Eloquent Images by Gary Hart
Insight, information, and inspiration for the inquisitive nature photographer
A Winter Morning in Yosemite
Posted on December 10, 2017
Winter Reflection, El Capitan, Yosemite
Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III
Canon 17-40
1/4 second
F/16
ISO 200
Missing snow so far this winter, I’m going through some of my old snow images and came across this one from a few years ago. I’d traveled to Yosemite with the promise of snow in the forecast, but the night before the trip’s final day I went to sleep to the steady hum of rain. The next morning dawned damp and gray—and gloriously silent. Outside a thin veneer of fresh snow dusted the trees, and without even considering breakfast I headed to Tunnel View to survey the valley and plan my morning. By the time I arrived a patch of sunlight had burned a hole in the clouds above Cathedral Rocks and hints blue sky mingled with the clouds behind me. I knew the show there would soon be spectacular, but I’ve photographed many clearing storms from Tunnel View and wanted something different.
Without leaving my car I headed back down into the valley, stopping first at El Capitan Bridge, arriving just before the clouds atop El Capitan started lifting. I photographed there for about 15 minutes, long enough to see El Capitan’s nose go from obscure shadow to distinct outline to fully exposed granite. Before the clouds parted completely, I packed up and made a beeline for nearby Cathedral Beach. In the short time it took to drive a half mile most of El Capitan had emerged from the clouds and I rushed to grab my gear. The road to the beach was closed so I set out on foot, running most of the quarter mile to the river.
I found two other photographers at the west end of the beach and rather than compete with them for real estate, I trudged through the brush and fresh snow to an open space just downstream. There I was able to set up in solitude and move around at will. I was quite pleased to find a snow covered snag protruding from the river, adding a little depth to the foreground.
The beauty of photographing a Yosemite clearing storm is that no matter where you are, something spectacular is happening. Often in these situations I move between locations much more quickly than normal, but this morning I took my time and just enjoyed the show.
Wringing out as many compositions as possible, I started wide with both vertical and horizontal compositions that included El Capitan and the reflection. Next I went a little tighter, capturing just El Capitan, or just the reflection, or some of both. Finally I switched to a telephoto and started picking out individual elements: the swirling clouds and brilliant highlights on El Capitan’s vertical edge, the snow covered snag in the river, and so on.
Technical stuff
A couple of related technical issues raised by this image: First, the focus point of a reflection; and second, where to focus when elements are spread from near to far throughout the frame. It’s counterintuitive to many that a reflection’s focus point is the focus point of the reflective subject, not the reflective surface. In other words, since El Capitan is at infinity, its reflection is in focus at infinity, and not when focused on the snag. If you don’t believe me, try it yourself.
Given that knowledge, and the fact that I generally want whatever’s in my foreground to be in focus (even if it means the background is slightly soft), I had to find a compromise focus point to ensure that both the reflection and the snag were in focus. With an extremely wide focal length and small aperture I was confident I could get the entire scene acceptably sharp if I focused carefully.
There are different approaches to maximizing focus range, such as relatively accurate but awkward hyperfocal charts, and rule-of-thumb guidelines like focusing a third of the way into the frame. Both have merit, and many excellent photographers employ them, but I prefer a more seat-of-the-pants approach that relies on my own experience and understanding of focus range. I generally find the closest subject I want in focus—in this case the snag—and then focus on something a little behind it.
Here I estimated the distance of the snag, found something behind me that I thought was a little farther away, and focused there. At f/16 that gave me a pretty large margin for error and I was confident the image was sharp throughout. Is this an approach I’d recommend for others? Perhaps, though it takes trial and error to perfect. I encourage you to familiarize yourself with hyperfocal distances–you don’t need to memorize them, but a basic understanding of the relationship between f-stops, focal lengths, and focus distance is invaluable for decisions like this.
Here’s an article from my Photo Tips section that might help: Depth of Field.
Workshop Schedule || Purchase Prints
Winter in Yosemite
Moon Over Yosemite
Posted on December 5, 2017
Winter Supermoon, Half Dome, Yosemite
Sony a7RIII
Sony 100-400 GM
Sony 2x teleconverter
ISO 400
f/11
1/8 second
Large or small, crescent or full, I love photographing the moon rising above Half Dome. The alignment doesn’t work most months, so those months when the alignment is right, I do my best to be there.
For last week’s Yosemite Winter Moon photo workshop I’d planned three moonrises: Thursday and Friday we got lucky with the never reliable December skies, but Saturday night concerned me. Not only was this moonrise the “main event,” the forecast was less than promising. And while the first two moonrises were absolutely beautiful, the moon was less full and we were on the valley floor, much closer to Half Dome. Our location required a wider focal length that meant a relatively small moon. But on Saturday (it would rise too late to photograph on Sunday) the moon would be 99 percent full and rise shortly after sunset, just left of Half Dome when viewed from Tunnel View. Tunnel View is eight miles west of Half Dome, a distance, when combined with the moon’s proximity to Half Dome, that would allow a long telephoto that would fill the frame with the moon and all of Half Dome.
Saturday started clear, but soon a thin layer of clouds moved in, bathing Yosemite Valley in diffuse light that was wonderful for photographing pretty much anything that didn’t involve the sky. These clouds weren’t dense enough to completely obscure the sun, but with a chance of rain coming overnight, I knew they’d be thickening at some point.
I got my group in position near Tunnel View about a half hour before sunset. I’ve attempted moonrises that were completely obscured by clouds, and some where we could see the moon’s glow through the clouds, but no detail. I tried to stay positive but the fading light made it impossible to tell exactly how thick the clouds were. Fearing the worst, I rationalized that we’d already had two nice moonrises and maybe wishing for a third was just greedy. But still….
Hoping for the best, I pointed out where the moon should appear about ten minutes after sunset, advising everyone to continue shooting normally until then, but to have an idea of their moonrise compositions. Practicing what I preach, I got out my Sony 100-400 GM, added my 2x teleconverter, and framed up the scene. Because I wasn’t going to shoot anything else (as you may have noticed, I already have a couple of Tunnel View images in my portfolio), I focused and waited.
About five minutes after sunset an amber glow in the clouds next to Half Dome signaled the moon’s imminent arrival. That we could even see any sign of the moon gave me hope and I held my breath as the glow intensified, still unsure whether we’d see lunar detail or just a white blob. The glow was actually unique and very beautiful in its own way and I started clicking. The instant the moon’s brilliant leading edge nudged into view, silhouetting the trees, I knew we were in luck. The landscape was already fairly dark by then, but because this was the group’s third moonrise, they’d become old pros at dealing with the scene’s extreme dynamic range—at that point the workshop’s mantra had become: “Push the exposure until the moon’s highlights start blinking, and fix the shadows in Photoshop.”
The experience that evening was even more spectacular than I had dared hope, a perfect storm of conditions I might never see repeated: the moon’s alignment with Half Dome, the telephoto distance, the timing of the moon’s arrival that put it on the horizon with just enough twilight remaining, and (especially) the translucent clouds that enveloped the moon in a golden halo and eased the scene’s dynamic range.
Some thoughts on the Sony a7RIII
A couple of weeks ago, at a Sony sponsored event in Sedona, I got the opportunity to do some night photography with the new Sony a7RIII. But this Yosemite trip was my first time using the new camera on my own. It’s too soon for any final proclamations, but my general sense is that this camera has even more dynamic range than the a7RII (which is pretty incredible). The other significant takeaway from this weekend is that I used the same battery for three-and-half days and came home with more than 25 percent remaining. Anyone who shot with the a7RII, knows how significant this is.
I’m still getting used to the new camera’s interface—while similar to the a7RII, there are definite differences. I do like the new button layout and improved menu interface, but am still getting used to the joystick and touchscreen—pretty sure I’ll learn to love them too. And the dual card slots are a necessary and most welcome improvement.
My biggest complaint with the new camera is that the back-button focus that I loved so much on the a7rII is broken on the a7RIII. Every camera I’ve ever used (Canon and Sony) has allowed me, after tweaking some settings, to switch seamlessly between auto and manual focus without requiring me to change the focus mode. So the first thing I do when I get a new camera is disengage autofocus from the shutter button and assign autofocus to a button on the back of the camera. With back-button focus enabled, my workflow has always been manually focus by default, but always with the ability to autofocus with the simple push of a button—no focus mode change required. Doing this with the a7RII was the easiest of any camera I’ve ever used, but for some reason Sony changed the focus behavior of the a7RIII, so now I have to deal with the added step of switching focus modes on the camera before focusing. This might not sound like a big deal, but I don’t want to have to think about my camera when I’m composing a scene, so this behavior is extremely frustrating. That said, I’ve already communicated my frustration to Sony’s engineers and am hopeful (confident?) this is a firmware fix that will come soon. Sony’s responsiveness to things like this is one of the reasons I’m so happy I made the switch from Canon.
I’m happily retracting those words after Sony found a solution for the a7RIII back-button focus problem. At last month’s Sony media event Sedona, I was surrounded by Sony’s best and brightest engineers; when I brought the BBF problem to their attention, we all scratched our heads over how to make it work, and they finally asked me to send them a detailed write-up. They promised to address it ASAP, but I didn’t think it would happen without a firmware update.
To enable back-button focus on a Sony a7RIII or a9, simply assign any custom button (Tab 2, Screen 8) to the AF/MF Control Hold option (AF1 screen). To use BBF, keep the camera in Manual Focus mode—this allows you to manually focus with the focus ring, or to autofocus by pressing whatever button you assigned AF/MF Control Hold.
Bottom line
I’m pretty sure this is the best camera I’ve ever had my hands on. In fact, the dynamic range improvement was obvious as soon as I started processing this moonrise shoot—we continued shooting about 25 minutes after sunset, and just a little processing reveals useable detail in my highlights and shadows, even in my final image. Ridiculous.
A couple of full moon photography tips
Sun and moon rise/set times always assume a flat horizon, which means the sun usually disappears behind the local terrain before the “official” sunset, while the moon appears after moonrise. When that happens, there’s usually not enough light to capture landscape detail in the moon and landscape, always my goal. To capture the entire scene with a single click (no image blending), I usually try to photograph the rising full moon on the day before it’s full, when the nearly full (99 or so percent illuminated) moon rises before the landscape has darkened significantly.
The moon’s size in an image is determined by my focal length—the longer the lens, the larger the moon appears. Photographing a large moon above a particular subject requires not only the correct alignment, it also requires distance from the subject—the farther back your position, the longer the lens you can use without cutting of some of the subject.
This moonrise image is a perfect example. Tunnel View in Yosemite is one of my favorite locations to photograph a moonrise because it’s about eight miles from Half Dome. At this distance I can use 500+ mm (250mm plus a 2x teleconverter) to fill my frame with Half Dome—with the moon nearby, I get an image that includes all of Half Dome and a very large moon.
Moon Over Yosemite
Click an image for a closer look and slide show. Refresh the window to reorder the display.
Photography’s Creativity Triad: Depth
Posted on November 18, 2017
Autumn Reflection, Half Dome, Yosemite
Sony a7R II
Sony 16-35 f/2.8 GM
.8 second
F/16
ISO 200
Photography’s Creativity Triad
Enduring photographs don’t duplicate human reality, they reveal unseen aspects of our world. Capturing this hidden world requires mastery of photography’s “creativity triad” that distinguishes the camera’s vision from human vision: motion, light, and depth.
Photography is the futile attempt to squeeze a three-dimensional world into a two-dimensional medium. But just because it’s impossible to truly capture depth in a photograph, don’t think you shouldn’t consider the missing dimension when crafting an image. For the photographer with total control over his or her camera’s exposure variables (what exposure variable to change and when to change it), this missing dimension provides an opportunity to reveal the world in unique ways, or to create an illusion of depth that recreates much of the thrill of being there.
Creative Selective Focus
Poppy Pastel, Sierra Foothills, California (1oomm, f4, ISO 400, 1/125)
A personal favorite solution to the missing depth conundrum I call creative selective focus: An intentionally narrow depth of field with a carefully chosen focus point to flatten a scene’s myriad out-of-focus planes onto the same thin plane as the sharp subject. This technique softens distractions into a blur of color and shape, complementing and emphasizing the subject.
I especially enjoy using creative selective focus for isolation shots of colorful leaves each autumn, and for dogwood and poppy close-ups in spring. Looking for a striking subject that stands out from the surroundings, I position myself to create foreground and/or background relationships that complement my primary subject.
When composing the poppy scene depicted here, I tried to frame the foreground trio of poppies with distant poppies and other wildflowers that I knew would become soft splashes of color. Using a macro lens with extension tubes, a large aperture, and a very close focus point, I achieved a paper-thin range of sharpness that softened the busy background and helped my primary subjects stand out.
A couple of years ago I wrote an article on this very topic for “Outdoor Photographer” magazine. You can read a slightly updated version of this article in my Photo Tips section: Selective Focus.
The Illusion of Depth
Sometimes a scene holds so much near-to-far beauty that we want to capture every inch of it. While we can’t actually capture the depth our stereo vision enjoys, we can take steps to create the illusion of depth. Achieving this is largely about mindset—it’s about not simply settling for a primary subject no matter how striking it is. When you find a distant subject to feature in an image, scan the scene and position yourself to include a complementary fore-/middle-ground subjects. Likewise, when you want to feature a nearby object in an image, position yourself to include a complementary back-/middle-ground subjects.
Autumn Reflection, Half Dome, Yosemite
Guiding my workshop group to a placid bend in the Merced River on this year’s Yosemite Autumn Moon photo workshop, I was instantly drawn to the reflection of Half Dome. The cottonwoods lining the distant shoreline were at their peak autumn gold, and a collection of clouds above Half Dome caught the late afternoon sun, promising good odds for a colorful sunset. These features alone would have made a great image, but I looked around for something to add to the close foreground.
I didn’t need to look long, as just about fifty feet downstream I found a collection of colorful leaves jutting into the river, perpendicular to the shore. I shifted my position until the leaves appeared to point directly at Half Dome and dropped my tripod until my camera was about a foot above the water. With a half hour or so until sunset, I had plenty of time to play with the scene, familiarize myself with all the compositional variables, and refine my composition and focus point. Despite the relative closeness of the floating leaves, at 16mm I knew I had plenty depth of field to carry the entire scene if I was careful. Stopping my lens down to f/16, I focused on a leaf near the middle of the group, about two feet away. This gave me good sharpness from about a foot to infinity and I was in business.
Here’s my Photo Tips article on using hyperfocal focus techniques to enhance your images’ illusion of depth: Depth of Field.
Managing Depth
Photography’s Creativity Triad: Motion
Posted on November 5, 2017
Autumn Spiral, Bridalveil Creek, Yosemite
Sony a7RII
Sony 100-400 GM
ISO 50
f/16
20 seconds
Photography’s Creativity Triad
Enduring photographs don’t duplicate human reality, they reveal unseen aspects of our world. Capturing this hidden world requires mastery of photography’s “creativity triad” that distinguishes the camera’s vision from human vision: motion, light, and depth.
Motion: Autumn Spiral
The human experience of the world unfolds like a seamless movie of continuous instants, while a camera accumulates light throughout its exposure to conflates those instants into a single frame.
Last week in Yosemite I got an opportunity to play with motion while photographing autumn leaves blanketing nearly every exposed surface below Bridalveil Fall. Beneath the fall Bridalveil Creek splits into three branches I love to explore—up- or down-stream, it doesn’t matter—searching for more intimate scenes. Last week I stayed close to the trail—not by design, but because I found enough to occupy every available minute.
Most of the fallen leaves had come to rest on granite, but those that had landed on the creek had been instantly swept downstream until they came to rest in sheltered pools, pushing up against and accumulating the rocks that bounded the pool. I found some pools that were entirely covered with leaves of varying shades of yellow and (just a little) green.
This little scene was downstream from the third bridge. The leaves here had been accumulating in this pool for a few days, leaving it more than half covered on this my final day in Yosemite. More than the golden pool, what really drew my attention from the bridge was a small collection of leaves, soon to become part of the pool’s autumn mosaic, swirling in a slowly spiraling current.
I set up my tripod right on the bridge, pulled out my new Sony 100-400 GM lens, dialed my polarizer to minimize reflections, and went to work. Because so much was happening in the scene, I started toward the lens’s wide end, but quickly found myself tightening each composition until I got down to a version of what you see here.
Once I had my composition, it became all about the motion in the leaves. When photographing landscape subjects in motion, each click can render a completely different image, so I’ve learned to never stop at one (or two, or three…). Whether it’s ocean waves, churning whitewater, or spinning leaves, I always make sure I have a variety of motion effects from which to choose. In this case, while the leaves were spiraling in a fairly consistent current, it seemed that with each rotation at least one leaf would go rogue, either slowing, accelerating, or making a break for the perimeter. The result was a distinctly different spiral with each capture.
I experimented with shutter speeds between ten and thirty seconds. Sometimes I’ll use a neutral density filter to stretch my shutter speed, but for this scene I was using a polarizer (minus two stops), it was quite early (shortly after sunrise) in an always densely shaded location, and darkened even further by the dense clouds of an approaching storm. In other words, the scene was dark enough that I could get the shutter speed all the way out to thirty seconds with my f-stop and ISO settings. When I was done, I had about 20 frames to choose from (one more argument for the tripod), identical except for a little different swirl.
While a still camera can’t capture motion as humans view it, in the right hands the camera absolutely does capture motion in ways that I’d argue can be even more appealing than being there. In this case, the spiral nature of this pool’s motion is much more apparent in this image than it was witnessing it firsthand.
Because there always has to be a moral…
The moral of this story is the importance of being able to manage your exposure variables: You can’t control motion, depth, and light without knowing how to achieve the shutter speed, f-stop, and ISO that serves your creative objective with minimal image quality compromise. That means retaining full control of your exposure settings by shooting in manual, aperture priority, or shutter priority modes. (And if you choose aperture or shutter priority, you must be able to manage your camera’s exposure compensation dial.)
Learn About Photographing Motion
World in Motion
Click an image for a closer look and slide show. Refresh the window to reorder the display.
Yosemite Reflections
Posted on October 28, 2017
Spring Sunset, Leidig Meadow, Yosemite
Sony a7R II
Sony/Zeiss 16-35
3.2 seconds
F/9
ISO 200
Rather than attempt the impossible task of choosing a favorite season in Yosemite, I find it easier to identify the things I like most about each season. From colorful fall to white winter to saturated spring, Yosemite becomes a completely different place with each season. (FYI, summer is for tourists.) But regardless of the season, I think it’s Yosemite’s reflections that make me happiest.
Yosemite’s reflection locations vary with the season. After a storm, small reflective pools form in Yosemite’s ubiquitous granite, then disappear almost as quickly as they appeared. The Merced River, is a continuous ribbon of reflection in the late summer and autumn low-water months, and a churning torrent in spring. But even in those high snowmelt months, reliable pockets of calm can be found along the riverbank, and there are a handful of spots where the river widens and smooths enough to reflect color and shape.
I think my favorite Yosemite reflections may be the ones I find in the flooded meadows during a wet spring, not necessarily because they’re any more beautiful than the other reflections, but mostly because they’re much more rare. Many years we don’t get these vernal pools at all, and even when they do form, their lifetime is measured in days or weeks.
Following years of drought, a record winter snowfall earlier this year translated to a record spring snowmelt, sending the Merced River well over its banks and into many of Yosemite’s normally high-and-dry meadows. This wasn’t “run for your life!” flooding, it was a gradual rise that seeped into and eventually submerged meadows, trails, and even some Yosemite Valley roads.
Leidig Meadow west of Yosemite Lodge is one of those spots that doesn’t usually flood, but flooding here is far from unprecedented. This year when I parked in my usual spot west of the meadow and attempted the normally relaxing 1/4 mile stroll along the river, I had to wade through eight inches of water to make it to the meadow. When I returned a few days later with my workshop group, even after choosing another somewhat less treacherous parking spot, we still had to pick our steps carefully or risk a shoe-full of water.
Meadows are always fragile, but never more-so than when they’re wet, so rather than venture further into the meadow, we set our sights on the numerous reflections among the trees near the (mostly submerged) trail. Even still, we ended up with a number of wet shoes and pant legs, some accidental and some by design (to get the shot, of course).
When it appeared the sunset show was over, the group started to pack up and head back to the cars. About the time I was ready to call it myself, I noticed a little bounce-back pink in the thin clouds overhead and warned everyone that they might be packing it in a little too soon. Many were anxious to get dry and escape the mosquito feast, but those of us who stayed were rewarded with about ten minutes of post-sunset color that went from pale pink to electric magenta, one of those moments in nature that you think just can’t get any better until somehow it does.
Reflecting a bit on reflections
A reflection can turn an ordinary pretty picture into something special. Of course they aren’t always possible, but when the opportunity exists I pursue reflections aggressively, scanning the scene for potentially reflective water and positioning myself accordingly. Too often I see people walk up to a reflection, plop down their tripod, and make a picture of whatever happens to be bouncing off the water at their feet. But maximizing reflection opportunities starts with understanding that, just like a billiard ball striking a cushion, a reflection always bounces off the reflective surface at exactly the same angle at which it arrived.
Armed with this knowledge, when I encounter a reflective surface, I scan the area for something worthy of reflecting. Sometimes that’s easy (Half Dome, for example), sometimes it’s a little tougher (like a rapidly moving sunlit cloud). Knowing that all I need to do is position myself in the path of the reflection of my target subject, I move left/right, forward/backward, up/down until my object appears. I’ve observed that many people are pretty good about the left/right thing, not quite so good with the forward/backward part, and downright miserable at the up/down. But I’ve found that once I get the left/right position nailed, it’s the up/down that makes the most difference.
For example, in the spring reflection of Half Dome at the top of this post, it’s not an accident that the Half Dome and North Dome reflections are centered and uncluttered by all the grass and leaves scattered throughout the water. The centering part was pretty easy, but finding a large enough clean surface to reflect the two domes required a lot of forward/backward maneuvering, combined with frequent up/down dipping—I’m sure to the uninformed observer it appeared that I was trying out a new dance routine.
Read more about reflections
A Gallery of Yosemite Reflections
Going wide
Posted on August 6, 2017
El Capitan and Three Brothers Reflection, Merced River, Yosemite
Sony a7R II
Sony 12-24 f4 G
12mm
1/25 second
F/8
ISO 100
After years of drought, in spring of 2016 I had the good fortune to photograph Yosemite Valley with actual flooding—nothing devastating, just enough for the Merced River to overspill its banks and create reflections where meadows normally exist. One such location was a spot beneath El Capitan, where I found myself faced with the challenge of capturing more scene than my 16-35 lens could handle.
Stitching multiple frames was an option, but because I have a thing about not doing things I couldn’t do with film, my goal is to always capture a scene with one click (this is my problem, and in no way do I mean to discourage others from entering the 21st century). One benefit of my self-imposed one-click rule is that I often find creative compositions I might have overlooked had I settled for the easy solution, but in this case I really, really wanted to photograph the entire scene. The photography gods were smiling upon me that day, as I was leading a workshop and the photographer assisting me generously offered to loan me his Canon 11-24 f/4 lens (thanks, Curt). Since I had in my possession a Metabones adapter that allowed me to pair Canon glass to my Sony body, I leapt at the opportunity.
Spring Reflection, El Capitan and Three Brothers, Yosemite
That was an epiphany moment for me, because even though I knew that the difference between 11mm and 16mm is more significant than it sounds, I’d never really compared the two focal lengths side-by-side. Replacing my 16-35 with Curt’s 11-24, suddenly I had the entire scene in my viewfinder, with room to spare. Not only that, I learned as soon as I put the images up on my monitor that the Canon lens was really sharp—I was in love. Sony shooter or not, I came home fully intending to purchase the Canon lens, and came very close to making a big mistake.
My decision not to pull the trigger on a Canon 11-24 purchase was three-fold: 1) it was $3000 2) it’s so massive that it could never be a full time resident of my camera bag 3) I knew Sony was committed to expanding their lens lineup, and that I’d be wracked with regret if Sony released a similar lens soon after I’d sunk $3,000 into a lens that could double as a boat anchor. But still….
Imagine my relief when my Sony doused my Canon fantasies with an ultra-wide lens of their own this spring. Given the opportunity to test the Sony 12-24 f/4 G lens before it was announced, I immediately took it to Yosemite where the flooding on the Merced was even more extreme than last year. Finding “my” spot underwater, I probed the riverbank for nearby vantage points and found the view I’ve shared at the top of this post.
It wasn’t difficult to see that the Sony 12-24 is every bit as sharp as the Canon 11-24. And not only does it not require an adapter to use on my Sony bodies, it weighs less than half of what the Canon ultra-wide weighs. I ordered the 12-24 immediately and this week packed for my first trip with it.
When I drive to a photo destination I bring virtually every piece of camera gear I own, but when I fly, I need to be a little more selective. As I chewed on what to bring and what to leave out, not only did I quickly confirm that the 12-24 would make the cut, I discovered that the new lens is small and compact enough to occupy a permanent space my camera bag.
Which brings me to another thought. I shoot Sony mirrorless for several reasons—foremost is the image quality: Sony’s unmatched combination of resolution, dynamic range, and low-light capability is exactly what I need for landscape photography. And after a few growing pains, I’ve come to love the electronic viewfinder and can’t imagine ever going back. Sony’s lenses are as sharp or sharper than anything I had from Canon, but I don’t think the compactness of Sony’s f/4 glass gets the credit it deserves for their ability to provide so much quality in such a compact package. How compact? They’re small enough to slide into a slot in my bag oriented up/down (resting on an end rather than along a side), which gives me so much more room for more gear (and what photographer doesn’t love more gear).
Here’s what’s in my camera bag (F-stop Tilopa) for this week’s trip to the Grand Canyon:
- Sony a7RII
- Sony a7SII
- Sony a6300
- Sony 12-24 f/4 G
- Sony/Zeiss 16-35 f/4
- Sony/Zeiss 24-70 f/4
- Sony/Zeiss 70-200 f/4 G
- Rokinon 24 f/1.4
- Two Lightning Triggers
That’s three (!) bodies and five (!) lenses, with room for even more stuff. Photographer heaven.
A few words about wide angle photography
Despite the fact that wide angle is the reflex response to most landscapes by virtually every tourist who picks up a camera, good wide angle photography is not easy. From diminished backgrounds to tilting verticals, wide angle lenses pose problems that can be turned to opportunities if they’re fully understood. I’ll save a full discussion of wide angle photography for another day, but here are a couple of tips that might help:
- Put something in your foreground: Many of my wide angle images put the primary subject front and center, but even when the background scene is my main subject, I try to have something of visual interest in my foreground. Browse the gallery below and note how many images have an empty foreground (Hint: Not very many). Sometimes I’m able to include something as striking as a mirror reflection or colorful flowers, but often my wide angle foregrounds are as simple as nearby rocks or leaves. If there’s nothing at my feet and I’m required to use something distant, at the very least I want the foreground of my wide image to be filled something worthy of the space it occupies.
- The tilting of vertical lines caused when you’re close to your subject is minimized when the sensor is on the same plane as the subject (not tilted up or down): Mount on your camera a wide angle lenses at its widest focal length, point it at a row of nearby trees (or some other vertical lines that spans the edges of your frame), and tilt up and down while looking through your viewfinder. At what point do the trees appear straightest? Most slanted? I rest my case.
Going Wide
Click an image for a closer look and slide show. Refresh the window to reorder the display.
What’s the deal with Yosemite’s dead trees?
Posted on July 28, 2017
One of the most frequently asked questions in my Yosemite workshops is some variation of, “Why are there so many dead trees?” My standard answer has always been a summary of what I’ve learned from talking to Yosemite rangers: The drought has stressed the trees and made them more susceptible to the bark beetle. This morning I read an excellent summary of the problem on the NPS Yosemite site explaining the problem, and adding to what I already knew, and I thought I’d share what I learned.
The problem
As someone who has been visiting Yosemite for (pretty much literally) my entire life, the tree death in Yosemite Valley in the last five years has been staggering. Yosemite Valley, once a carpet of green, is now stained with large patches of rust-brown dead or dying trees. Scenes I’ve photographed for over 40 years are suddenly marred by these trees.
Going through my portfolio of Tunnel View images, I chose two with very similar compositions that illustrate the tree death. The first, my rainbow image from 2009, shows the green valley floor I remember. The second is a winter scene from 2016, and the tree death is obvious. And sadly, in the year-and-a-half since I took the 2016 image, I guess that at least twice as many trees have died.
Double whammy
The drought has clearly taken its toll on Yosemite’s trees, both by killing the thirstiest outright, and by weakening many others until they become easy targets for a very opportunistic bark beetle. But the problem is not just about weak trees—it’s also about healthy beetles, a lot of them. Consider that while the 2016 image was taken in late January, there is absolutely no snow in Yosemite Valley. Of course the drought has something to do with that, but the lack of valley snow in recent years can also be attributed to warming temperatures. As Yosemite’s climate warms, much of the precipitation that once fell as snow now falls as rain.
Snow doesn’t kill the bark beetle (it’s still not cold enough), but an extreme freeze does. But as the number of sub-freezing days in Yosemite decline, the mechanism that kept the bark beetle in check gets out of whack. While Yosemite’s evergreens have no problem handling an extreme freeze, each freeze kills many bark beetles. But fewer freezing days each winter means more bark beetles, and more bark beetles makes even healthy trees more prone to attack.
Triple whammy
And finally, America’s long-time knee-jerk fire suppression policy has taken its toll. By thinning growth, consuming dead wood, and enabling regeneration, fire is a natural part of maintaining forest health. But for over a century, fires in Yosemite (and pretty much every other national park and forest) were doused as soon as they ignited because they were inconvenient, and they (temporarily) scarred the scenery.
Thankfully that misguided policy is largely behind us, but its legacy remains. We’re left with too many trees competing for the available water. Some die of thirst, while many survivors lack the resources to stave off a beetle infestation.
What’s being done
The National Park Service has undertaken the monumental task of removing dead and dying trees. Because it’s impractical to remove all of them, the emphasis is on those trees that pose a hazard to people and property. Also, in developed areas the NPS has started prophylactic application of a (naturally occurring) pheromone that discourages the beetles from attacking susceptible trees.
No one knows for sure, but it’s possible that the tree death will stabilize, or even start to decline over the next few years. While the current mitigation efforts might help stem the tide, the primary hope is that an equilibrium will be reached as the most susceptible trees die and forest health is restored through better management. Fingers crossed.
From the horse’s mouth
Here’s the link to the NPS tree mortality article.
The Trees of Yosemite
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Yosemite game-changer
Posted on June 26, 2017
Evening Reflection, Mirror Lake, Yosemite
Sony a7R II
Sony 12-24 f4 G
12mm
1/15 second
F/9
ISO 100
“Game changer” is most certainly a cliché, but every once in a while I get to use the term without shame. I used it when I switched from film to digital; again when I discovered that the Sony a7R (and now the a7RII) gave me 2- to 3-stops more dynamic range than my Canon 5DIII; one more time when I first turned the Sony a7S (since replaced with the a7SII) toward the night sky. And I think I’ll trot it out once more for Sony’s new 12-24 f4 G lens.
Of course I can only speak for the 12-24’s change in my game—your results may vary. But as a landscape-only shooter who spends a lot of time in Yosemite, this lens allows me to capture images that were heretofore not possible with anything in my bag: Game changed.
Early last month, with only a few days to play with the new (and at the time, top secret) lens, I beelined to Yosemite. My first stop was Mirror Lake, a wide spot in Tenaya Creek that isn’t technically a lake (it’ll be dry by summer’s end), but each spring is most definitely a mirror. The coveted feature here is Half Dome, which towers more than 4,000 feet above the glassy water, close enough to require some serious neck craning. Many times at Mirror Lake I’ve visualized a composition that includes Half Dome and its reflection, only to be thwarted because even at its widest, a 16-35 lens isn’t wide enough.
Since my days with the lens were limited, I wasn’t able to time my visit for interesting weather or some celestial event. No worries, I rationalized, even on Yosemite’s standard blue-sky days, I can always count on warm, late afternoon light bathing Half Dome—not spectacular, but reliably nice.
I arrived at the lake about an hour before sunset and immediately started seeking out compositions to put the new lens to the test. I can’t tell you how thrilled I was to mount the 12-24 on my a7RII, put my eye to the viewfinder, and see all of Half Dome and its reflection with room to spare. It wasn’t long before I zeroed in on the scene you see here (that required me to balance atop a rock about three feet from the shore, tripod 10 inches deep in frigid snowmelt).
As luck would have it, just as the light started to warm, a few clouds drifted down from the north, so I quickly adjusted my composition and waited for them to slip into my composition. They were moving quite fast, leaving a window of just a few seconds when they filled the sky without being seriously truncated by the border. With composition, exposure, and focus set, I clicked a half dozen rapid-fire frames before the clouds started drifting out of the frame.
This was just my first stop with this lens. On the walk back to my car I stopped for a shot that I shared a few weeks ago; that night, and again the next morning, I tried it at a favorite El Capitan View with great success (to be shared in a future blog). And before returning home, I discovered a completely unexpected use at Yosemite Falls. Needless to say, I’ve already ordered this lens—I expect to see it next month.
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A Half Dome Gallery
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Happy Father’s Day, Dad
Posted on June 18, 2017
Sunset Palette, Half Dome from Sentinel Dome, Yosemite
Canon EOS-1Ds Mark II
Canon 24-105L
2 seconds
F/20
ISO 100
June 2017
This summer it will be 13 years since I lost my dad to Alzheimer’s disease. He would have turned 87 next month, and I have no doubt that his body would still be going strong if the Alzheimer’s hadn’t taken over. Sadly, it’s difficult to fully appreciate a parent’s influence until they’re gone. We’re certainly aware of the love, wisdom, advice, discipline, tears, and laughs while we’re in the midst of growing up, but it takes being a parent to fully appreciate our parents’ influence on the adults we become.
Dad was a United Methodist minister who literally practiced what he preached. In 1965, when Martin Luther King issued a plea to clergy to join him, Dad borrowed money and flew across the country to march with Dr. King in Selma, Alabama (he was on national TV getting arrested). His was an inclusive theology that respected all religions: I can remember Dad preaching at the local synagogue on a Saturday, and reciprocating in our Sunday service by opening his pulpit to the rabbi. And I’ve lost track of the number of homeless people, including families with young children, we housed while they tried to get back on their feet.
More than the values he instilled, so many of the things that define me today are directly attributable to my dad’s influence. My love of sports and sense of humor for sure. And when asked how I became a photographer, I have to cite Dad. My standard answer has always been that Dad was a serious amateur photographer whose 80-hour work week offered too little time to pursue his passion, so he made up for lost time on our summer family vacations—I grew up believing that a camera was just a standard outdoor accessory. But I think his influence goes deeper than that. More than simply modeling camera use, Dad instilled his appreciation of nature’s beauty, and his longing for its soothing qualities.
Our vacations were, without exception, camping trips—always tent-camping, though in the later years we splurged on a used, very basic tent trailer (no kitchen, bathroom, or any of the other luxuries available in today’s tent trailers). A few times we (Dad, Mom, my two brothers, and I) hit the road for a longer camping trip, one summer taking a month to camp all the way across the country, another summer venturing into the Canadian Rockies. But usually we took advantage of the mountain scenery (always the mountains) closer to our California home.
Me, on an early (but probably not my first) Yosemite trip
Of these locations, Yosemite was the clear favorite. Marveling at the Firefall from Camp Curry and Glacier Point, waiting in lawn chairs at the Yosemite dump for the bears to arrive for their evening meal (really), rising in the dark for a fishing expedition to Tuolumne Meadows, family hikes up the Mist Trail to Vernal and Nevada Falls, are just a few of the memories that I only realize in hindsight formed my Yosemite connection.
My father’s rainbow
My favorite Dad photography story happened when I was about ten. It involves an electrical storm atop Sentinel Dome, and his desire to get the shot that was so great that it trumped common sense. As his ignorant assistant, I stretched to hold an umbrella high above Dad’s head to keep his camera dry. (In his defense, as Californians, lightning was a true novelty that trumped full appreciation of its dangers.) We didn’t get the lightning, and more importantly, it didn’t get us. But what I remember more than anything about that day was Dad’s excitement when later that afternoon he was able to photograph a rainbow arcing across the face of Half Dome.
This story has achieved family legend status, and we’ve felt a special connection to Sentinel Dome as a result. When it came time to scatter Dad’s ashes, Sentinel Dome was the obvious choice.
One more thing
I have the reputation for being very lucky where photography conditions are concerned: The clouds that part just as the moon rises, the snowstorm that blankets Yosemite Valley just as the workshop begins, the rainbow arcing across the Grand Canyon. In our family we like to believe that Dad is somehow up there pulling some strings. It’s just the kind of thing he’d do.
I love you, Dad.
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Sharing the Love: A Yosemite Gallery
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Downhill All the Way
Posted on June 5, 2017
El Capitan Reflection, Yosemite
Canon EOS 10D
1/4 second
F22
ISO 100
27 mm
On Saturday, with little fanfare, Alex Honnold stunned the climbing world when he free-soloed El Capitan in Yosemite, the world’s largest granite monolith. (What’s the big deal? From this image, you can clearly see that it’s downhill all the way….)
But seriously…
Speaking for all non-climbers, Alex Honnold didn’t just stun the entire climbing world, he stunned the entire rational world. Soaring three-thousand feet above Yosemite Valley, El Capitan is the Holy Grail of climbing. Among climbers, if you’ve summited El Cap, you’ve made the Major Leagues.
First conquered by Warren Harding in 1958, today dozens of climbers dot El Capitan’s vertical surface on any non-winter day with reasonable weather in the forecast. But until Saturday, all who scale El Capitan do it with ropes and a virtual hardware store worth of climbing aids. Most require multiple days to summit.
Alex Honnold chose to ascend El Capitan unencumbered by ropes or safety hardware of any sort (free climbing uses ropes for safety only; free-soloing is completely sans rope), scampering up the shear granite the old fashioned way, using only his hands and feet like a kid climbing a tree in his backyard. Even more astonishing, he accomplished his feat in less than four hours.
I’m not a climber, and in fact have a difficult time getting within three feet of any un-railed vertical drop greater than thirty feet. But I’ve always lived vicariously through climbers, devouring climbing books, videos, and documentaries just to marvel at their accomplishments. And for years Alex Honnold has been the climber I’ve followed most closely, not just because he’s the best (he is), but also because of our common affinity for Yosemite, and the fact that my daughters went to high school with him (and I was a Honnold fan even before I knew this connection).
I also admire Alex Honnold not only for his skill and accomplishments, but for his humble demeanor (I suspect that he’d prefer climbing in complete anonymity) and quiet wisdom. And though we’ve never met, I can’t help worrying a little about him when I think of the number of mistakes I make with my camera—”Oops, I’m still at ISO 3200 from last night’s Milky Way shoot”; “Crap, I forgot to orient my polarizer”; “Did I remember to focus?” (I could go on)—and realize that for Alex Honnold, even one small mistake likely means death. I mean, even if I knew with absolute certainty that missing my exposure by just 1/3 stop would cause my camera to explode, I’m pretty sure I’d still be dead long ago.
So hats off to you, Alex Honnold, here’s wishing you many happy years as the world’s greatest living climber.
Links
- Check out this “60 Minutes” segment
- Here he is climbing El Sendero Luminoso in Mexico
- And if the video makes you squeamish, here’s a simple interview
An El Capitan Gallery
Eloquent Images by Gary Hart 