Eloquent Images by Gary Hart
Insight, information, and inspiration for the inquisitive nature photographer
Oops
Posted on December 17, 2013
Winter Moonrise, Merced River, Yosemite
Canon EOS 5D Mark III
1/10 second
40mm
ISO 800
F16
Last Friday evening, this professional photographer I know spent several hours photographing an assortment of beautiful Yosemite winter scenes at ISO 800. Apparently, he had increased his ISO earlier in the day while photographing a macro scene with three extension tubes—needing a faster shutter speed to freeze his subject in a light breeze, he’d bumped his ISO to 800. Wise decision. But, rushing to escape to the warmth of his car, rather than reset the camera to his default ISO 100 the instant he finished shooting, he packed up his camera with a personal promise to adjust it later, when his fingers were warmer—surely, he rationalized, removing the extension tubes and macro lens would remind him to reset the ISO too. (You’d think.) But, despite shutter speeds nowhere near what they should have been given the light and f-stop, he just kept shooting beautiful scene after beautiful scene, as happy as if he had a brain.
I happen to know for a fact that this very same photographer has done other stupid things. Let’s see…. There was that time, while chasing a sunset at Mono Lake, that he drove his truck into a creek and had to be towed out. And the two (two!) times he left his $8,000 camera beside the road as he motored off to the next spot. And you should see his collection of out-of-focus finger and thumb close-ups (a side effect of hand-holding his graduated neutral density filters). Of course this photographer’s identity isn’t important—what is important is dispelling the myth that professional photographers aren’t immune to amateur mistakes.
And on a completely unrelated note…
Let’s take a look at this image from, coincidentally, last Friday evening. Also completely coincidentally, it too was photographed at ISO 800 (go figure)—not because I made a mistake (after all, I am a trained professional), but, uhhh, but because I think there are just too many low noise Yosemite images. So anyway….
This was night-two of what was originally my Yosemite ISON workshop—but, after the unfortunate demise of Comet ISON and a week of frigid temperatures in Yosemite, became my Yosemite ice-on workshop. That’s because, to the delight of the workshop students (and the immense relief of their leader), much of the one foot of snow that had fallen the Saturday before the workshop’s Thursday start had been frozen into a state of suspended animation by a week of temperatures in the teens and low-twenties.
Each day we rose to find nearly every shaded surface in Yosemite sheathed in a white veneer of snow and ice. (Valley locations that received any sunlight were largely brown and bare.) And the Merced River, particularly low and slow following two years of drought, was covered in ice in an assortment of textures and shapes from frosted glass to blooming flowers. Adding to all this terrestrial beauty was a waxing moon, nearly full, ascending our otherwise boring blue skies and illuminating our nightscapes.
On Friday night I guided my group to this spot just downstream from Leidig Meadow. There we found the moon, still several days from full, glowing high above the valley floor, and Half Dome reflected by a watery window in the ice. I captured many versions of this scene, from tight isolations of the reflections to wide renderings of the entire display. It’s too soon to say which I like best, but I’m starting with this one because it most clearly conveys what we saw that evening.
I chose a vertical composition because including the moon in a horizontal frame would have shrunk Half Dome and the moon, and introduced elements on the right and left that weren’t as strong as Half Dome, its reflection, and the snowy Merced River. (Sentinel Rock is just out of the frame on the right—as striking as it is, I wanted to make this image all about Half Dome.)
My f16 choice was to ensure sharpness throughout the frame, from the ice flowers blooming in the foreground, to Half Dome and its reflection. As you may or may not know, the focus point for a reflection is the focus point of the reflective subject, not the reflective surface. That means when photographing a reflection surrounded by leaves, ice, rocks, or whatever, you need to ensure adequate DOF or risk having either the reflection or its surrounding elements out of focus. Here I probably could have gotten away with f11, but my iPhone and its DOF app were buried beneath several layers of clothes, and using it would have require removing two pair of gloves.
I’d love to say that I chose ISO 800 to freeze the rapids, but I’m not sure you’d buy it. So I’m sticking with my too many low noise Yosemite images story and moving on. (A few cameras ago, ISO 800 would have meant death to this image, but today, thankfully, it’s mostly just a lesson in humility.)
A Yosemite Winter Gallery
Click an image for a closer look, and a slide show. Refresh the screen to reorder the display.
There’s a draft in here
Posted on December 13, 2013
Elm in Blizzard, Cook’s Meadow, Yosemite
Canon EOS 5D Mark III
1/200 second
220mm
ISO 800
F16
Drafting an image
Few writers create a polished piece of writing in a single pass—most start with a draft that gets refined and tightened until it’s ready for publication. It’s an incremental process that builds upon what’s already been done. As somebody who has been writing and taking pictures for a long time, I’ve found a real connection between the creation process of each craft. The most successful photographers aren’t afraid to create “draft” images that move them forward without necessarily delivering them all the way where they want to be.
When I write a blog, I start with an idea and just go with it. But before clicking Publish (or Delete), I read, revise, then re-read and re-revise more times than I can count. Likewise, when I find a scene that might be photo-worthy, I expose, compose, and click without a lot of hand wringing and analysis. But I’m not done after that first click, and I don’t particularly care if it’s not perfect. When my initial (draft) frame is ready, I pop the image up on my LCD, evaluate it, make adjustments, and click again, repeating this cycle until I’m satisfied, or until I decide there’s not an image there. (In the days before digital, the same evaluation process took place through the viewfinder with my camera on a tripod.)
Another tripod plug
It’s the tripod that makes this shoot/critique/refine process work. Much the way a computer allows writers to save, review, and improve what they’ve written (a vast improvement over the paper/pen or typewriter days), a tripod holds your scene while you decide how to make it better. Photographing sans tripod, I have to exactly recreate the previous composition before making my adjustments. But using a tripod, when I’m finished evaluating the image, the composition I just scrutinized is waiting for me right there atop my tripod, allowing each frame to improve on the previous frame.
About this image
Composition isn’t limited to the arrangement and framing of elements in a scene—it can also be the way the image handles depth and motion. For example, living in California, I just don’t get that much opportunity to photograph falling snow. So, on last week’s visit to Yosemite, when I saw the Cook’s Meadow elm tree partially obscured by heavy snowfall, I knew an image was in there, but wasn’t quite sure how to best render the millions of fluttering snowflakes between me and the tree. What shutter speed would freeze (pun unavoidable) the falling flakes, and what depth of field would best convey the falling snow? Would too much DOF be too cluttered? Would not enough DOF be too muddy?
But before solving those problems, I needed a composition. I started with my original vision, a tight, horizontal frame of the tree’s heavy interior—my “draft” image. With my camera on my tripod I tried several successively wider frames, each a slight improvement of the previous one, before jettisoning my tight horizontal plan in favor of a wider vertical composition. Though I knew right away I was on the right track, it still took a half dozen or so incrementally better frames before finally arriving at the composition you see here.
With my composition established, I set to work on the depth and shutter speed question. As good as the LCD on my camera is, I didn’t want to be making those decisions based on what I saw on a credit card size screen, but my tripod enabled me to capture a series of identically framed images, each with a different f-stop and shutter speed. Back home on my computer, I was able compare them all to one and other without being distracted by minor framing differences. I finally decided I like the version with lots of depth field.
Dashing to the snow
Posted on December 9, 2013
Winter Reflection, Half Dome and the Merced River, Yosemite
Canon EOS 5D Mark III
1/13 second
16mm
ISO 100
F16
If there’s anything on Earth more magical than Yosemite with fresh snow, I haven’t seen it. The problem is, Yosemite Valley doesn’t get tons of snow—its relatively low elevation (about 4,000 feet) means the valley often gets rain when most of the Sierra gets snow. And when snow does fall here, it doesn’t stay on the trees for more than a few hours (if you’re lucky). Which is why I’ve always said the secret to photographing snow in Yosemite is to monitor the weather reports and time your visit to arrive before the storm. This strategy gives photographers within relatively easy driving distance, especially those of us without day job, a distinct advantage—from my home in Sacramento I can be in Yosemite Valley in less than four hours (that’s factoring a Starbucks stop in Merced and a fill-up in Mariposa), and I have no problem using darkness to make the roundtrip on the same day.
So last week, when the National Weather Service promised lots of snow in Yosemite for the weekend, I quickly freed up my Saturday. I usually stay just outside the park in El Portal, but because I didn’t want to risk being turned away by a (rare but not unprecedented) weather related park closure, I booked Friday and Saturday nights at Yosemite Lodge, right in the heart of Yosemite Valley—even if the roads shut down, from there I’d be able to walk to enough views to keep me happy all day.
I arrived in the dark to find lots of ice and patches of crusty old snow; I woke dark-and-early Saturday morning to about ten inches of fresh snow. Yippie! The snow fell intermittently throughout the day, with conditions ranging from nearly opaque to classic Yosemite clearing storm drama. Since I was by myself, I was able to deemphasize many of the most frequently photographed spots my workshop expect to photograph and explore random scenes along the Merced. In the morning I concentrated on El Capitan scenes; the afternoon was more about Half Dome.
Of course the classic views are that way for a reason, so, as you can see in this image, I gave them some attention to. Despite not being much of a tourist location, many photographers know about this scene just upstream from Sentinel Bridge. It’s a little hard to find, but usually fairly accessible. But this time getting there forced me to employ a creative parking strategy and to soil about one hundred yards of virgin powder. At this spot a couple of weeks ago I used a telephoto to isolate a single tree clinging to its fall color and reflecting in the river; this visit was my widest lens that got all the work.
The January issue of Outdoor Photographer will include my Yosemite El Capitan Winter Reflection image and a paragraph explaining how to photograph snow in Yosemite Valley. Here’s pretty much what I say there, with a little elaboration:
- Arrive in Yosemite Valley before the storm and plan to stay until it’s over. Getting there before the snow starts makes your life so much simpler; staying until the storm passes not only gets you the coveted “clearing storm” images, it also allows you to photograph all of Yosemite’s iconic features above a snow-covered landscape.
- Despite what Google Maps, your GPS, or your brother-in-law tell you, don’t even think about any route that doesn’t take you through Mariposa and up the Merced River Canyon on Highway 140. The highest point on 140 is Yosemite Valley; all other routes into the park go over 6,000 feet and are much more likely to be icy, closed, or require chains. For people coming from the north that means 99 to Merced and east on 140. Coming from the south, you can either take 99 to Merced (easier) and 140, or 41 to Oakhurst and 49 to Mariposa (faster).
- Carry chains. While you’re rarely asked unless weather threatens, every car entering Yosemite in winter is required to carry them, even 4WD. While 4WD is usually enough to avoid putting chains on, that’s not a sure thing. And if you get caught in a chain check without them, you’re parked right there until the requirement is lifted. If you’re driving your own car to Yosemite, bite the bullet and purchase chains. If you’re flying into California and renting a car, try to get 4WD and keep your fingers crossed that you don’t get asked. Some people will purchase chains and try to return them if they didn’t use them, but that can be risky so check the store’s chain return policy.
- Don’t hole-up in your room while it’s snowing. I generally circle the valley looking for scenes (about a 30 minute roundtrip). If the low ceiling has obscured all the views and you tire of photographing close scenes, park at Tunnel View and wait. Not only is Tunnel View the location of some of Yosemite’s most spectacular clearing storm images, it’s also the first place storms clear. And because you’ll be stunned by how fast conditions in Yosemite can change, waiting at Tunnel View is the best way to avoid missing anything. Another advantage Tunnel View offers is its panoramic view of the entire valley that helps you to decide where to go next. For example, from Tunnel View you can see if Half Dome is emerging from the clouds and there are probably nice images to be had on the east side, or if your best bet will be to stay on the west side and concentrate on El Capitan, Bridalveil Fall, and Cathedral Rocks.
- No matter how spectacular the view is where you are now, force yourself to move on after a while because it’s just as spectacular somewhere else. Trust me.
Made in the shade
Posted on December 2, 2013
Cascade in Autumn, Bridalveil Creek, Yosemite
Canon EOS 5D Mark III
15 seconds
F/22
ISO 50
60 mm
Imagine that you want to send an eight-inch fruitcake to your nephew for Christmas (and forget for a moment that you’ve been come that relative), but only have a six-inch box. You could cut off one end or the other, squish it, or get a bigger box. If the fruitcake represents the light in a scene you want to photograph, your camera’s narrow dynamic range is the box. Of course the analogy starts to fall apart here unless you can also imagine a world where box technology hasn’t caught up with fruitcake recipes, but the point I’m trying to make is that whether it’s fruitcake or light, when you have too much of something, compromises must be made.
So, forgetting about fruitcakes for a moment, let’s look at this image of Bridalveil Creek in Yosemite. In full daylight on a sunny day the creek would have been a mix of sunlight and shade far beyond a camera’s ability to capture in a single frame—photographing it would have forced me to choose between capturing the highlights and allowing the shadows to go black, or capturing the shadows and allowing the highlights to go white. But photographing the scene in full shade compressed the dynamic range naturally, to something my camera could handle—suddenly everything was in shadow, and all I needed to do was keep my camera steady enough for the duration of the shutter speed necessary to expose the scene at the f-stop and ISO I chose.
This illustrates why “photographer’s light” is so different from “tourist’s light.” It also explains why your family gets so irritated when you base your vacation stops on when the light will be “right.” (Or, if you (wisely) defer to your family’s wishes, you get so frustrated that your vacation photos don’t look like the photos that show-off in your camera club submits for every competition.)
I love photographing a colorful sunset as much as the next person, but I’m never happier as a photographer than when I’m able to play with a pretty scene in full shade. Overcast skies are great because they allow me to photograph all day, but because clouds are never a sure thing, at every location I photograph I try to have weather-independent spots that will allow me to photograph when clear skies fill the rest of the landscape with sunlight. For example, Bridalveil Creek—nestled against Yosemite Valley’s shear south wall, much of the year Bridalveil Creek is in full shade until at least mid-morning, and then again by mid-afternoon. I never have to worry about what the light is here because I know exactly when I’ll find it in wonderful, (easy) low contrast shade.
The morning I captured this image was one of those blue sky days that can shut a photographer down, but I knew exactly where I needed to be. Arriving at about 8 a.m., I had several hours of shooting in easily manageable, constant light. As I scrambled up the creek toward the fall, I fired off a few frames but nothing stopped me until I came across this small pool swarming with recently fallen leaves. A couple of “rough draft” frames were enough to know that there was an image in here—I just needed to find it.
I suspected I needed to be closer, but between the large, slippery rocks and frigid creek, movement was quite difficult. Nevertheless, with each composition I seemed to manage to work my way a little closer, until I finally found myself at water’s edge. I started my composition at eye level, but that gave me too much water. To better balance the background cascade, middle-ground pool, and foreground leaves, I dropped down to about a foot above water level—this allowed me to include the foreground leaves with a telephoto that brought the cascade closer and shrunk the water separating the two.
Framing the scene this way required zooming to 60mm; because I wanted as much sharpness throughout the frame as possible, I stopped all the way down to f22 (an extreme I try to avoid). While the dense shade made the scene’s dynamic range manageable, it also made it quite dark; adding a polarizer to cut the glare subtracted two more stops. Sometimes I can increase my ISO enough to achieve a shutter speed that gives a little definition in the water, but given all the other exposure factors I just cited, my water was going to be blurred no matter what ISO I chose. So I decided to go the other direction and maximize my shutter speed to emphasize the motion of the leaves swirling on the pool’s surface.
* * *
FYI, your nephew would probably prefer an Amazon gift card. And if you must send a fruitcake, this one looks good (feel free to try it and send a sample).
Moon chasing: The rest of the story
Posted on November 19, 2013
Moon!, Half Dome, Yosemite
Canon EOS 5D Mark III
1/13 second
F/11
ISO 200
400 mm (slightly cropped)
Wow, it seems like only yesterday that the moon was just tiny dot hovering above Half Dome.
Moonrise Reflection, Half Dome and the Merced River, Yosemite
What happened?
No, the moon didn’t magically expand, nor did I enlarge it digitally and plop it into this image. What happened is that I waited two days and moved back; what happened is the difference between 40mm and 400mm; what happened is a perfect illustration of the photographer’s power to influence viewers’ reaction to a scene through understanding and execution of the camera’s unique view of the world.
The rest of the story
My workshop group captured the “small” moon at sunset on Thursday, when it was 93% full and the “official” (assumes a flat, unobstructed horizon) moonrise was 3:09 p.m (an hour and 40 minutes before sunset). That night the moon didn’t rise to 16 degrees above the horizon, the angle to Half Dome’s summit as viewed from our location beside the Merced River, until almost exactly sunset. Because it’s so much higher than anything to the west, Half Dome gets light pretty much right up until sunset—look closely and you can see the day’s last rays kissing Half Dome’s summit.
Flat horizon moonrise on Saturday, when the moon was 100% full, was at 4:24 p.m., only about twenty minutes before sunset. But Tunnel View is nearly 500 feet above Yosemite Valley; it’s also 5 1/2 miles farther than Half Dome than Thursday’s location—this increased elevation and distance reduces the angle to the top of Half Dome to just 6 degrees. So, despite rising over an hour later, when viewed from Tunnel View, the moon peeked above the ridge behind Half Dome just a couple of minutes after sunset (if we’d stayed at Thursday night’s location, in addition to being hungry and cold, by Saturday we’ have had to wait until after 6:00 for the moon to appear).
Exposure
My objective for full moon photography is always to get the detail in the moon and the foreground. As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, these were workshop shoots, and experience has shown me that the most frequent failure when photographing a rising moon in fading twilight is getting the exposure right—the tendency is to perfectly expose the foreground, which overexposes the daylight-bright moon (leaving a pure white disk). This problem is magnified when the moon catches everyone unprepared.
So, both evenings I had my group on location about 30 minutes before the moon. While we waited I made sure everyone had their blinking highlights (highlight alert) turned on, and understood that their top priority would be capturing detail in the moon. I warned them that an exposure without a blinking (overexposed) moon would slightly underexpose the foreground. And I told them that once they had the moon properly exposed (as bright as possible without significant blinking highlights), they shouldn’t adjust their exposure because the moon’s brightness wouldn’t change and they’d already made it as bright as they could. This meant that as we shot, the foreground would get continually darker until it just became too dark to photograph.
(A graduated neutral density filter would have extended the time we could have photographed the scene, but the vertical component of Yosemite’s horizon made a GND pretty useless. A composite of two frames, one exposed for the moon and one exposed for the landscape would have been a better way to overcome the scene’s increasing dynamic range.)
Compare and contrast
Winter Moonrise, Half Dome, Yosemite
Thursday night’s scene, which would have been beautiful by itself, was simply accented by the (nearly) full moon. Contrast that with my visit a few years ago, when I photographed a full moon rising slightly to the left of its position last Saturday’s night. But more significant than the moon’s position that evening was the rest of the scene, which was so spectacular that it called for a somewhat wider composition that included the pink sky and fresh snow. And then there’s the above image, from last Saturday night—because the sky was cloudless (boring), and snow was nowhere to be seen, I opted for a maximum telephoto composition that was all about the moon and Half Dome.
The wide angle perspective I chose Thursday night emphasized the foreground by exaggerating the distance separating me, Half Dome, and the moon; the snowy moonrise image found a middle ground that went as tight as possible while still conveying the rest of the scene’s beauty. Saturday night’s telephoto perspective compressed that distance, bringing the moon front and center. Same moon, same primary subject: If Thursday night’s moon was a garnish, Saturday’s was the main course.
Learn more about photographing a full moon
Join me next fall as we do this all over again
A gallery of Yosemite moons
Click an image for a closer look and slide show. Refresh the window to reorder the display.
Chasing the moon in Yosemite
Posted on November 18, 2013
Moonrise Reflection, Half Dome and the Merced River, Yosemite
Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III
1.3 seconds
F/16.0
ISO 200
40 mm
The highlight of my just completed Yosemite Autumn Moon photo workshop was a full moon rising above Half Dome at sunset. But rather than settle for just one Half Dome sunset moonrise, I’d “arranged for” three. Clouds shut us out on sunset-moonrise number two, but sunset-moonrise number one was a huge success. (And sunset-moonrise number three, from Tunnel View, was so special that I’ll dedicate a whole blog post to it.)
Any location’s “official” sun and moon rise/set times assume a flat horizon—if you read that today’s moonrise is at 5:00 p.m., you need to account for the time it takes for the moon to rise above whatever obstacles (mountains, hills, trees) are between you and the flat horizon. And due to the same motion around Earth that causes the moon’s phases, anyone planted in the same location night after night would see the moon rise about fifty minutes later each day (this is an average—the nightly lag varies with many factors). For example, a moon that hovered right on the horizon at sunset last night will rise too late to photograph tonight.
While you can’t do anything about the moon’s absolute position in the sky, you can control the elevation of your horizon simply by changing your location. In other words, careful positioning makes it possible to photograph a moonrise at sunset on multiple nights—move lower and/or closer to the horizon to delay the moon’s appearance, higher and/or farther to view the moon sooner.
The earlier the moon will rise, the closer to your subject (for example, Half Dome) you should be to increase the angle of view; the later the moonrise, the farther back and higher you should be. So, positioning ourselves on the valley floor, close to Half Dome, provided a steep angle of view that delayed the moon’s appearance on Thursday night, when it rose (above a flat horizon) several hours before sunset. Conversely, standing at elevated Tunnel View a couple of nights later decreased our angle of view, enabling us to see the moon sooner when official moonrise is closer to sunset.
Last Saturday night, from Tunnel View on Yosemite Valley’s west side (farthest from Half Dome) the moon was “scheduled” to appear about five minutes after sunset—that would put it in the magenta, post-sunset band with just enough light for about ten minutes of shooting before the dynamic range (the brightness difference between the sunlit moon and darkening foreground) shut us down. While that was the shoot we were most looking forward to, for Friday night I’d picked a mid-valley spot by the Merced River that would put the moon above Half Dome just about sunset. And for our initial sunset on Thursday evening, I took the group to a riverside spot on Yosemite Valley’s east side, much closer to Half Dome.
Clouds obscured the moon Friday night, but Thursday night was a real treat. Not only did we find the fall color in the cottonwood trees upriver still hanging in there (despite a fairly early autumn in most of Yosemite Valley), the clouds parted just in time for the moon’s arrival. In addition to Half Dome, the trees, and the moon in the distance, we were able to get a mirror image of the scene reflected on the glassy surface of the Merced River at our feet.
While the downside of moving closer to Half Dome (or whatever your subject is) is that the wider focal length necessary to include the entire scene also shrinks the moon, I’ve always believed a small moon adds a powerful accent that makes an already beautiful scene even more special. But what if you prefer your moon big? Simple: just wait a day or two, and move back as far as possible. Stay tuned….
Join me next fall as we do this all over again.
* * *
One final point: Notice the cool (blue) color cast of this scene. This is an indication of not just the rapidly advancing twilight, but also the depth of the shade there in the shadow of the steep valley walls and dense evergreens. An image’s color temperature is a creative choice made during processing by photographers capturing in raw (unprocessed) mode. While warming the light would have made the trees more yellow, I decided that the coolness adds a soothing calmness that is lost in the warmth of a daylight scene.
A Yosemite Autumn Moon Gallery
Variations on a stream
Posted on November 7, 2013
Leaf and Rocks, Bridalveil Creek, Yosemite
Canon EOS 5D Mark III
5 seconds
F/11
ISO 200
100 mm
In my November 4 post, I wrote at length about a recent morning spent photographing a single leaf I found plastered to a rock beside Bridalveil Creek in Yosemite (and my feelings about staged scenes). While my entire shoot that morning was all about one found leaf, it was just the latest in a long succession of focused visits to Bridalveil Creek. Each time I visit here the creek is different: In spring Bridalveil Creek spills into three distinct branches, each bulging with rushing snowmelt; most autumns, the creek has shrunk one branch, a trickle of its former self, decorated with yellow leaves; in winter the banks are lined with snow and ice crusts the surface. On each visit I usually choose a scene and work it to within an inch of its life. On this most recent morning I spent an hour photographing this one leaf, making sure I left no shot un-shot: Multiple lenses, a range of focal lengths, horizontal and vertical orientation, and a variety of perspectives.
Here are more samples:
Here’s the version of the leaf I featured in my November 4 post. I started with wider compositions and gradually moved to tighter frames like this one. (If I were one to arrange leaves in my scenes, I might have been tempted to place one about where the pine needle sits on the rock opposite the leaf.)
Here’s the same image rotated into a vertical. Whenever possible, I like to horizontal and vertical version of each scene I photography, but rarely do they come out identical because each orientation requires its own crop. But an advantage of photographing a scene from directly above is that there’s no top or bottom to the scene. To make the horizontal scene into a vertical, I could have rotated my camera 90 degrees and re-shot, but it was much easier to simply rotate the image in Photoshop.
Shortly after I started working on the scene, a breeze kicked up and deposited a green leaf right on top of the pine needle mentioned above. Not only was it a not particularly photogenic leaf, it was upside-down (clearly I need to work on my powers of telepathic manifestation). But rather than knock the rogue leaf into the creek, I included it in my composition, capturing several frames before the breeze returned and did the dirty work for me.
No leaves were harmed in the making of this image
Posted on November 4, 2013
Leaf, Bridalveil Creek, Yosemite
Canon EOS 5D Mark III
10 seconds
F/16
ISO 200
78 mm
“Did you put that leaf there?”
I’m not sure how many more times I’ll need to answer that question, but let me just say that my answer will never change: No. I feel very strongly that photography needs to be a source of pleasure, and my pleasure from photography comes from discovering beauty in its natural state. But that’s just me—others enjoy staging images by adding or moving elements to suit their composition, which, as far as I’m concerned, is fine as long as the photographer is forthright about what she’s done.
Sadly, the ease of digital manipulation has made people hyper-sensitive to the possibility that an image might not be “real” (whatever that means). Analog manipulation (like arranging leaves) has gone on since the first photon/film connection. And darkroom manipulation, while not nearly as easy as digital manipulation, has been around since the first darkroom—Ansel Adams was a notorious darkroom manipulator who often revisited older images and re-printed vastly different versions. Adams actually got a kick out of people who believed he was capturing the world exactly as he saw it.
Whatever the “manipulation” (a word with a much more negative implication than it deserves in this context), the ultimate litmus test is whether deception is involved. Most people who arrange the elements in their scenes do so without devious intent; while I may not be as excited about an image when I learn that the photographer placed the leaf on that rock, or Photoshopped the moon above between those mountains, I won’t think less of him as a person or photographer if he’s honest about it.
Nevertheless I sometimes find myself getting a little defensive when the “Did you put that leaf there?” question is posed. It’s not so much the question itself (which I understand), as it is the implication that I’ve been caught in a deception that so frequently wraps the question. Nevertheless, regardless of the questioner’s tone, I just smile and affirm my innocence of whatever nefarious act they might suspect me of. I try my best not to expose their ignorance, and when I’m in a more patient frame of mind, I’ll even attempt to educate anyone who wants to be educated. But sometimes I just feel like asking, “Do you really not believe that nature can be this beautiful?”
Fallen Color, Rock Creek Canyon, Eastern Sierra
Here’s one that gets the “Did you do that?” question all the time. I didn’t touch the leaves, but because any two objects in the Universe can be connected by a straight line, I did position myself to emphasize the line connecting this pair.
Oh well. I’m sure I get the question so much because of what and how I shoot—browse my galleries and you’ll see many images with a single leaf, or maybe a small group of leaves. But that’s because I aggressively seek solitary elements to isolate from whatever larger scene I’m in, or multiple elements that I can compose into a natural pattern by simply positioning my camera a certain way.
When I find a compositional element I think will work, I stick with it until I’m sure I’ve found every possible way to shoot it, then continue just a little longer. Which brings me to today’s leaf. I photographed it and nothing else for a full hour—it was the only thing I photographed that morning.
On the final morning of last week’s Yosemite Fall Color and Reflections workshop I guided those workshop students who didn’t mind a little rock scrambling to my favorite spot on Bridalveil Creek. Within easy earshot of the fall, the creek back here tumbles between boulders as large as cars, descending in cascading steps interrupted by quiet pools. In autumn, the scene is augmented by yellow leaves that dart through the cascades, drift on the pools, and cling to wet rocks.
While the others zeroed in on a triple cascade (that I’d photographed many times before), I hopped nearby boulders in search of something new. My search ended when I found this single, rock hugging leaf. Unfortunately, the star of my show was in a most inaccessible spot, inches from the rushing water at the bottom of a steep and slippery rock, deep in a narrow notch between a trio of large boulders.
From atop a nearby rock I could shoot down at about 45 degrees from maybe fifteen feet away, but I soon realized that a tighter composition from directly above was really the shot I wanted. Getting in position for this required angles I didn’t know my tripod legs were capable of, and gymnastic contortions this body hasn’t attempted in years. I can’t even begin to describe how awkward this was, but of course that won’t stop me from trying:
It was clear from the outset that securing my tripod in the open air above the leaf would require help from three widely separated rocks. After much trial, error, and imminent mishap, I finally managed to splay each tripod leg onto its own rock with the camera in positioned directly above the leaf. Okay, now what? There was no way I could even get close to the viewfinder, but spread-eagled between two rocks and using the tripod for balance (but not for support), through the genius of live-view, I was able to get close enough to my LCD that I was pretty sure I could compose and focus. So far so good.
I next removed the camera from the tripod to meter. With Bridalveil Creek in the shadow of six-hundred vertical feet of granite (in these low-sun months I can photograph here in low contrast, full shade for most of the morning), my exposure choices were pretty straightforward. I guessed that I’d need a least a foot of depth of field, that my camera would be about five feet above the leaf, and that my focal length would be around 80mm. Plugging these values into my hyperfocal app told me f16 would give me the one-and-a-half feet of depth of field I thought I’d need.
Experience with workshop students has shown me that many photographers vastly underrate the value of a polarizer in a shaded scene like this (and vastly overrate its value for the sky!). Without a polarizer, the glare on the wet rocks and leaf risked rendering this image unusable (even with the scene fully polarized, the glare remains quite noticeable). So, before returning my camera to the tripod, I oriented my polarizer by pointing my camera in the direction of my scene, looking through the viewfinder, and turning the polarizer’s outer ring until the wet rocks darkened.
At this distance and focal length, with water moving as fast as this, there’s virtually no difference in the blur effect between 2 and 20 seconds. Given that I see little noise difference between 100 and 200 ISO, rather than exposing 20 seconds at 100 ISO, I went with 10 seconds at 200 ISO for no better reason than it halved the wait time for each image.
Okay. Camera back on the tripod, I switched on live-view and found my composition. Moving the focus box to the leaf, I magnified 10x and focused carefully. Almost ready, but before clicking I returned to 1x view and reevaluated my composition. Then I clicked, evaluated, refined, and clicked again. But even with the LCD a few feet away I could see that those first couple of meticulously composed and focused attempts were slightly soft and framed wider than I knew I’d composed them. Hmmm. I double-checked my tripod and confirmed that everything was solid. Scratching my head, I recomposed and focused once more. Watching my camera closely this time, I saw that the extreme downward angle was causing the telescoping barrel of my 24-105 lens to slowly extend during my exposure. Crap. Camera back off the tripod, I retreated from my perch. Returning to my camera bag, which was safely balanced on a rock about ten feet away, I switched to my 70-200 lens.
While switching lenses was a pain, not only did it solve the drifting problem, the longer lens forced me to tighten and simplify my composition to its most basic elements: one leaf, two rocks, water. And variations on those elements are pretty much what I did for the next hour or so. The longer I worked the scene, the more variations I found, and also the more adept I became at adjusting my tripod, camera angle, and even myself, to achieve whatever shot I wanted. Every once in a while I descended to assist someone in the group (leaving the tripod and camera, thank-you-very-much), taking advantage of the break to relieve my cramping legs, back, and neck. By the time I finished my muscles were screaming and my hands were little pink ice cubes, but I was happy.
I walked back to the parking lot knowing I had some really nice images. And despite all the effort and discomfort, I had a complete blast. But please, please don’t ask me if I put that leaf there.
Cliché for a reason
Posted on October 29, 2013
Autumn Snow, Valley View, Yosemite
Canon EOS 5D Mark III
1/15 second
F/16
ISO 100
24 mm
It’s actually even a cliché just to say it, but some things really are “cliché for a reason.” And as much as I try to avoid the cliché shots in Yosemite, sometimes they just can’t be helped.
My Yosemite Fall Color workshop began yesterday, and even though I’d spent all day Saturday in the park, yesterday morning a storm filled Saturday’s blue skies with rain and I felt like I should go check on the conditions before we started. The wet weather had slowed me enough that I didn’t really have time to take pictures, but when I found not only the red and yellow leaves I’d seen on Saturday, and the swirling clouds I’d hoped for, but also Yosemite Valley’s colorful trees and meadows etched with snow, I was tempted at every turn to reach for my camera. Nevertheless, with the exception of a brief breakdown at Cook’s Meadow, I managed to resist temptation.
Unfortunately, the Cook’s Meadow stop had put me even more behind schedule, so I told myself while approaching Valley View that any stop here would be just reconnaissance. And anyway, Valley View images are a dime a dozen, clichés that I’d done more than my share to perpetuate over the years. Then I got there….
I mean seriously, cliché or not (deadline or not), how does a photographer pass up a scene like this? With my group meeting me in just an hour, I really, really didn’t have time for pictures, which is exactly what I kept reminding myself as I leaped from my car, snatched my camera and tripod, and sprinted down to the river. I only snapped four frames, two vertical and two horizontal, before racing back to the car and toward my impending rendezvous.
It’s images like this that remind me that nature’s beauty transcends any human judgement of “cliché.” Pro photographers, myself included, can get a little snobbish about frequently photographed scenes. And while I think it’s important to take the time to find a unique perspective, sometimes it’s best to let Mother Nature speak for herself.
Happy ending
I made it to my workshop with minutes to spare, conducted a lightning-fast orientation, and hustled everyone back outside as quickly as possible. We ended up circling Yosemite Valley several times, photographing without a break until dark. I heard no complaints.
A gallery of clichés
Favorite: Sunset Palette
Posted on October 17, 2013
Sunset Palette, Half Dome from Sentinel Dome, Yosemite
Canon EOS-1Ds Mark II
Canon 24-105
2 seconds
F/20.0
ISO 100
Usually an image comes together on the spot, an organic blend of location and light unique to the moment. But some images I carry around in my brain for years, fully aware of the elements and how I want them assembled, and hopeful to be present when that happens. I have a number of these “dream” images rattling around between my ears, and every once in a while the stars align and I actually get to capture one. For example, on every visit to Sentinel Dome I would eye the granite indentations on the southeast flank and picture them as pools of rainwater reflecting the sunset sky, framing Half Dome in the distance. Wouldn’t it be great if….
One showery October afternoon a few years ago I made the hike to Sentinel Dome with these indentations in mind. I knew that the recent rain would quite likely have filled them, allowing at least part of my dream to come true. After summiting the dome I beelined to the other side and found “my” pools exactly as I’d hoped. The sky was a promising mix of blue and gray, but the sun was still at least an hour above the horizon. Nevertheless, the air was clean and western horizon was clear, essential ingredients for the colorful sunset I so wanted. Dare I hope?
I walked around a bit and mentally refined my composition—rather than set up close and use an ultra wide-angle, I moved back as far as the terrain would permit. This allowed me to fit the pools in the frame at a longer a focal length, which would compress the distance separating Half Dome and the pools. To reduce the expanse of granite behind the pools, I flattened my tripod as far as it would go and framed my shot. With closest pool about six feet in front of me, stopping down to f20 and focusing on a point about twelve feet away gave me sharpness throughout the frame. With my composition set and waiting on my tripod, I readied my two-stop hard graduated neutral density filter and adjusted my polarizer, then sat down on the (hard) granite, and waited.
The sunset color that finally came was more than I dared hope for. The sun was at my back, but with clouds overhead and the western horizon wide open, the crimson glow stretched all the way to the eastern horizon. I clicked this frame when the color was at its most intense, so brilliant in fact that every exposed surface seemed to throb with its glow.
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A Few Images On or Including Sentinel Dome
Eloquent Images by Gary Hart 