Eloquent Images by Gary Hart
Insight, information, and inspiration for the inquisitive nature photographer
Super? Moon
Posted on November 8, 2025
November Moon, Half Dome from Tunnel View, Yosemite
Sony a7R V
Sony 200-600 G
Sony 1.4x teleconverter
ISO 200
f/9
1/80 second
This week’s full moon was a “supermoon”—or, as the media frequently proclaimed, “The biggest moon of 2025!” And while that is technically true, the size difference between a super and average moon is barely perceptible.
So, as a public service, I’ve dusted off and updated a prior article explaining the supermoon phenomenon (any hyperbole)—and what better time to share it than just days after photographing the November supermoon?
What’s the big deal?
So what exactly is so “super” about a “supermoon?” Answer: Not much. Or, maybe a better way to answer the question would be: When presented with a random series of full moon images, would you in fact be able to identify the supermoon? Doubtful. So why the media frenzy? And why do we see so many huge moon images every time there’s a supermoon? So many questions….
Celestial choreography: Supermoon explained
To understand what a supermoon is, you first have to understand that all orbiting celestial bodies travel in an ellipse, not a circle. That’s because, for two (or more) objects to have the gravitational relationship an orbit requires, each must have mass. And if they have mass, each has a gravitational influence on the other. Without getting too deep into the gravitational weeds, let’s just say that the mutual influence the earth and moon have on each other causes the moon’s orbit to deviate ever so slightly from the circle it seems to be (without precise measurement): an ellipse. And because its orbit isn’t round, as the moon circles Earth, its distance varies with the position in its orbit.
An orbiting object’s closest approach to the center of its ellipse (and the object it orbits) is at perigee; its greatest distance from the ellipse’s center is apogee. And the time it takes an object to complete one revolution of its orbit is its period. For example, earth’s orbital period around the sun is one year (365.25-ish days), while the period of our moon’s orbit is slightly more than 27 days.
But if the moon reaches perigee every 27 days, why don’t we have a supermoon every month? That’s because we’ve also added “syzygy” to the supermoon definition. In addition to being a great Scrabble word, syzygy (though it would cost you 2 blank tiles) is the alignment of celestial bodies—in this case it’s the alignment of the sun, moon, and earth (not necessarily in that order). Not only does a supermoon need to be at perigee, it must also be syzygy.
Syzygy happens twice each month, once when the moon is new (moon between the sun and Earth), and again when it’s full (Earth between the sun and moon). While technically a supermoon can also be a new moon, the full moon that gets all the press because a new moon is lost in the sun’s brightness and never visible, so no one cares. Since Earth circles the sun while the moon revolves around Earth, to achieve syzygy, with each orbit the moon has to travel a couple extra days to catch up. That’s why the moon reaches perigee evey 27 days, but syzygy comes every 29.5 days—the moon’s distance from earth is different with each syzygy because it comes at different points in the orbit.
The view from earth: Supermoon observed
While lunar perigee, apogee, and period are precise terms that can be measured to the microsecond, a supermoon is a non-scientific, media-fueled phenomenon loosely defined as a moon that happens to be at or near perigee when it’s full. To you, the viewer, a full moon at perigee (the largest possible supermoon) will appear about 14% larger and 30% brighter than a full moon at the average distance. The rather arbitrary consensus definition of the distance that qualifies a moon as a supermoon is a full moon that is within 90 percent of its closest approach to earth.
I really doubt that the average viewer could look up at even the largest possible supermoon and be certain that it’s larger than an average moon. And all those mega-moon photos that confuse people into expecting a spectacular sight when there’s a supermoon? They’re either composites—a picture of a large moon inserted into a different scene—or long telephoto images. (I don’t do composites, but they’re a creative choice that I’m fine with others doing as long as they’re clearly identified as composites.)
For an image that’s not a composite, the moon’s size in the frame is almost entirely a function of the focal length used. I have no idea whether most of the moons in the full moon gallery below were super, average, or small.
Can you identify the supermoon?
Well, if you said the big moon is a supermoon, you’d be right. But it’s kind of a trick question, because these are both images of Tuesday’s supermoon. The size difference is entirely a function of the focal length I used: around 100 mm for the small moon, more than 800 mm for the large one. What these images also make clear is that what I gain in moon size, I lose in field of view—you can’t have both. So when you see a wide angle scene with a huge moon, don’t think supermoon, think composite: a big moon dropped into a wide scene. Or worse still: AI. (Yuck.)
Every full moon is super
As far as I’m concerned, a rising or setting full moon is one of the most beautiful things in nature. But because a full moon rises around sunset and sets around sunrise, when most people are eating dinner or sleeping, seeing it is often an accident—maybe the moon catches your eye as you walk out of the store, or you spot it in near the horizon when your car rounds a bend. But viewing a moonrise or moonset doesn’t need to be an accident. There’s loads of information available online that will tell you which night to look for a full moon, and the general time and direction to look. And for people like me, who try to photograph moonrises and moonsets around an alignment with a terrestrial feature, there is also slightly more technical info that enables more precise planning.
About this image
Which brings me to this week’s image (images), captured Tuesday evening from my very favorite location to view a moonrise: Tunnel View in Yosemite. Why is Tunnel View my favorite moonrise location? Because I can’t think of a better combination beautiful subjects and distant view (nearly 9 miles to Half Dome), that allows me to photography the moon large with with a long telephoto lens and include a striking foreground subject. And if I just want to use the moon to accent a broader scene, the wide angle view at Tunnel View is not too shabby either.
As with most of my moonrise images, this one had been on my radar for over a year. And like many of my moonrise opportunities, I scheduled a workshop so I could share it with other enthusiastic nature photographers. But, since I don’t care about supermoons, I had no idea this November full moon would be a supermoon—and as I grew tired of hearing in the preceding weeks, the largest full moon of 2025! (Yawn.)
The way this month’s full moon set up, I was able to get my group a couple of practice moonrises from other Yosemite locations leading up the Tuesday moonrise—one with a reflection of Half Dome, and another from Glacier Point. Not only did they lear exposure and processing techniques that allow the capture of lunar and landscape detail with a single click, they got beautiful (albeit wider, with a small moon) moon images. I also demonstrated in a training session how I plot the moonrise (without using celestial plotting apps like Photographer’s Ephemeris and Photo Pills).
There’s often drama surrounding an impending moonrise as I stress about forecasts that promise clouds, or a sky filled with more clouds than forecast. This year, despite the threat of rain the following day, the Tuesday evening forecast was clear skies. And true to expectations, the entire afternoon was cloud free.
I got my group up to Tunnel View about a half hour before the moon’s expected arrival, so we all had plenty of time to get set up and settled in. About half of the group joined me on a granite slab above the Tunnel View parking lot, with the rest of the group setting up with my brother Jay and the hoards of other photographers at the wall in front of the parking lot (the standard Tunnel View vista).
I had two tripods set up: one with my (big and sturdy) RRS TVC-24L, with my Sony a7R V and 1.4X teleconverter; one with my Sony a1 and 100-400. My plan was to switch between the two bodies, and to switch out the 200-600 for my 24-105 once the moon separated from the landscape. In other words, I’d be using the a1 with the 100-400 for the entire shoot, and the a7R V with the 200-600 (first) and 24-105 (after a few minutes).
As we waited, I reminded my group that the moon would appear just a little left of Half Dome at around 4:45 (about 15 minutes before sunset), plus/minus 5 minutes. I also told my group that, depending on their camera and metering skills, we’d be able to continue photographing up to 15 minutes after sunset before the foreground became too dark to capture both lunar and landscape detail with one click. The moon arrived right on schedule, right around 4:44 and we were in business….
So maybe the best thing to come of the recent supermoon hype is that it’s gotten people, cameras or not, to appreciate the beauty of a full moon. If you like what you see, mark your calendar for every full moon and make it a regular part of your life—you won’t be sorry.
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Tunnel View Moonrise Collection (Super and Otherwise)
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Things Always Work Out…
Posted on October 10, 2025
Setting Crescent Moon, Grand Teton, Grand Teton NP
Sony a7R V
Sony 24-105 G
.8 seconds
F/16
ISO 100
I’m a naturally positive person who doesn’t have to work too hard to stay optimistic about pretty much everything. And while this “things always work out” philosophy generally serves me quite well, it can sometimes cause problems. Case in point…
A couple of weeks ago I was in Jackson Hole to help out Don Smith with his Grand Teton workshop. Back in the pre-Covid days, when Don and I would trade off assisting several of each other’s workshops every year, my annual Jackson Hole trip was one I especially looked forward to. Since I hadn’t been there since 2018, returning this year was a particular treat.
In addition to the incomparable beauty of the Tetons, Jackson itself is has a great little downtown that I make a point of walking daily when I’m there. With so many shops, galleries, and restaurants, it’s hard to spend quality time at each, but the one place I always make sure I get to is Tom Mangelsen’s gallery on Cache Street.
This year I had so much other stuff on my plate, by the time our final day arrived, I still hadn’t made it there. So I got a late checkout and carved out a couple of morning hours to walk down there, browse, and return before heading to the airport.
While enjoying the beautiful gallery, I couldn’t help patting myself on the back for allowing enough time to feast on every print displayed without feeling rushed. Even though I’d estimate that at least 80% of Mangelsen’s images are of wildlife, and I don’t photograph wildlife, I couldn’t help but feel the inexplicable kindred connection that draws me to a very small cadre of nature photographers whose motivation seems, rather than to dazzle or impress, simply to share their own very personal relationship with natural beauty as it touches them. And while I won’t pretend to have tapped those instincts to the extent Mangelsen and those few others have, their images have a profound influence on me.
As much as I’d have loved to leave with a Mangelsen print, I knew that would be far beyond my ability to transport home (not to mention my budget). But during my meanderings I couldn’t help notice the variety of beautiful Tom Mangelsen coffee table books displayed throughout the gallery. Last year I wrote a post about, among other things, my relationship with coffee table books, and how it saddens me that the coffee table photo book appears to be a declining medium., so it always thrills me to encounter signs of CTB life. On a whim I asked if any of the books were signed (I’d looked but found none) to my delight she not only did she point me to some, she said there was no price premium for the signed books.
For context, I’m of the pre-selfie generation, coming of age way back in the time autographs, not selfies, were the ultimate commemoration of a transient connection to greatness. (Another nice thing about autographs is that they can be acquired without bothering a person who is most likely quite tired of accommodating intrusive strangers.) Though I’m not a collector, over the years I’ve assembled an eclectic inventory of signed memorabilia from people I admire.
How eclectic? Well, I have a baseball signed by Ted Williams; a bottle of wine signed by Mick Fleetwood; “August and Everything After,” in vinyl, signed by all of Counting Crows; CDs signed by Michael Franks and Pat Metheny; two signed Galen Rowell prints; and a personal postcard from Wallace Stegner. (And the person who scores me a cartoon personally signed by Gary Larson would be a friend for life.) So anyway, getting a signed Tom Mangelsen book just seemed like the thing to do.
I’d be lying if I said I’d forgotten that, on my flight out, my suitcase weighed in at 51 pounds, one pound above the checked bag limit, forcing me to transfer a pound worth of miscellany to my already 30-pound camera bag. (My computer bag, which must fit under the seat to qualify as a personal item, weighs about 10 pounds and was already stuffed to the brim.) Nevertheless, I of course chose the largest, heaviest Mangelsen book: “The Last Great Wild Places”— a whopping 12×18 inches and (including the lovely protective carryall) about ten pounds. My plan for how I was going to travel with an additional 10 pounds? It’ll work out.
Unfortunately, somehow the woman at the Jackson Hole United Airlines counter didn’t get that memo. While packing, after adding my new book, I’d made a token effort to transfer a few more things to my camera bag (oh yeah, I’d also purchased some T-shirts for me, a sweatshirt for my wife, plus a pound of coffee, so my suitcase was starting out even heavier than before), and strategically positioned a few other heavy-ish items near the top of the suitcase for easy access in case more transferring was required. At the airport, I held my breath as I hefted my suitcase onto the scale, flashing my best, “Hey, I’m nice guy—work with me here” smile. The counter person looked at the scale, then back at me, and issued her best, “You’ve got to be kidding me” stare. When I feigned ignorance, she simply said, “You’re ten pounds over.” Sigh.
After shifting my pre-staged heavier items and discovering that I was still seven pounds overweight, a small amount of panic started to leak in. Fortunately, we’d arrived at the airport more than 3 hours early. After 45 minutes of shifting, repacking, and reweighing (at least four times) I passed the weigh-in and queued up for TSA. (My new United airlines “friend” wouldn’t even reward me for getting down to just 1/2 pound over.)
I won’t bore you with the details, but suffice to say, if the plane had gone down and they sent my recovered belongings to my wife, she’d no doubt be scratching her head trying to figure out why my camera bag included a one pound bag of ground coffee, my toiletry kit, a Bluetooth speaker, and a pair of hiking boots—and why my computer bag also included a coffee mug, umbrella, and several pairs of socks.
But the bottom line is, after countless failed weigh-ins, then lugging (not to mention babysitting) over 50 pounds of bulky carryon through the Jackson Hole, (incomprehensibly large) Denver, and Sacramento airports, I did indeed make it home with the signed Tom Mangelsen book that’s now on display in my office. So I guess things really do work out.
Speaking of things working out
The workshop shoot that resulted in today’s image was not part of Don’s Grand Teton workshop master plan. It was an opportunistic response to a fortuitous confluence of blank skies and a crescent moon that just happened to come at the right time this year.
When scheduling a photo workshop, we have no idea of the conditions we’ll encounter. While I schedule many workshops using the moon as a hedge against blank skies, other factors can and do take priority—like fall color in a fall color workshop. Since this was Don’s workshop, I had nothing to do with the schedule, but I knew this one had to be scheduled for the best chance of peak fall color, moon be damned. (And to say Don nailed the fall color timing this year would be an understatement.)
Having just returned from my Hawaii Big Island workshop, and knowing I was departing for my Eastern Sierra workshop the day after returning from Jackson Hole, the moon had been the last thing on my mind until just a day or two before the workshop started. That we’d have a crescent moon in the west shortly after sunset had been on Don’s radar long before that, but we both agreed that it would probably be too far south to align with any of our prime sunset locations. But when mostly clear skies were forecast for the workshop, Don and I revisited the moon as a potential blank sky antidote to follow one of the workshop’s sunsets, and decide that we could indeed make it work.
After pulling up some topo maps and solar/lunar data, I plotted the waxing crescent’s altitude and azimuth for each evening of the workshop and determined that Thursday night would be the time to go for it. Then Don and I scouted the potential locations, both on maps and in person, and found a spot on the road between Jackson Lake and Oxbow Bend that would align the moon perfectly with Teton Peak on Thursday evening.
When the day arrived, we followed a nice sunset at Jackson Lake with a short drive to our predetermined spot, arriving in the warm glow of early twilight. To my eye the view here was the spectacular peaks to our south and west, but I couldn’t help notice that just across the the road and facing north (backs to the mountains), a dozen or so photographers were pointing very long glass at something far across the meadow. I looked more closely and barely made out a pair of elk doing whatever elk do (no, not that). Whatever. (Okay, seriously, I understand the appeal of wildlife photography, it’s just not for me.)
We landscape shooters pointed in the complete opposite direction, toward the brightening crescent hanging above Grand Teton, arguably America’s most striking mountain. To align the moon and peak with the foreground I wanted, I jogged about 5o yards down the road, staying only long enough to get a few frames. But being down there also gave me a great perspective of the conflicting priorities on display: wildlife shooters on one side of the road pointing north, landscape shooters on the other pointing south (it was actually a pretty amusing sight I wish I’d thought to take a picture of). I imagine they were just as baffled by our choices as I was about theirs.
Even though this moonset wasn’t a “featured” shoot of the workshop (people were there for fall color and the many views of the Tetons), it’s a great example of how things really do work out. Don and I used to stress about the conditions in a workshop and whether people might be disappointed, but we learned a long time ago that if you stay prepared and flexible, there will always be great stuff to photograph—and things really do work out.
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A Peek at Peaks
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What Would Tom Cruise Do?
Posted on May 31, 2025
Rising Crescent, Grand Canyon
Sony a7R V
Sony 24-105 f/4 G
ISO 400
f/11
.6 second
As you might imagine, at the bottom of Grand Canyon the sleep schedule syncs with the sun. In May, that means flopping into our cots to await the stars around 8:00 p.m., then rising around 5:00 a.m. On a typical day, the morning pace is fairly leisurely, providing time for packing up our campsites, coffee, relaxed chat, breakfast, and even a little photography. While all this happens, the guides clean up breakfast and pack up the kitchen and toilets, then let us know when it’s time to queue up for the 5-minute fire-line that loads the boat. By 8:00 a.m. we’re on the water.
But this was not a typical day. The plan this morning, my annual Grand Canyon raft trip’s final full day, was to compress all that morning activity into one hour so we could beat the crowds to Havasu Creek, and catch the best light there. Photographers love clouds, but when clouds aren’t in the forecast, we go for the next best thing: shade. We formulated the Havasu shade strategy the prior afternoon, then sold it to the group at dinner that night. Though some were dubious of our seemingly impossible mission, the guides assured us it was doable if everyone bought in and worked together. And it didn’t hurt that, unlike the trip’s prior nights, this campsite wasn’t positioned with the view toward the southern horizon necessary for a sleep-interrupting Milky Way shoot.
Turns out I actually had a pretty good sleep that night, waking about 4:45 and instantly springing fully rested from bed, very much geared up for the morning’s tight schedule. The first thing I did was pack my cot and walk it down to the staging area in front of the rafts, greeting a few still groggy fellow rafters on the way. But after depositing my cot, I glanced up upstream and did an actual double-take….
Before continuing, I should probably let you know, or at least remind you, that I’m something of a moon fanatic—which I guess would make me quite literally, a “lunatic,” given that the word derives from the Latin word for moonstruck. I’ve always believed that the moon’s presence enhances pretty much any scene, and work hard to include it whenever possible.
Which is why, more than 20 years ago, I started plotting the moon’s potential arrival upon, or departure from, every scene I hoped to photograph, going to great lengths to capture this arrival or departure whenever possible. In fact, many photo trips and workshops are scheduled specifically for a landscape/lunar confluence. And even when the moon isn’t a prime objective, it’s a rare photo trip that I don’t at least know the moon’s status before departing, its phase and daily rise/set positions and times, just in case.
But since the primary celestial goal of my Grand Canyon raft trip is the Milky Way, and it requires moonless nights for the absolute darkest skies possible, I always schedule this trip for the moonless nights around a new moon. Not only that, given that we spend the entire trip in the shadow of vertical walls soaring up to a mile above us, including the moon in my Grand Canyon raft trip images is never a consideration—I simply don’t think about it.
So imagine my surprise when that casual upstream glance revealed a thin slice of moon suspended in the pre-sunrise gloaming, perfectly framed by the canyon’s towering limestone layers. Overcoming my disbelief, I reflexively shouted, “Look at the moon!,” then ran like Tom Cruise to grab my camera gear and race back to the best view. (I also do all my own stunts.)
For about 10 minutes I photographed in rapturous frenzy, completely forgetting our compressed morning. I composed horizontal and vertical, recording many versions of the ever-changing moon, clouds, color, and light. Given the weight restrictions on this trip, my longest lens was a 24-105, but I didn’t stress and (correctly) reasoned that I have more than enough resolution to crop my images down to the tighter compositions the scene called for.
By the time the crescent ascended behind the south wall and I put my camera away (and remembered the departure deadline I’d lobbied the group so hard for), my adrenaline was ramped so high that I had no problem packing the rest of my stuff and catching the last raft out of camp. (Okay, there are only two rafts and we depart together—I’m reasonably confident they wouldn’t have left without me, though I imagine I’d have had to endure a fair amount of good natured abuse.)
I’m fully willing to acknowledge that my passion for moon photography is extreme, a fact confirmed by the fact that most of the group didn’t join me photographing the moon this morning. But that’s okay—we each have our own relationship with the natural world, and my own deep interest in all things celestial predates my interest in photography by more than a decade. The fact that today’s technology (finally) enables me to combine these loves is a true blessing I will never take for granted.
One more truth was with me as I photographed that morning. All week I’d been fully aware that this was my final Grand Canyon raft trip. Drifting downstream, bouncing over rapids, and hiking to so many familiar spots, I’d spent the week silently saying goodbye to all the scenes that had moved me so profoundly on my ten visits. As I composed and clicked, I couldn’t help feel overwhelmed by the realization that this magic place had bestowed a divine parting gift.
I Still Do My Grand Canyon Monsoon Workshop
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Grand Canyon Raft Trip Collection
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Grand Finale
Posted on February 6, 2025
Lunar Lift Off, El Capitan, Yosemite
Sony α1
Sony 200-600 G
Sony 1.4x teleconverter
ISO 800
f/13
1/25 second
For most of my full moon workshops, I try to schedule the moonrise main event for the workshop’s final sunset. Sometimes other factors prevent this (for example, in Yosemite I try to avoid weekends), but when the schedule works, a nice moonrise gives the group something exciting to anticipate throughout the workshop. This becomes especially important when some or all of the workshop’s hoped-for conditions fail to materialize.
Last month’s Yosemite Winter Moon workshop lacked to winter snow and cloudy skies we hope for in a Yosemite winter workshop, but the moon (among other things) saved the day for us by not only giving us something to look forward to, but also by photobombing an earlier sunset. The true star of that prior sunset was the clouds and color, and as nice as it was to accent the scene with the moon, it was the final night moonrise that I most looked forward to.
As I’ve written before, despite all the unjustified “supermoon” hype, the key to photographing a big moon is focal length—the longer the better. Period. If you don’t care about what’s in the foreground, or for that matter choose not to include any foreground at all, any location where the moon is visible will do. But if you want to complement your legitimate big moon (a moon image that happens in one click) with a striking landscape feature, the farther you position yourself from your landscape subject, the longer the focal length you can use, and the bigger the moon will be. Of course if you make the moon bigger with a longer focal length, the less of your foreground you can include, and the more precise the moon/foreground alignment must be.
In Yosemite, the best place to set up for a telephoto moonrise that also includes photo-worthy foreground features, is Tunnel View. At Tunnel View, the prime moonrise subjects are El Capitan and Half Dome, three and eight miles distant. From there, I can include all of Half Dome with a focal length up to 400mm; with a longer lens, I can enlarge the moon further, while still including some of Half Dome—if the alignment is right.
The most important part of photographing a moonrise from Tunnel View is to align it with a desirable foreground subject. Most of the year, the moon rises much too far south to include in a Tunnel View scene, but for 2 or 3 months each winter, the full moon rises far enough north to align beautifully with Tunnel View’s magnificent monoliths.
But success is not simply a matter of showing up at Tunnel View the night of the full moon. Each winter the solar/lunar choreography is different, which is why the moon is all over the place in my many Tunnel View moonrise images in the gallery below: left of Half Dome, right of Half Dome, directly aligned with Half Dome, and occasionally closer to El Capitan than Half Dome.
This winter’s geometry was especially exciting to me when I realized the January moon would rise farther north, and therefore closer to El Capitan, than I’d ever photographed it. I have photographed the moon arriving from behind El Capitan’s vertical face, but I’d never seen it come up from behind the top of El Capitan. Always up for photographing something new (especially in Yosemite), I scheduled a workshop for it.
Which is how my workshop group and I ended up at my favorite Tunnel View vantage point on a Sunday evening last month. Sunset that evening was 5:05, and my calculations said the moon would at just about the same time—pretty much perfect timing for a moonrise, because you want the sky dark enough for the moon to stand out in contrast, while still bright enough that the landscape has enough light to reveal detail without blowing out the moon.
I’d set up with two tripods and cameras, one with my 200-600 lens, the other my 24-205 lens. The long telephoto was for the moon’s arrival; the wider lens was for when the moon elevated enough to separate from El Capitan. I’d planned to increase the magnification of the telephoto with my 2x teleconverter, but trying to attach the teleconverter to the lens, I fumbled it and helplessly watched it roll down the steep granite toward a vertical drop of several hundred feet. Fortunately, it lodged in small crack just before taking the plunge, but when I put it on the view was completely blurred, so I switched to my 1.4X teleconverter, giving me a focal range of 280-840.
As the sun dropped and the time approached, I became aware that a thin film of clouds had drifted across the eastern horizon above El Capitan—so thin that they weren’t visible at all in daylight brightness, but just substantial enough to reflect some color as sunset approached.
The moon arrived right on schedule, and we immediately started clicking. My earliest shots were almost entirely long telephotos, like this one at 840mm. It’s always shocking to see how fast the moon moves across a long telephoto frame, but I soon started mixing in a few wider frames (that required less frequent adjustments) as the moon started separating from El Capitan. By this time sky had pinked up beautifully, adding an element of color I hadn’t expected.
We all come to a workshop with expectations, students and leaders alike, but rarely are all of them met. And while the January group’s hopes for snowy winter scenes were dashed, I think that loss was more than made up for by other things we witnessed, some complete surprises, and some just a little better than our already high expectations—like this sunset moonrise to finish the workshop.
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Yosemite Moonrise Collection
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Ten Reasons to Take Up Nature Photography
Posted on January 16, 2025
Lunar Peek, Zabriskie Point, Death Valley
Sony a7R V
Sony 24-105 f/4 G
ISO 125
f/11
1/4 second
Recently I was talking to a friend on the cusp of retirement, and while she was looking forward to her impending freedom, she wasn’t sure what she was going to do with all her free time. I instantly blurted, “Nature photography!,” then started listing reasons. I surprised even myself with everything I came up with, and how quickly it came, which got me thinking the subject would make a good blog post. So here are my (very biased) thoughts on why nature/landscape photography makes the ideal pastime. (After reviewing the list, it turns out that most of my points apply to many other kinds of photography as well.)
- Save experiences: Ours is a beautiful, dynamic world. Over my lifetime, I’ve been fortunate to have witnessed Nature at its very best, more times than I can count. Though he’s no longer here to thank, for this I’m most grateful to my father—a serious amateur photographer who wouldn’t dream of traveling without a camera—for modeling the importance of recording these moments. It’s no wonder that, almost as soon as I was old enough to make my own major financial decisions, I purchased a 35mm SLR system of my own—mostly because (thanks to my dad) I thought that’s just what adults do. Thanks to my camera, the knowledge that I can revisit Nature’s ephemeral moments any time I want to is a source of great comfort.
- Share experiences: I think my father got as much pleasure sharing his travel experiences as he did recording them. Back in Dad’s time, most non-professional photographers’ images only reached other eyes when (captive?) visitors were sequestered in front a projection screen in a darkened living room (because there was really only one answer to the dreaded question, “Hey, do you want to see the pictures from our vacation?”). And while I won’t pretend Dad never subjected our visitors to the occasional slide show, as a United Methodist minister, he had a whole congregation filled with potential viewers, not to mention access to a large space ideal for sharing. Given the number of people who attended his shows without being compelled or held hostage, I’d say his images were well received. Today, the thrill of taking pictures that please others is as great as it’s ever been, but the opportunities to share them in our digitally connected world have increased exponentially.
- Low start-up cost: Camera gear can be ridiculously expensive, but it doesn’t need to be. Your smartphone will take surprisingly good pictures—good enough to reap most of the benefits listed here long enough to determine whether a bigger investment is justified. And when you do decide you want more serious dedicated photo gear, you can find quality equipment at pretty much any price point. In other words, expense should not be a reason not to pursue photography.
- Flexible income potential: I encounter many people who would like to make a living with their photography. And while there is still excellent money to be made with a camera, nature photography is not among the more lucrative options—not by a long shot (sorry). Fortunately, earning money with a camera doesn’t require you to quit your day job. You can pursue photography as an avocation, reaping the many personal benefits while dipping your toes into selling images (for publication), prints, and services until it grows into something lucrative. That was my path: More than 20 years ago I started doing weekend art shows while keeping my adult job, then gradually segued into workshops, training, and photography-related writing, until I felt confident pursuing photography as a profession. For a while after going fulltime I continued with the art shows, which were both lucrative and fun, but doing art shows and workshops felt like working two different jobs, and the path to a fulltime income with workshops was much clearer, so I dropped the art shows. On the other hand, I know photographers who earn a good living through art and gallery shows. And today, social media has increased the money-making opportunities far beyond what was available when I started.
- See the world (large): Need an excuse, or maybe just a catalyst, to travel? Try photography. It’s easy to get so locked into a day-to-day comfort zone that our dreams of visiting yearned-for locations are never fulfilled. I’m afraid that would probably describe my life were it not for photography. But, going all the way back to when photography was just a hobby, my camera and I have visited remote corners of the globe, enjoyed river rafting adventures in Grand Canyon, and witnessed more celestial and meteorological sights than I ever imagined possible.
- See the world (small): More than just visiting exotic locations, viewing the world with a photographer’s eye enables me to see beauty everywhere, from the distant horizon to right at my feet. I can say with absolute certainty that my own photographer-eyes have become hyperaware of my surroundings, noticing colors, textures, relationships, and minute detail everywhere—not just when I’m actively taking pictures, but pretty much as long as I’m awake: driving, walking, running, or simply sitting still. Not only that, to this day, the more time I spend taking pictures, the more this heightened vision improves.
- Commune with Nature: For many people, myself included, few things are more soothing than quiet time with Nature. This enhanced relationship with the natural world can be active or passive. When I’m immersed in a natural environment, away from the din of “civilization,” all of my senses intensify and seem to work in synergy, providing peace I don’t feel at any other time. But there’s more—even when I’m stuck inside, my life as a photographer inspires me to pursue deeper understanding of my subjects that helps me appreciate them even more.
- Ideal solitary activity: Are you an introvert who recharges by being alone? Nature photography has you covered. I think most of us have times when we just need to dial down the pressures and sensory dissonance of daily life. I can think of no better way than full immersion in the serene sights and sounds of the natural world, completely absent the need to please, impress, or in any other way interact with the rest of the world. When I’m alone in Nature, time seems to stand still, my senses amplify, and my connection to my surrounding is never stronger.
- Ideal group activity: Are you an extrovert who recharges by being around others? Nature photography has you covered. Some of the most memorable experiences of my photography life were made that way because I was able to share them with other like-minded individuals. The joy of these moments is contagious, at times amplified enough by the presence of others to move me to tears.
- Cultivate your creative and analytical brains: I can think of few endeavors that more perfectly blend the right and left brain than photography. Some photographers are drawn by photography’s creative opportunities to view and express the world; others love the technical aspects of managing exposure and focus with their camera’s many controls. While it’s possible to take pictures with just one side of the brain or the other engaged, most people who take up photography are surprised to learn that there is indeed life on the other side of the brain.
About this image
Lunar Peek, Zabriskie Point, Death Valley
The Zabriskie Point moonset is always a highlight of my Death Valley Winter Moon photo workshop. Often we get no clouds, making this sunrise moonset a no-stress event for me. This time (January 2024), when clouds threatened to wash out the shoot entirely, was not one of those events.
The moon was visible above the clouds when we arrived, but the sky was much too dark to capture lunar and foreground detail with one click (my personal requirement). When the moon dropped into the clouds and disappeared completely, I tried to rationalize that at least we’d have nice clouds for our moonless sunrise, but I used all the positive energy I could muster to will the clouds into parting.
Though it lasted for only a couple of minutes, the moon did indeed slip into a small opening long enough for everyone in the group to get a few frames before being swallowed for good. Though only had time for a handful of frames with enough moon to be worthwhile, I think most photographers would take quality over quantity any time.
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The Joy of Nature
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One Night, Two Moons
Posted on November 27, 2024
Through the Clouds, Tunnel View Moonrise, Yosemite
Sony a7R V
Sony 24-105 f/4 G
ISO 100
f/10
1/3 second
I wrapped up this year’s workshop schedule at the beginning of this month and am now enjoying a much anticipated Holiday breather before my schedule ramps up again in January. This isn’t exactly a vacation, because the end of the year is when all my permit reporting and next year’s permit applications are due, and my 2025 workshop prep starts to ramp up, but my schedule does get a bit less frenetic when the travel (and all its prep and recovery) is over.
As I often do when my travel schedule eases around the Holidays, I prioritize family over photography. That doesn’t mean no new pictures, but it does mean that most (all?) of the new pictures I share over the next couple of months will probably be pictures captured months, or even years, ago, but never got around to processing.
Going through my vast repository of unprocessed images is something I started doing while isolated during the early months of the pandemic (has it really been 4 1/2 years?!). I’d always been aware that I had lots of untapped gems languishing on my hard drive(s), but was nevertheless surprised by how much I enjoyed searching them out. Sometimes I’ll start by randomly picking a photo trip and scanning the Lightroom thumbnails for something that stops me, but the most productive approach has been going through my collection of already processed favorites to identify particularly special shoots, reasoning that there must certainly be more there. (I write more about this in my Back to the Future blog post.)
It always surprises me how much I enjoy revisiting past photo trips and workshops. Not only does the experience revive memories of special moments in Nature, lots of the best memories are of the people I was with. Sometimes that’s been other photo buddies, but since so much of my photography is centered around my workshops, the majority of those memories are actually my workshop groups.
Moonrise, Half Dome, Yosemite
Case in point: The seed for this “new” image was my “Moonrise, Half Dome, Yosemite” image from my February 2024 Yosemite Winter Moon workshop. Going through this workshop’s image folder, all the cloud-induced stress surrounding this particular moonrise came flooding back. And with it also came memories of the euphoria we all felt when the clouds opened just enough, at exactly the right time, to reveal the Half-Dome/moon/sunset alignment I’d been thinking about for more than a year. (Read the details here: Moon Swoon.)
Within minutes, the moon had climbed into the rapidly thickening clouds, and it looked like the show might be over—until, shortly before darkness was complete (or at least too dark to photograph the moon and foreground in one frame), it rose into a patch of slightly thinner clouds and briefly reappeared.
My strategy for moonrises is to go long until the moon separates from the landscape, then go progressively wider as it rises. This evening I’d set up two tripods, one with my Sony α1 and 200-600 lens, the other with my a7RV and 24-105 lens. So when the moon made its brief return, I was instantly ready to start clicking.
I chose a vertical composition to emphasize the foreground and minimize the lateral aspects of the scene. I also tried a few that were wide enough to include more of El Capitan, but ultimately decided to process this one to avoid shrinking the moon too much with a wider focal length.
Viewing these two images together provides a fantastic opportunity to make a point I’ve tried to make many times before: how to photograph a large moon. Thanks to the continued emphasis (and hype) focused on the largely irrelevant “supermoon” phenomenon, many people seem to believe the size of the moon in the sky is the most import part of a large moon image. It’s not.
The size of the moon in any image is almost entirely a function of the focal length used, not the relatively small difference between a “regular” size moon and a supermoon. Compare the size of the moon in these two images, noting that they were captured from the same location, on the same night, less than 10 minutes apart. For the big moon image, I used a 450mm focal length that magnified both Half Dome and the moon and eliminated everything else. For today’s smaller moon image, I chose a 50mm focal length that enabled me to fit far more of the surrounding beauty, but also shrunk the moon.
I should add that as far as I’m concerned, the absolutely best light for photography is the shadowless light that starts 10-15 minutes after sunset. I captured my (wide) image about 15 minutes after sunset. To my eyes, the scene appeared much darker than what you see in the image. I had to be careful with the exposure to avoid blowing out the moon, making the foreground in my raw original nearly black, but by monitoring my histogram and knowing my camera, I knew that the shadows would be recoverable. And I think the thin clouds helped subdue some of the lunar highlights, enabling to give the scene a little more exposure.
I still have a few openings in my 2025 Yosemite photo workshops
The Moon Large and Small, from Full to Crescent
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Moon Swoon
Posted on March 6, 2024
Moonrise, Half Dome, Yosemite
Sony α1
Sony 200-600 G
ISO 200
f/8
1/50 second
Given an especially intense workshop schedule to start my year, the only Yosemite workshop I originally planned for February was my annual Horsetail Fall workshop. But in early 2023 I plotted the 2024 February full moon and saw that it would appear above Yosemite Valley, directly behind Half Dome (viewed from Tunnel View), at exactly sunset on Friday, February 23. Hmmm…
Checking my 2024 schedule, I noted that the year’s workshop fun started on January 22 with five days in Death Valley, followed by just a two-day break before I flew to Iceland for eleven days. After returning from Iceland, I had only two days to catch my breath before my four-day Horsetail Fall workshop. Avoiding Yosemite’s weekend crowds (always a problem, but magnified significantly by Horsetail Fall) while including the moonrise, meant the February moon workshop could only start on February 20. That would give me just three days between Yosemite workshops to recharge and recover from jet lag. But that moonrise…
(All this probably isn’t terribly interesting, but surely there’s someone out there interested in the calculus that goes into scheduling photo workshops.) In general, any photo shoot should be timed to pair the static landscape feature (one we know exactly where it is, and that it’s not going anywhere) of your choice with some dynamic natural element (great light, dramatic weather, seasonal features, celestial elements, and so on) that will take the scene (cliché alert) “to the next level.” And while I can’t speak for other workshop leaders, my own scheduling process follows the same rule: start with a beautiful location I’m extremely familiar with, then identify those special external phenomena that I’d travel to photograph even without a workshop.
While personal trips can happen at the last minute, workshops need to be scheduled at least a year in advance, which of course adds an element of uncertainty because I can’t actually promise the event I scheduled the workshop for. And that doesn’t even take into account the other unforeseen events that can shut down a location with little notice. Case(s) in point: since 2020 I’ve lost workshops to a global pandemic (perhaps you remember that), extreme wildfire potential, and a flood threat. And just this week a forecast of extreme snow closed Yosemite for the weekend with very short notice—a bullet narrowly dodged by my February workshops. But none of that stress can trump the potential for a perfectly timed and placed Tunnel View moonrise that I wouldn’t dream of missing myself—so why not share it?
Worst case, I rationalized, I’d be delaying my post-workshop recovery for a week to get four more winter days of Yosemite beauty without having to battle any crowds (who’d be camped out beneath Horsetail Fall) at all my sunset spots. And best case, in addition to all of the above, we’d enjoy two beautiful moonrises, capped by the Tunnel View grand finale on our last shoot.
So schedule it I did. After an inauspicious beginning to the 2024 workshops—forgotten computer in Death Valley, traumatic reindeer encounter in Iceland, and a last-day power outage in the Horsetail workshop—I figured I’d gotten all the bad stuff out of the way just in time for the moon workshop. And despite the inconveniences, the photography in those first three workshops was off the charts—could I keep that photography streak alive in workshop number four?
That question was answered early. On the workshop’s first morning we drove into the park for sunrise and discovered that an unforecast overnight snowfall had decorated Yosemite Valley with a couple of inches of fresh snow. Better still, that storm was just departing as we set up for sunrise at Tunnel View, so my group got to enjoy a truly classic Yosemite clearing storm, followed by an intense dash to capture as much of Yosemite Valley as possible before the snow melted. After that morning, it felt like I was playing with house money. But I still wanted that moon…
One of the unfortunate side-effects of dependence on fickle, ephemeral natural phenomena is the urge to compulsively check their status as the target time approaches. In this case, since I knew exactly when and where the moon would rise (which of course didn’t prevent me from compulsively plotting and replotting, just to be sure), I was wholly dependent on the clouds to cooperate and couldn’t keep my eyes off the weather forecast (as if that would do any good).
On Monday of that week the forecast for Friday was clear. Excellent! By Tuesday, it changed to mostly clear—uh-oh (I always hate to see my weather forecasts trending in the wrong direction.) Sure enough, on Wednesday, Friday was forecast to be partly cloudy. And by the time I went to bed Thursday night, the NWS was calling for mostly cloudy on Friday. Sweet dreams…
We still had a nice moonrise shoot on the valley floor Thursday evening, so technically I’d delivered the “Yosemite Winter Moon” the workshop name promised. Not only was that moonrise a visual treat, it provided an opportunity for everyone to practice the surprisingly tricky exposure techniques a sunset moonrise requires. The tendency is to expose the scene so the darkening foreground looks good on the camera’s LCD, which pretty much guarantees the moon will be an overexposed white blob. The solution is to base the exposure on the moon, making the moon as bright as possible without blowing it out, and trusting that the foreground that looks much too dark on the camera’s LCD can be fixed in Lightroom/Photoshop. (Or you could just take one picture for the moon and one for the foreground, then combine them later in the image processor—but what fun is that?)
After building up the Friday moonrise promised in the workshop’s name, preparation material, and orientation, there was no turning back. And while everyone in the group knew I had no control over the weather, and the Wednesday morning snow and clearing storm guaranteed the workshop was already a huge photographic success, that was old news, and I couldn’t help stressing about the moonrise I’d built this workshop around.
The clouds arrived and lingered on Friday as promised. Throughout the day we got a few glimpses of blue overhead, but nothing that gave me a lot of optimism. Nevertheless, after a nice day of photography, with sunset and the moonrise both at 5:45, I got my people up to Tunnel View a little after 5:00 so they’d have plenty of time to stake out a good spot and get comfortable with the conditions. But there were those clouds…
About half the group followed me to a sloping granite slab behind Tunnel View, while the other half chose to stay with my brother Jay at the more accessible, less vertically exposed regular view in front of the parking lot. Before setting up, I bounced back and forth between the two spots a couple times to be sure everyone was settled in and knew exactly when and where the moon would appear (if the sky were clear).
Ever the optimist, I settled down on my little patch of granite with two tripods, cameras, and lenses. On my (large) Really Right Stuff 24L tripod (with the BH-55 head) was my Sony a1 and 200-600 lens; on my (compact) RRS Ascend 14L was my Sony a7R V and 24-105 lens. I pointed the 200-600 at Half Dome and zoomed to around 450mm to fill the frame with the snow-capped monolith; with the 24-105 I composed a wider scene that included El Capitan, Half Dome, and Bridalveil Fall. The plan, should the moon actually appear, was to start with tight telephotos of just Half Dome, then, as the moon separates from Half Dome, switch to wider frames of the entire scene. But those clouds…
Thinner clouds covered most of Yosemite Valley, but my primary concern was a large stratus blob above and a little west of Half Dome, with the thickest clouds approaching the rock from the west. Not a good setup. A lifetime of photographing Yosemite has taught me that the clouds above Yosemite Valley arrive from the west and exit in the east, which meant the heavier cloud cover was bearing down on the very area of the sky where the moon would appear. But a lifetime of photographing Yosemite has also taught me that as soon as you think you have the weather there figured out, it will prove you wrong.
Around 5:30 I noticed a small patch of blue behind Half Dome, low on the right side where it intersects the tree-lined ridge. This is the area the thicker clouds should be filling, but as I watched, rather than advancing, those clouds seemed to be lifting. Soon it became apparent that the blue behind Half Dome was expanding. With a couple of minutes to go, not only was all the sky directly behind and above Half Dome clear, even the clouds above that appeared to be thinning.
This is probably a good time to say that few sights thrill me more than the first appearance of the moon above any landscape. As the time for the moonrise approaches, I lock my eyes on the spot and don’t move them, even when talking to others—I don’t want to miss a single photon of the moon’s arrival.
And I didn’t. The instant I saw the first molecule of moon nudge above Half Dome I called out to everyone with me and the clicking commenced. I waited about 30 seconds just to enjoy the view a bit, then went to work with my 200-600. As soon as the moon separated from Half Dome, I switched to my a7R V 24-105 as planned and spent the next 15 or so minutes with wider views of the scene. The rising moon soon encountered some clouds, but most weren’t thick enough to completely obscured it, and most actually enhanced the view.
I realize this zoomed image isn’t a compositional masterpiece—I just wanted to get the tightest zoom possible (to make the moon as large as possible), without cutting off any of Half Dome (easy to do if you’re not paying attention). Mission accomplished.
Epilogue
Just when I thought I’d put the inauspicious behind me, I was notified by one of the people in the Yosemite moon group that he’d tested positive for COVID. The next day, I too tested positive for COVID, as did three others in the group. Fortunately, we were all sufficiently vaccinated and no one got terribly sick. For three days I felt pretty miserable (bad cold miserable, nothing that sent me to bed), but was back to my regular morning workout after four days.
Join me in a Yosemite photo workshop
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Yosemite Moonrise
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Searching for Serendipity
Posted on February 8, 2024
Dante’s Moon, Badwater, Death ValleySony a7R V
Sony 24-105 f/4 G
ISO 100
f/11
1/30 second
Miriam-Webster defines serendipity as, “Finding valuable or agreeable things not sought for.” Wikipedia calls it, “An unplanned fortunate discovery.” Though I can’t quibble with these definitions, I think photographers can create their own serendipity by keeping their eyes and mind open to unexpected opportunities.
Sometimes Mother Nature bludgeons us with serendipitous events that are too obvious to ignore—for example, a double rainbow suddenly coloring a gray downpour, a sunset that ramps up just as you’re about to pack up your gear, or maybe a rocket streaking through your Milky Way scene. But Nature’s more subtle gifts usually require our internal serendipity receivers to be tuned a little more sensitively—the unexpected is there if we keep an open mind.
Unexpected gifts from Nature are probably the single greatest joy I get from photography. But given the importance of planning and execution nature photography requires, it’s easy to understand how we might become so fixated on a specific plan that serendipity slips by undetected. The intense focus on a subject that shrinks the world and enables photographers to extract the best from one scene, also leads to overlooked scenes.
Over my many years photographing Nature, I’ve learned that rather than being mutually exclusive, laser focus and openminded awareness not only can coexist, they can actually collaborate to create photographic synergy.
Toward this goal, I’ve established a few techniques that nudge me into examining my surroundings more closely. These simple steps have become so ingrained in my photographic process that they no longer require conscious thought—in other words, the mere act of concentrating on my primary subject doesn’t mean my surroundings are denied the attention they deserve as well.
The first, and simplest, of these techniques is to periodically stop and do a slow 360, keeping a few questions in mind: What’s going on with the light, sky, shadows? What in the surrounding landscape draws my eye? Is anything moving? Then, to force myself to consider these observations even more closely, I try to anticipate what each of these factors will be doing over the next few minutes.
Another way to shake my single-minded focus while working any given scene is making sure I don’t move on without checking in on different perspectives: switch my camera’s orientation, zoom tighter and wider, reframe and/or adjust focus to emphasize different elements in my composition, and reposition my camera to change foreground/background relationships. I can’t tell you the number of times something unexpected and even better has magically appeared just because I adjusted some aspect of my perspective.
Despite these tools, extended periods away from my camera can make my serendipity generator a little creaky. So, following my recent two-and-a-half month workshop break, last month’s Death Valley / Alabama Hills workshop proved to be just what I needed.
Both locations, with their unique and diverse features, are great places to oil up the works and get my vision humming. And this workshop group in particular showed strong and varied vision that inspired everyone (myself included) during our daily image reviews.
I time this workshop to coincide with the full moon. Because the best full moon views in both Death Valley and the Alabama Hills face west, our moonsets come at sunrise. But that doesn’t mean we never see a sunset moonrise too. Even though the view isn’t great, and I never actually plot and plan a Death Valley moonrise, wherever I photograph a Death Valley sunset, I try to keep an eye on the east horizon for the moon’s arrival.
On our second evening, I took the group out to Badwater for sunset and the rare opportunity to photograph Lake Manly. Badwater Basin is almost always dry, but every once in a while extreme runoff will briefly restore it, adding a few inches of water that can stretch for miles, and for a few weeks or months transform the arid basin into a vast mirror. This version of Lake Manly is the vestigial runoff of Tropical Storm (and former hurricane) Hilary that laid waste to Death Valley last August.
The photography this evening was everything we’d hoped for—calm winds for a pristine reflection, and just enough nice clouds to catch the sunset color. The best Badwater views face west, toward 11,000 foot Telescope Peak, and north, up the valley. So while I knew the nearly full moon would be rising above the valley’s east wall this evening, lacking any kind of a view in that direction, the moon’s arrival wasn’t really a priority. Nevertheless, I occasionally glanced that way, and doubled-down when a cohort of clouds scooted across the eastern horizon and started catching sunset light.
And suddenly there it was, edging above the shear valley wall a little north of Dante’s View. With nothing beneath the moon but nondescript brown cliffs, at first I was content to simply watch it climb, but as the clouds closed in on the moon and their pink continued to intensify, I couldn’t help repositioning my camera.
With the clouds, moon, and color moving fast, the composition I ended up with was as simple as the scene was serendipitous. Since the scene really was all about the pink clouds and rising moon, I zoomed my 24-105 lens until my frame included as little of the surrounding (less appealing) elements as possible, and underexposed slightly to ensure lunar detail, emphasize the color, and darken (deemphasize) the barren mountain ridges.
The Badwater view and reflection this evening was so spectacular, especially when sunset started to color the sky, it would have been easy for this convergence of moon, clouds, and color to have unfolded behind my back, completely unseen. Instead, on an evening filled with the beautiful conditions I’d hoped for, I also got to enjoy one of those serendipity moments I love so much.
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A Gallery of Serendipity Scenes (That I Didn’t Come Looking For)
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Playing the Odds
Posted on November 21, 2023
Twilight Moon, Zabriskie Point, Death Valley
Sony a7R V
Sony 24-105 f/4 G
ISO 100
f/10
1/13 second
First and foremost, a good landscape image usually requires…, well…, a good landscape. But merely getting yourself to the good landscapes is only half the image success equation, because good landscape photography also requires good conditions: colorful sky, dramatic clouds, complementary light, a striking celestial object, or some other natural quality that elevates the scene to special.
One way to include these ephemeral variables is to monitor conditions closely enough to respond in time to photograph them. Which of course also requires being relatively nearby when the conditions become favorable. Not necessarily a problem when my desired subject is close to home and the only affected schedule is my own, but my photo workshops need be planned more than a year in advance, so the proximity and react quickly approach doesn’t really work. Instead, the best I can do is schedule workshops to maximize the odds for ideal light, interesting skies, and other photogenic conditions—then cross my fingers.
For example, visiting Iceland in January or February increases the odds for the northern lights and low angle all-day sunlight; June in New Zealand provides the best chance for snowy peaks, and it’s the month when the core of the Milky Way up all night; and early August (+/- a week or so) at the Grand Canyon is generally the peak of the Southwest monsoon’s spectacular lightning and rainbows. While each of these features can be thwarted by uncooperative weather, at least we’re close enough to be there when the good stuff happens.
My annual Death Valley / Mt. Whitney photo workshop is another example of playing the odds. I love clouds and Death Valley. But because Death Valley only gets about an inch of rain each year, it suffers from chronic blue skies. To maximize the possibility of clouds for my DV/Whitney workshop groups, I schedule the workshop from mid-January through early February, when temperatures are farthest from summer’s intolerable heat, and the (still remote) chance for rainfall and (more likely) clouds is highest.
While I always wish for clouds in my workshops, cloudless skies in Death Valley don’t mean lousy photography. Places like Mosaic Canyon and Artist’s Palette are nice in the soft shade of early morning and late afternoon. And few sights are more dramatic than the sun’s first or last rays on the curves and lines of the undulating Mesquite Flat Dunes. Another benefit of cloudless skies is the beautiful pink and blue pastels that hover above the horizon opposite the sun before sunrise and after sunset.
To further hedge my bets, in Death Valley I always give myself one more blank-sky card to play: the moon. Scheduling this workshop around a full moon opens moonlight opportunities, and gives my groups at least two mornings to photograph the setting moon in the pre-sunrise twilight pastels: first at Zabriskie Point, where it aligns beautifully with Manly Beacon, then in Alabama Hills, where we can photograph it slipping behind the alpenglow enriched Sierra Crest, bookended by 14,000 feet-plus Mt. Whitney and Mt. Williamson.
This year’s DV/Whitney workshop, last February, had more clouds than usual—great for our daytime photography, but a source of stress f0r the workshop leader as the Zabriskie Point sunrise moonset approached. But instead of thwarting my Zabriskie moonset plan, I woke this morning to find that most of the clouds had departed overnight, leaving behind just a handful of ideally placed cotton balls for the moon to play with.
Zabriskie Point is an extremely popular sunrise location, so I got my group out there nearly 45 minutes before sunrise. We ended up being the first ones out there (better to be 10 minutes early than 1 minute late)—too early, in the pre-dawn darkness, to capture detail in the daylight-bright moon and the rest of the scene in a single image, but since the moon was still fairly high, I suggested to everyone that they compose it out (shoot beneath the moon) and just concentrate on revealing the foreground in the sweet, shadowless light.
While waiting for the foreground to brighten, I enjoyed watching the clouds dance around the moon, alternating between obscuring, revealing, and framing. The darker the sky, the better the moon stands out, but when the sky is too dark, an exposure that captures detail in the moon also has an unrecoverably dark foreground (either its completely black, or there’s too much noise in the processing-recovered darkness). As the sun approaches the horizon behind us, the lighter the sky gets and the easier it becomes to get detail in both the moon and the landscape. But soon the sky becomes so bright, contrast between the moon (which isn’t getting any brighter) and sky is lost and the moon becomes less and less prominent.
My window for photographing a full moon is from 15 minutes before sunrise/sunset to 15 minutes after sunrise/sunset (maybe a few minutes earlier/later if I’m extremely careful with my exposure). At sunrise, the best moon photography is on the earliest side of this window, when the moon/sky contrast is highest; the easiest exposure (greatest margin for exposure error) is toward the end of the window. And of course this unfolds in reverse at sunset.
To ensure that I don’t miss any of the best photography when the moon exposure window opens, I always start a few minutes before my 15 minute window opens so I can identify later in Lightroom the earliest usable image. The image I’m sharing today wasn’t my very first usable click that morning, but it did come 14 minutes before sunrise, when the contrast was still high. I chose this one because it came shortly after the pink hues of the sun’s longest rays started pushing the Earth’s shadow toward the horizon, absolutely my favorite part of sunrise. For me, capturing the moon in this night/day transition is the Holy Grail of full moon photography.
Locations like Death Valley are always great to photograph, regardless of the conditions, so it always feels like I’m playing with house money there. But looking back at all the things I bet on when scheduling this workshop, I can see that this year most of them paid off. Thanks to the (long shot) clouds, we got beautiful sunset color at Dante’s View one evening, and on the dunes another. One morning the clouds cleared enough to paint the dunes in beautiful sunrise light (one reason we do sunrise and sunset there), and another morning just enough hung around to enhance, without obscuring, our beautiful moonset. We all felt like winners.
I actually have a couple of openings in my upcoming Death Valley workshop
Moons Over Death Valley and the Alabama Hills
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Relationship Building
Posted on April 17, 2023
Lunar Reflection, Half Dome and Cook’s Meadow, Yosemite
Sony a7R V
Sony 24-105 f/4 G
ISO 100
f/10
1/8 second
It’s all about relationships
I write a lot about relationships in photography. Often I’m referring relationships with my subjects, which could mean gaining better understanding of a location—not just the where and when of its photo opportunities, but its weather and geology (especially), as well as its flora, fauna, and history. (Of course I love visiting new places too, but I’ve never felt particularly driven to expand my portfolio through relentless pursuit of new locations.)
As important as location relationships are my relationships with the natural phenomena that inspire me understand the science behind the ephemeral phenomena that fascinate me enough to photograph them. Things like lightning, rainbows, reflections, sunrise/sunset color, fall color, and anything celestial simply fascinate me and it never feels like work to study them.
But there’s another side to photography’s relationship coin that takes place within the frame of an image. I’m talking about the visual relationships between disparate subjects—juxtaposing one subject with another physical subject (nearby or distant), or elevating a favorite location by photographing it under the spell of a favorite natural phenomenon.
However these relationships happen, it’s only logical that the best photography takes place when intimate knowledge of location and natural phenomena are combined to create the intra-image relationships that make an image sing.
Sometimes this seems so obvious the we make these connections without realizing we’re doing it. when we visit a vista that includes multiple features, or travel to a favorite location to photograph it with sunset light or fall color. Other times we’re beneficiaries of happy accidents, when something unexpected just happens to manifest while we’re there. And while I love happy accidents as much as anyone, we should never count on them.
In general, the more deliberate we can be about consciously combining the things we love in our photography, the better our images will be. Of course some of my favorite images are happy accidents—something unexpected that just happened to take place while I was there to witness it—but the vast majority were more strategic.
So I guess in a way that would make me a photographic matchmaker, aggressively seeking to create relationships, not just with, but for the things I love most. Whether it’s fresh snow in Yosemite, lightning at Grand Canyon, the northern lights in Iceland, or the Milky Way in New Zealand, it’s usually not an accident that I was there. Of course there are no guarantee any of these things will happen as planned, but I always do my best to maximize my odds.
As much as I’d love to claim that creating these matches makes me some kind of photographic savant, I’m afraid it’s far simpler than that. (Like most people) I can read a weather report and get a few days advance notice of snow in Yosemite Valley; I know that the ingredients for a rainbow are sunlight and airborne water droplets (like rain and waterfall mist), and that my shadow always points in the direction of the rainbow’s center; the time window for any location’s fall color peak is generally common knowledge; and the moon and Milky Way follow precise schedules, and there are plenty of resources that reveal their position in the sky at any time, from any location. All I need to do is act on this information.
Tying it all together
Usually all you need to do to understand the relationships I’m seeking in a workshop is to look at the workshop’s name. The image I’m sharing in this blog post was captured during my Yosemite Moonbow and Wildflowers photo workshop earlier this month—but, as you can see, there is in fact (and fortunately) more to Yosemite in spring than moonbows and wildflowers.
When I scheduled this workshop more than a year ago, I knew for a fact that it would take place during the full moon that’s necessary for the Lower Yosemite Fall moonbow, and that the angle of the rising moon relative to the fall would be just right. And I knew from experience that the odds of wildflowers in April were extremely high. What I didn’t know was whether we’d have clear or cloudy skies, nor could I have anticipated California’s unprecedented wet and cold winter and how it might threaten to throw a wrench in my plans.
This is where the location familiarity part of relationship building comes in handy, as I was able to adjust enough that we ended up with some wonderful photography, albeit something that was much closer to a winter workshop than a spring workshop. This group had chilly temperatures, clouds, a little rain, and lots of snow (mostly on the ground, but a few flakes as well). Nevertheless, as you no doubt know if you read my previous blog post, we were able to catch the very beginning of what has turned out to be a very late (but potentially spectacular) wildflower bloom, so I was able to deliver something as advertised.
The moonbow part of my plan was a little more problematic. While Yosemite Falls is fed entirely by snowmelt, and the Sierra received record snowfall this winter boded well for our chances, the temperatures hadn’t warmed enough yet for the fall to deliver the explosion of mist at its base necessary for the moonbow. (There was nice flow in the fall, just not enough for the moonbow.) We tried, but ended up with a moonlight shoot sans moonbow.
On to Plan B
From the moon to the Milky Way, regular readers of my blog know of my fascination with all things celestial. Orbital geometry aligns Yosemite’s moon with different features as the seasons change, and I try to be there for as many moonrises as possible. Since the full moon happens during this workshop, photographing it is always part of my plan. On the other hand, because the moon doesn’t align as perfectly with Half Dome or El Capitan as it does in winter, it’s more of a bonus than it is something I advertise.
The first night clouds that threatened my moonrise made for great photography, and we kicked off with a nice Tunnel View shoot. Since the wet winter also meant reflective vernal pools in Yosemite Valley’s meadows, to create a sunset match for my workshop students on that cloudy first evening, I opted for the vernal pool in Cook’s Meadow. (For good reason, Cook’s Meadow itself is closed to visitors to allow the meadow to recover from years of pedestrian abuse—we approached the pool from behind, via the trail from the Sentinel Bridge parking lot, and never actually entered the meadow.)
I was actually thinking about multiple matches this evening: not only does this location have a great view of Half Dome, the vernal pool is ideally positioned for a Half Dome reflection. And I knew (but kept to myself for fear of jinxing us) that in the off-chance that the clouds parted, this would be the best location to add the moon to our Half Dome reflection scene.
Between Half Dome, the reflection, and clouds kissed by warm light, I almost forgot about the moon. But about 20 minutes before sunset the clouds opened and there it was. I’d already been strategically moving about to manage the reflection’s relationship to the various features dotting the water’s surface, taking care to frame Half Dome rather than obscure it. So the biggest obstacle I had to overcome was making sure that everyone else had their shot before I got mine.
Since most of us were set up within a few feet of each other, I was able to provide impromptu coaching on how to expose bright enough to capture the shadows without blowing out the moon (read more here). Another (counterintuitive) learning point was to point out that the focus point for a reflection is the same as the focus point for the reflective subject, not the reflective surface (read more here).
One more thing
People ask me if I ever tire of Yosemite, and I can honestly answer, no. Part of keeping Yosemite fresh for me is the infectious excitement that happens when the people I’m with witness something like what we saw this evening. Even without the moon, this Half Dome scene provided a great Yosemite introduction for everyone. But when the clouds lit up and the moon popped out, it elevated to one of those truly special Yosemite moments that I’ll never tire of sharing.
Photographic Matchmaking
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Eloquent Images by Gary Hart 