Eloquent Images by Gary Hart
Insight, information, and inspiration for the inquisitive nature photographer
One part plan, one part serendipity, one part impulse
Posted on July 12, 2013
Dusk, Crescent Moon and Oaks, Sierra Foothills, California
Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III
1.6 seconds
F/11.0
ISO 400
330 mm
Nature photography is a particularly serendipitous art form. We do our best to get ourselves in the right place at the right time, but it’s ultimately up to Mother Nature to deliver. Fortunately, some things in nature are more certain than others. Among them is the phase, location, and timing of the moon, each of which can be anticipated with near absolute precision. Another certainty I’ve grown to depend on is clear skies in California in July. Armed with those two truths, Wednesday night a friend and I headed to the foothills to photograph a thin crescent moon in the western twilight.
My criteria for photographing any twilight scene include finding a striking shape to silhouette against the sky. And like a portrait photographer who can’t get enough of a particular model, there a number of “go-to” trees scattered about the foothills that I return to whenever I get the urge to photograph a sunset near home. For a long time I’ve known the hilltop perch of one pair would allow me to juxtapose them with a setting moon. I’d already photographed this pair many times with good success (one of these images was on a magazine cover), and one time got them with a crescent moon. But that success only made me greedy for a tight shot with the moon large, among the trees. I check the moon info each month to see if its phases and position align with my schedule (for obvious reasons, I’m often away from home when the moon is at its photographic best), and Wednesday night looked like everything might just fit into place, so out we went.
By about two hours before sunset it became pretty clear that clouds would be part of our sky that evening. While not unprecedented, this unexpected intrusion could be: A) Good, if the clouds added sunset color while parting enough to reveal the moon; or B) Bad, if the clouds thickened to obscure the moon and block the color. Serendipity.
Mark and I pulled up to “my” trees about fifteen minutes before sunset, but with the clouds starting to look like they might deliver a colorful sunset, and since we didn’t need to be in position for the moon until 25 or 30 minutes after sunset, I made the snap decision to continue about five miles down the road to another group of trees that I thought would be particularly nice for a colorful sunset. The sunset was indeed worth the detour, but that’s a story for another day. When it was over, we hightailed it back to the hilltop tree spot to find the moon playing hide and seek with the clouds above and just a little south of the trees. Definitely photo-worthy, but not aligned so perfectly that I could get the tight telephoto shot I’d envisioned.
While photographing from the narrow shoulder here is fairly easy (though a bit unnerving), the angle we needed to align the trees and moon required scaling a small hill. Behind a barbed wire fence. Hmmm. But wait—what’s this? A gate! And it’s unlocked! So, all with about as much restraint as two ten-year olds at the all-you-can-eat dessert bar, up the hill we traipsed, dodging cow patties and listening for rattlesnakes. As expected, the new vantage point provided exactly the angle we needed, but I have to say that in the growing darkness my impulsiveness enthusiasm was soon replaced by visions of tomorrow’s headlines:
- LOCAL PHOTOGRAPHERS ARRESTED FOR TRESPASSING
- PHOTOGRAPHERS SHOT BY FRIGHTENED FARMER
- ANGRY BULL GORES DISTRACTED PHOTOGRAPHERS
Fortunately, none of that stuff happened, and Mark and I made it back to my car, undetected and intact. Impulsive urges notwithstanding, I ended up with several “keeper” images, thanks in no small part to the convergence of my plan with the fortuitous appearance of clouds to color our summer sky. Sometimes things just work out.
Later, I had to admit that going up there like that violated one of my personal rules: Get permission before entering private property (I’ll often offer a print as thanks). But this time I rationalized that since we’d do no harm, and because time was absolutely of the essence, it would be okay to maybe go just a little bit beyond the fence. And while it worked out this time, that’s the kind of decision that inspires hindsight (and I have the stories to prove it).
Read more about photographing a crescent moon
A Crescent Moon Gallery
Click an image for a closer look and slide show. Refresh the window to reorder the display.
Just a dash of moon…
Posted on December 11, 2012
Tree and Crescent, Sierra Foothills, California
A new moon debuts this week, and with it some nice opportunities for photographers to accent favorite scenes with a delicate crescent. This morning the diminishing vestiges of the waning moon rose in the east, a couple of hours before sunrise (did you see it?); tomorrow morning, what remains of the “old” moon will be too thin and close to the sun to be seen at all. Thursday night’s sky will be moonless, as the Earth/Moon/Sun alignment puts the moon’s dark side facing us. On Friday the (rejuvenated) moon reappears, this time in the evening twilight, a three percent crescent trailing the sun to the western horizon.
Because it frustrates me no end to see a graceful slice of moon suspended above the landscape when I’m on my way to somewhere else, I now put these lunar milestones in my calendar. When my schedule permits, I’ll schedule a trip around the sunrise or sunset crescent moon, but often I’ll just head up to the foothills east of town.
It helps to know that the more of the moon that’s illuminated, the farther in the sky from the sun it appears (a full moon is exactly opposite the sun, rising at sunset and setting at sunrise). A crescent moon is always in close proximity to the sun, hanging in the brightest part of the post-sunset/pre-sunrise sky, above a (relatively) dark landscape. A camera’s limited dynamic range makes it impossible to photograph a crescent moon against twilight color and landscape detail in a single frame. In these scenes, subtle subjects and fine detail are lost in the dark foreground. Instead, look for strong shapes to silhouette against the colorful twilight sky, or bodies of water that reflect the sky.
For my foothill forays I’ve identified a number of hilltop oaks that stand out against the sky. The best ones for a moon are those that are far enough from my vantage point to allow me to magnify the moon with a telephoto. But even without a telephoto, the moon holds so much “emotional weight” (I’ll need to write about that sometime) that even the tiniest sliver can carry a large portion of the frame.
The tree in the image at the top of this post stands on a ridge south of El Dorado Hills. I come here often, and have a variety of images from this spot that please me (one appeared on the cover of Sierra Heritage magazine a few years ago). When I arrived that evening I feared that the clouds would shut me out, but they turned out to be thin enough to let the moon shine through as the sky darkened. Just a couple of minutes later the thicker clouds rose to obscure the moon, but as they did the pink deepened to a rich crimson and I just kept shooting.
Learn more on my Crescent moon page.
Red Sky, Oak at Sunset, Sierra Foothills :: This is one of my last captures that evening, about eight minutes later than the crescent at the top of the post. To emphasize the fiery red, I slightly underexposed this frame.
Color in nature
Posted on February 3, 2012
Red Sky, Oak at Sunset, Sierra Foothills
On consecutive nights last week the post-sunset sky featured a conjunction between the waxing crescent moon and Venus. This event had been on my calendar for a while, so when the first date arrived I was a little concerned to see thin clouds assembling in the west. Nevertheless, my camera and I headed to the foothills south and east of home, hoping to catch the celestial show above silhouetted oaks.
While the moon was too thin to penetrate the clouds that evening, the crimson sunset made my drive absolutely worthwhile. Here I used my 100-400 lens to isolate a hilltop oak (it shares this perch with a mate just out of the frame to the left) against the sunset. To hold the color and ensure that the tree and hillside remained in silhouette (totally black), I spot-metered the sky and set my exposure to +2/3 (above a middle tone).
In contrast to my previous post (a dawn moonset on the Big Sur coast), this image required virtually no processing. While I may have spent close to an hour preparing the Big Sur moonset image, this oak tree at sunset probably required less than five minutes from opening the raw file to saving a completed version, ready for output–and the bulk of that time was (tedious) cloning to remove sensor dust. No layers, no levels, curves, or saturation adjustments, no dodging and burning–nothing. But I know what you’re thinking: How do you get color like that without processing? I thought you’d never ask.
I’m convinced people forget how vivid color is in nature. How else to explain the skeptical looks and cynical questions when I post an image like this? To these people my brain thinks, “You don’t get outside enough,” but my mouth politely suggest that soon, very soon (tonight?), they install themselves on a vantage point with a good view of the western horizon about 30 minutes before sunset, and not take their eyes off the horizon until at least 30 minutes after sunset. No camera allowed. Just focus on the color, and I don’t think you’ll ever doubt sunset color again.
Does this mean that nobody exaggerates color in Photoshop? Of course not. I love color, and actively look for it when I shoot, and do certain things at capture to ensure that I get it. But I’m pretty sensitive to the difference between natural and manufactured (manipulated, enhanced, or whatever you want to call it) color. I find manufactured color is usually incongruous with the rest of the scene. For example, I’ve noticed that many HDR images often have an impossible combination of vivid reds and greens.
One of the most common causes of “lost” color is overexposure–not necessarily blown highlights, but hues washed out by sunlight. Left to its own devices, your camera’s meter might attempt to extract some detail from the hillside and tree, which of course would add exposure to the entire scene and dilute the red in the sky. Which is exactly why I never let my camera make decisions for me.
Eloquent Images by Gary Hart 