side, I also needed to find the best place to cut that side with the right border. And as with my rapidly changing exposure, a composition that worked one second might need to be completely adjusted the next.
I tried to go just wide enough on the right to include all of the main (and most dramatic!) vertical section of the sunlit plume, and on the right went just a little wider than that to include that one small splash light—any farther right would have shrunk my subjects while adding nothing more than a homogenous horizontal band of brownish-gray smoke.
The result of all these machinations is this wide vertical frame that includes the fountaining and flowing lava that was the star of the show that morning, plus all of the sunlit portion of the beautiful smoke plume. Accomplishing this was not rocket science, and I’m not pretending to be special for achieving it. But I do think photographers often fall down when they get so caught up in the majesty of the moment that they fail to take that one extra step to account for the scene’s motion, and the importance of those subtle changes from one frame to the next.
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World in Motion
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Kilauea Eruption Episode 33, Part 2: Grand Finale
Posted on September 29, 2025
Fountain of Fire, Kilauea Eruption, Hawaii
Sony a7R V
Sony 100-400 GM
ISO 400
f/5.6
1/125 second
For the full context of my experience with Kilauea eruptions in general, and the events leading up to the fountaining portion of this episode (33), check out my prior blog post: Kilauea Eruption Episode 33, Part 1: So You’re Telling Me There’s a Chance…
The euphoria of our (very) early Thursday morning Kilauea eruption shoot powered my workshop group through the day and into Thursday night. Since we hadn’t made it back to the hotel until 4:00 a.m., I pulled the plug on our sunrise shoot (with zero objections), and the group didn’t gather again until our 1:00 p.m. image review session. It turns out many were so excited by the eruption experience, they opted for downloading and processing over sleep, but the few eruption images we did see definitely turbocharged the eruption enthusiasm.
The discussion during the afternoon meeting centered around whether the fountaining we saw was Kilauea’s new normal, or whether there might be more to come. My inherent optimism went straight to the fact that the prior episode (episode 32, in early September) had delivered the second greatest volume of lava to the caldera floor of all the episodes —the most of 2025 so far. And the latest USGS report said that continuing inflation at the summit meant more was coming. Yay.
The pessimist in me, that annoying little voice that keeps reminding me of the times Mother Nature has thrown cold water on high hopes, kept reminding me of the signs that the reliable eruption sequence that started in December 2024 might be flagging: the fountain height of recent eruptions had decreased significantly from its 1000+ foot peak; the gap separating each fountaining phase was increasing; and most significantly (in my mind), live webcams focused on the eruption’s vents showed that the activity we’d photographed the prior night had completely died—only smoke was visible where we had once seen bubbling, flowing lava.
Shortly after the image review session, we departed for the workshop’s sunset shoot at my favorite beach on the Puna Coast. That evening’s spectacular sunset pushed the eruption buzz to the background, and in a way felt like a fitting wrap-up to a fantastic workshop. We did have one more sunrise shoot planned, but I think everyone felt like it would be anticlimactic following all we’d photographed in the workshop so far. In fact, with flights to catch and coming off a night with very little sleep, when I suggested that we stay in Hilo and stick to the sunrise plan even if the eruption resumed during the night, the agreement was unanimous—we’d already had a great volcano shoot that would be tough to beat. (We’d already been up to Kilauea twice, so I also suggested that anyone who changed their mind should feel free to go up on their own if the eruption started.)
That plan lasted until 3:30 a.m. One of the workshop participants (who had his office manager in Ohio, where midnight in Hawaii is 6 a.m., monitoring the Kilauea webcams and reporting any changes) messaged the group, “It’s fountaining!” I was sound asleep, but the messaging frenzy that followed quickly roused me enough to grab my phone and check the webcam. I instantly knew the sunrise plan was out the window and we were going back to Kilauea, sleep be damned. When he said fountaining, he meant FOUNTAINING!!!
This fountaining was on an entirely different scale from what we’d seen the prior night, or even from anything I’d ever seen—like someone had kicked a giant sprinkler head on the caldera floor. (I learned later that it was the highest fountaining since early July.) Almost all of the group was wide awake and on the road in 20 minutes.
Even though we arrived before 5:00 a.m., a little more than an hour after the fountaining began, the park was much more crowded than we’d seen the previous night. We found parking, but just barely, and I knew the way cars were streaming into the park the open spaces wouldn’t last long.
Because of the crowds, we’d implemented an “every car for itself plan,” each doing its own thing while staying in contact. My car started at Kilauea Overlook, but found the view, while very close, was partially obscured behind the caldera rim. So we quickly doubled back to the Wahinekapu Steaming Bluff (steam vents), for the best combination of direct view to the fountaining vents, and fast access. There we reconnected with most of the rest of the group.
The view to the fountaining vents from the Wahinekapu is about 2 miles—our other option was the closer vantage point at Keanakako’i Overlook, on the other side of the caldera (where I shot the 2023 eruption). This is about 1.25 miles from the fountains, but also required a 15 minute drive followed by a 1 mile walk, and I knew that even if we found parking there (far from a sure thing), it would probably be starting to get light by the time we got our eyes on the eruption. Plus, having shot the eruption from Wahinekapu already, I knew we’d be close enough that 400mm would be plenty long enough.
I’m so glad we took the path of least resistance and stayed at Wahinekapu. Even though my brother Jay (who was assisting me in this workshop) and I had a very small window to shoot before we needed to head back to Hilo to catch our flight home, the timing of the eruption and our arrival couldn’t have been better. We started with nearly an hour of complete darkness, allowing exposures that froze the fountains without blowing out the highlights (overexposing the lava) to create the virtually black background that I think makes the most dramatic lava images. Following the complete darkness, we photographed through the slow transition into a beautiful sunrise. Finally, as the day brightened, we enjoyed about a half hour of the eruption’s towering plume warmed by lava-light from below, and low sunlight from above. Absolutely spectacular.
When I first photographed lava in 2016, I was learning on the fly. At night, standard histogram rules don’t apply to lava because a properly exposed frame will be almost completely smashed agains the left side (with much cut off), and often, especially on wider shots, with just few small highlight blips on the far right. Basically, job-one is to make the lava as bright as possible without blowing it out. And job 1a is to do that using a shutter speed that freezes the lava’s motion (unless motion blur is your objective). And finally, you really should do this using the best (lowest) possible ISO.
The mistake people make for any kind of motion blur, and I’ve heard a lot of “best shutter speed for Kilauea’s lava fountains” advice, is to assume that there’s one ideal shutter speed for freezing the lava fountains. There isn’t. Just as with flowing water, the shutter speed that freezes a lava fountain is a function of several factors: the speed at which the lava is moving—the higher the fountain, the faster the lava will be moving when it reaches the ground, the distance to the fountain, and the focal length.
Back in 2016 I started with extremely high ISOs to maximize my shutter speed, but have gradually, through trial and error, dropped both my ISO and decreased my shutter speeds for my lava images. At night, since depth of field is usually no concern, for most of my long telephoto shots using my 100-400, I now just shoot wide open, at f/5.6 for that lens. My exposure trial and error process involves taking a shot at a certain focal length, verifying that the lava is close to maximum brightness without blowing out, then magnifying the image in my viewfinder (or LCD) to confirm that there’s no motion blur in the lava fountain (make sure you check the lowest lava blobs, as they’ll be moving fastest). If that works, I lower my ISO and increase my shutter speed further, until I find the threshold where blur is discernible. Then, for a just-to-be-safe cushion, I bump my ISO and shutter speed back up to just slightly more than the prior settings (that I thought froze the lava).
I had to do this for every significant change in focal length, but it wasn’t long before I became pretty comfortable with my settings. And by the time this Friday morning lava fountaining started—having done it in 2016, 2022, 2023, and earlier that week—I was feeling so comfortable with my exposure settings that it was no longer a distraction. In fact, I was varying my focal length so frequently and clicking so fast, to simplify the process I just kept my exposure settings in the range I knew would work all the way out to 400mm. I was fine with this because a very satisfactory ISO 400 gave me a shutter speed in the 1/100 to 1/200 second range that I knew worked.
So bottom line? In total darkness, standing 2 miles away, at 400mm I was perfectly comfortable with f/5.6, ISO 400, and 1/100. But I hope you can see that my exposure settings probably won’t work for you if you’re much closer than 2 miles, and might be overkill if you’re farther away. In other words, I strongly encourage anyone who wants to photograph fountaining lava to apply my process, not my settings. (And there are many people with far more experience photographing lava than I have, so feel free to defer to them if their results confirm that they know what they’re talking about.)
This experience, the final shoot of my 2025 Hawaii Big Island workshop, wasn’t just the grand finale for this workshop, it was the grand finale of 15 years of Hawaii workshops. As I pare down my workshop schedule and ease (slowly) toward retirement, I decided a few months ago that this would be my final Hawaii workshop. Not because I don’t enjoy it (I do!), or because it no longer fills (it does!), but simply because I had better reasons to keep other workshops. Just as my final Grand Canyon raft trip was gifted with a beautiful, albeit less dramatic, crescent moon for our final sunrise, I can’t imagine a better Hawaii memory to go out on.
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Kilauea Memories (2010-2025)
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Kilauea Eruption Episode 33, Part 1: So You’re Telling Me There’s a Chance…
Posted on September 24, 2025
River of Light, Kilauea Eruption, Hawaii
Sony a7R V
Sony 100-400 GM
ISO 400
f/5.6
1/250 second
One out of a million…
One of the great motivators for a nature photographer is the potential for the unexpected. As much as I love planning my photo shoots, especially when things come together exactly as hoped, the euphoria of the unexpected feels like photography’s greatest reward.
Some natural phenomena can be predicted with surgical precision—events like a rising or setting sun or moon, a total solar eclipse, the moonbow that materializes every spring full moon at the base of Yosemite Falls, and the sunset light that colors Horsetail Fall in late February—with the only variable being whether or not the clouds will cooperate enough to allow us to view the show.
I love those reliable phenomena and have made my living scheduling photo workshops to share them with others. But I also have a few workshops scheduled around the hope of something spectacular—a high risk, high reward roll of the dice that can only be timed to provide the best chance of success. In this category I include the Iceland aurora workshops Don Smith and I do each year, my Grand Canyon monsoon workshops where we cross our fingers for lightning and rainbows, and my latest obsession, chasing supercells and tornadoes across the US and Canadian plains.
But let me submit a third category: those phenomena where there’s absolutely nothing strategic about the timing, and when it occurs, it feels like a gift from Heaven. I guess that could describe any random sunset, rainbow, or unexpected snowfall, but I’m thinking more about those one-out-of-a million phenomena that are so spectacular and rare, for many they’re a once in a lifetime event. Like an erupting volcano.
My personal volcano history
I’ve been visiting Hawaii’s Big Island every (non-Covid) September since 2010. Through 2017, the lava lake in Halemaʻumaʻu on Kilauea’s summit bubbled away 24/7, allowing each of my workshop groups to view and photograph beneath the Milky Way. This was so reliable, I simply took lava’s nightly glow for granted. Until 2016 I never saw actually the lava itself, just its rising smoke and vapor plume during the day, and the lava’s orange radiance illuminating the caldera walls after dark. But in 2016 the lava lake rose to the top of Halemaʻumaʻu and overflowed onto the caldera floor, and my group and I were gifted with the rare opportunity to view bubbling, exploding lava. Then in 2017 everything was back to normal, and my group returned to photographing the glow (and me to taking the eruption for granted).
But in a frustrating exhibition of Mother Nature’s fickle whims, in 2018 she reminded me to never take her for granted, and completely shut off the summit eruption the week before my workshop. Of course there’s lots of other stuff to photograph on the Big Island (my favorite Hawaiian island), but it’s pretty hard to top a volcanic eruption.
Since 2018, Kilauea has been mostly quiet, with a handful of relatively minor eruptions each year, most measured in hours or days, arriving with very short notice, and vanishing just as suddenly. In other words, impossible to plan a workshop around, and rare enough to never be expected.
My groups got nothing from the volcano in 2018, 2019, and 2021 (2020 was lost to Covid). Then in 2022, my workshop group and I were fortunate enough to get a long distance view of an eruption and the Milky Way from a brand new location. And in 2023 we hit the jackpot when a very active eruption started the day before my workshop, and ended the day after. For that one, I got to photograph numerous small fountains and lava rivers across a wide area of the caldera floor three different times, and my group enjoyed the same show twice. Then in 2024, Kilauea was quiet again.
I knew that Kilauea’s eruption history meant that the next one could be tomorrow, or years away. Or never. But in December of 2024, a whole new kind of eruption started on Kilauea. Instead of smaller fountains spreading across the caldera as we’d seen in 2023, this one was limited to one or two massive fountains. And instead of the recent one-and-done eruptions that would last for days or (occasionally) weeks, this new eruption came in short and sweet bursts separated by days. The first few lasted longer, up to 8 days, but after a while this latest eruption established a fairly regular routine, coming every week or so and lasting less than a day.
The fountaining in some of these episodes exceeded 1000 feet (a height I struggled to imagine, despite the many pictures and videos shared online), with most reaching at least 300 feet—far higher than anything I’d seen before, including in 2023.
Finally, we get to this image
(That’s a lot of context for just one image, so thanks for sticking with me.)
Since I scheduled the 2025 Hawaii workshop in the summer of 2024, I added it with no expectations of photographing an eruption. I simply knew any eruption, while always possible, was quite unlikely. Of course Hawaii has plenty to photograph without an erupting volcano, but a person can dream….
When the current eruption started late last year, nothing in recent history gave hope that it would last long enough to still be going by the time my workshop came around. With 10 months to go, my hope meter stayed pegged on zero. But as the volcano settled into its once-a-week routine and the months clicked past with little change in that pattern, I started to notice a slight quiver in the meter’s needle.
But as we all know, Mother Nature toys with hope. No sooner had my meter shown signs of life, the reliable one-week span between eruptions started stretching out to 10-14 days, the episode duration dropped to less than 12 hours, and the fountain heights dropped well below 500 feet. By the time episode 32 came and went in early September, I was down to hoping my workshop group would be lucky enough that the 12-hour or less span of the next episode (if there was a next episode), would fall sometime in the workshop’s 4 1/2 days. Not great odds, but to be safe, a few weeks before the workshop I e-mailed my group explaining our poor odds, but also reassuring them that if any eruption did happen during the workshop, we’d drop all other plans and I’d do everything in my power get us up to Kilauea to view it, regardless of the hour.
But in the secret recesses of my mind, despite my overwhelming desire to see and share this unprecedented sight, the possibility (no matter how small) that I might be responsible for navigating a dozen photographers and 3 vehicles through the mayhem reported to accompany every prior episode—gridlock and hours just getting into the park, no parking once we get in, and limited viewing space—was daunting at best. Combine that with the fact that I obsess about getting my eyes on a scene before guiding a group to it—not only did I not have any experience with the best viewing locations for this eruption (each eruption happens at a different location in or near the crater), if it did happen during the workshop, I’d be learning on the fly, with my group depending on me.
I did as much research and preparation as possible from 2600 miles away, scouring the internet, reaching out to others I knew who had viewed prior episodes, and practically memorizing the viewing instructions on the NPS Hawaii Volcanoes website. But I knew all this planning would be of little use if we made the 45 minute drive from our Hilo hotel to the park and found it teeming with double-parked photographers and gawking tourists.
Then, just a few days before the workshop, the USGS posted an eruption forecast stating that the earliest the next episode would start would be September 19, and possibly later if summit inflation (the amount of magma in the subterranean chamber) decreases. Since my workshop wraps up following the sunrise shoot on September 19, I knew we’d almost certainly miss it. A disappointment for sure, but also a significant stress reliever.
On my pre-workshop scouting visit, I learned that the vent of the eruption had been glowing the last couple of nights, a sign that the magma chamber was filling. With that information I realized there might be an opportunity to give my group a caldera night shoot for the first time since 2017. Not only that, as I scouted the views to the current eruption vents, I realized that I’d be able to align the caldera’s glow with the Milky Way, just like the olden days. Even without an eruption, things were looking up.
On Tuesday, our second night, I took the group to the caldera for sunset, and we stayed for a magnificent Milky Way shoot beneath a spectacularly (and unusually) clear sky. In fact, unlike all the prior Kilauea Milky Way shoots, where we just photographed a glowing hole at the bottom of a featureless caldera floor, subsequent eruptions (and especially the current one) had raised the caldera floor from 100 to 300+ feet, and replaced the dull rocks and shrubs with brand new beautifully textured lava. And the glow now emanated from a discernible volcanic cone that at times during our shoot emitted visible splashes of lava.
I went to bed that night overjoyed to have given my group an actual active volcano experience. And then I woke Wednesday morning. Checking the USGS Kilauea status update, I did a double-take. The earlier September 19 – 23 episode 33 forecast had been revised to indicate that an eruption was imminent, and could start any time from September 17 (today!) to 19. Whoa.
Along with the euphoria that we might indeed get to witness an actual fountaining eruption came the prior anxiety of not knowing exactly how I’d navigate it. So I devised a plan. Knowing that we’d all been up to the volcano the prior day, I decided that if the eruption does start, we’d drop everything and immediately beeline to Kilauea as a group, in no more than 3 vehicles (there were 14 of us, including me and my brother Jay). Once there, we’d do our best to stay together, but if it was too crowded and unmanageable, each car would have full autonomy to go where its occupants wanted to go, and to stay as long as they wanted. If that happened, we’d still keep in constant contact via our workshop WhatsApp group (which we’d already been using all week), and share any insights we learned about parking or vantage points. With a plan in place, we went about the day’s workshop plans (Akaka Falls and Hawaii Tropical Botanical Garden), keeping a constant eye on the USGS eruption webcams and status updates.
Nothing had happened by the end of the day, so before sending everyone off for the evening, I checked to see who wanted to be awakened if the eruption started overnight, and found that all but three were up for an overnight adventure.
At 11:30 p.m. I’d already been asleep for a couple of hours when my phone started lighting up with notifications that the eruption had started. We were awake, dressed, and on the road in 15 minutes. By 12:15 a.m. (Thursday morning) we in place at the caldera and clicking madly.
What we saw this evening was not the promised fountaining, but no one was disappointed by the bubbling vent, lava falls, and lava river we did see. The splashes this night reached up to 50 feet, and our vantage point at the Steam Vents gave us a perfect view straight to all the action. We stayed to photograph it until 3:00 a.m., and drove back to the hotel completely euphoric. Needless to say, we passed on the sunrise shoot.
Stay tuned for Part Two…
Unplanned Beauty
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It’s Not All Skill and Hard Work
Posted on December 7, 2024
Molten Churn, Kilauea, Hawaii
Sony a7R V
Sony 100-400 GM
ISO 800
f/5.6
1/1250 second
There’s not a nature photographer alive who hasn’t heard someone exclaim about a coveted capture, “Wow, you were so lucky!” And indeed we are lucky—but that sentiment completely discounts the time and effort that put us in the right place at the right time.
Louis Pasteur’s assertion that chance favors the prepared mind has been co-opted by photographers—mostly, I suspect, to reclaim some (much deserved) credit for capturing Nature’s ephemeral beauty: vivid sunrises/sunsets, rainbows, lightning, the aurora and other celestial displays, volcanic eruptions, and on, and on….
Yes, it was indeed very lucky when that rainbow appeared, or the sky turned crimson, or the clouds parted to reveal a rising full moon—at just the moment I happened to be there with my camera. Most of those times, despite insinuations to the contrary, my presence wasn’t a total fluke and I’d like credit for it thankyouverymuch.
On the other hand…
Let’s not forget that two things can be equally true. I fear that some photographers become so defensive of the effort they put into capturing a special moment, they fail to appreciate that there was indeed luck involved too. But conceding our good fortune doesn’t diminish our skill and vision, it just acknowledges that we are never in complete control of Nature’s fickle whims. Not only that, appreciating the luck involved helps bolster the sense of wonder and awe a nature photographer must have.
As hard as I try to anticipate an outcome, and the number of times that effort has succeeded, I have to admit that sometimes my presence for a beautiful moment was an absolute fluke. I mean, I still had to know how to work my camera and frame a composition, but what I witnessed was not part of the original plan.
For example, scheduling my 2013 Maui workshop more than a year in advance, I had no inkling of Comet PanSTARRS. When I did learn about the approaching potential naked-eye comet, and that it would be paired with a crescent moon on possibly the best day for viewing, I checked my schedule and discovered that I’d be on Maui for a workshop. In fact, the day the comet would appear closest to the moon just happened to be the day I’d planned to photograph sunset from the summit of Haleakala—coincidentally, the site of the very telescope that discovered PanSTARRS more than a year earlier.
Another special experience I can’t take much credit for was morning I got to photograph the most active, longest lasting Grand Canyon lightning display (that included a rainbow right at sunrise) I’ve ever seen. Based on that morning’s weather forecast (clear skies, 0% chance of rain), and the 12-hour drive home following the shoot, I’d probably have stayed in bed had there not been a workshop group counting on me.
I’m thinking about these unexpected blessings because recently I’ve been going through old, unprocessed images and came across this one (of many) from the September 2023 Kilauea eruption. I’d love to be labeled a Pele-whisperer capable of anticipating a Hawaiian eruption early enough to get myself to the Big Island, blessed with prescient insight into the ideal vantage point before the lava fountains appear. But alas….
I’ve been leading a Hawaii Big Island workshop every year since 2010 (minus the 2020 COVID year). Since Halemaʻumaʻu (Kilauea’s summit caldera) had been erupting continuously since 2008, for the first eight of those years it was easy to take Kilauea for granted. I’d show up, take my group at least one time (often more) to the spot I’d found that perfectly aligned the eruption with the Milky Way. As long as the clouds didn’t deny us, I’d have a workshop full of thrilled photographers.
But in 2018 Pele sent a “don’t ever take me for granted” message, providing a dazzling, 4-month pyrotechnic display before rolling over and going to sleep less than a month before my workshop started. Since 2018, Kilauea has stirred only periodically, so scheduling workshops more than a year in advance has made it impossible to time my workshops to coincide with an eruption.
Putting a positive spin on it, that has made the good fortune of the eruptions we have witnessed even more special. For example, I completely lucked out in 2022 with a nice, albeit distant, eruption that included lava fountains and an opportunity to get the caldera and the Milky Way in the same wide frame.
And then there was 2023. As the workshop approached, things appeared to be back to business as (post-2018) usual. After a couple of minor eruptions over the past year or so, Kilauea had been quiet for several months leading up to my September workshop. Though it had been showing a few signs of stirring, by the day before my workshop, nothing seemed imminent. There’s so much more than enough to photograph on the Big Island, so this wasn’t a big concern, but it was still a minor personal disappointment because I never tire of viewing an erupting volcano.
With the workshop starting Monday, my brother Jay and I had arrived the Friday prior to check out all my workshop locations. We spent Sunday afternoon out of cell phone range, scouting along the Puna Coast, our final area before the workshop. Entering the relatively isolated Puna region, Kilauea was quiet when my phone went dark—so imagine my surprise when we emerged from the cellular void a few hours later to see two notifications from the USGS in my inbox. When I saw Kilauea in the subject line, my heart jumped, but when I opened the first e-mail and saw that it started with, “Kilauea is not erupting,” I scanned the message enough to see that it report signs of increased activity. Okay, then what’s this second message about?
The first sentence grabbed my eyeballs and I didn’t bother to read further: “Kilauea is erupting.” I instantly punched the gas detoured straight to the volcano. The eruption had started at 3:15 p.m., and at exactly 5:00 p.m. we were rolling up to the Visitor Center. There we learned that we could view the eruption right across the street, from Volcano House.
Racing over there, we joined the crowd oooh-ing and ahhh-ing at the billowing smoke, orange glow, and occasional bursts of lava that jumped high enough to be visible the steep crater wall. Rather than photograph from there, I decided to see if there might be a better view. We found more of the same at the steam vents: spurts of lava, lots of smoke, and a distinct orange glow. But while there we ran into a couple who told us the best view was at Keanakakoi, on the other side of caldera. So off we went.
At Keanakakoi we snagged one of the last parking spots, grabbed our camera bags, and bolted down the trail (a paved road now closed to non-official vehicles). After a brisk (understatement) one-mile walk, we made it to the vista about 10 minutes before sunset.
I’ll never forget the sight that greeted us. On the caldera floor clearly visible directly below us were at least a two-dozen lava fountains of varying size, churning among a honeycomb of just-cooled black lava that appeared etched by thin, glowing cracks. Splitting this fiery orgy was a broad lava river, and several narrower streams. We quickly joined the throngs who had jumped the improvised rope that had not doubt been placed to prevent us gawkers from plunging to our deaths (safety-schmafety).
What followed was a clicking frenzy. I started with my 24-105 lens, eventually switching to my 100-400. (I also snuck in a couple of quick iPhone photos—the lava field was close enough to fill the frame without cropping). Monitoring my RGB histogram, I quickly determined that an exposure that completely spared the red channel skewed the rest of the histogram far to the left, which of course made perfect sense and was no problem because pretty much the only thing that mattered in this scene was the orange lava.
So focused was I on scene below me that it was a couple of minutes before I registered that I was working in what might be the windiest conditions I’ve ever photographed in. I’ve probably experienced stronger gusts (I’m looking at you, Iceland), but this wind was steady, brutal, and relentless. So strong in fact that it nearly ripped the glasses of my face, and forced me to actually keep one hand on them most of the time.
Given the rapidly approaching darkness, with most subjects this wind would have been a significant problem. But because my primary (only?) subject was imbued with its own built-in light source, and was in constant, frenetic motion that required an extremely fast shutter speed anyway, I found it all quite manageable—I was actually more concerned about getting blown into the maelstrom than I was about camera shake.
Throughout the evening I varied my exposure settings, shooting wide open with shutter speeds varying between 1/500 and 1/1500 second, and ISOs ranging from 800 to 3200. Focal lengths ranged from fairly wide (wider than 50mm at the start) to 400. In fact, many of my 100-400mm frames were closer to the 100mm range so I could include groups of fountains. I tried to time each shot for peak explosiveness in whatever fountain or fountains I’d targeted, but honestly, since these peaks came every second or two, that wasn’t much of a challenge.
Every once in a while I got a strong whiff of sulfur, a reminder of the risks of being so close to a volcanic eruption. It seemed like we’d been out there at least an hour when I was aware of shouting behind me. I turned to see rangers running around shoeing us from the edge. At first I thought all of us who had crossed the rope barrier were in trouble, but it turns out we were being evacuated—and they meant business. A review of the timestamps on my images showed that what seemed like more than an hour was in fact only 33 minutes.
How close were we to the eruption? I calculated later that we’d been only 1/2 mile away from the lava field, but it seemed much closer. Unfortunately, the closure that caused us to be evacuated wasn’t lifted until the eruption ended, so I wasn’t able to take my group out there. But I did learn about other vantage points that were nearly as good, and got my group out there two more times.
How lucky was I (and my workshop group)? This eruption that started the day before the workshop started, was finished the day after the workshop ended.
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Lucky Shots
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Fire and Rainbow
Posted on October 10, 2023
Fire and Rainbow, Kilauea, Hawaii
Sony a7R V
Sony 100-400 GM
ISO 250
f/11
1/200 second
One concern about returning to the same location, at the same time, in the same workshop, is finding something new to photograph. But last month’s Hawaii workshop group was so excited about our first shoot of the Kilauea eruption, going back on the workshop’s final night was a no-brainer. Not only were we looking forward viewing the fountaining lava one more time, we all wanted to apply some of the lessons learned from the Tuesday shoot. And Mother Nature delivered a surprise that guaranteed something new for everyone.
Surprise or not, many in the group returned with plans for different exposure or focal length choices; I want to use the knowledge gained in the first visit to position my group better, because the eruption had been so new on that first visit, I’d arrived at Kilauea with no idea of what we’d encounter and how we’d access it. I knew enough this second time to arrive with an actual strategy.
The first night we had to park in the overflow parking lot and walk about a mile along the caldera rim to reach the best vantage points; this time we arrived nearly 90 minutes earlier and drove directly to Kilauea Overlook, our favorite vantage point from the earlier visit. Even arriving that much earlier, we ended up snagging the last three parking spaces in the lot—one more kiss of good fortune to bless this especially fortunate workshop group.
Though the eruption was still going strong, we found the shooting conditions this second evening much different. The first time it was dry, with a mix of sky and clouds; this time we found ourselves surrounded by low clouds that dampened every surface and filled the caldera with a heavy mist. By the end of the evening I’d labeled this a “stealth” rain—microscopic drops that couldn’t really be felt as they landed, but somehow managed to saturate our clothes and accumulate on our lenses. But at first it just seemed a little damp.
As early as we were, the sun still hadn’t set behind Mauna Loa. As we unloaded our gear from the cars, I noticed blue sky visible above Mauna Loa and pointed out to the group that there may actually be enough moisture in the air to create a rainbow if the sun came out. And it wasn’t long after making our way to the rim that the sun did indeed pop out enough to create a fuzzy rainbow far to the left of the lava.
The rainbow’s location was close enough to the eruption that we could include both in the same frame without going too wide, but I wanted to get it even closer to minimize the (not especially appealing) brown caldera floor separating them. This is where understanding basic rainbow science pays off. A rainbow forms a 42 degree circle around the anti-solar point: the point in the sky at the other end of an imaginary, infinitely long line starting at the sun, passing through the back of the viewer’s head, and exiting between the eyes. Since we each have our own anti-solar point (and therefore our own rainbow), which is entirely a function of our position relative to the sun, we can change the location of any rainbow (relative to the landscape) by simply repositioning. In this case I knew I could move about 300 yards to my right before the trail (and eruption view) curved out of view of the eruption and rainbow.
Since this was the workshop’s final evening, and we’d all photographed the eruption from here before, everyone was pretty comfortable scattering (rather than sticking close to me for guidance)—which is exactly what they’d done. I hailed as many as I could and explained what I was doing and why, encouraged them to join me, then rushed up the trail.
Not knowing how long the rainbow would last, on the way I stopped a couple of times to fire a frame or two. Turns out I needn’t have worried because the rainbow lasted, in one form or another, for at least 30 minutes. Once I reached the vantage point that positioned the rainbow closest to the eruption, I set up and went to work. The rainbow seemed most intense near the lava, but at times I could make out a faint full arc, and once even pulled out my 12-24 lens to capture a few frames of it. But for the most park I was interested in the tighter, brighter compositions.
Finally working in one spot long enough to get settled, I started to fully comprehend how wet it was. I was wearing a thin rain shell, but could tell that it was already soaking through to my flannel. (Flannel in Hawaii? Indeed—here at 4,000 feet conditions were both wet and windy, with temps in the low 50s.) The wind made my umbrella pointless, so the mist/rain also assaulted my front lens element enough that I had to wipe it clear every few frames.
The difficult problem was getting focus. I’ve come to trust the autofocus on my Sony mirrorless cameras so much, the only time I manually focus anymore is when I have a critical focus point requirement—in 100% infinity scenes like this, I just autofocus anywhere in the scene (wherever my focus point happens to be positioned) and call it good. But the mist this evening was so dense, I could rarely get a focus confirmation—and even when I did, I wasn’t completely confident of it. So I scanned my surroundings and spied a couple hundred yards behind me one of the volcano observatory buildings (near the now shuttered Jagger Museum) to auto-focus on.
This worked well, especially since I use back-button focus and didn’t need to switch between auto and manual focus each time I refocused. Of course each time I changed my focal length I had to pop my camera off my tripod and turn around to refocus, but this became second nature soon enough.
We stayed until dark, battling the wetness and chill to add to our already brimming Kilauea eruption collections. Once darkness fell, the eruption didn’t look much different than it had the first time, so as soon everyone felt like they’d had enough success and addressed whatever problems they’d identified in their prior images, we retreated to the cars and headed back down to Hilo.
Who wants to find out what we’ll see in Hawaii next year?
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Lots More Rainbows
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Sometimes It’s Better To Be Lucky Than Good
Posted on September 30, 2023
Making Mountains, Kilauea, HawaiiSony a7R V
Sony 100-400 GM
ISO 1600
f/5.6
1/500 second
As a rule, landscape photographers resent being told “you’re so lucky to have seen that.” We work very hard to get to our scenes in just the right conditions, and to create the compositions with the exposure settings that portray them at their best. But I have to admit that luck is a factor as well—sometimes more than others.
For example…
Sunrise Mirror, Mono Lake
One time my brother Jay and I spent an afternoon exploring the north shore of Mono Lake, searching for alternatives to the mayhem of heavily-photographed South Tufa. Navigating a maze of barely passable unpaved roads, we found a remote spot that required a half mile walk through sand and shoe-sucking mud to reach, but it looked like it would be worth returning to for sunrise.
Rising a couple of hours before the next morning’s sun, we made our way in that general direction, but in the darkness couldn’t find the exact spot (or even the exact road). Nevertheless we did find a place to park, so we blazed a new trail to the lake, where we waited for sunrise.
Though luck isn’t what got us out of bed that morning, it had everything to do with all that followed. For starters, we were quite fortunate to randomly wind up at the spot we did. But the real luck was the clouds the sky delivered this morning, and the perfectly calm lake surface that mirrored them perfectly.
Rainbow Bridge, Colorado River, Grand Canyon
For good reason, rainbows usually feel like gifts from heaven. Knowing the science behind rainbows can certainly make finding them easier, but that knowledge can’t actually create the conditions necessary to form a rainbow.
Each year I schedule my Grand Canyon Raft Trip for Photographers to maximize the opportunity for dark sky (moonless) Milky Way opportunities, clear (pre-monsoon) water in the Colorado River, and blue in the Little Colorado River. Rainbows are never a consideration when I make these plans.
I’ll take a little bit of credit for seeing the conditions and anticipating the possibility of a rainbow on this rainy May afternoon in 2016, but of course had absolutely nothing to do with the actual manifestation of those conditions. Yet there it was, a vivid double rainbow spanning the Grand Canyon walls, exactly as I’d fantasized for many years. Do you believe in miracles?
Aurora Reflection, Glacier Lagoon, Iceland
If you know anything about the northern (and southern) lights, you know that they’re caused when Earth’s magnetosphere is overwhelmed by electromagnetic radiation from the Sun. You might also know that this solar activity follows an 11 year cycle from one “solar maximum” to the next. And it stands to reason that midway between these electromagnetic peaks is the solar minimum, when the Sun is relatively quiet and auroral activity reaches its nadir.
It just so happened that in 2019 Don Smith and I chose the most recent solar minimum to make our first visit to Iceland, scouting for our Iceland photo workshop scheduled to debut the following year. We chose winter to increase our aurora odds, but given the Sun’s quiescent status really had no right to expect a northern lights show. Of course that didn’t prevent us from spending each night shivering in the cold dark, peering into a frustratingly black sky.
So imagine our surprise when, just as our trip was wrapping up, a confluence of magic conditions graced us. First, on the trip’s final night we just happened to be at Glacier Lagoon, where floating icebergs bob atop a mirror-like lake just downstream from Jökulsárlón Glacier—a made-to-order aurora landscape. Coinciding with this visit was a reprieve from the clouds that so frequently obscure Iceland’s night sky. And even more fortunate, of all possible nights the Sun chose this one to deliver the most breathtaking solar display of that winter.
A Kilauea Eruption
My latest lucky break, so lucky that I actually shake my head and chuckle whenever I think about it, came in my Hawaii Big Island workshop earlier this month. Kilauea hadn’t erupted since June, and since its historic eruption in 2018 had actually spent much more time asleep than awake. The volcano was still sound asleep the Friday Jay and I departed for Hawaii, just three days before the workshop, and remained that way as we went about my annual pre-workshop scouting routine on Saturday and Sunday. (You can read about what happened next in my I Was There blog post.)
On Sunday afternoon we headed down the Puna Coast, a beautiful volcanic coastline that also happens to be off the cellular grid. But in the several hours we were down there, Kilauea came back to life and we instantly jettisoned all plans for the evening and beelined to the caldera. I felt especially lucky to photograph the eruption at its peak, on the night it started, from the closest possible vantage point—that was shut down permanently about 30 minutes after we started.
When I took my group back up to Kilauea a couple of days later, I had no idea where we’d go or even if there would be another spot with a direct view of the eruption. Guiding them into Volcanoes National Park, I just followed the crowds until I encountered a detour that terminated in a parking lot near the rim. There we learned that a one-mile walk would indeed enable us to view the eruption.
So we set out on foot, still not really sure what to expect, finally encountering our first view of churning magma about 1/2 mile down the trail. Everyone was so thrilled by the sight that I had to herd them forward with promises (hopes) of even better views ahead. To my relief, the view soon opened up to provide a full view of the entire caldera floor, complete with fountaining cinder cones and flowing lava—everything a volcano watcher can hope for. More than one person told me that evening had checked a long coveted bucket-list item for them.
We returned a couple of nights later for one more shot at the eruption, and to apply lessons learned from our first visit. On this second visit a dense mist had settled in the caldera, making focus sometimes difficult, but also painting a towering rainbow as the sun set behind Mauna Loa. By the end of the workshop, every single one of us had once in a lifetime memories and the images to savor them by.
When the eruption started, I marveled at my good luck that it happened the day before my workshop started. Little did I know that the eruption would end the day after the workshop wrapped up, and my workshop group couldn’t have thread the eruption needle more perfectly if I’d have planned it that way. Like I said, sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good.
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Fortunate Photography
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Near and Far, Now and Then
Posted on September 25, 2022
Glow, Milky Way Above Kilauea, HawaiiSony a7SIII
Sony 14mm f/1.8 GM
ISO 6400
f/1.8
15 seconds
So what’s happening here? (I thought you’d never ask.)
The orange glow at the bottom of this frame is light from 1,800° F lava bubbling in Halemaʻumaʻu Crater atop Hawaii’s Kilauea, the world’s most active volcano. It’s also a beautiful example of the final act of our planet’s auto-recycling process.
Propelled by the mantle’s inexorable convection engine, Earth’s tectonic plates endlessly jostle about, sometimes sliding past each other, often colliding. When the lighter of the colliding plates is pushed upward, mountains form. While this is happening, the denser plate is forced downward, beneath the uplifting plate, a process called subduction. As the downward force persists, the subjected crust continues downward into the mantle, where intense heat melts the rock until it’s absorbed into the mantle.
Around the globe subduction is constantly, albeit very slowly (on the human scale), adding new material to the mantle. To make room for this new material, magma somewhere else is forced out at weak points in Earth’s crust and volcanoes are born. Sometimes these volcanoes push up above the land in front of the subducting plate—that’s what’s happening in the Cascade Range of the the Pacific Northwest.
A hot spot can also form in the middle of a tectonic plate. For the last 40 million years the Pacific Plate has drifted slowly northwest above a hot spot, leaving a string of 80 or so volcanoes in its wake. Most of these have since eroded away, or never made it to the surface at all. The Hawaiian Islands as the youngest in this island chain, haven’t had time to erode into their eventual oblivion. The Big Island of Hawaii is the youngest of the islands, and the only one still volcanically active, though it’s believed that Maui isn’t completely finished.
Another island, Kamaehuakanaloa Seamount, is building up south of Hawaii and should make its appearance sometime in the next 100,000 years (could be much sooner). But until that happens, we get to enjoy Kilauea—and eventually (inevitably) Mauna Loa (last eruption, 1984), Hualalai (last eruption, 1801), and maybe even Kohala (last eruption, 120,000 years ago) and Mauna Kea (last eruption 4 million years ago) could come back to life.
The vertical white band above the crater represents world building on an entirely different scale. You no doubt recognize it as light cast by billions of stars at the center of our Milky Way galaxy. So dense and distant are the stars in the Milky Way’s core, their individual points are lost to the surrounding glow. The dark patches partially obscuring the Milky Way core’s glow are large swaths of interstellar gas and dust, the leftovers of stellar explosions—and the stuff of future stars. Completing the scene are pinpoint stars in our own neighborhood of the Milky Way, stars close enough that we see them as discrete points of light that humans imagine into mythical shapes: the constellations.
The Milky Way galaxy is home to every single star we see when we look up at night, and 300 billion (-ish) more we can’t see—that’s nearly 50 stars for every man, woman, and child on Earth in our galaxy alone. And recent estimates put the total number of galaxies in the Universe at 2 trillion—a number too large to comprehend.
Our Sun, the central cog in the Solar System, is an insignificant outpost in the Milky Way suburbs. It resides in a spiral arm, a little more than halfway between the urban congestion at the galaxy’s core and the empty wilderness of open space.
Everything we see is made possible by light—light created by the object itself (like the stars and lava), or created elsewhere and reflected (like the planets, or Halemaʻumaʻu’s walls). Light travels incredibly fast, fast enough that it can span even the two most distant points on Earth faster than humans can perceive, fast enough that we consider its arrival from any terrestrial origin instantaneous. But distances in space are so great that we don’t measure them in terrestrial units of distance like miles or kilometers. Instead, we measure interstellar distance by the time it takes a photon of light to travel between two objects: one light-year is the distance light travels in one year—nearly 5.9 trillion miles.
The ramifications of cosmic distances are mind-bending. While the caldera’s proximity makes its glow about as “right now” as anything in our Universe can be—for all intents and purposes, the caldera and its viewers are sharing the same instant in time. On the other hand, the light from the stars above the caldera is tens, hundreds, or thousands of years old—it’s new to me, but to the stars it’s old history.
Imagine Proxima d, a planet orbiting Proxima Centauri, a mere four light-years distant and the star closest to our solar system. If we had a telescope with enough resolving power to see all the way down to Proxima d’s surface, we’d be watching what was happening there four years ago. Likewise, if someone on Proxima d today (2022) were peering at us, they’d be viewing a pre-Covid world and learn that Dunkin’ Donuts was dropping “Donuts” from their name (how did I miss that?). Halemaʻumaʻu Crater, which paused its activity in August 2018, would be black. (Anything you regret doing in the last 4 years? Take heart in the knowledge that everywhere in the Universe outside our Solar System, it hasn’t happened yet.)
So what’s the point of all this mind bending? Perspective, I guess. To me, the best landscape images don’t just tip the “that’s beautiful” scale, they also activate deeper insights into our relationship with the natural world. And few things do that better for me than combining, in one frame, light that’s 25,000 years old with light caused by the formation of Earth’s newest rock.
About this image
Glow, Milky Way Above Kilauea, Hawaii
In 2018, after years of reliable activity, Halemaʻumaʻu Crater went out in a blaze of glory. This renewed vigor included fountaining lava, daily earthquakes, and the complete collapse of the crater as I’d known it.
Even more impactful, lava draining from the summit flowed into the Pacific to create nearly 900 acres of brand new land, on the way overrunning nearly 14 square miles of land and destroying more than 500 homes. The spectacle ended in August, one month before that year’s Big Island workshop.
Kilauea’s current eruption started in September 2021, just two weeks after that year’s workshop ended. Between sporadic eruptions and Covid, I haven’t been able to enjoy one of my favorite sights, the Milky Way above an active Kilauea, since 2017. Needless to say, in the weeks leading up to this year’s trip I kept my fingers crossed that Kilauea would keep going. It didn’t disappoint.
Given the caldera’s collapse and the new eruption, I knew things on Kilauea were completely different from any previous visit. So on my first evening back on the Big Island (I always fly in 3 days before the workshop to check all my locations), I made the 40 minute drive up from Hilo to get my eyes on it.
At the vista that once housed the now closed Jagger Volcano Museum, and that used to be the primary place to view the eruption, I started chatting with a photographer who was set up with a long telephoto, waiting for the full moon to rise. It turned out that she volunteers at Hawaii Volcanoes National Park and does a lot of photography for the park. She very generously provided me with great information that saved me a lot of scouting time, including the best places to view the new eruption, and how to avoid the crowds I’d heard so much about.
Based on her input, after sunset I parked at the Kilauea Visitor Center and took a 1/2 mile walk along the Crater Rim Trail to the point where my new friend had promised the lava would be visible. I chose this spot over the closer view that most people seemed to prefer for a couple of reasons: fewer people (and easier parking), it would be an easier walk for my group (you can only go as far, or as fast, as the slowest person), and (especially) because I thought it would align better with the Milky Way.
To say that I was thrilled with the new view would be an understatement. Though clouds obscured the Milky Way that evening, I was pretty confident the alignment would be fine—not the perfect alignment I got from the spot I’d always used before, but definitely close enough that it would be no problem getting the eruption and Milky Way in the same frame.
The thing that excited me most was that I could actually see the lava. In my 12 years visiting Kilauea, I’ve only been able to see lava at the summit once (check the gallery below)—in the other visits we could clearly see the lava’s beautiful orange glow, but the lava lake was too low to be visible from the rim. But now not only was the lava visible, the perspective was close enough to actually see it bubbling and splattering on the lake’s surface. I hadn’t brought my camera, but I took a quick snap with my iPhone, then walked back to the car in the dark, pretty stoked by what I’d be able to share with my group.
I returned to the volcano the next night to check out more locations, especially interested in my old viewing spot. I was pleasantly surprised to find that I could still see the glow at least as well as I could with the earlier eruption, and that it still aligned perfectly with the Milky Way.
I took my workshop group up to Kilauea on our second night—since it’s a real highlight, I like to do the volcano early in the workshop so we can come back if clouds shut us out. After a few other stops waiting for darkness, we started the short (and easy) hike out to the new lava viewing sight shortly after sunset.
Fog hovering over the caldera obscured the sky at the vista, but no one cared because for most (all?), it was the first time they’d seen lava. Without stars, this was a total telephoto shot—since everyone in the group was shooting mirrorless, we could all magnify our viewfinder and get an up-close, live look at the bubbling lava. It appeared to be bursting from a vent near the caldera wall, like a massive waterfall springing from a mountainside. In addition to the constant rolling and popping on the lake’s surface, every minute or so we could see a much bigger explosion that sent lava careening about the crater—pretty cool for all of us.
I spent most of my time working with people in the group and didn’t photograph too much. Eventually I did manage a few telephoto frames and was pretty happy with how things were going in general—not so much for my images, but mostly because everyone seemed as excited as I’d hoped they’d be.
About the time I was thinking of heading over to my other spot, the fog suddenly thinned and the Milky Way appeared. Everyone immediately switched to wide angle lenses and started working on completely different images. For the next 20 minutes or so we alternated between clicking and waiting as the fog came and went. Again I spent much of that time working with my group, but I managed to get in a few Milky Way frames, including this one.
I’ve got my Milky Way exposure down, and focus for this image was actually easier than most Milky Way scenes because of the brightness in the caldera. Since the Milky Way requires an exposure too long to freeze most motion, all detail in the lava was lost, but I still think it’s pretty cool to know what that glow really is. (Full disclosure: I used Photoshop’s Content Aware Fill tool to fill in a tiny blown-out white patch where the hottest lava was too bright for my night exposure.) The biggest problem I had to deal with is the guy standing next to me (not in my group), who insisted on using a red light (great for telescope or naked eye view, but absolutely the worst light source for night photography). So I had to time my clicks for the times he turned it off, then hope he kept if off until my exposure complete.
Eventually the clouds thickened and showed no sign of leaving. Since everyone was pretty happy with what they had, we packed up and headed back. But it turns out we weren’t done, because by the time we made it backto the cars, the stars were back out—so I took everyone over to my other view. There was no fog at this spot and the Milky Way remained out the entire time we were there. We had another great shoot, despite a crazy wind that hadn’t bothered us at all at our first spot. But that’s a story for another day…
Near and Far
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Making Mountains
Posted on May 5, 2018
Night Fire, Halemaumau Crater, Kilauea, Hawaii
Sony a7RII
Tamron 150-600 (Canon-mount with Metabones IV adapter)
1/100 second
F/8
ISO 400
A couple of years ago I was blessed to witness one of our planet’s most spectacular phenomena: an erupting volcano. Kilauea on Hawaii’s Big Island has been in near constant eruption for centuries (millennia?), slowly elevating Hawaii’s slopes and expanding its shoreline with lava that cools and hardens to form the newest rock on Earth. This island building process has been ongoing for the last five-million or so years, as the Pacific Plate slowly slides northwest over a hot spot in Earth’s mantle, building the northwest/southeast-trending Hawaiian chain of islands. The Hawaiian Islands get successively older moving northwest up the chain, with the island of Hawaii currently on the hot-seat, making it the youngest of the chain’s exposed islands (though there is a newer, still submerged island rising south of Hawaii).
As active as Kilauea is, much of its volcanic activity occurs out of the view of the average visitor. But on my annual visit in September of 2016, my workshop group and I got a firsthand look at Kilauea’s island-building furnace when the lava lake inside Halemaumau Crater rose high enough to be seen from the safety of the caldera’s rim. (Read more about this experience in my 2016 blog post, Nature’s Transcendent Moments.)
This week Kilauea is back in the news with an eruption far more significant (and destructive) than the event I captured in this 2016 image. The 2016 experience resulted from the good fortune of catching an elevated phase of the normal summit crater activity that started in 2008. The Kilauea activity that started this week, complete with earthquakes and lava flows, is a new eruption in Kilauea’s east rift zone. It could be over in hours or days, or could continue for decades.
The relatively fluid nature of Hawaiian lava makes its eruptions less “run for your life!” crises and more, “Well, I guess I better start packing up,” events that range from inconvenience to financial disasters, but are rarely life threatening. Local residents know the risk and are generally philosophical and positive when Pele points her fiery finger in their direction.
On the other hand, a volcanic eruption in the Cascade mountains of the Pacific Northwest is potentially far more dangerous than a typical Hawaiian eruption. We only need to look back on the eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980, a relatively minor event on the continuum of possible Cascade eruptions, to see the extreme power of an explosive eruption. The viscous lava of the Cascade volcanoes makes their eruptions far more dangerous than Hawaii’s eruptions. While Hawaii’s basalt lava flows easily when internal forces push it to the surface, the Cascade lava resists, setting up an irresistible force versus immovable object standoff that is resolved suddenly and explosively (in favor of the irresistible force) as a cataclysmic explosion.
The undeniable aesthetic appeal of the Cascades is actually a byproduct of the the viscous lava that makes them so explosive. As it emerges and flows down the mountain’s side, Cascade lava doesn’t spread too far before cooling in place. The result is a strato-volcano that builds more vertically to form the towering symmetrical cone that photographers love to photograph. The more fluid Hawaiian basalt spreads rather than builds, wreaking slow-motion havoc on the countryside and accumulating over thousands of years to form massive, but visually unimpressive, flat, shield volcanoes.
Having just returned from a couple of weeks photographing in the Pacific Northwest, the beauty of the Cascade volcanoes is fresh in my mind. But nothing compares to witnessing the actual mountain making process in action.
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A Volcano Gallery
Compromise less, smile more
Posted on November 28, 2017
Night Fire, Milky Way Above Kilauea Caldera, Hawaii
Sony a7S II
Sony 16-35 f/2.8 GM
10 seconds
F/2.8
ISO 3200
Night photography always requires some level of compromise: extra equipment, ISOs a little too noisy, shutter speeds a little too long, f-stops a little too soft. For years the quality threshold beyond which I wouldn’t cross came far too early and I’d often find myself having to decide between an image that was too dark and noisy, or simply not shooting at all.
Because the almost total darkness of night photography requires a fast lens, the faster the better, one of the first compromises night photography forced on me was adding a night-only lens—a prime lens that was both ultra-fast and wide. Ultra-fast to maximize light capture, wide enough to give me lots of sky and to reduce the star streaking that occurs with the long shutter speeds night photography requires (the wider the focal length, the less visible any motion in the frame).
I started doing night photography as a Canon shooter, so my first night lens was a Canon-mount Zeiss 28mm f/2.0—it did the job but wasn’t quite as fast or wide as I’d have liked. After switching to Sony I added a Sony-mount Rokinon 24mm f/1.4—I loved shooting at f/1.4, and 24mm was a definite improvement over 28mm, but I still found myself wishing for something wider. And the Rokinon had other shortcomings as well: because the camera doesn’t even know the lens is mounted (f-stop set on the lens, not in the camera), I always had to guess the f-stop I used to capture an image. Worse than that, at f/1.4 the Rokinon had pretty significant comatic aberration that made my stars look like little comets.
Since switching to Sony, one compromise I’ve happily made is carrying an extra body that’s dedicated to night photography. Because the Sony a7S and (later) a7SII are just ridiculously good at high ISO, I was able to compensate for the Rokinon’s distortion by stopping down to f/2 or f/2.8 at a higher ISO. The a7SII is worth the extra weight, but I’ve longed for the day when I could replace the Rokinon lens with something wider, and something that had a better relationship with my camera.
That day came earlier this year, when Sony released the 16-35 f/2.8 GM lens. I got to sample this lens before it was released and was surprised by its compactness despite being so wide and fast—it wasn’t long before the 16-35 f/2.8 GM occupied a full-time spot in my camera bag. And in the back of my mind I couldn’t help thinking that the 16-35 GM might just work as a night lens.
I don’t have the time or temperament to be a pixel-peeper, but I had a sense that this lens was pretty sharp wide open, and few things reveal comatic aberration more than stars. I finally got my chance to test the 16-35 GM lens at night on the Hawaii Big Island workshop in September. When this year’s Milky Way images revealed that the 16-35 GM is sharp and pretty much aberration free at f/2.8, I couldn’t have been happier.
As with every night shoot, this night at the caldera I tried a variety of exposure settings to maximize my processing options later. I was pretty pleased to get a clean exposure at 10 seconds (minimal star motion) and f/2.8 (maximum light). While the a7SII doesn’t even breathe hard at the ISO 3200 I used for this image, I know if I were shooting someplace without its own light source (for example, at the Grand Canyon, the bristlecone pine forest, or pretty much any other location lacking an active volcano), I’d probably need to be at ISO 6400 or even 12800 to make a 10 second exposure work. But it’s nice to know that the a7SII and 16-35 f/2.8 GM will do the job even in darkness that extreme.
One more thing
A couple of weeks ago while in Sedona for Sony I got the opportunity to use the new a7RIII. One highlight of that trip was two night shoots with the new camera. I haven’t had a chance to spend any quality time with those images, but I got the sense that its high ISO performance is nearly as good as the a7SII. If that’s true, that will be one less compromise and a lighter camera bag—at least until Sony releases the a7SIII.
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The Milky Way
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Photograph the Milky Way: Part Two
Posted on March 9, 2017
Fire and Mist, Halemaumau Crater, Kilauea, Hawaii
Sony a7S
Sony/Zeiss 16-35 f4
10 seconds
F/4
ISO 3200
Previously on the Eloquent Nature blog: Photograph the Milky Way: Part One
Viewing the Milky Way requires nothing more than a clear, dark sky. The Milky Way’s luminosity is fixed, so our ability to see it is largely a function of the darkness of the surrounding sky—the darker the sky, the better the Milky Way stands out. But because our eyes can only take in a fixed amount of light, there’s a ceiling on our ability to view the Milky Way with the unaided eye.
A camera, on the other hand, can accumulate light for a virtually unlimited duration. This, combined with technological advances that continue increasing the light sensitivity of digital sensors, means that when it comes to photographing the Milky Way, well…, the sky’s the limit. As glorious as it is to view the Milky Way with the unaided eye, a camera will show you things your eyes can’t see. In fact, not only does the right camera in the right hands resolve far more Milky Way detail than we can see, it also reveals color too faint for the human eye.
Knowing when and where to view the Milky Way is a great start, but photographing the Milky Way requires a combination of equipment, skill, and experience that doesn’t just happen overnight (so to speak). But Milky Way photography doesn’t need to break the bank, and it’s not rocket science.
Equipment
Bottom line, photographing the Milky Way is all about maximizing your ability to collect light: long exposures, fast lenses, high ISO.
Camera
In general, the larger your camera’s sensor and photosites (the “pixels” that capture the light), the more efficiently it collects light. Because other technology is involved, there’s not an absolute correlation between sensor and pixel size and light gathering capability, but a small, densely packed sensor almost certainly rules out your smartphone and point-and-shoot cameras anything more than a fuzzy snap of the Milky Way. At the very least you’ll want a mirrorless or DSLR camera with an APS-C (1.5/1.6 crop) size sensor. Better still is a full frame mirrorless or DSLR camera. (A 4/3 Olympus or Panasonic sensor might work, but I’ve not been overly impressed with the high ISO images I’ve seen from these smaller sensors.)
Another general rule is that the newer the technology, the better it will perform in low light. Even with their smaller, more densely packed sensors, many of today’s top APS-C bodies outperform in low light full frame bodies that have been out for a few years, so full frame or APS-C, if your camera is relatively new, it will probably do the job.
If you’re shopping for a new camera and think night photography might be in your future, compare your potential cameras’ high ISO capabilities—not their maximum ISO, but read some reviews to see how your camera candidates fare in objective tests by credible sources like DP Review or Imaging Resource (there are many others).
An often overlooked consideration is the camera’s ability to focus in extreme low light. Autofocusing on the stars or landscape will be difficult to impossible, and you’ll not be able to see well enough through a DSLR’s viewfinder to manually focus. Some bodies with a fast lens will autofocus on a bright star or planet, but it’s not something I’d count on (though I expect within a few years before this capability becomes more common).
Having photographed for years with Sony and Canon, and working extensively with most other mirrorless and DSLR bodies in my workshops, I have lots of experience with cameras from many manufacturers. In my book, focus peaking makes mirrorless the clear winner for night focusing. Sony’s current mirrorless bodies (a7R II, a7S, and a7S II) are by far the easiest I’ve ever used for focusing in the dark—what took a minute or more with my Canon, I can do in seconds using focus peaking with my Sony bodies. That said, of the major DSLR brands, I’ve found Canon’s superior LCD screen makes it much easier to focus in extreme low light than Nikon. (More on focus later.)
Lens
Put simply, to photograph the Milky Way you want fast, wide glass—the faster the better. Fast to capture as much light as possible; wide to take in lots of sky. A faster lens also makes focus and composition easier because its larger aperture gathers more light. How fast? F/2.8 or faster—preferably faster. How wide? At least 28mm, and 24mm or wider is better still. I do enough night photography that I have a dedicated, night-only lens—my original night lens was a Canon-mount Zeiss 28mm f/2; my current night lens is a Rokinon 24mm f/1.4.
Tripod
It goes without saying that at exposure times up to 30 seconds, you’ll need a sturdy tripod and head for Milky Way photography. You don’t need to spend a fortune, but the more you spend, the happier you’ll be in the long run (trust me). Carbon fiber provides the best combination of strength, vibration reduction, and light weight, but a sturdy (heavy) aluminum tripod will do the job.
An extended centerpost is not terribly stable, and a non-extended centerpost limits your ability to spread the tripod’s legs and get low, so I avoid tripods with a centerpost. But if you have a sturdy tripod with a centerpost, don’t run out and purchase a new one—just don’t extend the centerpost when photographing at night.
Read my tips for purchasing a tripod here.
Other stuff
To eliminate the possibility of camera vibration I recommend a remote release; without a remote you’ll risk annoying all within earshot with your camera’s 2-second timer beep. Don’t forget a flashlight or headlamp for the walk to and from the car. And it’s never a bad idea to toss an extra battery in your pocket.
Getting the shot
Keep it simple
There are just so many things that can go wrong on a moonless night when there’s not enough light to see camera controls, the contents of your bag, and the tripod leg you’re about to trip over. After doing this for many years, both on my own and helping others in workshops, I’ve decided that simplicity is essential.
Simplicity starts with paring down to the absolute minimum gear: a sturdy tripod, one body, one lens, and a remote release (plus an extra battery in my pocket). Everything else stays at home, in the car, or if I’m staying out after a sunset shoot, in my bag.
Upon arrival at my night photography destination, I extract my tripod, camera, lens (don’t forget to remove the polarizer), and remote release. I connect the remote and mount my lens—if it’s a zoom I set the focal length at the lens’s widest—then set my exposure and focus (more on exposure and focus below). If I’m walking to my photo site, I carry the pre-exposed and focused camera on the tripod (I know this makes some people uncomfortable, but if you don’t trust your head enough to hold onto your camera while you’re walking, it’s time for a new head), trying to keep the tripod as upright and stable as possible as I walk.
Flashlights/headlamps are essential for the walk/hike out to to and from my shooting location, but while I’m there and in shoot mode, it’s no flashlights, no exceptions. This is particularly important when I’m with a group. Not only does a flashlight inhibit your night vision, its light leaks into the frame of everyone who’s there. And while red lights may be better for your night vision, they’re particularly insidious about leaking into everyone’s frame (so before you ask, no red light!). If you follow my no flashlight rule, you’ll be amazed at how well your eyes adjust. I can operate my camera’s controls in the dark—it’s not hard with a little practice, and well worth the effort to learn. If I ever do need to see my camera to adjust something, or if I need to see to move around, my cell phone screen (not the phone’s flashlight, just its screen) gives me all the light I need.
Composition
A good Milky Way image is distinguished from an ordinary Milky Way image by its foreground. Simply finding a location that’s dark enough to see the Milky Way is difficult enough; finding a dark location that also has a foreground worthy of pairing with the Milky Way usually takes a little planning.
Since the Milky Way’s center is in the southern sky (for Northern Hemisphere observers), I look for remote (away from light pollution) subjects that I can photograph while facing south. Keep in mind that unless you have a ridiculous light gathering camera (like the Sony a7S or a7S II) and an extremely fast lens (f/2 or faster), your foreground will probably be more dark shape than detail. Water’s inherent reflectivity makes it a good foreground subject as well, especially if the water includes rocks or other features to add a little visual weight.
When I encounter a scene I deem photo worthy, not only do I try to determine its best light and moon rise/set possibilities, I also consider its potential as a Milky Way subject. Can I align it with the southern sky? Are there strong subjects that stand out against the sky? Is there any water I can include in my frame?
I’ve found views of the Grand Canyon from the North Rim, the Kilauea Caldera, and the bristlecone pines in California’s White Mountains that work spectacularly. On the other hand, while Yosemite Valley has lots to love, you don’t see a lot of Milky Way images from Yosemite Valley because there just aren’t that many south views there, and Yosemite’s towering, east/west trending granite walls give its south views an extremely high horizon that blocks much of the galactic core from the valley floor.
To maximize the amount of Milky Way in my frame, I generally (but not always) start with a vertical orientation that’s at least 2/3 sky. On the other hand, I do make sure to give myself more options with a few horizontal compositions as well. Given the near total darkness required of a Milky Way shoot, it’s often too dark to see well enough to compose that scene. If I can’t see well enough to compose I guess at a composition, take a short test exposure at an extreme (unusable) ISO to enable a relatively fast shutter speed (a few seconds), adjust the composition based on the image in the LCD, and repeat until I’m satisfied.
Focus
Needless to say, when it’s dark enough to view the Milky Way, there’s not enough light to autofocus (unless you have a rare camera/lens combo that can autofocus on a bright star and planet), or even to manually focus with confidence. And of all the things that can ruin a Milky Way image (not to mention an entire night), poor focus is number one. Not only is achieving focus difficult, it’s very easy to think you’re focused only to discover later that you just missed.
Because the Milky Way’s focus point is infinity, and you almost certainly won’t have enough light to stop down for more depth of field, your closest foreground subjects should be far enough away to be sharp when you’re wide open and focused at infinity. Before going out to shoot, find a hyperfocal app and plug in the values for your camera and lens at its widest aperture. Even though it’s technically possible to be sharp from half the hyperfocal distance to infinity, the kind of precise focus this requires is difficult to impossible in the dark, so my rule of thumb is to make sure my closest subject is no closer than the hyperfocal distance.
For example, I know with my Rokinon 24mm f/1.4 wide open on my full frame Sony a7S II, the hyperfocal distance is about 50 feet. If I have a subject that’s closer (such as a bristlecone pine), I’ll pre-focus (before dark) on the hyperfocal distance, or shine a bright light on an object at the hyperfocal distance and focus there, but generally I make sure everything is at least 50 feet away. Read more about hyperfocal focus in my Depth of Field article.
By far the number one cause of night focus misses is the idea that you can just dial any lens to infinity; followed closely by the idea that focused at one focal length means focused at all focal lengths. Because when it comes to sharpness, almost isn’t good enough, if you have a zoom lens, don’t even think of trying to dial the focus ring to the end for infinity. And even for most prime lenses, the infinity point is a little short of all the way to the end, and can vary slightly with the temperature and f-stop. If you know your lens well enough to be certain of its infinity point by feel (and are a risk taker), go for it. And that zoom lens that claims to be parfocal? While it’s possible that your zoom will hold focus throughout its entire focal range, regardless of what the manufacturer claims, I wouldn’t bet an entire shoot on it without testing first.
All this means that the only way to ensure night photography sharpness is to focus carefully on something before shooting, refocus every time your focal length changes, and check focus frequently by displaying and magnifying an image on your LCD. To simplify (there’s that word again), when using a zoom lens, I usually set the lens at its widest focal length, focus, verify, then never change the focal length again once I know I’m focused. And remember, the best way to ensure focus is to set your focal length and focus before it gets dark.
But sometimes pre-focusing isn’t possible, or for some reason you need to refocus after darkness falls. If I arrive at my destination in the dark, I autofocus on my headlights, a bright flashlight, or a laser 50 feet or more away. And again, never assume you’re sharp—always magnify your image and check it after you focus.
For more on focusing in the dark, including how to use stars to focus, read my Starlight Photo Tips article.
Exposure
Exposing a Milky Way image is wonderfully simple once you realize that you don’t have to meter because you can’t (not enough light)—your goal is simply to capture as many photons as you can without damaging the image with noise, star motion, and lens flaws.
Basically, you can’t give a Milky Way image too much light. What I mean by that is, capturing the amount of light required to overexpose a Milky Way image is only possible if you’ve chosen an ISO and/or shutter speed that significantly compromises the quality of the image with excessive noise and/or star motion.
In a perfect world, I’d take every image at ISO 100 and f/8—the best ISO and f-stop for my camera and lens. But that’s not possible when photographing in near total darkness—a usable Milky Way image requires exposure compromises. What kind of compromises? Each exposure variable causes a different problem when pushed too far:
- ISO: Raising ISO to increase light sensitivity comes with a corresponding increase in noise that muddies detail. The noise at any particular ISO varies greatly with the camera, so it’s essential to know your camera’s low-light capability(!). Some of the noise can be cleaned up with noise reduction software (I use Topaz DeNoise 6)—the amount that cleans up will depend on the noise reduction software you use, your skill using that software, and where the noise is (is it marring empty voids or spoiling essential detail?).
- Shutter speed: The longer the shutter stays open, the more motion blur spreads the stars’ distinct pinpoints into streaks. I’m not a big fan of formulas that dictate star photography shutter speeds because I find them arbitrary and inflexible, and they fail to account for the fact that the amount of apparent stellar motion varies with the direction you’re composing (you’ll get less motion the closer to the north or south poles you’re aimed). My general shutter-speed rule of thumb is 30-seconds or less, preferably less—I won’t exceed 30 seconds, and do everything I can to get enough light with a faster shutter speed.
- F-stop: At their widest apertures, lenses tend to lose sharpness (especially on the edges) and display optical flaws like comatic aberration (also called coma) that distorts points of light (like stars) into comet shaped blurs. For many lenses, stopping down even one stop from wide open significantly improves image quality.
Again: My approach to metering for the Milky Way is to give my scene as much light as I can without pushing the exposure compromises to a point I can’t live with. Where exactly is that point? Not only is that a subjective question that varies with each camera body, lens, and scene, as technology improves, I’m less forgiving of exposure compromises than I once was. For example, when I started photographing the Milky Way with my Canon 1DS Mark III, the Milky Way scenes I could shoot were limited because my fastest wide lens was f/4 and I got too much noise when I pushed my ISO beyond 1600. This forced me compromise by shooting wide open with a 30-second shutter speed to achieve even marginal results. In fact, given these limitations, despite trying to photograph the Milky Way from many locations, the only foreground that worked well enough was Kilauea Caldera, because it was its own light source.
Today (early 2017) I photograph the Milky Way with a Sony a7S II and a Rokinon 24mm f/1.4 lens. I get cleaner images from my Sony at ISO 6400 than got a ISO 1600 on my Canon 1DSIII, and the light gathering capability of an f/1.4 lens revelatory. Now I can stop down slightly to reduce lens aberrations, drop my shutter speed to 20 or 15 seconds to cut star motion 33-50 percent, and still get usable foreground detail by starlight.
I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to know your camera’s and lens’s capabilities in low light, and how for you’re comfortable pushing them. For each of the night photography equipment combos I’ve used, I’ve established a general exposure upper threshold, rule-of-thumb compromise points for each exposure setting that I won’t exceed until I’ve reached the compromise threshold of the other exposure settings. For example, with my a7SII/Rokinon combo, I usually start at ISO 3200, f/2, 20 seconds. Those settings will usually get me enough light for Milky Way color and a little foreground detail. But if I want more light (for example, if I’m shooting into the black pit of the Grand Canyon from the North Rim), my first exposure compromise is to increase to ISO 6400; if I decide I need even more light, my next compromise is to open up to f/1.4; if that still isn’t enough light, my next compromise is to bump my shutter speed to 30 seconds. Finally, if I want more light that ISO 6400, f/1.4, 30 seconds delivers, I’ll try ISO 12,800 (and cross my fingers)*. If that’s not enough, I go home (or just sit and enjoy the view).
These thresholds are guidelines rather than hard-and-fast rules, and they apply to my setup only—your results may vary. And even though I’m pretty secure with this workflow, for every Milky Way composition I try a variety of exposure combinations before moving to another composition. Not only does this give me a range of options to choose between when I’m at home and reviewing my images on a big monitor, it also gives me more insight into my camera/lens capabilities, allowing me to refine my exposure compromise threshold points.
* In normal situations the Sony a7SII can handle ISO 12,800 without even breathing hard, but the long exposure time required of night photography generates a lot of heat on the sensor with a corresponding increase in noise.
It’s time to click that shutter
You’re in position with the right gear, composed, focused, and exposure values set. Before you actually click the shutter, let me remind you of a couple of things you can do to ensure the best results: First, lower that center post. A tripod center post’s inherent instability is magnified during long exposures, not just by wind, but even by nearby footsteps, the press of the shutter button, and slap of the mirror (and sometimes it seems, by ghosts). And speaking of shutter clicks, you should be using a remote cable or two-second timer to eliminate the vibration imparted when your finger presses the shutter button.
When that first Milky Way image pops up on the LCD, it’s pretty exciting. So exciting in fact that sometimes you risk being lulled into a “Wow, this isn’t as hard as I expected” complacency. Even though you think everything’s perfect, don’t forget to review your image sharpness every few frames by displaying and magnifying and image on your LCD. In theory nothing should change unless you changed it, but in practice I’ve noticed a distinct inclination for focus to shift mysteriously between shots. Whether it’s slight temperature changes or an inadvertent nudge of the focus ring as you fumble with controls in the dark, you can file periodically checking your sharpness falls under “an ounce of prevention….” Believe me, this will save a lot of angst later.
And finally, don’t forget to play with different exposure settings for each composition. Not only does this give you more options, it also gives you more insight into your camera/lens combo’s low light capabilities.
The bottom line
Though having top-of-the-line low-light equipment helps a lot, it’s not essential. If you have a full frame DSLR that’s less than five years old, and a lens that’s f/2.8 or faster, you probably have all the equipment you need to get great the Milky Way images. Even with a cropped sensor, or an f/4 lens, you have a good chance of getting usable Milky Way images. If you’ve never done it before, don’t expect perfection the first time out. What you can expect is improvement each time you go out as you learn the limitations of your equipment and identify your own exposure compromise thresholds. And success or failure, at the very least you’ll have spent a magnificent night under the stars.
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A Milky Way Gallery
Click an image for a closer look and slide show. Refresh the window to reorder the display.
Eloquent Images by Gary Hart 