Eloquent Images by Gary Hart
Insight, information, and inspiration for the inquisitive nature photographer
Doing the math
Posted on January 13, 2016
Autumn Snow, El Capitan, Yosemite
Sony a7R II
Sony/Zeiss 16-35 f4
1/160 second
F/11
ISO 800
A few days ago Sony asked me to write a couple of small pieces on “my favorite landscape lenses.” Hmmm. My answer?
My favorite lens is the lens that allows me to do what I need to do at that moment. In fact, to avoid biasing my creativity, I consciously avoid approaching a scene with a preconceived notion of the lens to use.
What I mean is, when I charge into a scene too committed to a lens, I miss things. And “favorite” tends to become a self-fulfilling label that inhibits creativity and growth. Rather than picking a favorite, I’m all about keeping my mind open and maximizing options.
I went on to say:
Because the focal range I want to cover whenever I’m photographing landscapes is 20-200mm, the three lenses I never leave home without are my Sony/Zeiss 16-35 f4, Sony/Zeiss 24-70 f4, and Sony 70-200 f4.
I have other, “specialty” lenses that I bring out when I have a particular objective in mind. For example, my Tamron 150-600 when I’m after a moonrise or moonset, or my Rokinon 24mm f1.4 when the Milky Way is my target. And even though I have a bag that will handle all of these (plus three bodies, thank you very much Sony mirrorless), I need to weigh the value of lugging lenses I probably won’t use against inhibited mobility in the field.
Ruminating on this favorite lens thing kindled my curiosity about which lenses I really do favor—so I did the math. (Okay, I let Lightroom Filters do the math.) Of the 10,395 times I clicked my shutter in 2015, here’s the breakdown:
Primary lenses (always in my bag)
- Sony/Zeiss 16-35mm f4: 3064
- Sony/Zeiss 24-70mm f4: 3529
- Sony 70-200mm f4: 1566
Specialty lenses
- Rokinon 24mm f1.4 (night only): 189
- Zeiss Distagon 28mm f2* (night only): 161
- Tamron 150-600mm* (mostly moon and extreme close focus): 1886
*Canon Mount with Metabones IV adapter
There are a lot of qualifiers for these numbers—for example, the total may be skewed a bit for the 24-70 as it is the lens I use most for lightning photography, and when my Lightning Trigger is attached and an active storm is nearby, it can go through hundreds of fames in a relatively short time (even when I’m not seeing lightning). Also, since getting the Tamron 150-600, I sometimes used that lens as a substitute for the 70-200, something I virtually never did with Canon and my 100-400 (which I didn’t particularly like). And I haven’t used the Zeiss since getting the Rokinon, so I really could lump those two together.
What does all this mean? I don’t know, except that I have a fairly even distribution between wide, midrange, and telephoto. That’s encouraging, because I never want to feel like I’m too locked into a single lens. But two things in particular stand out for me: the high number of 16-35 images, and the low number of 70-200 images.
The 16-35 number is significant only in comparison to my Canon 17-40 and 16-35 numbers from previous years, which were much lower (especially for the 17-40). Wide angle clicks went up quite a bit when I replaced my Canon 17-40 (which I was never thrilled with) with the Canon 16-35 f2.8 (which I liked a lot more). But I don’t think they were as high as they are with my Sony/Zeiss 16-35, which is probably a reflection of how pleased I am with the quality of those images, combined with that lens’s compactness. The jury is out on whether it signals a transition in my style, but it’ll be worth monitoring.
The most telling statistic to me is how few 70-200 images I took. I really like the lens, so it’s not a quality thing. And as I said earlier, some of that is an indication of how much I enjoyed shooting with the big Tamron, but that’s not the entire answer. My Canon 70-200 f4 was one of my favorite lenses, and I always enjoyed using it to isolate aspects of a scene, and maybe I’m not doing that so much since my switch to Sony. So here’s a goal for 2016: Don’t forget the 70-200. Stay tuned….
About this image
This is another image from my recent Yosemite snow day. It’s just another example of how much I enjoy photographing Yosemite when its seasons are changing—either snow with autumn leaves, or snow with spring dogwood and waterfalls.
On this chilly, wet morning, during one of the breaks when the clouds lifted enough to expose Yosemite’s icons, I was at a spot above the Merced River with a nice view of El Capitan. I like this spot for the dogwood tree I can align with El Capitan, and because it’s not particularly well known. I found it about ten years ago while wandering the bank of the Merced River looking for views (something I encourage anyone who wants to get serious about photographing Yosemite to do).
I tried a few different things here, starting with closer compositions using my 70-200 and 24-70 to highlight the snow on the leaves with El Capitan in the background. I eventually landed on this wide angle view that used the snow-dusted dogwood tree to balance a more prominent El Capitan. Because the opening is narrow here, I struggled with how to handle the tree on the left. I eventually decided, rather than featuring it or eliminating it, to just let its textured trunk frame the scene’s left side.
Sharpness throughout the frame was essential. With the trunk less than three feet away, the depth of field benefit of shooting at 16mm was a life-saver, giving me front-to-back sharpness at my preferred f11 (the best balance of DOF, lens sharpness, and minimimal diffraction)—as long as I focused about five feet away. Focus handled, my next concern was the breeze jiggling the leaves. At ISO 100, my shutter speed in the overcast, shaded light was 1/20 second; increasing my ISO to 800 allowed a much more manageable 1/160 second. Click.
Workshop schedule
Yosemite in transition
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Think before you shoot
Posted on January 5, 2016
Winter Arrives, El Capitan, Yosemite
Sony a7R II
Sony/Zeiss 16-35 f4
1/8 second
F/11
ISO 125
True story: I once had a woman in a workshop who put her camera in Continuous mode and every time she clicked her shutter, she held it down and waved her camera in the general direction of a scene until the buffer was full. When I asked what she was doing, she said, “There’s bound to be a good one in there somewhere.” We were in Yosemite, so I couldn’t really disagree with her. But I’m guessing she wasn’t seeing a lot of growth as a photographer.
I tend to fall on the other end of the photography spectrum. Rather than a high volume of low-effort images, much of my photography style carries over from my film days—back then, a photographer who wasn’t careful might return from Europe to find that the photographs cost more than the trip. With our wallets forcing us to be more calculated and discriminating with our captures, we took our time, checked and double-checked our compositions and settings, and relied much more on our tripods.
Times have changed. While every film click costs money, every digital click increases the return on our investment. So far, so good: Combined with a histogram and instant review, digital shooters can click liberally, secure in the knowledge that each shot can be better than the one preceding. But I fear that this great benefit digital has bestowed, combined with powerful processing capabilities, has engendered a “shoot now, think later” mentality among many photographers. Rather than taking advantage of digital’s instant feedback to ensure that everything’s perfect at capture, these photographer adopt a high volume approach that sometimes hits a bullseye, but does nothing to improve their aim.
While there’s nothing wrong with lots of clicks, to advance your photography, each click needs a purpose. That purpose doesn’t even need to be a great image, it can simply be an I-wonder-what-happens-if-I-do-this experiment. Or it can be an incremental approach that begins with a “draft” and works toward perfection.
For example
On my recent snow day in Yosemite, I tried to highlight locations a little off the beaten path (as much as that’s possible in Yosemite). One of my stops was along Southside Drive, a little west of the crossover (to Northside Drive). Traipsing through wet snow, I made my way through the trees down to the Merced River. Bounding El Capitan Meadow, here the river widens and slows, as if gathering strength for its headlong charge down the Merced River Canyon.
The relatively open views and leisurely pace of the Merced River at this spot makes this one of my favorite place for full reflections of El Capitan. Ever on the lookout for juxtaposed disparate elements, I didn’t have to venture too far upstream before the collision of autumn leaves and winter snow stopped me. Parallel yellow and white, El Capitan reflection, towering evergreens, snow-etched oaks, swirling clouds, all against a granite background: I knew there was a shot in here somewhere, and I was going to work these elements until I found it.
To identify the shot, I started with an initial, “rough draft” click, then stood back and critiqued my result. With that frame as a foundation, I made incremental refinements, adjusting individual aspects rather than trying to fix everything at once: My horizontal orientation became vertical to highlight the (more or less) parallel snow and leaves; I determined the lowest f-stop that would ensure front-to-back sharpness and carefully refined my focus point, selecting leaves about a quarter of the way into the frame; I shifted slightly left to avoid merging the snowy log with El Capitan’s reflection; and finally, I tweaked the borders slightly (micro-zooming and -widening) to ensure that no significant visual elements were cut off. With everything set, I watched the shifting clouds and clicked when they did something interesting.
I was satisfied after about a dozen frames—far more than I could have afforded in my film days, but a far cry from my workshop student’s machine gun approach. No doubt she’d have gotten something I didn’t get, but I like this one. I bet I had more fun, too.
Join my
Yosemite Winter Moon photo workshop
An El Capitan gallery
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Who needs vacations?
Posted on January 1, 2016
Moonlight Magic, El Capitan and Clearing Storm, Yosemite
Sony a7R II
Sony/Zeiss 16-35 f4
30 seconds
F/11
ISO 3200
I was hungry, wet, and cold. With the blacktop obscured by a slippery white veneer, I carefully followed my headlights and a faint set of parallel tire tracks through the Northside Drive tree tunnel. Though the storm that had lured me to Yosemite was finally clearing, that show was lost to the night and dense forest canopy. But even without another clearing storm to add to my Yosemite portfolio, I was quite content with what I’d photographed that day.
Just as my heated seats started to work their magic and visions of dinner filled my head, I rounded a curve and reflexively hit the brakes, sliding not so gracefully into the empty Valley View parking lot. With no forethought I bolted from the car, then had to grab the door to keep from losing my footing on the icy pavement.
Always a beautiful place for photography, Valley View this time was quite literally one of the most beautiful sights I’d ever witnessed. I inhaled cold air and held it. Instead of racing for my gear, I exhaled slowly and gaped through my vaporized breath at ice-coated trees and granite, moonlight infused clouds draping El Capitan, and the glassy Merced River spreading before me like a luminous carpet. The scene’s centerpiece, the element that really took the experience over the top for me, was a full moon embedded in the night sky like a blazing gem, illuminating every exposed surface.
Gathering my wits along with my gear, I started to think about photographing the scene. Because the moon was too bright to photograph (and I have the pictures to prove it), I started with a composition my favorite aspects of the rest of the scene: the clouds, the reflection, and the frozen moonlight magic—the moon would remain out of the frame, to the right.
In most moonlight images, my foreground is distant enough that everything in my frame is at infinity, regardless of my f-stop. But the nearby glazed trees and rocks meant this scene needed to be sharp from just a few feet away all the way to the stars, requiring a small aperture and very precise focus point selection. A quick check of my hyperfocal app told me that focusing 5 feet away at f/11 would give me the depth of field I needed. Once my eyes adjusted, the moonlit branches were just bright enough to manually focus on by magnifying the scene in my Sony a7R II’s viewfinder (I love mirrorless).
But at f/11, even with the brilliant moonlight, getting enough light to reveal the scene required other compromises. Pushing my shutter speed to 30 seconds—the after-dark threshold that the risk of star motion prevents me from crossing—I had to bump my ISO to 3200 to capture enough light. Fortunately, the a7R II was up to the task—while I did get some noise in the shadows, it cleaned up nicely in processing.
Leaving Valley View that night, the chill and hunger I’d felt earlier had disappeared. Photography is funny that way—we put ourselves in the most miserable conditions, then completely forget how miserable we are when Nature delivers. The key is to remember this capacity when we’re debating whether to set the alarm for zero-dark-thirty, skip a meal, or brave extreme conditions.
This El Capitan moonlight moment turned out to be my final 2015 photo shoot, a fitting conclusion to a year filled with highlights. Breaking in a new camera while learning a completely new system and way of shooting (Sony mirrorless), I visited the dunes of Death Valley, the rain forests of Hawaii, Yosemite’s glacier-carved granite (many times), Grand Canyon top and bottom—among many. I photographed lightning, rainbows, snow and ice, an active volcano, spring wildflowers and fall color, the moon in many phases, and the Milky Way above some of the world’s most spectacular scenery. How fortunate I am to have a job that I don’t need a vacation from!
At the end of 2014, while reflecting on the beauty I’d witnessed that year, the new friends I’d made, not to mention countless new memories with old friends, I wondered what 2015 would bring. And now I know. In one year I’ll do a similar retrospective on 2016, and while I have no idea what’s in store, I’m confident my good fortune will continue.
So let’s go….
Workshop Schedule || Purchase Prints || Instagram
Here’s what my 2015 looked like
Click any image to scroll through the gallery LARGE
Snow day
Posted on December 17, 2015
Winter Storm Reflection, El Capitan, Yosemite
Sony a7R II
Sony/Zeiss 16-35 f4
1/8 second
F/10
ISO 100
From my front door I can be in Yosemite Valley in less than four hours (including a stop for gas and another for Starbucks). I enjoy the drive and am not averse to doing a one day up-and-back when I think something special is in store. And nothing is more special than a chance to photograph Yosemite with fresh snow.
My most recent Yosemite snow-dash was last month. Given the fickle nature of Yosemite’s weather, and four years of drought that have made Yosemite snow a rare commodity, I made this trip an overnighter to maximize my odds.
Though I arrived well ahead of the storm, dense clouds and a damp chill ruled the afternoon. Instead of rushing into photography mode, I used the relative calm to scout the conditions, and was pleased to find water in the falls and a few traces of autumn color lingering in some of the more sheltered spots.
The rain started just as night fell. Descending the hill to my hotel that evening, I monitored the outside temperature and was cautiously optimistic about the next day. I enjoyed a warm, quiet evening in my room, cleaning sensors and filters, organizing my wet-weather gear, and visualizing scenes of snow and granite.
Yosemite Valley is at 4,000 feet, but my room was in El Portal, less than 15 minutes away but 2,000 feet lower. Staying in El Portal means I often wake to rain and hold my breath as I ascend to the valley because, regardless of the forecast, snow in Yosemite Valley is never a sure thing.
As expected, that morning I left El Portal in a steady rain, but the drops on my windshield turned to flakes at about 3,000 feet—exhale. By the time I reached Cascade Fall at 3,500 feet, snow was sticking to the trees, and it only got better from there.
This was not a particularly heavy snowfall, but I stayed all day and the clouds never completely cleared. Instead, the storm ebbed and flowed, lifting its stratus cap enough to reveal all of Yosemite’s iconic landmarks, then dropping the lid to obscure everything beyond a few hundred yards.
I concentrated most of my attention on the assortment of El Capitan reflections on the west end of Yosemite Valley. For this image I parked at the El Capitan Bridge and walked upstream along the riverbank a short distance. From here I was close enough to El Capitan that I was unable to get all of El Capitan and all of its reflection in one frame, even at 16mm. I decided to bias my composition to the reflection, and as I worked the sky peaked through just long enough for me to include it in a handful of frames.
The ultimate clearing finally came shortly after sunset. With a nearly full moon illuminating snow-covered Yosemite Valley, I couldn’t resist photographing for a couple hours longer than planned. Stay tuned….
Schedule of upcoming photo workshops
Yosemite in the snow
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Is a tripod really necessary?
Posted on December 6, 2015
Sunset Fire, Olmsted Point, Yosemite
Sony a7R II
Sony/Zeiss 16-35 f4
1.3 seconds
F/11
ISO 100
If you’re content with derivative snaps of pretty scenes, a tripod may not be for you. But for those who agree that, rather than regurgitating a rough representation of the world as we know it, landscape photography should reveal deeper, less obvious natural truths—things like relationships between diverse elements, an intimate exploration of larger scenes, detail and pattern lost in the blur of motion—there is no substitute for a tripod.
The case against the tripod
Once upon a time, the tripod’s sole purpose was stability—preventing blur caused by camera shake during the exposure. And while stability remains important, clean high ISO and stabilized bodies and lenses make possible shooting hand-held in light we’d never dreamed of just a few years ago.
The anti-tripod argument says that tripods are expensive, add weight and bulk, are awkward to set up, get in people’s way, and slow the composition process. Given that the exposure compromises (higher ISO, larger than ideal aperture, longer shutter speed) forced by hand-holding are usually minor and more easily corrected today than what we faced with our film cameras, why bother with a tripod at all?
I’d argue that you never know when even a minor, hand-held compromise—such as shooting at ISO 400 instead of ISO 100, opening to f5.6 when f11 would have been better, or stretching your exposure duration out to 1/4 second and holding your breath—will be a deal-breaker for that law firm downtown who ordered a 10-foot print for their lobby. Why spend all this money on state-of-the art equipment only to compromise your image quality even just a little?
Nevertheless, I’ll (grudgingly) acknowledge that for many current landscape photographers, the convenience of tripod-free shooting outweighs these compromises—clean, printable images are possible without a tripod most of the time.
But….
Inconveniences notwithstanding, serious landscape photography is improved by a tripod. In fact, despite the advantages digital capture has brought to tripod-free shooting, digital photography has enhanced the tripod’s value to landscape photographers.
There’s a draft in here
The odds of the perfect landscape image happening on the first click are about the same as crafting a perfect poem, novel, or essay on the first pass. When we write something important, we don’t sit down and spin it out without stop or correction, we start with an idea, write a draft, review, rewrite, review, rewrite, until we’re satisfied.
A photograph should be no different—no matter how much you like the first click, it’s pretty unlikely that frame is so perfect that further scrutiny and adjustment won’t improve it further. Much like the drafts I create when I write, my workflow in the field is a click/review/adjust, click/review/adjust cycle that continues until I’m either satisfied with my image, or convinced there’s no image to be had. I can’t imagine doing this without a tripod.
To review a hand-held image, you must completely remove the camera from its shooting position (your eye) and extend it down and in front of you, essentially erasing your camera’s view of composition the way vigorous shaking erases and Etch A Sketch—fine if you’re done, but to fix problems and add improvements, you must return the camera to your eye and completely recreate the composition you just reviewed. Standing at a vista snapping a scene that’s been snapped a million times before? No big deal. But what about an image with layers of detail at varying distances, trying to include all of that rock on the left while without including any of that tree-branch on the right, all while trying to maintain front-to-back sharpness?
When I shot film (always on a tripod thank-you-very-much), my personal image reviews involved alternating between studying the scene and peering through the viewfinder. The most I could hope for was a good guess that I had everything right. Enter digital, with its instantaneous display, including a graph and flashing pixels that tell me if I messed up the exposure. Suddenly, I can critique the image itself, right on the spot.
With digital, composing on a tripod gives me the freedom to stand back and take time to scrutinize my creation. I can study the frame for balance, scan the borders for distractions, check the histogram to ensure proper exposure, magnify the LCD for sharpness and depth of field—doing all this comfortable in the knowledge that when I’m ready, the exact image I just critiqued is waiting right there atop my tripod, ready for my improvements. In other words, my adjustments are applied to an existing creation, rather than an approximate (fingers crossed) recreation.
Revisiting the writing analogy, hand-holding reminds me of the typewriter days, when a major revision required retyping everything I just wrote; using a tripod is more like a word-processor that allows me to edit the existing document.
For example
A trip to Olmsted Point in Yosemite has become a tradition for the final sunset of my Eastern Sierra Fall Color photo workshop. Olmsted Point offers a distant, less common view of Half Dome and an assortment of photogenic trees and boulders for the foreground.
On this year’s visit we parked and made the short hike to the “point” (more of a granite dome than an actual point) for the best view down Tenaya Canyon to Half Dome and beyond. I pointed out that the sky was setting up for something special; following my encouragement to anticipate the colorful sunset and find a foreground to complement the obvious background, the group quickly scattered.
I tried to stay fairly centrally located, eventually choosing a nearby triangle of glacial erratics (granite boulders carried by glaciers and deposited in place when the retreating glaciers melted) anchored by a weathered pine. With time to spare, I set about finding a composition. I decided vertical orientation would be the best way to exclude peripheral distractions, emphasize my primary subjects (rocks, tree, Half Dome), while including enough of the sky feature what had the potential to be dramatic color.
Working methodically, I started wide and gradually tightened, refining the focal length, focus point, and borders. I’m kind of obsessive about no distractions on the edge of my frame, and try as I might, it always seems that widening or tightening to eliminate one distraction introduces a new distraction over there.
In this case I was dealing with a couple of large boulders carrying too much visual weight to be on the edge of my frame, plus the leg of a nearby tripod, and an overhanging tree branch. I was able to tighten enough to eliminate these distractions without going so tight that I cut off the boulder on the right, or crowded Half Dome on the left. Of course, since I was on a tripod, each click was an improvement of the one that preceded it—in this case it took only about a half dozen images until I was satisfied.
The foreground was static, but the sky seemed to change with each second. While I had the general framework of my composition ready, as the color overhead intensified I decided I wanted a little more sky. Fortunately, by now I was so familiar with my composition that adjustments were easy. This image came as the color reached a crescendo, intensifying until the entire landscape throbbed with color.
My primary tripod is a Really Right Stuff TVC-24L with a RRS BH-55
My travel/hiking tripod is a Really Right Stuff TQC-14 with a RRS BH-30
Each of my cameras has a RRS L-plate
A gallery of tripod-crafted images
(All of my images were captured using a tripod, but my favorites tend to be the images that require the click/review/refine/repeat process that’s greatly enhanced by a tripod)
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Getting ahead of the shot
Posted on November 28, 2015
Dawn, Mono Lake and the Sierra Crest
Sony a7R II
Sony/Zeiss 16-35 f4
8 seconds
F/10
ISO 100
I hate arriving at a photo destination for the first time and having to immediately hit the ground running. Over the years I’ve come to appreciate the value of advance knowledge of landscape and light, and always try to factor in ample scouting time before getting down to serious shooting.
On the other hand, a prime reason people sign up for a photo workshop is to shortcut the scouting process, and for the most part this works pretty well. I (like any other experienced workshop leader) can share my knowledge of a location’s terrain and light to put my groups in the right place at the right time, and to provide insights into what’s in store and how they might want to approach it.
But sometimes there’s no substitute for firsthand exposure to a location before the good stuff happens. This is particularly true for sunrise spots, because the good shooting usually starts before it’s light enough to see the landscape. Unfortunately, a photo workshop’s tight schedule doesn’t always provide the luxury of exposing my groups to a location before it’s time to photograph it, but I do my best.
Mono Lake is a perfect example. The serpentine shoreline of South Tufa, the lake’s most photographed location, is a series of points and coves that offer lake views to the east, north, and west, depending on where you stand. Often nice at sunset, sunrise at South Tufa can be downright world class in any one of these compass directions. The best sunrise photography frequently cycles through (and sometimes overlaps) all three directions as the sunrise progresses. Overlaying South Tufa’s directional light are the vivid sunrise hues that can paint the sky in any direction at any time, and glassy reflections that double the visual overload.
After many years photographing South Tufa, I’ve established a fairly reliable sunrise workflow that helps me deal with these shifting factors. I usually start with tufa tower silhouettes facing east, into the early twilight glow in the east, then do a 180 to capture the magenta alpenglow on the Sierra crest in the west, and finally pivot northward as sidelight warms the tufa towers once the sun’s first rays skim the lake.
But just knowing the direction to point the camera is only part of the Mono Lake equation. In fact, with so many composition possibilities, South Tufa can overwhelm the first time visitor. Not only is there a lot going on here, on most mornings you need to contend with photographers that swarm the shore like the lake’s ubiquitous black flies.
Because of these difficulties, I make a point of getting my Eastern Sierra workshop group out to South Tufa for the sunset preceding the sunrise shoot. In my pre-shoot orientation, I strongly encourage my students to walk around before setting up their cameras, to identify compositions in each direction, and to envision the sunrise light.
It turns out, this year’s South Tufa sunset shoot was beneficial to me as well. With the lake level lower than I’ve ever seen it, the shoreline was virtually unrecognizable—many familiar lake features were now high and dry, and a number of new features had materialized. As alarming as it was to see the lake this low, the photographer in me couldn’t help but feel excited about the fresh compositions the new shoreline offered.
While showing the group around South Tufa’s various nooks and crannies, I spotted a stepping stone set of newly exposed tufa mounds on a north- and west-facing section. I pointed out to those still with me the way tufa could lead the eye through the bottom of the frame to the distant Sierra peaks, and made a mental bookmark of the spot. Sunset that night, with nice color a glassy reflection that’s more typical of sunrise than sunset, that everyone was a little dubious when I told them sunrise could be even better.
The next morning, all the conditions were in place for something special: a mix of clouds and sky, an opening on the eastern horizon to let the light through, calm winds to quiet the lake. Armed with knowledge from the night before, the group quickly dispersed to their pre-planned spots and I found myself mostly alone.
I’ve photographed Mono Lake so many times that I had no plans to shoot that morning, so I wandered around checking on everyone. As often happens when the photography is good (especially late in the workshop, when people have become pretty comfortable handling difficult light and extreme depth of field), I felt like my presence was more distraction than benefit, so I headed over to the spot I’d spied the previous evening (it had the added benefit of being pretty centrally located and well within earshot of my distributed students).
By the time I got there the show was well underway in the east and quickly moving west. It would have been easy to slip into panic-shooting mode and try to find something where things were good right now, but I’ve learned (for me at least) that it’s best to anticipate than react. Instead, because I’d already mentally worked this scene, I knew the composition I wanted and was ready for the color when it arrived.
The extra sixty seconds this bought me was enough to refine my composition, find the f-stop and focus point that would maximize sharpness throughout the scene, meter the scene and set my exposure, and orient my polarizer for the best balance between reflection and lakebed. It turns out that this anticipation was a difference-maker, as the vivid color peaked and faded in about 30 seconds.
Join my next Eastern Sierra Fall Color photo workshop
A Mono Lake Gallery
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I love you, goodbye…
Posted on November 18, 2015
Fire and Mist, Halemaumau Crater, Kilauea, Hawaii
Sony a7S
Sony/Zeiss 16-35 f4
10 seconds
F/4
ISO 3200
Last week I said goodbye to my Sony a7S. More than any camera I’ve owned, this is the camera that overcame photography’s physical boundaries that most frustrated me.
I’ve been interested in astronomy since I was ten, ten years longer than I’ve a been photographer. But until recently I’ve been thwarted in my attempts to fully convey the majesty of the night sky above a grand landscape.
What was missing was light. Or more accurately, the camera’s ability to capture light. Light is what enables cameras to “see,” and while there’s still a little light after the sun goes down, cameras struggle mightily to find a usable amount.
When faced with limited light, photographers’ solutions are limited, and each solution is a compromise. In no particular order, we can increase:
- Shutter speed: We can increase the time the light strikes the sensor. While we can usually keep our shutter open for as long as the battery lasts, the longer it’s open, the more motion we capture.
- Aperture (a ratio measure in f-stops): Larger apertures (the f-stop number shrinks as the aperture opens) allow more light, with a loss of depth of field. While the DOF loss is usually insignificant in most night photography scenes (because all subjects are usually at infinity), the laws of optics limit the size of of a lens’s aperture.
- ISO: We can increase the sensor’s sensitivity to light by increasing the ISO, but not without significant image quality degradation (noise).
Most night photography attempts bump into the limits of each solution before complete success is achieved. For me, the first barrier is usually the f-stop, which is soon maxed. With my f-stop maxed, I’m left with a dance between ISO and shutter speed as I attempt to balance acceptable amounts of motion and noise.
So why not just add more light? Duh. But, while adding light solves some problems, it introduces others. Anything bright enough to illuminate a large landscape (sunlight or moonlight) washes out the stars, and artificial local light (such as light painting or a flash) violates my own natural-light-only objective. Another option some resort to is image blending (one frame for the foreground, one for the sky), but that too violates my personal single-frame-only goal.
My first shot at the night photography conundrum came about ten years ago, when I started doing moonlight photography. I immediately found that the reflected sunlight cast by a full moon beautifully illuminated my landscapes, while preserving enough celestial darkness that the brighter, most recognizable constellations still shined through. But walking outside on a clear, moonless night far from city lights was all the reminder I needed that my favorite qualities of the night sky—the Milky Way and the the seemingly infinite quantity of stars—remained beyond my photographic reach.
To photograph a moonless sky brimming with stars, my next step was star trail photography—long exposures that accumulated enough light to reveal my terrestrial subjects at manageable ISO (not too much noise). Star trails have the added benefit of stretching stellar pinpoints into concentric arcs of light that beautifully depict Earth’s rotation.
While both enjoyable and beautiful, moonlight and star trail photography were not completely satisfying. But the laws of physics dictated that lenses weren’t going to get any faster, and Earth wasn’t going to rotate any slower, so the solution would need to be in sensor efficiency.
Unfortunately, camera manufactures remained resolute in their belief that megapixels sold cameras. So as sensor technology evolved, and photographers saw slow but steady high ISO improvement, we were force-fed a mind-boggling increase in megapixel count.
But cramming more megapixels onto a 35mm sensor requires: 1) smaller photosites that are less efficient at capturing light, and 2) more tightly packed photosites that increase (noise inducing) heat.
The megapixel race changed overnight when Sony, in a risky, game-changing move, decided to offer a high-end, full-frame camera with “only” a 12 megapixel sensor. What were they thinking!?
Acknowledging what serious photographers have known for years, that 12 megapixels is enough for most uses (just 12 years ago, pros paid $8,000 for a Canon 1Ds with only 11 megapixels), Sony bucked the megapixel trend to embrace the benefits of fewer, larger, less densely packed photosites. The result was a light-sucking monster that can see in the dark: the Sony a7S.
Since purchasing my a7S less than a year ago, I’m able to photograph the dark night sky above the landscapes I love. Additionally, I found that its fast shutter lag (since matched by the a7R II) made the a7S ideal for lightning photography. It was love at first click.
And now it’s gone. Last month Sony released the a7S II, and given my satisfaction with the upgrade from the a7R to the a7R II, it was only a matter of time before I upgraded to the a7S II. I’m happy to say that I found a good home for my a7S and in fact may even get to visit it in future workshops.
I haven’t had a chance to use the a7S II, but I assure you it won’t be long, and you’ll be the first to know.
About this image
The image at the top of this post was captured in September (2015) during my Hawaii Big Island Volcanos and Waterfalls photo workshop. Each time I visit here I hold my breath until I see what the sky is doing. I’ve encountered everything from completely cloudless to pea soup fog. I’ve come to hope for a mix of clouds and sky—enough sky for the Milky Way to shine through clearly, but enough clouds to reflect the orange light of the churning volcano.
On this evening we got a combination I hadn’t seen before—clear sky overhead, a few low clouds, and a heavy mist hanging in the caldera. Not only did the mist frame the scene with a translucent orange glow, it subdued the volcano’s fire enough for me to use a long exposure to bring out the Milky Way without blowing my highlights.
We’ll do it again in my next Hawaii Volcanos and Waterfalls workshop
An a7S homage
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On the rocks
Posted on November 14, 2015
Reflection On the Rocks, El Capitan and the Merced River, Yosemite
Sony a7R II
Sony/Zeiss 24-70 f4
25 seconds
F/11
ISO 100
Yosemite is known for its waterfalls, but I gotta say, I think I’m happiest photographing Yosemite when the falls are dry. Not that I don’t love Yosemite’s waterfalls (I do!), but when the falls are dry, the Merced River has slowed to a reflective crawl that paints reflections everywhere. And as an added bonus, when the falls dry up, so do the crowds.
Last month I spent a day guiding a couple from Sweden through Yosemite when the Merced River was at its drought-starved nadir. I’d been looking forward to this day for a while, but two days earlier I’d cracked ribs and my collarbone in a cycling accident—I could walk, I could talk, but I couldn’t do both, and simply getting in and out of the car was an achievement. The seatbelt? Torture. So my camera and tripod stayed in the car all day.
But when we pulled up to Valley View for sunset, I just couldn’t resist the mix of light, clouds, sky, and reflection. By the time I extracted my camera and tripod and made my way down to the river (no more than 20 feet from the car), the sun was about done with El Capitan. There were a few hot spots in the clouds, but my Singh-Ray two-stop hard GND held back the highlights enough to enable enough exposure to bring out the shadows. The resulting 25 second exposure added a gauzy texture to the reflection.
The trickiest thing about photographing a reflection with embedded features is achieving depth of field throughout. Though it seems counter-intuitive, the focus point for a reflection is the focus point of the reflective subject, not the reflective surface. In this case I wasn’t too worried about the reflection because I knew the long exposure would soften it anyway. But I did want to be sharp from embedded rocks all the way back to El Capitan. A quick check of my hyperfocal app told me that at f11 and 28mm, focusing on the closest rock (about ten feet away), would ensure sharpness all the way to infinity.
A public service announcement
I don’t always wear a helmet when I bike. I’m fortunate to live adjacent to a bike trail that can keep me off city streets for virtually all of my bike trips, so (my rationalization went), why mess with a helmet?
My accident last month happened on the bike trail, with no cars in sight, when I clipped a portable barricade with my handlebar and my bike went right while I continued forward. In addition to cracked ribs and collarbone, some nasty road-rash, and a torn-up shirt, my helmet was totaled. I shudder to think what would have happened had I decided not to wear a helmet that day (about a 50/50 chance), and will never, ever ride a bike again without one. I encourage you to make the same promise to yourself.
I return you now to your regular programming.
A gallery of Yosemite reflections
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Reflection season
Posted on October 26, 2015
Reflection on the Rocks, El Capitan, Yosemite
Sony a7R II
Sony/Zeiss 24-70 f4
1/40 second
F/11
ISO 400
It’s reflection season in Yosemite, that time of year when the falls are dry and the Merced River slows to a glassy crawl. Plugging in the golds and reds of autumn makes this my favorite time for creative photography in Yosemite, and explains the volume of Yosemite autumn images in my portfolio.
It also explains why I’ve been to Yosemite three times this month. The month’s first visit, with my Eastern Sierra workshop group, we photographed high Sierra reflections and a Half Dome sunset from Olmsted Point—we’d had lots yellow and orange aspen in the canyons above Bishop and Lee Vining, but it was a little early for Yosemite color. The next two trips were primarily focused on Yosemite Valley, ground-zero for autumn reflections. On both Yosemite Valley trips, the Merced River, always low and slow in autumn, was down far enough that I saw places I could have rock-hopped from one side to the other without getting wet.
Today’s image, from about a week and a half ago, almost didn’t happen. I’d been looking forward to this visit (to guide a couple from Sweden) for several months, but a bike accident two days earlier had cracked a rib, torn a muscle in my shoulder, removed copious amounts of skin from my arm, and pretty much prevented me from doing anything requiring movement (or breathing, for that matter).
When I left home that morning I knew I was going to be sore, but I was actually a little surprised by just how uncomfortable I was. Somehow, bolstered by liberal quantities of ibuprofen, I managed to survive the day, quite content to limit my activity to driving, narrating, and and answering questions. Even getting in and out of the car was an ordeal, and photography seemed out of the question. But when we pulled into the parking lot at Valley View for the day’s final stop, the reflection drew me to the rocks like the Sirens of Greek mythology.
Rather than grab my camera bag and sling it over my shoulder as I normally would (the mere thought makes me flinch), I gingerly extracted my tripod, camera, and 16-35 lens, and assembled them them at my car’s tailgate. Given my level of pain and the precarious footing on the rocks by the river, I knew wouldn’t be able to move around as much as I’m accustomed to (or at all), so scanned the route and I very carefully selected my destination before departing on the 20 foot journey. In a perfect world I’d have been able to shuffle slowly, but the route to the river was over a disorganized jumble of granite rocks that made each step feel like a knife had been thrust into my ribcage.
At the river I found a flat granite platform just large enough for both my feet, and a solid rock for each tripod leg. Using the tripod for support, I found that if I moved slowly enough, I could keep the pain to a manageable minimum. Nevertheless, I was even more deliberate than I usually am, strategizing and executing each movement. Soon I developed a workflow that allowed me to do pretty much all I needed to do by only moving my arms from the elbow down.
There were a lot of moving parts to consider as I crafted this image. Since the focus point of a reflection is the focus point of the reflective subject, not the reflective surface, I needed DOF that went from the nearby rocks, just a few feet away, all the way out to El Capitan at infinity. But I couldn’t make DOF decisions until I composed and decided on a focal length. And as I tried to compose, I found that even the slight adjustment in focal length and framing introduced new problems—rocks cut off or jutting in from the side, or even worse, introducing bright sky at the top of the frame.
At one point I thought I finally had it, only to realize that the top rock of the foreground triangle intersected El Capitan. Moving my tripod a few inches to the left solved that problem, but also made it impossible to use my viewfinder without repositioning myself. Rather than destabilize my precarious perch, I decided to forego the viewfinder in favor of the LCD (thank you Sony for the articulating viewfinder).
With a little work I finally found a composition that achieved my framing objectives: balanced foreground, clean borders, and no sky. Now for my exposure variables. I estimated that foreground rocks were about 10 feet away—according to my hyperfocal app, at 40mm and f11, the hyperfocal distance was a little less than 16 feet. I picked a rock about that distance and carefully focused there, thus ensuring acceptable sharpness from about 8 feet to infinity. I decided to go with ISO 400 to mitigate the light breeze that moved the leaves just a little.
The shadows were quite dark, while the cloud reflections contained some hot spots, but I was confident that my Sony a7R II could handle the dynamic range if I was careful. Watching my histogram, I increased my shutter speed until the highlights were right up to the point of clipping.
Finally ready, I realized that my remote cable was in the car. Since there was no way I was going to put myself through an extra roundtrip, I engaged my camera’s 2-second timer and clicked. After reviewing the image on my viewfinder I made a couple of small adjustments and clicked again. I repeated this click/review/click cycle a couple more times, until I was satisfied that I’d achieved my vision.
Photograph reflections like this in my next Yosemite Autumn Moon photo workshop
A gallery of reflections
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The best time of day
Posted on October 20, 2015
New Day, Sunrise Sunstar, Mono Lake
Sony a7R II
Sony/Zeiss 16-35 f4
1/4 second
F/20
ISO 125
Imagine a world that’s so quiet you can hear nature’s every stirring, a place where each breath holds a pristine bouquet of subtle fragrances, and the sky is a continuously shifting kaleidoscope of indigo, blue, yellow, orange, and red. In case you haven’t figured it out, I’m describing the very world we live in, before the sun’s light and warmth draw out the dirty, noisy, oblivious masses.
As a nature photographer, I’m quite familiar with this world. And while I can’t say that I relish a 4:30 a.m. alarm, I’ve come to terms with its darkness, frigid temps, and sleep depravity. I also understand why most people despise early wake-ups, because that used to describe me. We’ve been conditioned by a lifetime of rising for school and work and completely bypassing early morning’s benefits as we rush to obligations, appointments, and responsibilities that are almost invariably less pleasant than staying in bed.
But if you haven’t learned to appreciate the joy of the pre-sunrise world, let me help you reset your bias with a few tips for making early mornings happen:
- For the full experience, plan to be at your spot at least 45 minutes before the “official” (flat horizon at that latitude and longitude) sunrise for that location. The eastern horizon will already be brightening noticeably by then, but the stars will be visible. (This is for mid-latitude locations—twilight starts earlier in the high latitudes, later in the low latitudes.)
- Get organized before you go to bed. Lay your clothes out, assemble your gear, make sure everything’s charged, and prime the coffee maker. You do all this so you can…
- Set your alarm for the absolute minimum time necessary to get ready. Your resolve will be much stronger at bedtime than when it goes off—the less time you have to delay, less the chance that you’ll lose your resolve to the cozy warmth of your bed. This also gives you the maximum amount of sleep possible. And don’t forget, one of the best things about being up when no one else is up and it’s dark is that it really doesn’t matter how you look (so you don’t really need to spend a lot of time on personal hygiene).
- Under no circumstances use the snooze button on your alarm. Rising early is like ripping off a Band-Aid—the sooner you get it over with, the happier you’ll be; the longer you drag it out, the harder it is. Trust me.
The weather report called for clear skies and no chance of rain this morning. But the lightning was already firing when we walked out to Grand Canyon’s Bright Angel Point in the dark, and it was still going when we finally ran out of compositions over two hours later.
- Don’t be discouraged by the conditions at bedtime or wake-up. Some of my most memorable sunrises have happened on mornings I’d have skipped if I’d relied solely on weather reports, or on the way things look when I peek out the window after the alarm. Photography is just one of the benefits of being out before the sun. Even when the photography conditions don’t materialize as hoped, I rarely regret those mornings when I dragged myself out of bed to sit in the cold and dark. And for some reason, the most special stuff seems happen when I go out with the lowest expectations, driven solely by the attitude that I’m just going to enjoy this special time of day.
For example (the above image)
Getting to this remote location on Mono Lake’s north shore is always an adventure; getting there early enough before the sun can feel downright crazy. We depart an hour-and-a-half before sunrise, navigate a bone-jarring maze of unpaved roads that worsen with each mile, and drive until we can drive no further. From there the lake is still a half mile walk. Most of the hike is in volcanic sand, but the last couple hundred yards are through shoe-sucking mud; with no trail or light, it’s no wonder I never end up at the same spot from one year to the next.
Earlier this month my Eastern Sierra workshop group made the annual pilgrimage out here for our final sunrise. We’d been incredibly blessed with great conditions throughout the workshop—great sunrise and sunset color, nice clouds, and glassy reflections at Mono Lake’s South Tufa the day before (always a highlight when it happens). Our luck held as we got all three—color, clouds, and reflection—for this final sunrise.
I started shooting in near darkness, with wide, east-facing compositions that included a thin slice of moon flanked by Venus, Jupiter, and Mars. My focus turned more south and west as the sun started to rise and paint the clouds with color. Soon the mountains in the west were bathed with warm light and I turned my attention there. The wind stayed calm, so every direction I shot, I was able to double the beauty with a reflection.
Watching the shadow slide down the mountains, I was able to anticipate the sun’s arrival at my position and turn back to the east just in time to make my sunstar composition. I used a trio of nearby rocks to anchor my foreground, removed my polarizer (I wanted a maximum reflection and didn’t want to worry about differential polarization at my wide focal length), extracted my 3-stop reverse graduated neutral density filter (Singh-Ray), and stopped down to f-20 to enhance the sunstar effect.
When the sun appeared I clicked a half-dozen or so images, each with a little bit brighter sunstar. I chose this one because it was a good balance between brilliant sunstar without washing out too much of the sky around it. Thanks to my GND and the ridiculous dynamic range of my a7R II, I got this scene with a single click. In Photoshop I dodged the top 2/3 of the sky and burned the water to disguise the GND effect, but did very little else.
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The joys of sunrise
Eloquent Images by Gary Hart 