Eloquent Images by Gary Hart
Insight, information, and inspiration for the inquisitive nature photographer
Playing the Odds
Posted on November 21, 2023
Twilight Moon, Zabriskie Point, Death Valley
Sony a7R V
Sony 24-105 f/4 G
ISO 100
f/10
1/13 second
First and foremost, a good landscape image usually requires…, well…, a good landscape. But merely getting yourself to the good landscapes is only half the image success equation, because good landscape photography also requires good conditions: colorful sky, dramatic clouds, complementary light, a striking celestial object, or some other natural quality that elevates the scene to special.
One way to include these ephemeral variables is to monitor conditions closely enough to respond in time to photograph them. Which of course also requires being relatively nearby when the conditions become favorable. Not necessarily a problem when my desired subject is close to home and the only affected schedule is my own, but my photo workshops need be planned more than a year in advance, so the proximity and react quickly approach doesn’t really work. Instead, the best I can do is schedule workshops to maximize the odds for ideal light, interesting skies, and other photogenic conditions—then cross my fingers.
For example, visiting Iceland in January or February increases the odds for the northern lights and low angle all-day sunlight; June in New Zealand provides the best chance for snowy peaks, and it’s the month when the core of the Milky Way up all night; and early August (+/- a week or so) at the Grand Canyon is generally the peak of the Southwest monsoon’s spectacular lightning and rainbows. While each of these features can be thwarted by uncooperative weather, at least we’re close enough to be there when the good stuff happens.
My annual Death Valley / Mt. Whitney photo workshop is another example of playing the odds. I love clouds and Death Valley. But because Death Valley only gets about an inch of rain each year, it suffers from chronic blue skies. To maximize the possibility of clouds for my DV/Whitney workshop groups, I schedule the workshop from mid-January through early February, when temperatures are farthest from summer’s intolerable heat, and the (still remote) chance for rainfall and (more likely) clouds is highest.
While I always wish for clouds in my workshops, cloudless skies in Death Valley don’t mean lousy photography. Places like Mosaic Canyon and Artist’s Palette are nice in the soft shade of early morning and late afternoon. And few sights are more dramatic than the sun’s first or last rays on the curves and lines of the undulating Mesquite Flat Dunes. Another benefit of cloudless skies is the beautiful pink and blue pastels that hover above the horizon opposite the sun before sunrise and after sunset.
To further hedge my bets, in Death Valley I always give myself one more blank-sky card to play: the moon. Scheduling this workshop around a full moon opens moonlight opportunities, and gives my groups at least two mornings to photograph the setting moon in the pre-sunrise twilight pastels: first at Zabriskie Point, where it aligns beautifully with Manly Beacon, then in Alabama Hills, where we can photograph it slipping behind the alpenglow enriched Sierra Crest, bookended by 14,000 feet-plus Mt. Whitney and Mt. Williamson.
This year’s DV/Whitney workshop, last February, had more clouds than usual—great for our daytime photography, but a source of stress f0r the workshop leader as the Zabriskie Point sunrise moonset approached. But instead of thwarting my Zabriskie moonset plan, I woke this morning to find that most of the clouds had departed overnight, leaving behind just a handful of ideally placed cotton balls for the moon to play with.
Zabriskie Point is an extremely popular sunrise location, so I got my group out there nearly 45 minutes before sunrise. We ended up being the first ones out there (better to be 10 minutes early than 1 minute late)—too early, in the pre-dawn darkness, to capture detail in the daylight-bright moon and the rest of the scene in a single image, but since the moon was still fairly high, I suggested to everyone that they compose it out (shoot beneath the moon) and just concentrate on revealing the foreground in the sweet, shadowless light.
While waiting for the foreground to brighten, I enjoyed watching the clouds dance around the moon, alternating between obscuring, revealing, and framing. The darker the sky, the better the moon stands out, but when the sky is too dark, an exposure that captures detail in the moon also has an unrecoverably dark foreground (either its completely black, or there’s too much noise in the processing-recovered darkness). As the sun approaches the horizon behind us, the lighter the sky gets and the easier it becomes to get detail in both the moon and the landscape. But soon the sky becomes so bright, contrast between the moon (which isn’t getting any brighter) and sky is lost and the moon becomes less and less prominent.
My window for photographing a full moon is from 15 minutes before sunrise/sunset to 15 minutes after sunrise/sunset (maybe a few minutes earlier/later if I’m extremely careful with my exposure). At sunrise, the best moon photography is on the earliest side of this window, when the moon/sky contrast is highest; the easiest exposure (greatest margin for exposure error) is toward the end of the window. And of course this unfolds in reverse at sunset.
To ensure that I don’t miss any of the best photography when the moon exposure window opens, I always start a few minutes before my 15 minute window opens so I can identify later in Lightroom the earliest usable image. The image I’m sharing today wasn’t my very first usable click that morning, but it did come 14 minutes before sunrise, when the contrast was still high. I chose this one because it came shortly after the pink hues of the sun’s longest rays started pushing the Earth’s shadow toward the horizon, absolutely my favorite part of sunrise. For me, capturing the moon in this night/day transition is the Holy Grail of full moon photography.
Locations like Death Valley are always great to photograph, regardless of the conditions, so it always feels like I’m playing with house money there. But looking back at all the things I bet on when scheduling this workshop, I can see that this year most of them paid off. Thanks to the (long shot) clouds, we got beautiful sunset color at Dante’s View one evening, and on the dunes another. One morning the clouds cleared enough to paint the dunes in beautiful sunrise light (one reason we do sunrise and sunset there), and another morning just enough hung around to enhance, without obscuring, our beautiful moonset. We all felt like winners.
I actually have a couple of openings in my upcoming Death Valley workshop
Moons Over Death Valley and the Alabama Hills
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Back in My Happy Place
Posted on November 7, 2023
Autumn Spiral, Bridalveil Creek, Yosemite
Sony a7R V
Sony 24-105 f/4 G
ISO 50
f/16
13 seconds
Auroras, lightning, and a volcanic eruption—anyone viewing this year’s images might think my camera and I are most drawn to Nature’s purest drama. But as breathtaking as these phenomena are (they are!), I think I’m happiest with a camera in my hand when I’m working to extract subtle beauty from Nature’s quiet places. Rare, dramatic beauty is an instant stimulant that grabs your eyes and pretty much demands to be photographed. Not so much for the peaceful scenes that subtly soothe, but that doesn’t mean their beauty can’t compete—you just have to work for it.
Extracting photographs from these quiet places combines observation, position, and subtraction: observing to identify the scene’s essential elements; positioning to create relationships between these elements and the camera; subtraction of all that’s not essential through careful framing and/or management of the exposure variables. It’s rarely quick work, but I’m never happier than when I feel like I’ve created a synergy between these components.
My Yosemite Valley happy place has to be Bridalveil Creek. I’m not talking about the nearby view of the fall itself, I’m talking about the area just beneath the fall, where the creek tumbles and pools among granite and maples. Rather than feasting on views of Yosemite’s magnificent monoliths and waterfalls, I come to Bridalveil Creek to meditate and create in Nature’s more understated beauty.
Lacking the most photographed views of Yosemite’s icons, the Bridalveil Creek area probably shouldn’t be the starting point for a first-time visitor. On the other hand, when timed right, this (relatively) peaceful spot does provide a wonderful respite from Yosemite’s teeming masses, as well as ample opportunities to stretch your creative muscles.
Bridalveil Fall is the only Yosemite Valley waterfall that reliably flows year-round, but its volume varies tremendously depending on the season, the prior winter’s snowpack, and the amount of recent rainfall. In spring, Bridalveil Creek is an angry torrent that splits into three distinct channels just beneath the fall, each spanned by its own stone footbridge that provides an excellent platform for photography. In wet years all three channels run year round; in the driest years, by late summer two are nothing but dusty, rounded boulders, with only the east-most bridge offering views of flowing water.
I visit here each time I visit Yosemite, but my favorite season by far is autumn. Whether one, two, or three channels are flowing, by autumn the remaining water has lost the urgency of spring, pausing to rest in still pools before descending the next cascade. And autumn is when the suddenly yellow maples shed a seemingly infinite number of leaves that settle briefly atop rocks, accumulate in nooks and crannies, blanket the forest floor, and drift atop the swirling pools.
I always start my workshops’ final day at Bridalveil Creek, setting my groups free to roam the trail and its bridges, clamber down to the still pools, and rock-hop the cascades in search of inspiration. Early in the workshop many students are still battling their cameras and personal vision, but waiting until workshop’s end to bring my groups here gives everyone three-plus days to settle into the photographic zone that’s necessary to get most of their time here.
I never considered that I might lose this spot until 2019, when the NPS started work on a much anticipated overhaul of the whole Bridalveil Fall area. To speed the work, they decided to close everything (parking lot, toilets, trails, and creek access) while they rerouted the trails, reconfigured the parking lot, and (my favorite upgrade) replaced the aromatic vault toilets with actual flush-toilet bathrooms. Though I was disappointed that I’d have to forego my happy place for a year or (God forbid) two, I rationalized that the promised improvements would be worth the sacrifice. When COVID happened, I resigned myself to maybe another year of waiting.
When the park reopened after the pandemic, and on every visit since, Bridalveil Creek has my first Yosemite Valley stop. And while it always looked like an active worksite (barricades, equipment, and stacked construction material), progress seemed to be frustratingly slow. In fact, despite those signs of activity, I rarely saw any actual activity underway. Even my NPS contact couldn’t give me a date for reopening.
It was more of the same in 2021, 2022, and for my winter and spring workshops earlier this year. So, after seeing no announcement online or in my daily Yosemite news e-mail, I approached this year’s Yosemite Fall Color and Reflections workshop resigned to another year of Bridalveil disappointment. That pessimism was confirmed when I drove by the Bridalveil Fall parking lot Tuesday morning (on my pre-workshop scouting run) and saw it still locked tight with no sign of activity. Sigh.
This was my first trip to Yosemite since early May (I don’t visit Yosemite in summer), and while I was aware of some traffic-flow improvements made to the valley’s east side since my last visit, I had no idea how extensive they’d been. So I decided to make another loop around the park to reset my bearings (it’s never a good look when the workshop leader gets lost), which took me past the Bridalveil Fall area one more time. This time I decided to park and check out the short hike to the creek from the other side—I’ve done this many times, as recently as my previous visit last spring, and have always found the trail fenced off and signage making it very clear they want no one back there. So imagine my surprise (not to mention delight), when I found this side open with full access to the creek! The parking lot and bathrooms were still closed, but I found the trails and all of the bridges open.
On Friday, for the first time in four years, I guided a workshop group back to Bridalveil Creek. As much as I wanted to explore my favorite Bridalveil Creek haunts, I remained on the trail and bridges where most of my workshop group had gone to work. But, as often happens here, one-by-one they set out to explore farther afield, until with about a half-hour before I’d instructed them to be back at the cars, I found myself completely alone on the middle bridge. Though 30 minutes is hardly enough to time do any quality work here, I couldn’t help beelining back to one of my favorite spots—upstream, around a motorhome-size rock, and a quick scramble over rocks and a log down to the water. The last few years before the shutdown this spot had been partially largely by fallen trees, but I was very pleased to see that part of the improvement process had been dead tree removal.
I’d told the group about this spot before we started and thought one or two might still be there, but they’d all moved on and I found myself alone with maybe 20 minutes to work. I’m very familiar with the little cascade back here, and the pool it lands in, but depending on the amount of water and the timing of the fall color, the scene is different each time I visit. Sometimes the leaves form a mosaic on the pool’s surface, but this time I found most of the leaves huddled at the far end and out of the composition that came to me first.
Since speed was essential, I just went with that first composition, which was some version of the cascade tumbling over the rocks and into the pool. (For scale, I estimate that this cascade, from top to bottom, is at least 6 feet and no more than 8 feet high.) I knew that even an exposure of just a second or two would render the cascade as a gauzy veil, and that in the deep early-morning shadow of Yosemite Valley’s south wall, not to mention the trees and an overcast sky, a multi-second exposure would be nearly impossible to avoid. Seeing little flecks of floating foam, I decided to just lean into the long exposure to streak the foam and emphasize swirling motion on the pool’s surface. (I didn’t need a neutral density filter because I was satisfied being in the 10-15 second range by just stopping down to f/16 at ISO 50.)
There was so much sheen on the rocks and glare on the water that a polarizer was essential (and even with polarization maximized, I couldn’t eliminate all of it). The polarizer had the added benefit of revealing submerged rocks that would have been exposed in drier years. As I worked, an occasional leaf would ride the cascade into the pool, or drift down from overhead, to take a couple of laps in the pool before sinking or exiting stage left. No problem—their yellow swirl lasted just long enough to add a final touch to my happy little scene.
Join me for a Yosemite photo workshop
Autumn at Bridalveil Creek
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A Peek Behind the Curtain
Posted on October 24, 2023
Aspen and Ferns, Bishop Creek Canyon, Eastern Sierra
Sony α1
Sony 16-35 f/2.8 GM
ISO 400
f/16
.8 seconds
A particular highlight of my annual Eastern Sierra photo workshop is our sunrise shoot at North Lake. Made famous as the default desktop image for macOS High Sierra, North Lake is a small lake in the shadow of snow-capped Eastern Sierra peaks, near the top of Bishop Creek Canyon a little west of Bishop. It’s encircled by aspen, and reflections in its sheltered bowl are quite common. More than once my groups have been fortunate enough to enjoy a light dusting of snow along the lakeshore.
Autumn Morning, North Lake, Eastern Sierra
Depending on the conditions, we’ll stay at North Lake for at least an hour—often longer. But the photography isn’t over when we do finally leave, because just down the mountain from the lake are some of my favorite Sierra fall color spots. In the two miles between North Lake and Lake Sabrina (Pro Tip: it’s pronounced with a long “i,” like China) at the top of the canyon, we can choose between mountain vistas, dense aspen groves, views of aspen lined Bishop Creek, and several small reflective ponds also accented by aspen.
The conditions determine our stops. When it’s cloudy (low contrast light), we can shoot anywhere for hours; when the sky is clear, the best photography is done before the sun arrives, forcing me to be a little more selective to get the most of our limited time.
This year, with few clouds and morning light rapidly descending the mountainsides, after North Lake I took my group to the deep shade at the canyon’s bottom, stopping first to photograph the gold and (a few) red aspen framing Bishop Creek, then moving a half-mile or so upstream for reflections in a couple of pools formed by wide spots in the creek. There’s so much to photograph at both of these locations that the group always scatters quickly—when that happens, I know we’ll enjoy a wonderful variety of images at the next workshop image review.
Always on the lookout for something new, familiar locations like Bishop Creek kick-in my natural urge to explore. But when I lead a workshop, I’m well aware that no one pays their hard earned money only to spend their days (and nights) following the leader to places he’s never been. So, despite the obvious beauty here, I’m usually content to simply step back and take it all in.
Nevertheless, I try not to let that inhibit my explorer’s mindset. As I walk about checking on my workshop students, or simply while taking in the surroundings, I often find myself silently asking, “I wonder what’s over there.” Though circumstances don’t usually allow me to actually find out on that visit, I mentally file the spot away for a time when no one depends on me. But every once in a while an opportunity to explore surprises me in the moment.
I knew the sun this morning would reach us at around 9:00 a.m., so around 8:30 I started making my way around to everyone to let them know that we had about 30 more quality minutes before we’ll head back down the mountain for breakfast. The creek here parallels the road, with all the standard photo spots between the road and the creek. While waiting for people to wrap up after I made my rounds, I thought I might have just enough time to find out what’s on the other side of the creek and crossed the bridge, where I found a barely discernible path into the woods.
This was just a quick reconnoissance mission, so my camera bag remained in the car. At first the path was so overgrown that in spots I had trouble following it, but after about 50 yards it opened into a sublime fern garden, walled by aspen and sprinkled with golden leaves. I knew instantly it was too small and fragile to bring a group to, but I also knew I had to photograph it. So I raced back to my car, grabbed my camera bag and tripod, and was back in business in just a few minutes.
I only had about 5 minutes to photograph, but that was enough to drop low, compose wide, meter and focus, and capture a half-dozen or so horizontal and vertical frames. The treetops were already getting washed out by the advancing sun, so I emphasized the foreground ferns with all my compositions, cutting off the sunlit parts of the aspen—an effect that creates the illusion of infinite depth in this relatively compact space.
When I first arrived back here, the dense forest on all sides made me feel completely isolated. But as I worked my scene, I became aware of people in my group laughing and chatting as they worked their own scenes, and realized that I was only a few feet from the creek. That got me thinking about all the intimate beauty underlying the larger scenes that first draw our attention. In this natural garden this morning, it felt as if I’d peeked behind a curtain and discovered an entirely new world.
This is a reminder to me that even the most in-your-face beauty is comprised of easily overlooked subtleties, and that no matter how beautiful the first thing you see in a scene, there’s always more there. The best photography doesn’t show us the world we already know, it pulls back a curtain to expand our understanding of the unseen world.
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Off the Beaten Path
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Older Than History
Posted on October 17, 2023
Last Light on the Bristlecones, Schulman Grove, White Mountains (California)
Sony a7R V
Sony 24-105 f/4 G
ISO 100
f/16
1/4 seconds
Ask people to name California’s state tree and I’m afraid most would go strait to the palm tree—which isn’t even native to the Golden State. And though the correct answer is the redwood, those of us born and raised in California might argue that the stately oaks that dominate the foothills throughout most of the state conjure the strongest feelings of home.
But without diminishing the other trees, let me give our ancient bristlecone pines some much deserved love. Lacking the ubiquity of California’s palms and oaks, and the mind-boggling stature of our redwoods, bristlecones are largely unknown to California residents and visitors alike. But, not only do these twisting, gnarled trees look specifically designed for photography, for me it’s their fascinating natural history that truly sets bristlecones apart.
All varieties of bristlecone pines can live for millennia, but today I’m referring specifically to the Great Basin bristlecones, which have earned the distinction of being among the oldest living organisms on Earth. Earned being the operative word there.
Slow growth, a shallow and extensively branched root system, dense wood, and extreme drought tolerance contribute to the bristlecone pine’s longevity. How old are they? Well, many predate Christ, and at 4850 years old, the Methuselah tree (whose location somewhere near the Schulman Grove of the Inyo National Forest is a closely guarded secret) had already lived more than three centuries when the Egyptians broke ground on the first pyramid.
My favorite fact about these trees is that the more harsh a bristlecone pine’s environment, the longer it lives—a wonderful metaphor for perseverance that might bolster anyone battling the headwinds of life. Also found at the most extreme elevations of Nevada and Utah, Great Basin bristlecones especially thrive in the high elevation (low oxygen), extremely arid and rocky conditions above 9500 feet in the rain-shadowed White Mountains, just across the Owens Valley from the Sierra Nevada.
In the oldest bristlecones the majority of the wood is actually dead, with only a small area of living tissue connecting the roots to a few surviving branches. Having a relatively small amount of living tissue allows a bristlecone to sustain itself with minimal resources, while the extreme density of its dead wood serves as armor against harsh conditions. And once a bristlecone pine does die, with wood so hard and roots so robust, they can remain standing for centuries.
I visit these amazing trees each autumn in my Eastern Sierra Fall Color workshop. And though they’re technically not in the Eastern Sierra (but do provide spectacular views of it), and are completely devoid of fall color, so far no one has complained. On each visit I send my group up the Schulman Grove Discovery Trail loop, a short (one mile) hike starting at 10,000 feet with a 300 foot elevation gain that tests the fitness of all who attempt it. Compensation for all this effort is the opportunity to stroll among dozens of truly photogenic trees, each with its own unique character, that predate most human history.
All of the climbing happens in the first half mile—just about the time everyone is ready to turn around (or string-up the leader on the nearest bristlecone), the trail levels, then mercifully drops for the remainder of the hike. I’ve been doing this hike for more than 15 years, sometimes multiple times in a year, and if I’ve learned nothing else, I know to give everyone enough time to actually enjoy it.
It helps that most of the best trees are on the first half of the trail, as are 2 or 3 strategically placed benches. The ultimate payoff is a pair of striking bristlecones standing by themselves on a west-facing slope a little beyond the trail’s halfway point and just after the trail starts descending.
Because we start hiking about 90 minutes before sunset, and there’s no chance anyone will get lost, I let each person go at whatever pace makes them comfortable. And before setting everyone free, I remind them that there’s plenty of time to stop and take pictures (or pretend to take pictures) whenever they need to catch their breath.
I’ve visited these trees so many times, I rarely photograph them anymore—and when I do, few shots ever get processed. But as I got people started this year, I suspected things might be different because we’d been gifted with nice clouds—a welcome sight indeed.
I always let everyone in my group start up the trail before me, then wait at least 5 more minutes, so I can check on each person after they’ve had a a few minutes to experience the grade and thin air. In more than a few prior years I’ve had to race to the target trees, drop my gear, and double-back to check-on/assist others who might be struggling, but that wasn’t necessary this year—everyone made it to the trees by sunset without any trouble, albeit some much sooner than others.
When I first started coming here there were no posted requirements to stay on the trail, and photographers didn’t hesitate to clamor about the base of the trees in search of the best angle. But all this activity threatened to damage the trees’ shallow roots, so in recent years signs have been posted making it very clear not to leave the trail.
This new edict has actually made my job easier, as I no longer need to choreograph an assortment of photographers with conflicting agendas (even just one person scrambling up to the trees can ruin everyone else’s frames). Now we all just line up along the trail on either side of the trees, then shuffle positions when it’s time to change angles.
Clouds dominated when we arrived, but they moved swiftly, shuffling small patches of blue in the southern sky behind the trees. Though the clouds farther west were thick enough to completely block the sun, I was excited to see a small strip of blue just above the ridge that would ultimately swallow the sun for the day—if it held, we’d get nice late light, and maybe even some sunset color. Fingers crossed.
The trail almost completely loops around this pair of trees, providing more than 300 degrees of potential vantage points—some above, some below. My first frames this evening were at the far back of the loop, facing south and maybe 100 feet from the trees, allowing me to include the Sierra Crest and compress the distance between the trees and the peaks with a little bit of telephoto. As the clouds improved, I worked my way closer, shooting more beneath the trees to include more sky as well as well as a few patches of foreground snow.
So focused on the trees and sky, I forgot about the promising blue patch until the uphill treen suddenly lit up like it had been hit with a spotlight. Seeing the downhill had remained completely shaded except for its highest branches, I glanced westward and knew we’d only have a few minutes before the sun disappeared for good—fortunately I was in a perfect position to include the spotlit tree with the best clouds and could just stay put.
This turned into one of those situations where I simply worked as rapidly as I could without descending into actual panic-shooting. I started by checking my my histogram to ensure that I wasn’t clipping the essential highlights on the tree. With visual elements near and far, I had to be careful about depth of field, so I stopped down to f/16 and focused a little in front of the trees, and started shooting a range of compositions, horizontal and vertical, with a variety of sky and foreground (quickly refocusing each time I changed my focal length), firing continuously until the sun left—no more than five minutes.
The sunset color I’d hoped for never quite materialized, but no one complained. The evening’s combination of clouds and light, combined with the patches of snow, made this one of my favorite shoots at this most special of locations.
I will return next year
Trees Near and Far
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Fire and Rainbow
Posted on October 10, 2023
Fire and Rainbow, Kilauea, Hawaii
Sony a7R V
Sony 100-400 GM
ISO 250
f/11
1/200 second
One concern about returning to the same location, at the same time, in the same workshop, is finding something new to photograph. But last month’s Hawaii workshop group was so excited about our first shoot of the Kilauea eruption, going back on the workshop’s final night was a no-brainer. Not only were we looking forward viewing the fountaining lava one more time, we all wanted to apply some of the lessons learned from the Tuesday shoot. And Mother Nature delivered a surprise that guaranteed something new for everyone.
Surprise or not, many in the group returned with plans for different exposure or focal length choices; I want to use the knowledge gained in the first visit to position my group better, because the eruption had been so new on that first visit, I’d arrived at Kilauea with no idea of what we’d encounter and how we’d access it. I knew enough this second time to arrive with an actual strategy.
The first night we had to park in the overflow parking lot and walk about a mile along the caldera rim to reach the best vantage points; this time we arrived nearly 90 minutes earlier and drove directly to Kilauea Overlook, our favorite vantage point from the earlier visit. Even arriving that much earlier, we ended up snagging the last three parking spaces in the lot—one more kiss of good fortune to bless this especially fortunate workshop group.
Though the eruption was still going strong, we found the shooting conditions this second evening much different. The first time it was dry, with a mix of sky and clouds; this time we found ourselves surrounded by low clouds that dampened every surface and filled the caldera with a heavy mist. By the end of the evening I’d labeled this a “stealth” rain—microscopic drops that couldn’t really be felt as they landed, but somehow managed to saturate our clothes and accumulate on our lenses. But at first it just seemed a little damp.
As early as we were, the sun still hadn’t set behind Mauna Loa. As we unloaded our gear from the cars, I noticed blue sky visible above Mauna Loa and pointed out to the group that there may actually be enough moisture in the air to create a rainbow if the sun came out. And it wasn’t long after making our way to the rim that the sun did indeed pop out enough to create a fuzzy rainbow far to the left of the lava.
The rainbow’s location was close enough to the eruption that we could include both in the same frame without going too wide, but I wanted to get it even closer to minimize the (not especially appealing) brown caldera floor separating them. This is where understanding basic rainbow science pays off. A rainbow forms a 42 degree circle around the anti-solar point: the point in the sky at the other end of an imaginary, infinitely long line starting at the sun, passing through the back of the viewer’s head, and exiting between the eyes. Since we each have our own anti-solar point (and therefore our own rainbow), which is entirely a function of our position relative to the sun, we can change the location of any rainbow (relative to the landscape) by simply repositioning. In this case I knew I could move about 300 yards to my right before the trail (and eruption view) curved out of view of the eruption and rainbow.
Since this was the workshop’s final evening, and we’d all photographed the eruption from here before, everyone was pretty comfortable scattering (rather than sticking close to me for guidance)—which is exactly what they’d done. I hailed as many as I could and explained what I was doing and why, encouraged them to join me, then rushed up the trail.
Not knowing how long the rainbow would last, on the way I stopped a couple of times to fire a frame or two. Turns out I needn’t have worried because the rainbow lasted, in one form or another, for at least 30 minutes. Once I reached the vantage point that positioned the rainbow closest to the eruption, I set up and went to work. The rainbow seemed most intense near the lava, but at times I could make out a faint full arc, and once even pulled out my 12-24 lens to capture a few frames of it. But for the most park I was interested in the tighter, brighter compositions.
Finally working in one spot long enough to get settled, I started to fully comprehend how wet it was. I was wearing a thin rain shell, but could tell that it was already soaking through to my flannel. (Flannel in Hawaii? Indeed—here at 4,000 feet conditions were both wet and windy, with temps in the low 50s.) The wind made my umbrella pointless, so the mist/rain also assaulted my front lens element enough that I had to wipe it clear every few frames.
The difficult problem was getting focus. I’ve come to trust the autofocus on my Sony mirrorless cameras so much, the only time I manually focus anymore is when I have a critical focus point requirement—in 100% infinity scenes like this, I just autofocus anywhere in the scene (wherever my focus point happens to be positioned) and call it good. But the mist this evening was so dense, I could rarely get a focus confirmation—and even when I did, I wasn’t completely confident of it. So I scanned my surroundings and spied a couple hundred yards behind me one of the volcano observatory buildings (near the now shuttered Jagger Museum) to auto-focus on.
This worked well, especially since I use back-button focus and didn’t need to switch between auto and manual focus each time I refocused. Of course each time I changed my focal length I had to pop my camera off my tripod and turn around to refocus, but this became second nature soon enough.
We stayed until dark, battling the wetness and chill to add to our already brimming Kilauea eruption collections. Once darkness fell, the eruption didn’t look much different than it had the first time, so as soon everyone felt like they’d had enough success and addressed whatever problems they’d identified in their prior images, we retreated to the cars and headed back down to Hilo.
Who wants to find out what we’ll see in Hawaii next year?
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Lots More Rainbows
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Sometimes It’s Better To Be Lucky Than Good
Posted on September 30, 2023
Making Mountains, Kilauea, HawaiiSony a7R V
Sony 100-400 GM
ISO 1600
f/5.6
1/500 second
As a rule, landscape photographers resent being told “you’re so lucky to have seen that.” We work very hard to get to our scenes in just the right conditions, and to create the compositions with the exposure settings that portray them at their best. But I have to admit that luck is a factor as well—sometimes more than others.
For example…
Sunrise Mirror, Mono Lake
One time my brother Jay and I spent an afternoon exploring the north shore of Mono Lake, searching for alternatives to the mayhem of heavily-photographed South Tufa. Navigating a maze of barely passable unpaved roads, we found a remote spot that required a half mile walk through sand and shoe-sucking mud to reach, but it looked like it would be worth returning to for sunrise.
Rising a couple of hours before the next morning’s sun, we made our way in that general direction, but in the darkness couldn’t find the exact spot (or even the exact road). Nevertheless we did find a place to park, so we blazed a new trail to the lake, where we waited for sunrise.
Though luck isn’t what got us out of bed that morning, it had everything to do with all that followed. For starters, we were quite fortunate to randomly wind up at the spot we did. But the real luck was the clouds the sky delivered this morning, and the perfectly calm lake surface that mirrored them perfectly.
Rainbow Bridge, Colorado River, Grand Canyon
For good reason, rainbows usually feel like gifts from heaven. Knowing the science behind rainbows can certainly make finding them easier, but that knowledge can’t actually create the conditions necessary to form a rainbow.
Each year I schedule my Grand Canyon Raft Trip for Photographers to maximize the opportunity for dark sky (moonless) Milky Way opportunities, clear (pre-monsoon) water in the Colorado River, and blue in the Little Colorado River. Rainbows are never a consideration when I make these plans.
I’ll take a little bit of credit for seeing the conditions and anticipating the possibility of a rainbow on this rainy May afternoon in 2016, but of course had absolutely nothing to do with the actual manifestation of those conditions. Yet there it was, a vivid double rainbow spanning the Grand Canyon walls, exactly as I’d fantasized for many years. Do you believe in miracles?
Aurora Reflection, Glacier Lagoon, Iceland
If you know anything about the northern (and southern) lights, you know that they’re caused when Earth’s magnetosphere is overwhelmed by electromagnetic radiation from the Sun. You might also know that this solar activity follows an 11 year cycle from one “solar maximum” to the next. And it stands to reason that midway between these electromagnetic peaks is the solar minimum, when the Sun is relatively quiet and auroral activity reaches its nadir.
It just so happened that in 2019 Don Smith and I chose the most recent solar minimum to make our first visit to Iceland, scouting for our Iceland photo workshop scheduled to debut the following year. We chose winter to increase our aurora odds, but given the Sun’s quiescent status really had no right to expect a northern lights show. Of course that didn’t prevent us from spending each night shivering in the cold dark, peering into a frustratingly black sky.
So imagine our surprise when, just as our trip was wrapping up, a confluence of magic conditions graced us. First, on the trip’s final night we just happened to be at Glacier Lagoon, where floating icebergs bob atop a mirror-like lake just downstream from Jökulsárlón Glacier—a made-to-order aurora landscape. Coinciding with this visit was a reprieve from the clouds that so frequently obscure Iceland’s night sky. And even more fortunate, of all possible nights the Sun chose this one to deliver the most breathtaking solar display of that winter.
A Kilauea Eruption
My latest lucky break, so lucky that I actually shake my head and chuckle whenever I think about it, came in my Hawaii Big Island workshop earlier this month. Kilauea hadn’t erupted since June, and since its historic eruption in 2018 had actually spent much more time asleep than awake. The volcano was still sound asleep the Friday Jay and I departed for Hawaii, just three days before the workshop, and remained that way as we went about my annual pre-workshop scouting routine on Saturday and Sunday. (You can read about what happened next in my I Was There blog post.)
On Sunday afternoon we headed down the Puna Coast, a beautiful volcanic coastline that also happens to be off the cellular grid. But in the several hours we were down there, Kilauea came back to life and we instantly jettisoned all plans for the evening and beelined to the caldera. I felt especially lucky to photograph the eruption at its peak, on the night it started, from the closest possible vantage point—that was shut down permanently about 30 minutes after we started.
When I took my group back up to Kilauea a couple of days later, I had no idea where we’d go or even if there would be another spot with a direct view of the eruption. Guiding them into Volcanoes National Park, I just followed the crowds until I encountered a detour that terminated in a parking lot near the rim. There we learned that a one-mile walk would indeed enable us to view the eruption.
So we set out on foot, still not really sure what to expect, finally encountering our first view of churning magma about 1/2 mile down the trail. Everyone was so thrilled by the sight that I had to herd them forward with promises (hopes) of even better views ahead. To my relief, the view soon opened up to provide a full view of the entire caldera floor, complete with fountaining cinder cones and flowing lava—everything a volcano watcher can hope for. More than one person told me that evening had checked a long coveted bucket-list item for them.
We returned a couple of nights later for one more shot at the eruption, and to apply lessons learned from our first visit. On this second visit a dense mist had settled in the caldera, making focus sometimes difficult, but also painting a towering rainbow as the sun set behind Mauna Loa. By the end of the workshop, every single one of us had once in a lifetime memories and the images to savor them by.
When the eruption started, I marveled at my good luck that it happened the day before my workshop started. Little did I know that the eruption would end the day after the workshop wrapped up, and my workshop group couldn’t have thread the eruption needle more perfectly if I’d have planned it that way. Like I said, sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good.
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Fortunate Photography
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Storm Chasing Grand Canyon Style
Posted on September 19, 2023
Electric Sunset, Desert View Lightning, Grand Canyon
Sony a7R V
Sony 24-105 f/4 G
ISO 200
f/8
10 seconds
Before returning to the Hawaii trip, I want to wrap up my Grand Canyon trip with another image from the wonderful lightning show on the last night of the second workshop. I wrote about this evening, and the frustrations that preceded it, in my August 29 “Feast or Famine” post. I’ve actually processed three of my favorite lightning strikes from that evening, and it occurs to me that viewing them in sequence adds a little context to the experience—not just for this storm, but for most of the best storms I’ve photographed over my many years storm chasing here.
My approach to photographing Grand Canyon lightning is to take advantage of the broad, distant views along the canyon’s rim to keep a safe(-ish) distance from the storms we photograph. These wide views are a prime reason I use (and strongly recommend to all of the photographers in my workshops) a Lightning Trigger LT IV from Stepping Stone Products in Colorado (I get no kickback or other perks from Stepping Stone—they’ve even discontinued the 10% discount my workshop participants used to get). Not only does the Lightning Trigger miss fewer lightning bolts than any lightning sensor I’ve seen, my groups and I have captured lightning up to 60 miles away—a huge advantage for the kind of lightning photography I do at Grand Canyon.
Since at least 80% of the storms my groups photograph are too distant for the thunder to reach us, the lens I recommend (and use more than 90% of the time) is a 24-105 (for anyone who doesn’t have a 24-105, a 24-70 is a good second choice). Since we can only guess where the next lightning bolt will strike, this focal range is wide enough for the loose compositions that ensure lightning somewhere in the frame, and long enough to pull in even the most distant lightning the LT captures. And we make our composition decisions with the full understanding that we’ll almost certainly be cropping any resulting lightning image—one of the few times I’m grateful for every single one of the 61 megapixels on my Sony a7R V’s sensor.
Having a distant vantage point has the added benefit of providing a ringside seat for the storms’ evolution and motion. I’ve watched storms develop in place, going from puffy white clouds to towering thunderheads in a matter of minutes. Often the storms will drift up from the south—some traveling great distances and lasting an hour or more, others building and dissipating quickly, only to be replaced by another new storm just a little farther north, until the activity reaches the canyon.
The North Rim is the best place to view these northward-trending storms. Since our North Rim lodging is right on the rim, we’ll often just hang out on one of the (lightning rod shielded) view decks at the lodge and wait for the lightning to come to us. Usually the storms don’t make it all the way across the canyon, but we have been chased inside a few times.
The South Rim is a little trickier for lightning photography for several reasons: more people; our hotel is 15 minutes from the rim; and many storms sneak up behind us. But when we do get in position to photograph a storm on the South Rim, it’s a real treat because this is where we find Grand Canyon’s most expansive views.
The Grand Canyon south-to-north storm path I describe is simply a tendency—far from a rule. We’ve also photographed many storms that have moved down from north of the canyon, as well as many that have moved toward us from up- or down-canyon. The storms can move east-to-west, west-to-east, or curve from a north/south to an east/west path (or vice versa). And then there are the storms that just stay put, dumping rain and stabbing the rim with lightning in one spot for more than an hour.
Because of the storms’ unpredictability, it’s very important to keep a constant eye on them, monitoring the general direction of movement. For safety reasons of course, but also to make the most informed composition decisions. Unlike pretty much every other kind of photography, in lightning photography you really don’t know where the scene’s most important feature will be. The difficulty is balancing the best composition for the scene, with where the lightning is most likely to strike.
I got my latest reminder of this for the Desert View lightning shoot on the the workshop’s final night. After starting the day with lots of optimism, we’d pretty much given up hope for a lightning experience. Sunset that evening was Desert View, one of my favorite Grand Canyon locations. The sunset was a treat, but as the sun dropped, I noticed the rain increasing about 15 miles down-canyon (west), to the point where I thought in might be worth breaking out the Lightning Triggers and crossing our fingers.
Fortunately, this was in the direction of one of Desert View’s best compositions, so we weren’t really losing much pointing this way. Meanwhile, I noticed some clouds with potential moving up from the south, just east of the canyon. Though the clouds to the west looked a little more promising for lightning, I liked a northeast-facing composition (wide enough to capture any lightning out there) even better and soon pointed my camera in that direction—a luxury I had (to choose the best composition over the best chance for lightning) because I have more than enough lightning images already.
To make a long story just a little shorter, I got nothing with my northeast composition, but the people facing west weren’t having any luck either. The (still unproductive) cell to the west seemed to be in a great hurry to move north, across the canyon, and I encouraged everyone pointing in that direction to adjust their compositions accordingly (and to keep their fingers crossed)—while I stubbornly stuck with my composition in the opposite direction.
As soon as the western cell made it across the rim, it made a 90 degree turn and started scooting across the North Rim, directly in front of us. It took a couple of excited exclamations (that could only mean lightning across the canyon) to change my mind, and I turned my camera in that direction (now northwest).
I like the Desert View compositions due west (where the rain had been), and northeast (where I’d been pointing). But the lightning was firing directly across the canyon—my least favorite canyon view at Desert View. So I widened up enough to include some of the really nice view to the west—if I’d guessed right, I’d get that view on the left of my scene, with lightning on the right.
I ended up with three really nice lightning images this evening, each well after sunset. The first one (shared above) came the earliest, when I still had most of the down-canyon view I like so much. The second came nine minutes later, after it had become clear that the lightning was moving east and I needed to adjust accordingly. The final strike was six minutes later, after the darkness had really started to take hold, but the activity had moved far enough east that I could completely change my composition to include the up-canyon northeast view I like so much.
I think from this series of images you can really get a sense for the storm’s movement, and my attempts to balance the best composition with the potential for the best lightning. I’m not always as successful as I was this evening, but I guess that’s part of the thrill of lightning photography.
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Lightning Sequences
Here’s a collection of groups of 2 or 3 images captured together (same shoot); I’ve placed each sequence together, in the order they were captured (it’s probably easier to see the sequences if you click through the gallery)
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Here Comes the Sunstar
Posted on September 4, 2023
Day’s End on the Rim, Desert View, Grand Canyon
Sony α1
Sony 16-35 f/2.8 GM
ISO 100
f/20
1/8 second
As striking as they might be, some people find sunstars (AKA, diffraction spikes, sunbursts, or starbursts) gimmicky and cliché. When I (and pretty much any other landscape photographer) arrive at a location, of course I hope for some combination of dramatic clouds, vivid color, and soft light. But when the sun dominates the scene, it turns out that including a sunstar is usually the best way to get the most out of the moment.
Adding a sunstar to a photograph does have its challenges: Including any part of the sun in your frame introduces lens flare, not to mention extreme (often unmanageable) contrast. And poorly executed, a sunstar creates an unappealing eye magnet that overpowers the rest of the scene. And while a sunstar doesn’t capture the literal experience of watching the sun’s arrival or departure, it’s almost always better than a washed-out blue sky.
For a long time I considered sunstars merely a lemonade-from-lemons solution—the best way to play a poor hand. But over time I’ve come to appreciate a sunstar’s ability to represent the brilliance of gazing directly into the sun—minus the corneal damage. Like blurring whitewater and waves or freezing airborne droplets to convey motion, a sunstar can serve as a proxy for a natural phenomenon that’s impossible to duplicate in a still photo.
The truth is, the sun is a powerful conveyer of emotion. We all have fond memories of watching the day’s first or last rays as the sun peeks above, or slips below, the horizon. And who doesn’t feel relief when moving from sunlight to shade on a blistering summer afternoon, or from shade to sunlight on a chilly winter day? A sunstar can freeze these natural transitions in a still image, subconsciously stirring their associated emotions.
So what’s going on?
A sunstar forms when brilliant, direct sunlight (or any other bright light) diffracts (spreads) as it passes through the overlapping blades of a lens iris (its aperture). These are the blades that open to admit more light (small f-number), and close to limit light (large f-number).
It’s true that the more circular the aperture opening, the more pleasing a lens’s bokeh. But it’s impossible to get past the fact that you can’t make a perfect circle by connecting a series of straight lines (which is what each aperture blade is). Adding blades helps keep the aperture iris more circular, but as the lens stops down (smaller aperture) to allow less light to pass, the angle between adjacent blades steepens and the more the emulated circular shape (remember, it’s never a true circle) becomes a more obvious polygon—connected straight edges, one for each blade, with each blade intersecting its adjacent blades at identical angles totaling 360 degrees.
As sunlight crosses the straight line made by each iris blade, diffraction spreads spikes of light in both directions perpendicular to the blade. If the lens has an odd number of iris blades, each spike will appear in your sunstar—2 spikes for each iris blade. Lenses with an even number of blades consist of pairs of exactly parallel blades opposite each other around the opening; the diffraction spikes of each matching pair overlap, so you’ll see just one spike for each blade. In other words, the amount of spikes in your sunstar is a function of the number of iris blades in your lens: with an even number of blades you’ll see one spike per blade; with an odd number of blades, it will be 2x the number of blades.
Light diffracts (spreads) as it passes through a small opening—the smaller the opening, the greater the diffraction. Since diffraction reduces resolution, we usually we try to choose apertures that minimize diffraction. But when a sunstar is the goal, a small aperture makes the sunstar more distinct.
Sunstar how-to
If you’re still with me, you’ll be happy to know that creating a sunstar is much more straightforward than understanding its optics. Here’s a quick recipe:
- Start with a brilliant point of light: You can create a sunstar with any bright light source—the moon, stars, or even an artificial light such as a lighthouse, or car headlights—but I’m going to talk about the brightest, most ubiquitous, and easiest light source: the sun. Rather than using the entire sun, it’s usually best (but not always—you decide the look you prefer) to block most of the light with the horizon, a cloud, or some terrestrial feature, such as a rock or tree. And clouds and atmospheric haze can reduce the brilliance enough to significantly limit your sunstar. Sometimes I’m not even aware of clouds or haze until I see the sunstar spikes are faint, spread out, or non-existent.
- Different lenses will yield different results: Experiment with your lenses to see which one gives the most pleasing sunstar effect. As a general rule, wide lenses are better, and the better the quality of the lens, the better its sunstar effect. Prime lenses tend to do a better job, but today’s best zooms create beautiful sunstars too, especially at their widest focal lengths. Remember, the number a sunstar spikes is determined by the number of diaphragm blades.
- Remove filters: The more glass between the sun and your sensor, the more reflections and lens flare you’ll get, so remove your polarizer (which has no benefit anyway when you’re pointing at the sun) and UV filter. If you must use a graduated neutral density filter to hold down the dynamic range, go ahead.
- The smaller your aperture, the better your sunstar: A wide-open aperture is a nearly perfect circle (not good for sunstars), but the angle between the diaphragm blades increases as the diaphragm closes down, improving the sunstar as the angles increase. For my sunstars, I generally stop down to f/16 or smaller (larger f-number)—usually f/18 or f/20.
- Size matters: The larger the visible portion of the sun, the bigger the sunstar, but also the more lens flare and blown highlights. Conversely, if most of the sun is blocked, you’ll get a smaller sunstar, but it will also be more precise and delicate. There’s not absolute ideal size, it’s more of a balancing act to find the right mix for your taste and situation.
- Composition: The extreme dynamic range of a sunstar image makes it essential to photograph the scene the way your camera sees it, not the way your eyes see it. I generally set up my composition before I meter, brightening the foreground enough to make it plainly visible in my mirrorless LCD (ideally I do this before the sunstar appears). If you’re new to sunstar photography, or don’t have a camera with lots of dynamic range, a silhouette or high key image are good options. Start with a foreground shape, or shapes, that standout against the sky—for silhouettes, meter on the sky and underexpose; for high key, meter on your foreground subject and overexpose slightly (to turn the sky white or nearly white—see poppy example in the gallery below).
- Manage the highlights: With the sun actually in your frame, you’re invariably dealing with a sky that’s much brighter than your foreground—overexposed highlights and underexposed shadows are virtually unavoidable. To maximize the usable data you capture, start with a raw—a jpeg file just doesn’t have enough dynamic range to handle the extreme highlights and shadows of a sunstar image. Nevertheless, it’s likely the image will look like crap on your LCD—even in a properly exposed sunstar image, the highlights will probably look too bright and the shadows will look too dark. On the other hand, if the sky looks great, the shadows are probably hopelessly dark (unrecoverable); if the highlights look great, the sky is probably hopelessly bright. When I’m exposing for a sunstar, I watch the histogram (a benefit of mirrorless photography is the pre-capture histogram in my viewfinder) and try to find a balance between the extreme highlights near the sun, and the dark shadows of the surrounding scene. In most of my photography don’t bracket for exposure, but sunstars are one significant exception. Since the dynamic range is so extreme that the histogram shows both shadows and highlights completely clipped (blown), I try to start with an exposure where their both more-or-less equally clipped, then bracket over at least a 6-stop range (3 stops up and down from my midway starting point) in 2/3-stop increments, changing exposures as rapidly as possible to give me a good number of different exposures to choose between.
- Processing: I promise that you’ll need to do some processing to get the most out of the highlights and shadows, but take a look at my gallery below—each image was captured with one click (no HDR or any other multi-image blending), and most (all?) were captured without a GND filter. My usual processing approach is to start with one of the frames near the middle of the exposure range that I used, pull the Highlights slider all the way to the left (-100) and pull the Shadows slider all the way to the right (+100). Then I pull the exposure slider to the right until satisfactory detail appears in the shadows. If this brightens my highlights too much, I discard these changes and move to a darker image. Following this approach, I can usually find at least one frame with usable shadow/highlight balance.
- Practice: You can practice sunstars any time the sun’s out. Just go outside with your camera, dial in a small aperture, and hide the sun behind whatever object is convenient (a tree, your house, etc.).
About this image
I captured today’s image on the first sunset shoot of last month’s first Grand Canyon Monsoon photo workshop. You can read all the details of that shoot in an earlier blog post: Where to Draw the Line. Because I was with my group that evening, and especially because this was our first evening, I stayed in one place so I could continue working with anyone who needed help. That kind of limited my composition options, but I was very happy to have this striking tree directly in front of me, so I just tried to find as many ways as possible to feature it.
The Grand Canyon’s expansive views make it especially easy to lock into horizontal compositions, a mistake I almost made. Fortunately, since we were using clouds rather than the horizon to block most of the sun, we had multiple sunstar opportunities as the sun and clouds shifted. And though I was set up for a sunstar, when the sun first appeared, it was the shafts of light that stood out most. For those I’m glad my camera was oriented horizontally. (And I still got a little sunstar.)
But when the shafts faded and the sunstar became more prominent, I’m pleased to have given myself some vertical options. I’m actually surprised how much I prefer the vertical version of this later scene (after the shafts) to the horizontal orientation I was stuck in. In the horizontal version (it’s in the gallery below), I don’t the think the tree stands out nearly as well. This vertical version really becomes all about the tree and the sunstar, connected by the canyon’s receding red ridges.
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A Star is Born
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Watch Your Back
Posted on August 21, 2023
Day’s End, Cape Royal, Grand Canyon
Sony a7R V
Sony 24-105 f/4 G
ISO 100
f/13
1/13 seconds
Landscape images can be divided into two categories: the right place at the right time images, and the “Hey, look at this!” images (that creatively reveal something easily overlooked). While I do everything I can to get myself and my workshop groups in the right place at the right time for something special, it’s the HLAT! images that I find most satisfying.
Right-place/right-time can be an anticipated event that we mark on a calendar and make an effort to be present for (or schedule a photo workshop for)—things like a Yosemite moonrise, Iceland’s northern lights in January, or the lightning of the summer monsoon at Grand Canyon. Or they can be one of those surprises that sometimes just seem to fall into our laps—for example, a SpaceX rocket launch photobombing a workshop Milky Way shoot. As thrilling as these moments can be, photographing them is mostly just a matter of combining a decent eye for composition with an understanding of your camera and mastery of photographic craft (like exposure and depth of field).
The HLAT! images start with those basic skills, but also require creative vision and an uncommon attention to detail. It’s a mindset that knows there’s something better here, and a determination to find it.
Rather than settling for the obvious, I strive for that mindset and approach. And while I think I have decent success with it, in pretty much every workshop image review I’m reminded by my students’ images that I still miss things. My students’ images are a great reminder to everyone present, myself included, of the creative possibilities at every location.
I do find it ironic that those spectacular right-place/right-time moments we covet so much can so easily blind us to all the subtle, but no less beautiful, opportunities nearby. And while a few fortunate photographers seem naturally predisposed to recognize Nature’s subtleties and convey them in unique ways, most of us need to actively cultivate that vision. For me that means having the discipline to regularly check my surroundings—look behind me, look closer, and just plain slow down—no matter what else is going on.
Most times I start by identifying the best light and finding a composition that uses it, regardless of the scene’s primary subject. Something else that helps is switching to a different lens—for example, using an ultra-wide when the more obvious composition calls for something longer, then getting right up in a close foreground subject. Or I’ll add telephoto lens when my first inclination is to shoot wide, then remove my camera from the tripod and slowly scan the scene to see what stops me.
I had a good opportunity to apply all this at Grand Canyon earlier this month. Anyone who has photographed sunset at Cape Royal on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon knows that “the shot” there is facing west and southwest. Not only is west the direction of the setting sun, it’s also where you’ll find the North Rim’s most impressive canyon view. And starting with that view, going wider and angling your camera just a little to the left (southwest) allows you to include all of massive Wotan’s Throne, arguably the Grand Canyon rim’s most iconic feature, jutting front-and-center.
Last Light, Wotan’s Throne, Cape Royal, Grand Canyon
Though Wotan’s Throne is a prominent feature at most of the South Rim vistas, Cape Royal on the North Rim is the closest vantage point, and the absolutely best place to catch it throbbing with the warm light of the sun’s last rays. Less heralded Cape Royal views to south and east include Vishnu Temple and more canyon, but they’re not nearly as expansive as the view west and southwest.
My workshop groups always do a sunset shoot here, and when conditions permit, we top it off with a Milky Way shoot. As you might imagine, no matter which way their cameras were pointed, no one leaves Cape Royal disappointed.
First time photographers here can be forgiven for giving all of their sunset attention to these west/southwest views. This evening it seemed everyone in my group had found some version of the obvious sunset- and Wotans-facing view. Some had visions of capturing a sunstar or red rubber ball sun, while others set up to include Wotan’s Throne’s last light (a wide shot will get both). But as you’ll hear from any quarterback who has fixed his gaze on the primary receiver while the (unguarded) tight end frantically waves his arms in the end zone, the first choice isn’t always the best choice.
In a workshop I generally don’t shoot unless I think I can get something new, but no matter how “ordinary” I think the sunset might be, I’ve learned never to walk out to Cape Royal without my camera bag. This time, as expected, my gear had spent the entire evening resting on a rock, undisturbed.
One of my roles during a shoot with a group is to be the eyes in the back of everyone’s head—not only does this benefit them, foregoing my camera keeps me from being so locked in on what’s in my viewfinder that I miss other good stuff. So while the group concentrated on the primary scene, I kept my head on a swivel, scanning for less obvious opportunities.
Long aware of the aesthetic appeal of the dead tree clinging to the cliff at Cape Royal, I’ve attempted to photograph it (with varying degrees of success) on previous visits. Usually it’s been as an accent to the primary subject (as in the Wotan’s Throne image above), and I’ve never really emphasized it. But this time, after seeing its gnarled branches bathed in golden sunset light and accented by a single lit cloud, I sounded the alarm.
Of course this was also the moment when the sun had just balanced in the horizon, so most of the Wotan’s light, sunstar, red ball crowd were otherwise engaged. But a couple in the group saw what I saw and pulled themselves away, and when I raced to my bag to pull out my own camera and tripod and set up facing the opposite direction of everyone else (Tip: when you see a pro photographer point his or her camera in the opposite direction, take a second to figure out what the attraction is), one or two more joined the fun.
With only a couple of minutes before the sun disappeared, I worked fast, starting with vertical compositions, but making sure to include horizontal options as well. The cloud was a fortuitous addition, just enough to carry the sky. And while I try to avoid cutting subjects with the horizon line, I didn’t have much choice and was grateful that the lit part of the tree was almost entirely below the horizon.
As the sun dropped, the light on the tree just kept getting warmer, but also the amount of the tree actually receiving light shrunk. At some point I realized that the tree was actually catching some of my shadow (duh), so every time I clicked my shutter (using a 2-second timer because I hate the Sony remote), I ducked to hide my shadow.
Turns out, this is one of those images that’s equal parts right place, right time, and “Hey, look at this.” I happened to be at the right place at the right time for this light and cloud, but I’d have completely missed it if I’d been too focused on the more obvious scene. In this case I was especially pleased because not only did I get an image that’s a little different than the conventional scene, I was actually able to encourage a few others in the group into photographing something they otherwise would have missed—and in the process remind them to always watch their back.
Epilogue
Less than 2 hours after this we were photographing Wotan’s Throne beneath the Milky Way, when Elon Musk’s SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket crashed the party. And at this point in the workshop it still looked like we’d be lucky to get lightning, but that changed quite suddenly two nights later. Stay tuned…
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The Less Obvious Shot
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That Time Elon Musk Photobombed My Workshop…
Posted on August 15, 2023
Milky Way and SpaceX Falcon 9, Wotan’s Throne, Grand Canyon
Sony a7R V
Sony 14mm f/1.8 GM
ISO 4000
f/1.8
25 seconds
Last week’s Grand Canyon Milky Way shoot almost didn’t happen, but by the time all was said and done, we ended up with far more than we’d bargained for.
My Grand Canyon monsoon workshops are ostensibly about photographing all of Grand Canyon’s unrivaled beauty, but ask anyone who signs up and they’ll tell you their number one goal is lightning. About 70 percent of my monsoon groups have what I consider lightning success: everyone in the group gets at least one nice lightning image. Of course that also means in 30 percent of my groups, not everyone gets lightning—I can prepare them, monitor the activity, and put us in the locations that maximizes our chances, if the lightning isn’t happening, there’s not much I can do. On the other hand, the clouds that bring lightning often wipe out the night sky, so the (generous) consolation prize for the clear-sky groups is the opportunity to photograph the Milky Way in the dark Grand Canyon sky.
After spending the first two days of this year’s second Grand Canyon workshop beneath wall-to-wall blue skies, all of us were excited about photographing the Milky Way on that second night. Though I was a little concerned about the wind during the Cape Royal sunset shoot, it wasn’t until walking over to my nearby Milky Way location in the darkening twilight (for a less obstructed view and better angle to our foreground subject, Wotan’s Throne), that I really started to fear our Milky Way shoot might not happen. I’d hoped that the more sheltered location would help, but the wind there was just as intense, blowing so hard that I wasn’t sure we’d be able to keep our cameras stable throughout the long exposures a Milky Way shoot requires.
Not only that, the views this spot offers are very exposed, with no railings above a precipitous vertical drop (there’s also room back from the edge for all who aren’t comfortable with heights, so no one is forced to stand on the edge). That meant, given the wind gusting to 40 MPH, in addition to camera stability concerns, I was more than a little concerned about someone straying too close to the edge and getting knocked off balance by a sudden gust. Yikes.
After pondering all this, I decided that we’d hang out a safe distance from the edge at least long enough for the darkening sky to reveal the Milky Way. Best case, the wind would die enough for us to photograph; worst case, we’d at least get to see the Milky Way, always a treat. (Okay, the real worst case would be someone stumbling over the cliff in the dark, but there was really no need for anyone to vacate their safe vantage point once we were established.)
As we waited, I realized that the gusty wind often slowed long enough that we might be able to time our captures between gusts and decided we may as well give the Milky Way a shot—when darkness was complete, we were open for business. With each person’s camera safely affixed to their tripod, Curt (the photographer assisting me) and I moved around to ensure that all had achieved reasonable focus, the right exposure settings, and a good composition. Thanks to our optional practice shoot at Grand Canyon Lodge (where the South Rim lights make for less than ideal Milky Way conditions) the prior night, the group got up to speed quickly.
With exposures in the 10 to 30 second range (double that if long exposure noise reduction is turned on), we had lots of time while waiting for each exposure to complete to simply appreciate skies darker than any of us get at home—for some, darker than they’d ever seen.
It truly is a joy to watch the stars pop out in a darkening sky. There’s Spica in Virgo, Arcturus in Bootes, Antares in Scorpius, plus a host of less prominent stars. Splitting the dark like sugar spilled in ink was our Milky Way galaxy’s luminous core. Two or three times a meteor flashed through the scene, perhaps a stray Perseid streaking from behind us, but most likely just a random piece of space dust.
But wait a minute… What’s that? As I mentally checked through all the familiar skymarks (I just made-up that word), something new caught my eye. Expanding in the southwest sky was a large diaphanous disk. We all saw it at about the same time, which told me that it had just appeared. My first thought, which I uttered out loud only half joking, was, “I hope it’s one of ours.”
Living in California my entire life means I’ve seen a few rocket launches—none that looked exactly like this, but similar enough that I was pretty confident that’s what we were seeing. I did a quick Google search and the first thing that popped up was a SpaceX Falcon 9 Starlink mission launching from Vandenberg Air Force Base on California’s Central Coast, nearly 500 miles away, at 8:57 that night. I checked my watch: 9:04 p.m.—mystery solved.
SpaceX was founded in 2002 by Elon Musk to further his dreams of space dominance. Propelled by reusable Falcon and (soon) Starship rockets, SpaceX crafts deliver both human and electronic payloads to space. Today the human payloads are primarily mega-rich tourists, but the eventual goal is to put humans on the Moon, Mars, and perhaps beyond.
A more practical current SpaceX implementation is the Starlink satellite system that blankets Earth and is capable of providing Internet service anywhere on the planet. I’ve used Starlink at a location where I’d previously had no Internet (the Grand Canyon North Rim, actually) and was absolutely blown away by the speed and reliability—not as fast as home, but certainly fast enough for reasonable use (I didn’t stream any movies, but I did stream shorter videos without problem). On the other hand, this year we tried Starlink on the North Rim and didn’t have a clear enough view through the trees to get a reliable signal—sometimes it worked, but mostly it didn’t.
Which is why SpaceX is still adding satellites. As of August 2023 4,500 Starlink satellites orbit roughly 200 – 350 miles above Earth’s surface. The launch we witnessed last Monday added another 15, with the ultimate goal being as many as 42,000!
I found a video of the launch and learned that 7 1/2 minutes after liftoff, a few seconds before I captured this image, the rocket propelling the satellites toward orbit was 175 miles above Earth’s surface, traveling over 10,000 MPH. But the the Falcon 9 rocket achieves this altitude and speed by using two stages—when the first one has exhausted its fuel, it steps aside and defers to stage two. After doing a little research I’m pretty sure what we witnessed was the beginning of the stage-1 rocket’s return to Earth—the second stage and its satellite payload were out of sight.
Five minutes earlier (2 1/2 minutes into the flight), it’s job done, stage 1 had shut down and separated from the moneymaking section of the rocket, turning control of the payload delivery to stage 2. At that point the rocket was about 50 miles above Earth, traveling about 4,700 MPH. As stage 2 took over, accelerating its payload of satellites even further heavenward, it rapidly outpaced the jettisoned first stage.
With nothing propelling stage 1 forward, Earth’s gravity became the only force acting on it, causing immediate deceleration. But with so much momentum and virtually no atmosphere to slow it further, the depleted stage 1 continued climbing for about 2 1/2 more minutes.
Without further intervention, stage 1 would have plummeted far out in the Pacific. But SpaceX wants to reuse it, so about 7 1/2 minutes into the flight, when it was about 42 miles above the ocean and traveling more than 4,800 MPH, stage one threw on the brakes with a 20-second entry burn timed to deliver it into the waiting “arms” (landing pad) of a SpaceX ship positioned in the east Pacific, west of Baja California. Bullseye (watch the video and be amazed).
I believe the glowing cloud my group and I witnessed was the exhaust from this entry burn, illuminated by the sun. The red streak is the rocket burn itself.
The opportunity to view this phenomenon is relatively rare. Because the exhaust cloud has no inherent luminance, it’s visible only when illuminated by sunlight. That means Earth-bound viewers must be beneath dark skies, and the exhaust plume must be high enough to still have a direct line of sight to the sun—in other words, night below, daylight above. Too far east and the plume would get no sunlight; too far west and it wouldn’t have been visible to anyone beneath a night sky. This convergence requires a twilight launch, cloudless skies, and a viewing position within a relatively small terrestrial zone just into the dark side of night’s advancing shadow.
I virtually never photograph anything manmade, but this was too cool to lose to silly personal rules. At this point, still completely ignorant of all I detailed above, I quickly adjusted my composition to include more of the glowing exhaust plume without losing the Milky Way and Wotan’s Throne. I just stuck with the exposure values I’d already been using. I got exactly one frame before the rocket and its cloud faded noticeably—I just hoped the image was sharp.
I come from the generation where space flight was celebrated, a time when the world stopped to watch every launch, splashdown, and space milestone. Teachers would wheel televisions into classrooms so we could all view together, and I still have vivid memories of watching Neil Armstrong’s first steps on the moon. But as amazing as this SpaceX launch was to view and photograph, and no matter how beneficial this technology is, I can’t help being more than a little concerned about what all this hardware in space is doing to our once pristine night sky.
When I was a kid gazing up at the night sky, spotting a satellite was a rare and thrilling event. But in this 25-second exposure I count at least 9 satellites of varying degrees of brightness—what’s our night sky experience going to be like when Starlink’s count reaches its 42,000 goal, and SpaceX’s inevitable competitors try to match them?
And if scientific exploration is important to you, consider that satellites have become the bane of optical astronomers’ existence. SpaceX has started applying a less reflective surface to its Starlink satellites, reducing their visibility by about 50% (better than nothing but still not great), but also increasing their surface temperatures, making them more problematic for infrared astronomy.
I don’t really have a solution for this conundrum, I just hope that moderation is applied to these technological advances, and that factors beyond the bottom line are considered as we dig deeper into space.
(And I still love this image.)
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To Infinity and Beyond
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Eloquent Images by Gary Hart 