Eloquent Images by Gary Hart
Insight, information, and inspiration for the inquisitive nature photographer
New Zealand Rocks
Posted on July 22, 2024
New Zealand Rocks, Lake Pukaki
Sony α1
Sony 16-35 GM
13 second2
F/18
ISO 50
(Yes it does.)
This New Zealand winter morning dawned damp and gray, with a layer of low clouds hindering the light and obscuring the peaks. Not awful for photography, but far from the spectacular color and light photographers hope for. My workshop partner Don Smith was battling a nasty (non-Covid) virus, so I was solo with the group on the morning we visited an obscure beach on the south shore of Lake Pukaki. It wasn’t lost on me that last year I was the one who had to miss this Lake Pukaki sunrise shoot with some kind of food poisoning. I don’t know what it is about this spot, but I’m pretty sure that in all our years of doing New Zealand workshops, these are the only two times Don or I have had to call in sick to a shoot.
Our destination was a beach we’d found many years ago—we like it not only for the foreground rocks and view of snowy peaks across the lake, but also for the pristine water that is often calm enough for glassy reflections. Another appeal is that it’s one of our discoveries—not that we’re the only ones who visit here, but despite its obvious appeal, this spot hasn’t yet made anyone’s list of New Zealand’s must-photograph destinations.
Don and I always try to offer our workshop groups a mix of photo locations, from popular to unknown. We certainly need to take our groups to all the beautiful New Zealand scenes that inspired them to travel around the world in the first place (I’m looking at you, Wanaka Tree), but we want to balance those by providing opportunities to capture New Zealand scenes that feel more uniquely their own.
Driving out in the dark this morning, I remembered our visit here a couple of years ago, when we almost couldn’t find this unmarked location because (it turned out) a few landmark trees had been removed. And since I’d missed last year’s visit here, I was afraid I wouldn’t remember how to get there, but our driver Steve was pretty confident he knew where to go, and we did indeed find it without trouble.
Pulling up in the faint light of the approaching sunrise, I could see nearby shrubs swaying in a strong breeze, dashing my hope for a reflection that might compensate for the flat sky. After giving the group a brief orientation, I guided them down to the lake and encouraged everyone to take advantage of the plentiful boulders—both the few protruding from the water, and the many clearly visible just beneath the surface.
There’s no trail from the parking area to the lake—you just have to pick your way across dry lakebed covered with more boulders. Usually this walk is just a few yards from the unpaved road where we park, but with the lake lower than usual, the lakeshore was more than 100 yards away—still not far, but definitely farther than I’d seen before. As this realization sank in, I could also see that the lower water had exposed even more rocks than usual—a small bonus.
Having arrived at the water more than a half hour before sunrise, darkness still ruled. As everyone extracted gear and set up tripods, it seemed like a good time to remind them that they are under no obligation to expose their images as dark as their eyes see the scene, and that this is a perfect opportunity to soften the churn atop the lake with long exposures. Some in the group immediately chose their own foreground rock or rocks and went straight to work, while I spent a little time going over hyperfocal focus techniques with a few people concerned about front-to-back sharpness.
Most photographers understand that stopping down (small aperture) increases depth of field, and that the wider the focal length, the greater the depth of field as well. By far the trickiest factor in maximizing front-to-back sharpness is choosing the correct focus point—focus too far, and nearby subjects will be soft; focus too close, and distant subjects will be soft.
Some photographers use seat of the pants hacks that are (slightly) better than nothing, such as focusing 1/3 of the way into the frame or 1/3 of the way into the scene (these aren’t the same thing), but they provide a false sense of focus-security while too often being wrong. The most reliable way to maximize depth of field is to use a hyperfocal app or table (remember those?) that identifies the hyperfocal point: the closest you can focus and still be sharp all the way out to infinity. But that’s not always convenient.
Lacking a hyperfocal app (or, more likely, too lazy to pull my phone out and check it), I usually start with a rough (experience based) idea of what the hyperfocal distance is for my chosen focal length and f-stop. (The more you check your hyperfocal app and apply its results, the more accurate your rough ideas will be.) Armed with that knowledge, I determine the closest thing that must be sharp (CTTMBS). If it’s clearly farther away than my estimated hyperfocal distance, my focus point doesn’t really matter (as long as it’s farther than the CTTMBS) and I just focus on the most convenient distant object.
When I think my CTTMBS is fairly close to my hyperfocal distance, but I still feel like there’s a comfortable amount of wiggle room, I just pick a spot behind CTTMBS and focus there. (Because focusing on the CTTMBS gives me worthless sharpness in front of it, at the cost of essential distant sharpness.) At that point the decision becomes, how far behind? I usually find something about 50% beyond my CTTMBS. In other words, if the CTTMBS is 10 feet away, I’ll focus about 15 feet distant; if it’s 4 feet away, I’ll pick a spot about 6 feet away.
Any time I’m not 100 percent confident with my focus point choice, I magnify the image preview in my (mirrorless) viewfinder (if you’re shooting with a DSLR, you’ll need to use the preview on your LCD, but I find that less than ideal for critical sharpness decisions), checking both my CTTMBS and a distant object.
When I’m not comfortable guessing the focus point, or when my review reveals an area of the image isn’t sharp, I suck it up and check my hyperfocal app. (And it’s possible that the CTTMBS is so close, I just can’t get there from here and the only way to achieve front-to-back sharpness is focus stacking—something my one-click paradigm doesn’t allow me to do, but there’s absolutely nothing wrong with it if you choose to focus stack.)
I was comfortable with my seat of the pants approach this morning. I started by identifying a group of exposed and submerged rocks that made a strong foreground for the lake and distant mountains, then positioned myself to emphasize a coherent and balanced pattern in the rocks’ relationships to one another.
By the time I was ready to start shooting, it was still dark enough to do multi-second exposures without a neutral density filter. I spent a lot of time with this group of rocks and my 16-35 lens, gradually moving closer and dropping lower as I became more familiar with the scene. Closer and wider allowed me to fill the foreground with the rocks; lower reduced the amount of open lake in the middle of my frame. When I felt like I’d exhausted the possibilities, I moved on to other nearby rock relationships.
As we all worked, the sky that had looked completely socked in when we started, began opening up, first revealing the peaks, and soon thereafter coloring the clouds with warm sunlight. With this, what had been a nice but unspectacular morning of photography took a more dramatic turn, and I rushed back to my original rock grouping that remained my favorite foreground subject.
Armed with prior knowledge, I went straight to the version of the composition I liked best on my initial pass. I dropped my camera (on my tripod, of course) down to about 18 inches above the water, and moved it to about 3 feet from the closest rock (tripod in about 4 inches of water). This close, the focal length that filled the frame left/right with rocks was around 24mm, which I knew at f/16 would give me a hyperfocal distance of around 4 feet. To increase my margin for error, I stopped down to f/18, then focused at the front of the second-closest rock (right of the nearest rock).
By this time the sky was bright enough that the only way to achieve a shutter speed long enough to smooth the choppy water was to replace my regular polarizer with my Breakthrough Filters 6-Stop Dark polarizer. This, combined with f/18 and ISO 50, enabled a more than adequate 13-second exposure—that, it turned out, also picked up slight motion blur in the clouds.
If you’ve made it this far (kudos to you), before leaving (and after checking out my gallery, of course), take the time to study this image and appreciate the color and clarity of the water. If you thought this was unique to Lake Pukaki, you’d be wrong—in this workshop our groups get to enjoy many large New Zealand South Island glacial lakes—Lake Wakatipu, Lake Te Anau, Lake Wanaka and its sister, Lake Hawea, Tasman Lake, Lake Tekapo, and Lake Pukaki—and they’re all some version of the color and clarity you see here.
Don and I return to New Zealand next year
Front to Back
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Channeling the Donner Party
Posted on July 18, 2024
Star Spangled Night, Milky Way and Tasman Lake, New Zealand
Sony a7R V
Sony 14mm f/1.8 GM
ISO 4000
f/1.8
20 seconds
Landscape photographers know suffering. With no control over the weather and light, we’re often forced to sacrifice comfort, sometimes even safety, in pursuit of our subjects. Cold, exhaustion, sleep deprivation, hunger—it all goes with the territory. But in the long run the successes, though never guaranteed, far outweigh the sacrifices.
So, when my wife and I scaled the short but steep trail (336 stairs—I counted) to the Tasman Lake overlook in New Zealand earlier this month, we knew it would be cold, and found out quickly that the route was treacherously icy as well. But we persevered and were rewarded with a lake view beneath the southern night sky that was almost beyond comprehension for our Northern Hemisphere brains.
Did I mention the cold? When I’m taking pictures, though I’m very much aware of the temperature, no matter how extreme, it never bothers me. For anyone with me who isn’t shooting? Not so much. But Sonya braved the frigid temps for 30 minutes—long enough to appreciate the majesty of the moment, and for me to get some nice pictures. Mission accomplished.
One of the things about planning a photo shoot in difficult conditions is anticipation and planning—not just for the shoot itself, but for all the other factors supporting it. In addition to the knowledge that the Milky Way would indeed be shining above the lake, and the moon wouldn’t be present to wash out the essential darkness, we also anticipated the possibility of an icy trail and carried a pair of Yaktrax for improved footing, made sure our lights were in working order, and had all the appropriate cold weather gear. And knowing that afternoon that we’d be driving into Aoraki / Mt. Cook National Park and possibly staying well past dark, I had the foresight (patting myself on the back) to check into our hotel in Twizel and make arrangements for dinner before embarking on our adventure.
Calling Twizel a sleepy town would be an understatement. Because our hotel locks the registration area and sends the staff home at 8:00 p.m., and most restaurants in town also close their doors at 8:00, at hotel check-in I inquired about a place in town to eat after 8:00. The woman at the front desk sent us to (raved about, in fact) a restaurant nearby. But not wanting to take her word that it would be open after 8:00, we drove over to talk to someone at the restaurant in person. When I explained to Carol, the nice lady who greeted us at the restaurant, that I wasn’t sure what time we’d be there, she said she’d just put us down for between 8:00 and 9:00. Great!
We were already getting hungry by the time we drove into the park and started our hike, but sucked it up like good photographers (well one of us at least—the other just sucked it up like a good human with a crazy partner). After our successful ascent and stay at the top, our prime emphasis on the descent was not falling on our butts, but rattling around the back of our minds was our extreme cold and hunger, and (especially) the relief waiting for us back in Twizel.
Back in town we beelined to the restaurant. Having checked the menu in advance, our mouths already watered in anticipation. It was still relatively full, but everyone was in the bar area watching the All Blacks vs. England rugby game (rugby is a religion in New Zealand, and the All Blacks are the deity of choice). There was no sign of Carol, any hostess or server, so I approached the bar and told the bartender we have a dinner reservation. He just stared at me like I’d asked where I could park my camel, finally saying with an implicit duh, “We stopped serving dinner at 8:00.” Dropping Carol’s name was met with a blank stare and a shrug. When I asked where else we might find dinner after 8:00 p.m., he just chuckled and said, “This is Twizel.”
By now it was after 8:45 and very clear that pleading with the bartender would be a waste of time, so we zipped over to town centre hoping to find something open. The only place with any sign of life was the local pub, so we parked and rushed in. Everyone here was watching the rugby game too, and try as we might, we couldn’t get enough of anyone’s attention to ask about dinner. Fortunately (or so it seemed), about then the game ended (All Blacks 16 — England 15) and the rugby zombies snapped out of their trances.
At least this time when we asked about dinner we got a little sympathy, but still no dinner. Walking back out into the cold and suddenly desperate, we remembered a gas station as we entered town—maybe we could at least find snacks there? Then we noticed a liquor store next door to the pub, a potential snack oasis in a frozen desert? Not so much. As we approached the entrance, a woman came out the front door and told us they’d just closed.
Turns out the gas station was fully automated, with no minimart, unlike pretty much every gas station in the US. So we limped back to the hotel, hoping maybe to find vending machines that would sustain us until breakfast. But with the lobby area locked tight, we had to enter through a side door that only provided access to the rooms, but none of the hotel’s other (meager) amenities.
By then we were so hungry we’d temporarily forgotten how cold we were. That is, until we turned the key in our door and walked into what surely must be a cryogenic chamber with beds. We were already accustomed to the unheated hotel hallways with temperatures that rival the temps outside (you can see your breath in a New Zealand hotel hallway in winter), but this was an entirely new level of cold. Before doing anything else, I went searching for the heater and finally found mounted to the wall a box with vents and a couple of knobs, about the size of a toaster. Surely this couldn’t be the heater?
It was in fact the heater. A heater, it turns out, that also doubles as a white noise machine. Genius! So we cranked it, keeping our outdoor clothes on while unpacking and rummaging for scraps of food in our luggage. Eventually Sonya struck pay dirt, excavating two pieces of hard candy from the bottom of her purse—dinner!
By 10:00 p.m. it had become pretty clear that the heater, despite achieving impressive decibel levels, was never going to generate enough warmth to make the room comfortable, and decided our best defense would be bed. While this did nothing for the hunger, perhaps sleep would mitigate our discomfort.
It’s amazing what being awake in a dark room does to the mind. Freezing cold, starving (okay, perhaps a bit of hyperbole but you get the idea), my thoughts kept drifting to the Donner Party. I discovered new empathy in their plight, but only the knowledge that Sonya is mostly vegetarian and doesn’t eat red meat allowed me to eventually drift off to sleep with both eyes closed.
Somehow, we survived the night.
(I should add that this is the only bad hotel experience I’ve ever had in New Zealand. Despite the chilly hallways, and bafflingly flaccid bacon, I truly love the hotels there.)
A few words about this image
In my prior blog post I shared the details of this night above Tasman Lake. But before checking out, I’d like to add a thought or two.
Most of my Milky Way shoots skew heavily to a vertical orientation that maximizes the amount of Milky Way in my frame. Between the wall of peaks stretching northward, and the Magellanic Clouds high in the southern sky, if ever a scene were to break me of this habit, it’s this view of Tasman Lake.
New Zealand Night, Milky Way Over Tasman Lake
So this night I made a conscious effort to emphasize horizontal orientation, and the image I shared last week reflects that choice. But I’ve learned to never leave a beautiful scene, night or day, without giving myself both horizontal and vertical options.
Sometimes as soon as I reorient and put my eye to the viewfinder I’ll see something I missed; other times, it’s not until further scrutiny with the benefit of my large monitor at home, that I’m surprised to find I actually prefer the less obvious orientation.
So, despite my plan to emphasize horizontal frames this evening, I made sure I didn’t leave without some verticals as well. In this case, since I’ve photographed here before, I didn’t find anything especially surprising. But I did try something new, entirely ignoring the lakeshore and small pool on the rocks directly beneath me, including only enough lake to feature a couple of icebergs. This minimal foreground allowed the maximum Milky Way. (Which, at 14mm, turned out to be quite a bit of Milky Way.)
And as I’ve said before, the color of the lake in this image is real, though at night there isn’t enough light to see it. This ability to reveal realities lost to human vision is probably my favorite thing about photography.
Join Don Smith and me for next year’s New Zealand adventure
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The Joy of Suffering
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New Zealand After Dark
Posted on June 19, 2024
Dark Night, Milky Way and Tasman Lake, New Zealand
Sony a7S II
Sony 12 – 24 f/4 G
ISO 10,000
f/4
30 seconds
This week I have New Zealand on my mind. In preparation for the New Zealand Winter photo workshop that begins next week, I started going through unprocessed images from prior New Zealand visits. I was actually looking for something else when I stumbled upon this Milky Way image from the 2019 trip, when Don Smith and I guided a group of Sony influencers around the South Island. I’d already processed a virtually identical composition of this scene back then, but since my Milky Way processing has evolved (improved), I decided to give it another shot.
Day or night, I love this Tasman Lake scene in particular because it so beautifully captures what I love most about New Zealand. We only do this workshop in winter, which of course leads to the inevitable question: “Why?” The simple answer is that the modest sprinkling of tourists, consistently interesting skies, and snowy peaks I love so much, are only possible in winter. I could go on and on with my answer, but since a picture is worth a thousand words, I’ll just save you some time and give you six-thousand words worth of examples. (You’re welcome.)
But even once I convince skeptics that winter in New Zealand is in fact quite beautiful, I’m usually hit with a follow-up: “But isn’t it cold?” Sure it’s cold, but by most people’s expectations of winter, New Zealand’s South Island is actually quite mild—with average highs in the 40s and 50s, and lows in the 30s, it’s similar to winter in Northern California and Oregon. I would venture that there’s not a single person reading this who doesn’t already have in their closet enough winter warmth to ensure cozy comfort in a New Zealand winter. Also like Northern California and Oregon, in winter New Zealand’s South Island gets rain and fog in the lowlands, and snow in the mountains, conditions I find so much better for photography (and for just plain being outside) than the sweltering blank-sky California summers I left back home.
All that said, for me the strongest argument for winter in New Zealand is Southern Hemisphere’s night sky. Inherently pristine air and minimal light pollution makes New Zealand is an astrophotographer’s paradise any season. But winter is when the Milky Way’s brilliant core shines in the east after sunset, already much higher above the horizon than my Northern Hemisphere eyes are accustomed to. The galactic core remains visible all night, ascending further and slowly rotating westward, before finally fading on the other side of the sky in the pre-sunrise twilight. That means more than 12 hours of quality Milky Way time, and the ability to place it above landscapes facing east, north, or west, by simply choosing the time of night you photograph it. And joining the celestial show are the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds—satellite galaxies of our Milky Way, only visible in the Southern Hemisphere.
Benefiting from our years of experience on the South Island, Don and I have identified many very nice locations for photographing the Milky Way, but our two favorites feature the galactic core above glacial lakes that are bounded by snowy peaks. One of these is on the shore Lake Wakatipu near Queenstown; the other is a vista above Tasman Lake in Mt. Cook / Aoraki National Park. This week’s image, from the 2019 trip, is of the Tasman Lake scene.
From the very first time my eyes feasted on it, I marveled at what a spectacular place the Tasman Lake view would be to photograph the Milky Way. In 2019, Don and I were especially pleased to be guiding this group of young photographers who were as excited about photographing the Milky Way as we were, so this shoot was in our plan since before the workshop started.
The sky this evening was crystal clear, but as the sky darkened, I found myself still down at the foot of the lake (just out of the frame on the far right), where I’d photographed sunset with most of the group. The majority decided to stay put for the Milky Way shoot, and while I couldn’t deny that this spot would likely be no less spectacular, I couldn’t pass the opportunity at the elevated lake view that had been on my radar for so long. I also thought the Milky Way would align better with the most prominent peaks from this vantage point. So I scrambled back up the boulders to the trail and race-walked more than a mile, then scaled more than 300 stairs in near darkness, to get in position.
I expected to find the few who weren’t down at the lakeside sunset spot (this group always scattered) would already be up here, but I arrived to find the view empty. While I was happy to eventually have the company of a couple of others, the utter solitude I enjoyed for the first 30 minutes felt downright spiritual.
Going with my dedicated night camera, the Sony a7S II, I started with my default night lens at the time, the Sony 24mm f/1.4. But the scene was so expansive, I quickly switched to my Sony 16-35 f/2.8 GM for a wider view. While that did the job for a while, it wasn’t long before I found myself wanting an even bigger view, so I reached for my Sony 12-24 f/4 G lens. Because light capture is the single most important factor in a Milky Way image, in general I find f/4 too slow. (Today I’d use my 14mm f/1.8 or 12-24 f/2.8, but back then those lenses were still at least a year away.) But really wanting the widest possible view, I rationalized that since the a7S II can handle 10,000 ISO without any problem, and the star motion of a 30-second exposure at 12mm would be minimal, and just went for it. Mitigating the f/4 exposure problems was the fact that the best parts of the scene’s foreground, the snow and water, were highly reflective, while the dark rock wasn’t really essential to the scene.
The result as processed in 2019, while noisier than ideal, was still usable. But as time passes, I’ve become less and less thrilled with many of my old Milky Way processing choices—that image was no exception. Since I’ve been pretty thrilled with the results reprocessing old Milky Way images with Lightroom’s latest noise reduction tool, I thought this might be a great time to reprocess this old scene to see if I could do it better.
For no reason in particular, I chose different image to process, but the compositions are nearly identical. As expected, the new Lightroom noise reduction did a much better job minimizing the inevitable noise that comes at 10,000 ISO, so I was already ahead of the game. The only other major processing improvement I made was the color of the sky, which, as my night sky processing evolves, I’m making much less blue.
Because no one knows what color the night sky supposed to be when given the amount of exposure necessary bring out foreground detail, I’ve always believed that the color of the sky in a Milky Way image is the photographer’s creative choice. I mean, scientists might be able to tell you what color it should be (there’s a very strong case for green), but to me the bottom line is image credibility (and green just won’t do it).
Whatever night sky color I’ve ended up with has entirely a function of the color temperature I choose when I process my raw file in Lightroom—no artificially changing the hue, saturation, or in any other way plugging in some artificial color. Since I do think the foreground (non-sky) of a night image looks more night-like (I don’t want a night image that looks like daylight with stars) with the bluish tint I get when the color temperature is cooled to somewhere in the 3000-4000 degrees range (photographers will know what I’m talking about—non-photographers will just need to take my word), for years I cooled the entire image that way—hence the blue night skies. But Lightroom now makes it super easy to process the sky and foreground separately and seamlessly, so I no longer cool my night skies nearly as much as before (or at all). Now my night skies tend to be much closer to black, trending almost imperceptibly to the purple side of blue (avoiding the cyan side).
Oh, and the color of Tasman Lake you see in this image is real, I swear—the color of the South Island’s glacial lakes is another reason to love this country, but that’s a story for another day.
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This year’s New Zealand workshop is full, but Don and I will do it again next year.
New Zealand After Dark
Organic Discovery
Posted on May 30, 2024
Sunbeams, Lóndrangar, Iceland
Sony a7R V
Sony 24-105 f/4 G
ISO 100
f/13
1/40 second
When I sit down each week to write a new blog post, I usually have a general idea of where I want to go, but little plan for how I’m going to get there. I’ll start with a couple of relevant sentences, then just see where that leads me. Depending on the topic, and my state of mind at the time, the effort that gets me from concept to completed blog can range from simple to Sisyphean. Regardless of the struggle, I’m always surprised by the insights the creation process itself uncovers—I learn so much about myself, photography, and the natural world in general, simply through exploring with words, that I realize writing this blog is as much for me as it is for my audience.
It occurs to me that this is very much the way I approach my photography—I’ll arrive at a location and identify something I like, but am usually not quite sure how I want to handle the scene until I frame it in my camera and start working. Or more accurately, I might think I know how I want to handle the scene from that initial spark of attraction, but usually discover much more as I work.
Whether I’m writing or taking pictures, beyond an overall general concept or theme (like coffee table books, or a moonrise), I prefer my creation to happen organically. That’s because, for me at least, I find going in with a predetermined mindset stifling. In life, the instant you think you know the answer is the instant you stop learning; in photography, the instant you think you have the shot is the instant you stop seeing.
I’m reminded of this every time I conduct a workshop image review and see the mind boggling variety of images shared. We’re all going to the same places, but everyone’s seeing something different. Even if the execution isn’t perfect, the vision that shines through can be downright inspiring.
Just as every writer starts with a blank page, when looking for photographs I try to challenge myself with the reminder that the shots are there, that my ability to see them is limited only by my own creativity. I’ve learned that my best view into a scene’s essence doesn’t come instantly—it happens organically, and can’t be rushed. Much like the first draft of whatever I’m writing, my first click is only the starting point that serves as a catalyst for the discovery process to follow.
Landscape photography in particular, with its primarily stationary subjects, lends itself to this organic discovery approach. Rather than anticipate and react, as sports and wildlife photographers must, as a photographer of mostly stationary landscape subjects, landscape photography (usually) provides all the time I need to identify a potential subject and evaluate it fully before pressing my shutter. I just feel more creative when I know that, no matter how long I take, my subject will still be there when I’m finally ready.
This need to spend time with my subjects, adjusting my compositions as they come to me, is a prime reason I feel so strongly about using a tripod. I’m old enough to remember writing longhand on paper with pen or pencil. And while it’s undeniable that some of the greatest writing in human history happened this way, largely because of my need to edit as I go, my own writing took a significant leap forward when I started using a computer and word processor.
I can say the same thing about the switch from the delayed results of film to the instant feedback of digital, and the tripod played a major part in that. I’ve always used a tripod with most of my photography because it allows me frame up my scene and study it as long as necessary. But since the arrival of digital capture and its instant feedback, my tripod plays an even bigger role. In addition to allowing me to spend time with my scene before clicking, with a digital camera I can immediately study my results and identify necessary adjustments secure in the knowledge that the composition that needs tweaking is patiently waiting in the viewfinder atop my tripod.
As happens with my writing, this edit on the fly approach almost always takes my images places I hadn’t imagined when I started. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve ended up with something much different, and better, simply because I had quality, unhurried time with my scene.
The image I share above was from this year’s version of the Iceland photo workshop that Don Smith and I partner on each winter. Snaefellsnes Peninsula is filled with visual highlights, especially in winter, but Londrangar is a highlight among highlights. This image features several of the (many) reasons we choose winter for our Iceland workshop: brooding clouds, pounding surf, and fresh snow. And while the prime focal point here is the Londrangar sea stack, the volatile conditions always provide something new to consider with each visit.
So this year when the group arrived at Londrangar, I was initially drawn to the dramatic surf and clouds, starting pretty wide to include more of these features—including very large waves battering the rocks about 40 feet below me. But as I worked the scene, the dusting of white snow on the rugged basalt drew my eye, so I tightened my composition to emphasize it.
Given how much I dislike a disorganized foreground and messy borders, in a scene like this, with its jumble of rocks and ever-shifting surf, create a particular challenge. It took me awhile to find a composition that satisfied those instincts, but once I had a working composition fixed atop my tripod, I was free to play with different motion effects in the surf. With churning surf, I’ll often use multi-second exposures, with the help of my Breakthrough Filters 6-Stop Dark Polarizer, but this time I was so enamored of the white-water explosions with each wave, I also tried freezing the collision with a fast shutter speed.
As I grew familiar with the waves’ patterns—how to anticipate their arrival point and timing—I refined my composition further. Then, with little warning, the sun broke through to cast golden beams on the gray horizon, forcing me to jettison my casual pace and respond quickly to the sudden beauty. Fortunately, by this time I’d become so familiar with the scene and all its idiosyncrasies that I didn’t feel at all rushed. With only slight adjustments to my current composition to balance the sea stack with the shafting sunlight, I spent the next five or so minutes timing the surf and enjoying the view.
The Motion of the Ocean
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Go With the Flow
Posted on May 16, 2024
Blur, Diamond Beach, Iceland
Sony a7R V
Sony 24-105 f/4 G
ISO 50
f/11
1 second
Despite many visits to Diamond Beach over the last half-dozen or so years, I still don’t feel like I’ve mastered the iceberg blurred water shot to my complete satisfaction. But I keep working on it, and this year I was at least was able to capture something I like.
In previous visits, when my attempts to capture the perfect motion blur shot failed, I’d fall back on sunstar images—partly because I find them easier, but mostly because the backlit translucence of an iceberg is spectacularly beautiful. But as much as I like these sunstar images, I’ve seen other photographers’ Diamond Beach flowing surf images that I like even better, and can’t help going for my own.
The problem (aside from only getting one shot at it per year), is getting all the scene’s many moving parts working together. Blurring a waterfall, or the whitewater of a flowing river or creek, is relatively simple because, even though the water is moving, the surrounding scene, including the position of the water feature itself, is stationary. And while crashing surf is fairly random from one wave to the next, again the surrounding scene (the beach or rocks upon which the surf is crashing) is fixed. But nothing at Diamond Beach is still for long.
Foremost among the Diamond Beach moving parts the frigid North Atlantic’s unpredictable power, which requires unwavering attention—in 2022, a rogue wave swamped four workshop members who reasonably believed their position above the beach was safe. Trying to coordinate all the other variables with one eye constantly on the ocean is the photography equivalent of patting your head while rubbing your belly.
The first essential element to consider is the location of whatever mini iceberg I target, which needs to be planted in sand, yet close enough to the water for an occasional wave to wash up and around it. Too far from the surf and the waves never reach the ice; too close, and the subject will actually float away mid-exposure. Often it’s difficult to tell whether a potential subject is properly positioned until actually attempting to photograph it for awhile. And even the best ice subject doesn’t in one place for more than a wave or two.
Adding more frustration to these Diamond Beach iceberg scenes is the power of moving water, which, even when it doesn’t reposition the ice, can still impart micro-movement during the long exposure. I can’t tell you how often I’ve thought I’d nailed a Diamond Beach shot, only to zoom in on the ice afterward to find an imperceptible rotation or wobble had made it too soft to use.
Then there’s the timing of the click. I’ve found that the most appealing blur happens when the wave has swept past the ice and is actually washing back out. Equally important is the duration of the exposure, which needs to be long enough to blur the water, but not so long that all definition in the water is lost. Even if I’ve nailed all the above variables, since I focus on my chosen ice subject before the wave arrives, even if it stays perfectly stationary during my exposure, just the slightest shift in the ice’s position before my shutter click can invalidate my chosen focus point.
Of course all these machinations are irrelevant to the people don’t like the silky water effect in any image. And while I agree that at times blurring water verges on cliché, the truth is that fast water illuminated by anything less than full sunlight usually offers little choice. In those conditions the question isn’t whether to blur the water, it’s how much to blur it?
The argument against blurring moving water that always amuses me most is the one that says blurred water “isn’t natural.” The reasoning is that blurred-water images should be disqualified because we never see blurred water in nature. My question for these “purists” is, how many times have you seen the alternative to blurred water: individual water droplets suspended in midair?
This question just underscores a photographic truth I’ve been hammering on for years: The camera and human eye experience the world entirely differently. Discarding images simply because they aren’t “natural” would eliminate not only all black and white images, but also every image that’s not, uhhh, three-dimensional. Hmmm—let’s count how many images that leaves us with….
On the other hand, embracing your camera’s unique vision is empowering. It opens doors to many creative possibilities, of which blurred water is just a scratch on the surface. While there’s no magic formula to achieve it, blurring water isn’t hard once you learn to see the world as your camera does.
The prime determining factor in blurred water is the distance any individual water drop traverses your frame while the shutter is open: the more of the frame it spans, the greater the blur effect. The amount of blur you capture starts with the speed of the water, over which you have no control. But take heart, because there are several variables you can control:
- Focal length: The longer your focal length (more telephoto), the shorter the distance from one side the frame to the other (a wide angle vista can encompass many miles; a telephoto from the same vantage point can reduce the image’s width to a few hundred yards or less), so our imaginary water droplet will span a greater percentage of the frame’s width in a telephoto exposure.
- Subject distance: Moving closer achieves the same thing a telephoto lens does because the closer you are to the moving water, the shorter the distance our water droplet has to travel to span the frame.
- Shutter speed: The longer the shutter is open, the farther our droplet can travel during exposure. You can keep the shutter open by reducing your ISO, shrinking your aperture, and/or cutting the amount of light with a polarizer or neutral density filter.
Because long shutter speeds increase the amount of blur, blurring water is easier when you photograph in reduced light, such as overcast or shade, that requires a longer shutter speed. In full sunlight it’s pretty much impossible to blur water without a neutral density filter to cut the light illuminating the scene.
In a river or creek, whitewater generally works best because not only does it move fast, it also shows the blur effect much better than rapidly flowing green water. In other words, for any given combination of conditions and settings, while the amount of blur is the same for green water as it is for white water, the blur will be much more noticeable in the white water.
When the blur subject is ocean waves, there’s always an abundance of white water to work with. But rather than the relatively consistent flow pattern of river rapids, each ocean wave is significantly different from the others. I think this extreme variability from one wave to the next is what I most enjoy about ocean wave motion-blur images.
Approaching Diamond Beach this February morning, I scanned for ice in the narrow subject zone. I’ve had visits with more potential targets, but also some with less, so overall I was pleased with this year’s opportunities. I spent most of my time there strolling the black sand, working with workshop students, and occasionally targeting an ice chunk of my own for a few unsuccessful frames.
It wasn’t until I was confident everyone in the group was comfortable with the surroundings and happily at work on shots of their own that I got serious about my own photography.
I approached this little iceberg, maybe the size of a large microwave, and set up my tripod a couple of feet away. For the next 15 minutes or so, I worked carefully as up to 10 waves approached my subject, wrapped it, then flowed back out. Each wave nudged the ice slightly, forcing me to move my tripod and recompose before every frame.
Having an LCD and viewfinder to immediately scrutinize each capture was a huge advantage that allowed me to zero in on the shutter speed that worked for my focal length and distance, as well as verify the sharpness of my subject. Having waterproof boots that went up to within six inches of my knees was another advantage I quickly appreciated.
I still don’t think this Diamond Beach blurred wave image is as good as others I’ve seen, but I’m working on it…
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Water on the Move
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Visualize the Future
Posted on May 6, 2024
Twin Falls, Ribbon Fall and Bridalveil Fall, Yosemite
Sony α1
Sony 16-35 f/2.8 GM
ISO 50
f/16
2.5 seconds
Virtually every scene I approach with a camera is beautiful, but a beautiful scene isn’t enough if all the parts don’t work together. Human experience of the world differs greatly from what the camera captures—the photographer’s job is to understand and use those differences.
Ansel Adams and visualization
Most photographers know that Ansel Adams visualized his final print, and the darkroom work necessary to create it, before clicking the shutter. This ability to look into the future of each capture is part of what set Ansel Adams apart from his peers.
But Adams’ extensive darkroom work is often cited by digital photographers defending their over-processesed images. We’ve all heard (and perhaps even uttered ourselves) statements like, “Ansel Adams spent more time in the darkroom than he did in the field,” or “Ansel Adams would love Photoshop.” Perhaps true, but using Ansel Adams’ darkroom mastery to justify extreme Photoshop processing misses a significant point: Adams’ mental picture of the ultimate print was founded upon a synergistic relationship between his own vision and his camera’s vision, coupled with a master’s control of capture variables like composition, light, motion, and depth. In other words, Adams’ gift wasn’t merely his darkroom skills, it was an overarching vision that enabled him to make decisions now based on invisible realities he knew he’d encounter later.
I bring this up because I’m concerned about many photographers’ Photoshop-centric “fix it later” approach that seriously undervalues capture technique. This mindset ranges from simple over-reliance on the LCD for exposure with no real understanding of the histogram or how metering works (shoot-review-adjust, shoot-review-adjust, shoot-review-adjust, until the picture looks okay; or shoot so it looks good, not realizing the exposure is wrong until they get it on their computer), to photographers who channel their disappointment with an image into an overzealous Photoshop transformation, pumping color, adding “effects,” or inserting/removing objects until they achieve the ooooh-factor the image lacks.
The better approach is to understand the potential in a scene while actually viewing it in Nature, camera in hand, then to anticipate the processing the image will require and shoot accordingly. In other words, Photoshop should inform capture decisions, not fix them.
Putting Photoshop in its place
Every image ever captured, film or digital, was processed. Just as the processing piece was easy to ignore when the exposed film you sent to a lab magically returned as prints or slides, many digital shooters, forgetting that a jpeg capture is processed by their camera, brag that their jpeg images are “Exactly the way I shot them.” Trust me, they’re not.
Whether you shoot monochrome film, Fuji Velvia slides, low-compression jpegs, or (especially) the latest smartphone there’s nothing inherently pure about your “unprocessed” image. On the other hand, digital landscape photographers who understand that processing is unavoidable, rather than relinquish control of their finished product to black-box processing algorithms built into the camera, usually opt for the control provided by raw capture and hands-on processing.
Unfortunately, Photoshop’s power makes it difficult for many (myself included) to know where to draw the processing line. And every photographer draws that line in a different place—one photographer’s “manipulation” is another’s “masterpiece.” The reality is, Photoshop isn’t a panacea—its main function should be to complement the creativity already achieved in the camera, and not to fix problems created (or missed) at capture.
While I’m not a heavy Lightroom/Photoshop user, I readily acknowledge that they’re amazing tools that are an essential part of my photography workflow. I particularly appreciate that LR/PS give the me ability to achieve things possible with black and white film and a decent darkroom, but difficult-to-impossible with the color transparencies I shot for over 25 years. Of course processing is an ever-evolving art itself, one I’m still learning. I’m afraid to this day I find myself mortified by some of my earlier processing choices—as I no doubt will be at some later date by processing choices I make today.
Creating an image, from start to finish
Normally when I find myself at a popular Yosemite location like Valley View, I won’t get my camera out unless I can find something that feels truly unique. Last month, not wanting to stray from my workshop group, I was content to observe and assist. But when the clouds draping El Capitan and Cathedral Rocks started turning pink in the evening’s last light, I couldn’t resist.
I raced to my car and grabbed my tripod and Sony a1, already loaded with my 16-35 GM lens, and headed down to the large log embedded along the riverbank, just downstream from the parking lot. This log has been a Valley View fixture for years, but each year it gets nudged a little by spring runoff—some years more than others. I’m sure it will eventually be swept away entirely.
A trio of photographers was already in place on and around the log, but spying a spot I could squeeze into, I scaled the log and tightroped my way toward the small opening. Despite an extreme language mismatch, we were able to pantomime our way into a friendly equilibrium—lots of smiles and pointing, with a mutual thumbs-up for punctuation—that enabled me to set up in a spot that worked for me without disturbing them.
With the light changing quickly, I went right to work, framing up a wide draft version that included the entire Valley View scene: clouds, Ribbon Fall (on the left), El Capitan, Cathedral Rocks, Bridalveil Fall, and the Merced River. I was especially excited to be able to frame the scene with the two prominent waterfalls: well known and year-round Bridalveil on the right, and somewhat anonymous, seasonal Ribbon Fall (Yosemite’s highest vertical drop).
I wasn’t super crazy about the log in the middle of the river, but since it was right in the middle of the scene I wanted to photograph, I decided to lean into it and just make it part of my composition. And while I liked the whitewater, I was less than thrilled by its position in the lower right corner of my frame. Again, just something I’d need to accept and deal with.
Balanced atop my log, I raised my tripod as high it would go to prevent the foreground log’s protruding vertical branch from intersecting the far riverbank. To remove distracting texture from the whitewater, I decided to smooth the water with a long shutter speed, dialing to ISO 50 and stopping down to f/16. Exposure was tricky because the sky still held onto a fair amount of light, while the foreground was darkening fast, so I took care to monitor my histogram until I found a shutter speed that didn’t wash out the color, while still creating a pleasing (to my eyes) motion blur.
The preview image on my LCD looked mostly too dark, with the sky too bright, but I know my camera well enough to know that all the beautiful detail in the shadows and highlights would return like magic in Lightroom. Besides pulling down my highlights and dragging up my shadows, a small color temperature tweak, and some selective dodging/burning, this turned out to be a relatively simple image to process and get to come out exactly as I’d visualized it that evening.
One more thing
Check out the gallery below. All of these images were captured at Valley View. Rather than base my composition on the “standard” shot here, I crafted each to take advantage of whatever conditions were before me at the time. And while a few images do indeed settle for the more conventional composition, my decision to photograph that way was justified (in my mind) by the exceptional conditions that told me I should just get out of the way and let the scene speak for itself. So I guess the moral is, trust your instincts and don’t settle for the obvious—unless the obvious just hits you right over the head and you just can’t ignore it.
Valley View Variety
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The Battle of the Brains
Posted on May 3, 2024
Intimate Dogwood, Yosemite Valley
Sony a7RV
Sony 200-600 G
ISO 1600
f/10
1/125 second
Two photographers approach a dense forest festooned with blooming dogwood: One is drawn to a lovely bloom and can clearly visualize a uniquely beautiful image, but he has no idea how to manage his exposure variables to achieve it; the other photographer is so intent on minimizing diffraction while identifying the shutter speed that will freeze the gently swaying bracts without compromising the ISO, that to her, the scene is nothing more than a disorganized assortment of white splashes.
While most photographers don’t fall at these extremes of the creative/analytical continuum, the vast majority do approach their craft with a dominant intuitive or analytical bias, a right-brain versus left-brain struggle with one side or the other significantly stronger than the other. Compounding the problem, rather than simply getting out of the way and letting the strong side do its work, much like an irritating little brother, the less developed (notice I didn’t say “weaker”) side often seems committed to distracting its dominant counterpart.
But every once in a while I run into a photographer who seems to have negotiated a synergistic truce between her conflicting mental camps. She’s able to efficiently analyze and execute the plan-and-setup stage of a shoot, then check-in with her aesthetic counterpart for creative inspiration. As the time to click the shutter approaches, she seamlessly switches between the two camps: the right brain knows how much to soften the background and blur the water, while her left brain knows exactly how to make this happen. The result is images that consistently amaze with their creative inspiration and technical execution.
My job as a photo workshop leader (among other things) is to identify where each photographer falls on this analytical/intuitive spectrum so I can honor and refine the dominant side, and encourage and nurture the less developed side. And after more than 18 years leading photo workshops, I’ve learned that what most photographers perceive as a terminal shortcoming in their creative or analytical aptitude can usually be resolved once it’s untangled from the dominant side.
When I hear, “I have a good eye for composition…,” I know before the “but” exits the photographer’s lips that I’ll need to prove that he’s smarter than his camera (he is). Our time in the field will be spent working on jettisoning the camera’s automatic modes because as smart as it might seem, your camera is not creative. I try to demystify and simplify metering, exposure, and depth management until they become second nature, comforting allies rather than distracting antagonists. Fortunately, despite the fact that much of the available photography education seems designed to intimidate Einstein, laying a foundation for mastering photography’s technical side is ridiculously simple.
On the other hand, before the sentence that starts, “I know my camera inside and out…,” is finished, I know I’ll need to foster this photographer’s curiosity, encourage experimentation, and help her disengage the rules that constrain her creativity. We’ll think in terms of whether the scene feels right, and work on what-if camera games (“What happens if I do this”) that break rules. Success won’t require a brain transplant, she’ll just learn to value and trust her instincts.
Intuition is the key to breaking the rules that inhibit creativity, while simplification and repetition create technical confidence. Alone, these qualities are incomplete; in conflict, they’re mutually exclusive anchors that prevent movement; in concert, their synergy is the foundation of photographic success.
For example
Coincidentally, just this week I happed to find myself in a dense forest festooned with blooming dogwood. Go figure. A few minutes earlier I’d set my workshop group free just upstream from Valley View, and after making sure everyone was content, I grabbed my camera, tripod, and 200-600 lens and went dogwood hunting.
I started by switching on my creative brain and wandering slowly, scanning the surroundings for a dogwood flower (yes, I know they’re technically not flowers, they’re bracts) to isolate from its surroundings. Eventually I made my way across the road, and soon my eyes landed on a single bloom swaying gently in full shade. Its slightly green tint and pristine center (this is where the actual dogwood flowers reside) told me this specimen was young—exactly what I was looking for.
Instead of framing my subject up and clicking, I scanned the background and found a branch with more young flowers a couple of feet away. Positioning myself to align my target flower with the background flowers, I framed up a vertical composition. Briefly engaging my analytical brain, I opened my aperture wide for the absolute softest background, increased my ISO to mitigate the effects of the breeze, and focused on the dogwood’s center. Then I dial my shutter speed until the histogram looked right, checking to be sure my chosen speed could freeze the flower”s gentle bobbing.
My favorite moment when doing these creative selective focus shots is the instant my subject snaps into focus. Suddenly, the world in my viewfinder is completely different from the one outside my camera. In addition to the pillowy background flowers, I liked the way a few rays of sunlight had penetrated the dense branches overhead to illuminate a couple of green leaves in my frame.
My creative brain really liked the framing I’d found, but thought the background could use just a little more definition. So back to my analytical brain I went, stopping down to f/10—just enough to distinguish individual flowers in the soft background. But stopping down also reduced my exposure—since I couldn’t increase my shutter speed to add light, instead I increased my ISO knowing that whatever noise the higher ISO introduced would easily clean up in processing. Click.
Of course this creative/emotional switching doesn’t really happen consciously anymore, but there was a time when I was far more deliberate about the distinction. Like most things in life, the longer I do this, the more unconscious and seamless this switching becomes, and the better my two sides play together.
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More Dogwood!
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Happy Earth Day
Posted on April 26, 2024
Valley Fog, Tunnel View, Yosemite
Sony a7R V
Sony 24-105 f/4 G
ISO 100
f/10
1/6 second
My commitment for this blog is one image/post per week. With a workshop that started Sunday and ended Wednesday, I’m a little behind this week, but I made it! Next week I have a workshop that goes from Monday through Thursday, and the following week I’ll be completely off the grid rafting the Grand Canyon. But one way or the other, I’ll continue with my once per week commitment, even if I’m a little late. And if I do have to skip a week, I’ll catch up eventually, I promise. I return you now to your regular programming…
Happy Earth Day to you
How did you celebrate Earth Day (April 22) this year? I was fortunate enough to celebrate up close and personal, guiding a workshop group around Yosemite. It’s easy to appreciate a planet when you’re surrounded by some of its most exquisite beauty, and with a group of people who appreciates it as much as you do, but every time I visit, I’m reminded that we may in fact be loving our wonders to death.
It’s impossible to have zero impact on the natural world. Every day, even if we never leave the house, we consume energy that, directly or indirectly, pollutes the atmosphere and contributes the greenhouse gases that warm our planet. The problem only worsens when we venture outdoors. Our vehicles belch exhaust, or consume electricity that was the product of invasive mining. At our destination, the clothing we wear introduces microscopic, non-indiginous flora and fauna, while the noise we create clashes with the natural sounds that comfort others and communicate information to animals. Even foot travel, the oldest, most fundamental mode of transportation, crushes rocks, plants, and small creatures with each footfall. And let’s not forget the artificial light that dilutes our once black night sky.
I’m not suggesting that we all hole up beneath a rock. If everyone just considered how their actions impact the environment and acted responsibly, our planet would be a better, more sustainable place.
Let’s get specific
The damage that’s an unavoidable consequence of keeping the natural world accessible to all is a tightrope our National Park Service does an excellent job navigating. With their EVs, organic, and recycling mindset, it’s even easy for individuals to believe that the problem is everyone else.
I mean, who’d have thought merely walking on “dirt” could impact the ecosystem for tens or hundreds of years? But before straying off the trail for that unique perspective of Delicate Arch, check out this admonition from Arches National Park. And Hawaii’s black sand beaches may appear unique and enduring, but the next time you consider scooping a sample to share with friends back on the mainland, know that Hawaii’s black sand is a finite, ephemeral phenomenon that will be replaced with “conventional” white sand as soon as its volcanic source is tapped–as evidenced by the direct correlation between the islands with the most black sands beaches and the islands with the most recent volcanic activity.
Sadly, it’s Earth’s most beautiful locations that suffer most. Yosemite’s beauty is no secret—to keep it beautiful, the National Park Service has been forced to implement a reservation system to keep the crowds (marginally) manageable. Similar crowd curtailment restrictions are in place, or being strongly considered, at other national parks. And while the reservations have helped in Yosemite and elsewhere, the shear volume of visitors who make it through guarantees too much traffic, garbage, noise, and too many boots on the ground.
While Yosemite’s durable granite may lull visitors into environmental complacency, it is now permanently scarred by decades of irresponsible climbing. And Yosemite’s fragile meadows and wetlands, home many plants and insects that are an integral part of the natural balance that makes Yosemite unique, suffer from each footstep to the point than some are now off-limits.
A few years ago, so many people crowded the elevated bank of the Merced River to photograph Horsetail Fall’s sunset show, the riverbank collapsed—that area is now off limits during Horsetail season. Despite all this, I can’t tell you how often I see people in Yosemite cavalierly trampling meadows to get in position for a shot, as a trail shortcut, or to stalk a frightened animal.
Don’t be this person
Despite the damage inflicted by the sheer volume of garden variety tourists, my biggest concern is the much smaller cohort doing a disproportionate amount of damage: photographers. Chasing the very subjects they put at risk, photographers have a vested interest and should know better. But as the urge to top the one another grows, more photographers seem to be abusing nature in ways that at best betrays their ignorance of the damage they’re doing, and at worst reveals their startling indifference to the fragility of the very subjects that inspire them to click their shutters in the first place.
If I can’t appeal to your environmental conscience, consider that simply wandering about with a camera and/or tripod labels you, “Photographer.” In that role you represent the entire photography community: when you do harm as Photographer, most observers (the general public and outdoor decision makers) simply apply the Photographer label and lump all of us, even the responsible majority, into the same offending group.
Like it or not, one photographer’s indiscretion affects the way every photographer is perceived, and potentially brings about restrictions that directly or indirectly impact all of us. So if you like fences, permits, and rules, just keep going wherever you want to go, whenever you want to go there.
It’s not that difficult
Environmental responsibility doesn’t require joining Greenpeace or dropping off the grid (not that there’s anything wrong with that). Simply taking a few minutes to understand natural concerns specific to whatever area you visit is a good place to start. Most public lands have websites with information they’d love you to read before visiting. And most park officials are more than happy to share literature on the topic (you might in fact find useful information right there in that stack of papers you jammed into your car’s center console as you drove away from the entrance station).
Most national parks have non-profit advocacy organizations that do much more than advocate, maintaining trails and underwriting park improvements that would otherwise be impossible. For example, the Yosemite Conservancy funded Bridalveil Fall’s recently completed (significant) upgrade that included new flush toilets (yay!), new trails and vistas, and enhanced handicapped access.
If you spend a lot of time at a national park, consider supporting its non-profit partner. The two I belong to are Yosemite Conservancy and Grand Canyon Conservancy.
Develop a “leave no trace” mindset
Whether or not you contribute with your wallet, you can still act responsibly in the field. Stay on established trails whenever possible, and always think before advancing by training yourself to anticipate each future step with the understanding of its impact. Believe it or not, this isn’t a particularly difficult habit to form. Whenever you see trash, please pick it up, even if it isn’t yours. And don’t be shy about gently reminding (educating) other photographers whose actions risk soiling the reputation for all of us.
A few years ago, as a condition of my national parks’ workshop permits, I was guided to The Center for Outdoor Ethics and their “Leave No Trace” initiative. There’s great information here–much of it is just plain common sense, but I guarantee you’ll learn things too.
Armed with this mindset, go forth and enjoy nature–but please save some for the rest of us.
About this image
Valley Fog, Tunnel View, Yosemite
When I started taking pictures, long before the dawn of digital, my emphasis was outdoor subjects ranging from natural landscapes to urban skylines and bridges. But as my eye and overall relationship with the world has evolved, I’ve gravitated naturally toward landscapes and away from the cityscapes.
I understand now that this evolution has much to do with my love (and concern) for the natural world, both the beauty that surrounds us and damage we’re doing, and a desire to honor it. In recent years I’ve very consciously striven to, as much as possible, create images that allow people to imagine our planet untouched by humans—perhaps hoping that they’ll understand what’s at risk somehow do their share to stem the tide.
Though only number six on the current list of most visited national parks, Yosemite needs to cram the vast majority of its nearly 4-million annual visitors into the less-than 10 square miles of Yosemite Valley. In fact, for more than half the year, almost all of the park outside of Yosemite Valley is smothered in snow and closed to vehicles. This creates congestion and other problems that are unique to Yosemite.
One of the most beloved vistas on Earth, Tunnel View attracts gawkers like cats to a can-opener—all I have to say about that is, “Meow.” Despite its popularity, and the fact that the vista has indeed been crafted by the NPS (paved parking, enclosed by a low stone wall, and many trees removed to maintain the view), Tunnel View remains one of my favorite places to imagine a world without human interference.
My history with Tunnel View in Yosemite dates back to long before I ever picked up a camera, but I never take it for granted. Each time I visit, I try picture Yosemite before paintings, photographs, and word of mouth eliminated the possibility for utter surprise and awe, and what it must have been like to round a corner or crest a rise to see Yosemite Valley unfolding before you (earlier views of Yosemite were not at the current location of Tunnel View, but the overall view and experience were similar).
Dance of the Veils, Tunnel View, Yosemite
Today, unless I’m there for a moonrise, I rarely take out my camera at Tunnel View, preferring instead to watch the reaction of other visitors—either my workshop students or just random tourists. But every once in a while, the scene is too beautiful to resist. That happened twice for me in February, when I added two more to my (arguably already too full) Tunnel View portfolio: today’s image and the one I shared last week.
This week’s image came in the first workshop, before sunrise following an overnight rain. Though the compositions are similar, the moods of the two images are completely different. First, in last week’s image, the valley sported a thin glaze of snow, while the overnight temperatures for this week’s image weren’t quite cold enough to turn the rain to snow in Yosemite Valley (though we did find some had fallen on the east side of the valley).
But to me the biggest difference between the two images is the mood. In the snowy image I shared last week, the storm had moved on and the sky had cleared—most of the remaining clouds were local, radiating from the valley floor. The warm light of the approaching sun coloring the sky gives the scene a brighter, more uplifting feel.
The new image I share this week came during a break in the storm, but not at its end. With more rain to come, the moisture-laden sky darkened and cooled the scene, creating a brooding atmosphere. I especially like these scenes for the way they convey the timeless, prehistoric feel I seek.
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Tunnel View Views
The Other AI
Posted on April 16, 2024
Dance of the Veils, Tunnel View, Yosemite
Sony a7R V
Sony 24-105 f/4 G
ISO 100
f/10
1/10 second
What’s wrong with ACTUAL intelligence (the other AI)?
I love all the genuine eclipse photos popping up on social media—almost as much as I DESPISE all the fake eclipse photos. Though we’ve had to deal with a glut of fabricated photos since the introduction of computers and digital capture to photography (all the way back before the turn of the 21st Century), the advent of artificial intelligence, combined with insatiable social media consumption, has put the bogus image problem on steroids. Despite being downright laughable, these AI frauds seem to fool a disturbing number of viewers. More concerning, many who claim they’re not fooled claim they don’t care because they still find these AI-generated fakes “beautiful.”
Acknowledging that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, all I can do is shrug and offer that my own definition of beauty is founded on truth. Not necessarily a perfect reproduction, or repetition of literal fact, but an overarching connection to some essential reality.
Whether it’s a painting, a work of fiction, a photograph, or any other artistic creation, I need to feel that essential truth connecting the scene, the artist, and me. The reality in a work of art—visual, musical, written, or whatever—doesn’t need to be, in fact usually isn’t, a literal reproduction of the world as I know it. Rather, I prefer artistic creations that reveal a previously unseen (by me) truth about the world. In other words, while paintings are rarely literal interpretations of the world (and in fact can be quite abstract), and novels by definition aren’t factual, the artistic creations I’m drawn to tap the creator’s unique take on reality to expand my own.
Even photographs, once relied on as flawless reproductions of reality, can’t possibly duplicate our 3-dimensional, unbounded, dynamic, multi-sensory reality. But they can, in the right hands, leverage the camera’s reality to expose hidden truths about the world. No matter how “stunning” an AI-generated or dishonest composite (two or more unassociated scenes in one image) image might be at first glance, they lack the artist’s perspective, or any connection to reality, sometimes both. Even worse, counterfeit images pretend to represent a reality that doesn’t exist. While it may be possible for an AI creation to require genuine human insight and creativity, so far all I see is people using AI as a shortcut around actual intelligence.
Of course photographic deception started long before digital capture, but like so many other things computers simplified, digital capture made it easy for people more interested in attention than connection to attract the strokes they covet. At least in the film days, manipulating a photo still required a bit of skill and effort—back then, when it was done honestly, you could at least admire the perpetrator’s skill.
Full disclosure (I digress)
I have to confess that I was actually party to blatant image manipulation at the age of 11, when my best friend Rob and I did a sixth grade Science Fair project on UFOs. In Rob’s backyard (and with help from Rob’s dad), we first photographed a homemade styrofoam “flying saucer” suspended on a wire against a plain tarp. Next, without advancing the film, we photographed our school, then sent the film off to be processed (who remembers those days?).
A few days later, we had a pretty convincing black-and-white print of our school beneath a hovering UFO. But, since our sole goal was to prove how easy it is to fake a UFO sighting, we did reveal the sleight-of-camera trick in our presentation (so no harm, no foul).
The digital dilemma
The introduction of computers to the world of photography, even before digital camera’s were anything more than a promising novelty, created an almost irresistible temptation for photographers who lacked the ethic or inspiration to create their own images. At the time, with no consensus on where to draw the line on digital manipulation, some photographers innocently stepped over the spot where most of us would draw it today.
For example, in the mid-90s, when Art Wolfe cloned extra zebras into his (already memorable) zebra herd image, many cried “Foul!” Wolfe, who had no intent to deceive, was taken aback by the intensity of the blowback, arguing that the resulting image was a work of art (no pun intended), not journalism.
In the long run, the discussion precipitated by Wolfe’s act probably brought more clarity to the broader digital manipulation issue by forcing photographers to consider the power and potential ramifications of the nascent technology, and to decide where they stood on the matter. Expressing his disapproval in a letter to his friend Wolfe, renowned landscape photographer Galen Rowell probably said it best: “Don’t do anything you wouldn’t feel comfortable having fully revealed in a caption.” Great advice that still applies.
Nevertheless, left up to each photographer, the “how much manipulation is too much” line remains rather fuzzy, but I think most credible photographers today agree that it excludes any form of deception. Which brings me back to the absolutely ridiculous eclipse fakes we’ve all been subjected to. I honestly don’t know what upsets me more—the fact that “photographers” are trying to pass these fakes off as real, or the number of people who they fool. (And I won’t even get into the fact that every image and word I’ve shared online has almost certainly been mined to perpetrate AI fabrication—that’s a blog for a different day.)
One risk of that mass gullibility, and people’s apathy about the distinction between real and artificial, is the dilution of photography’s perception in the public eye. As beautiful as Nature is without help, it’s pretty hard to compete with cartoonish captures when a connection to reality isn’t a criterion. I’m already seeing the effects—the volume of enthusiastic praise for obvious fakes is disturbing enough, but even more disturbing to me is the number of people responding to legitimate, creative, hard-earned images with skepticism.
So what can we do?
I’m not sure there is a complete solution to the AI problem, but I hope that enough people crying “Foul!,” on social media and elsewhere, will open eyes and force discussions that might help the public draw a line—just as the zebra debate did three decades ago. If the blowback is strong enough, perhaps even the potential stigma will be enough to discourage AI purveyors and consumers alike.
As much as I appreciate people calling out AI perpetrators in the comments of obviously fake social media posts—I’ll do this occasionally myself when I think I can contribute actual insight that might help some understand why an image is fake—I’m afraid these well-intended comments get so buried (by the “Stunning!” and “Breathtaking!” genuflections) that very few people actually see them. So one step I’ve started taking with every single fake image that soils my social media feeds is to permanently hide all future posts from that page/profile/poster. I’m probably fighting a losing battle, but at least this unforgiving, one-strike-and-you’re-out policy gives me a little satisfaction each time I do it.
About this image
Dance of the Veils, Tunnel View, Yosemite
One thing a still photo can do better than any other visual medium, better even than human vision, is freeze a moment in time. From explosive lightning, to crashing surf, to a crimson sunset, to swirling clouds, Nature’s most beautiful moments are also often its most ephemeral. No matter how much we believe at the time that we’ll never forget one of these special events, sadly, the memory does fade with time. But a camera and capable photographer, in addition to revealing hidden aspects of the natural world, records the actual photons illuminating those transient moments so they can be revisited and shared in perpetuity.
Which was the very last thing on my mind as this year’s February workshop group and I pulled into the Tunnel View parking lot in the predawn gloaming of this chilly morning. Instead, we were abuzz with excitement about the unexpected overnight snow that had glazed every tree and rock in Yosemite Valley with a thin veneer of white.
Our excitement compounded when we saw the scene unfolding in Yosemite Valley below. One of my most frequent Yosemite workshop questions is some version of, “Will we get some of that low fog in the valley when we’re at Tunnel View?” My standard answer is, “That’s only in the Deluxe Workshop,” but they rarely accept that. The real answer is, while this valley fog does happen from time-to-time, it’s impossible to predict the rare combination of temperature, atmospheric moisture, and still air it requires. (It’s much easier to predict the mornings when it absolutely won’t happen, which is most of them.)
But here it was, almost as if I’d ordered it up special for my group. (I tried to take credit but don’t think they were buying it.) Since I’ve seen this fog disappear as suddenly as it appears, or rise up from the valley floor to engulf the entire view in just a matter of seconds, as soon as we were parked I told the group to grab their gear and hustle to the vista as fast as they can. Then I did something I rarely do at Tunnel View anymore: I grabbed my gear and hustled to the vista as fast as I could.
While Tunnel View is one of the most beautiful views I’ve ever photographed, I’ve been here so many times that I usually don’t get my gear out here anymore—not because I no longer find it beautiful, but because it’s a rare visit that I get to see something I’ve not seen before. But since the view this morning, while not unprecedented, was truly special, I just couldn’t help myself. Another factor in my decision to photograph was that here we can all line up together, allowing me to check on and assist anyone who needs help, and still swing by my camera to click an occasional frame. This morning everyone seemed to be doing fine, so I was actually able to capture a couple of dozen frames as the fog danced below.
There were a lot of oohs and ahhs when a finger of fog rose from the valley floor and pirouetted toward Half Dome. There were many ways to photograph it, but I chose to frame it as tightly as possible, ending up with a series of a half-dozen of this particular fog feature before it morphed into something completely different. I included minimal sky because the sky above El Capitan, Half Dome, and Cathedral Rocks was relatively (compared to the rest of the scene) empty and uninteresting.
With the fog continuously shifting, to avoid cutting off any of the zigzag beneath Bridalveil Fall, I had to be extremely conscious of its spread. Depth of field wasn’t a concern because everything in my frame was at infinity. The most challenging aspect was exposure of the bright sky with the fully shaded valley. To get it all, I underexposed the foreground enough to spare the warmth of the approaching sun. The result was a virtually black foreground and colorless sky on my camera’s LCD, but I took special care to monitor my histogram and ensure that I’d be able to recover the shadows in Lightroom/Photoshop.
So, as you can see from my description, I did indeed leverage digital “manipulation” to create the finished product I share here. But my processing steps were designed to brighten the nearly black foreground my camera captured, because exposing it brighter would have resulted in a completely white sky. Since neither a white sky or a black foreground were anything close to our experience this morning, I applied actual intelligence to expose the scene and create an image that more closely reflects this actual (and unrepeatable) event in Nature.
My group rose in the frigid dark and stood bundled against the icy cold to witness this scene and capture permanent, shareable memories of our glorious morning. I imagine it might have be possible for us to have stayed in our cozy hotel rooms, open our computers, and input a few prompts in an AI image generator to come up with something similar (and why not throw in a rainbow, lightning bolts, and rising moon while we’re at it?). But where’s the joy in that?
Ephemeral Nature
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Bonus Blog: Eclipse Special
Posted on April 5, 2024
Solar Return, Total Solar Eclipse, Central Idaho (August 21, 2017)
Sony a7RII
Sony 100-400 GM
ISO 100
f/16
1/6 second
The following article isn’t a comprehensive eclipse photography how-to, but for eclipse viewers, it might be worth reading anyway
I’m getting a lot of questions about next week’s (April 8, 2024) total solar eclipse. In addition the standard “how-to” questions, many have asked if I plan to write a blog about how to photograph it. My response has been that, having photographed exactly one total solar eclipse in my life, I’m far from qualified to portray myself as an eclipse expert. But the questions keep coming, so I figured I’ll put my limited knowledge, along with some unsolicited experience-based advice, in a short(-ish) blog post with the qualifier that there are many people out there with far more eclipse photography experience than I have. And please note that the words that follow are intended for my kindred spirits, those whose passion for photography is an extension of their love of Nature—if your goal is a career-making eclipse image that you can retire on, you probably want to look elsewhere.
Safety first
And before I say anything else, don’t even think about viewing the eclipse without proper eye and camera lens protection—anything less risks permanent eye and sensor damage. Rather than try to provide safety guidance here, I’ll just refer you to NASA’s Eclipse Viewing Safety page.
Trust me
Based on my 2017 experience, my number one piece of advice to anyone lucky enough to be in position for eclipse totality is don’t get so caught up the photography that you fail to appreciate the majesty above you. I can’t emphasize this enough. For many, this will be a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and (I promise) if you’re trying to photograph it, the short duration of totality (four minutes or less) will take your breath away (like a knee to the midsection if you realize you missed it fiddling with your camera).
After my experience in 2017, my recommended approach to photographing any total eclipse while prioritizing the experience, is to put your camera on a tripod well in advance, attach your longest lens, and frame up the sun. In other words, don’t get fancy.
Trying to add landscape features to your eclipse image is probably a mistake, because during totality the sun will be so high in the sky that any (legitimate) image that includes the landscape will be so wide, the eclipse will shrink close to insignificance in the frame. Even going wide enough to include stars and planets will shrink the eclipse more than I’d prefer.
Not only will shooting a telephoto of the eclipse maximize the eclipse’s beauty, a tight frame eliminates all terrestrial objects, making your location within the path of totality irrelevant—whether you’re at a beautiful mountain lake or the parking lot of a 7/11, your telephoto eclipse images will look the same. That said, if you can be in a relatively remote area away from crowds, by all means do it. While the photography aspect won’t be any different, the multi-sensory personal aspect will be much better.
Time to start clicking
Don’t misunderstand: I’m not saying you shouldn’t photograph the eclipse—I can’t imagine witnessing something this special and not photographing it. I just want to make sure your priorities are straight before you begin. So here goes…
I think the best eclipse images happen in the few seconds before and after totality, so make sure you’re ready for both of these very brief windows. During the actual period of totality, you’ll have time to catch your breath, appreciate the view, and prepare for the sun’s return.
Though in 2017 I took a ton of images long before and after totality, I never did a thing with them—they just weren’t that interesting (a bright disk with a bite taken out). But that doesn’t mean these images didn’t have value, especially my before images, because there’s no better way to appreciate the speed of Earth’s rotation than to frame up any celestial object in a long telephoto lens and watch how quickly it exits the frame. If nothing else, even if you won’t use your before images, this is your best opportunity to gauge the sun’s pace across the frame at your chosen focal length, and its general path across the sky. In 2017, armed with this knowledge, I set a timer on my watch (can’t remember how long—30 seconds?) to remind me to check my framing. Don’t forget, the longer your focal length, the more frequently you’ll need to check your framing.
In final minute (or so) before totality, remove the solar filter (from the lens, not your eyes), stop down to f/16 or smaller (for a sunstar as the sun shrinks to nothing), and reframe the sun by moving it toward the edge of your frame to maximize the length of time until you’ll need to reframe again—ideally you won’t need to touch your camera again until after totality starts and you’ll have about four glorious minutes to enjoy a view that doesn’t change a lot. (FYI, the reason you don’t see any 2017 pre-totality sunstar images from me is because I was just a few seconds late removing my solar filter until it was too late—fortunately, I was prepared when the sun returned two minutes later.)
Don’t forget to check your exposure, both after removing the solar filter, and again when the sun is completely eclipsed. Since most of your frame will be black, your histogram will be skewed far to the left, but don’t worry about this—the most important thing is to make the remaining sunlight as bright as possible without clipping those highlights.
In the final seconds before and after totality, look for the Baily’s Beads and the diamond ring effects on sun’s perimeter (you might not see them until you view your images later). Both are brilliant splashes of light on the sun’s rim, caused when the last rays pass through irregularities on the lunar surface. Once the sun has disappeared completely, you can increase your exposure and remove eye protection (but keep it nearby—like on top of your head) until the sun returns.
Once totality arrives, a possible compositional option that will require a wider focal length is to include Venus, about 15 degrees below and right of the eclipse, and Jupiter, about 30 degrees above and to the left of the eclipse. As cool as that sounds, they’ll just be white dots, and as I said earlier, the wider focal length will shrink the sun. But if that sounds appealing, you’ll have time to do this in the four minutes of totality without completely distracting yourself from the eclipse experience. (But if you change your focal length for any reason, don’t forget to refocus.)
One potentially very cool addition to your eclipse frame is Comet Pons-Brooks, in the sky near Jupiter. On the cusp of naked-eye visibility, the comet should be visible to a camera during the few minutes of eclipse totality darkness. Don’t expect anything like 2020’s NEOWISE, but you might get a small tail that will identify the fuzzy dot as a comet, a truly rare opportunity that could set your eclipse photos apart.
If you must include landscape with your eclipse, to avoid an image that’s merely a single tiny sun somewhere near the top of the frame, you’ll probably want to do a time-lapse composite: a series of images captured at regular intervals, then combined in the computer with a before or after picture of the landscape, which will depict in one frame the eclipse’s evolution and path above the landscape. If you attempt a composite, please don’t cheat and manufacture a composite that shows the eclipse above an unrelated landscape—for example, an image of the Golden Gate Bridge with an eclipse series transposed above it (yuck). Nor should you magnify the eclipse larger than its actual size. (If you do either of these things, I don’t want to see them.) Since my 2017 composite attempt was a failure, and trying to do that composite was the distraction I most regret, I’ll refer you to the countless other photographers who have had more time-lapse success and generously offer guidance online.
A few processing points
The three images I’ve processed from 2017 (below) are cropped. Even though I used a 400mm lens (I’d have used a 200-600 if it had been available at the time), I wanted the eclipse bigger, so I cropped closer in Photoshop. Because there’s not a lot of fine detail in an eclipse image, you have a fair amount of latitude for cropping without doing great harm, so if you’re disappointed by the size of the eclipse in whatever lens you use, you’re not necessarily stuck with that.
I shoot everything in raw, which enabled me to warm the color temperature quite a bit in Lightroom. To my eyes, the eclipse looked more blue than this, but I just like my images being the yellow color we associate with the sun.
I also had to clean up some lens flair in Photoshop. Lens flair is pretty much unavoidable if the sun is in your frame, but the Photoshop Remove tool handles it pretty well.
Experience first, then photography
However you choose to photograph the eclipse, during totality step away from the camera and bask in the experience. As totality approaches, observe the sunlight’s subtle dimming, and the way shadows appear more crisply etched as the area of the sun providing illumination diminishes. With a good view of the surrounding landscape, in the final seconds you might see the moon’s shadow rapid approach before engulfing you in totality.
Now you’re eclipsed. Marvel at the sun’s corona dancing against the surrounding blackness. As your eyes adjust, look for stars, planets, and (if you’re lucky) Comet Pons-Brooks. And don’t limit your focus to the visual. When the sun disappears, note the rapturous awe, or elated celebration, of those surrounding you. Monitor animal behavior, and check in with your non-visual senses: notice the cooler temperature, listen for bird, insect, and other creature sounds to go quiet, perhaps replaced by the calls of nocturnal creatures.
There you have it, the extent of my eclipse photography knowledge. If you encounter advice from a photographer with more eclipse experience than I have, it’s entirely possible (likely) that they know more about it than I do. But don’t let them talk you into trying something so complicated that you miss your four-minute opportunity to experience one of Nature’s most special gifts, because there are no do-overs.
Now enjoy, and good luck!
Read about my 2017 eclipse experience
August 21, 2017
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Eloquent Images by Gary Hart 