Posts Tagged full moon
Half Dome – Alone in the moonlight
Posted by Doug Otto in Photography on August 13, 2009
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Just over two years ago I took a workshop with Gary Hart. The main goal of the trip was to shoot Yosemite under the light of the full moon. This is one of my favorite images from that trip. That was also when Gary first asked if I’d be interested in assisting on future workshops.
The workshop group consisted of just 5 students, including myself. The small group made for a really intimate setting and I still hear from nearly all of those folks on a semi-regular basis. I think that part of that bond came from the grueling conditions that we all endured together. Because it was summer, the days were very long. We’d get up at 3:30Am to be in place before sunrise. After shooting all day and well into the night we generally didn’t return to the hotel until after midnight; only to do it again the next day. I’m still not sure how we all made it through but I will admit that by day 4 we were all a bit punchy.
If you’ve never experienced Yosemite by moonlight, you should make that one of your goals. The stark white granite absolutely lights up under moonlight and is unlike any place that I’ve ever seen.
This image really formulated my basic strategy for moonlight shooting. With a fairly wide angle lens, in this case a Tokina 12-24 @ 16mm, an exposure of 30 seconds still results in fairly sharp star images. Longer exposure and focal lengths make the rotation of the Earth much more apparent. I wanted as much light as I could get so I set the aperture to f/4. The entire scene was at infinity so depth of field wasn’t a concern. I left the shutter speed at 30 seconds and started raising my ISO until I got the exposure that I wanted. In this case, I ended up at ISO 400. My old Canon 30D was pretty clean at ISO 400 or below but I did do some noise cleanup using Noise Ninja as well as basic color correction and sharpening in Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop CS4.
Cheers
Has anyone seen the moon?
Posted by Doug Otto in Geek, Photography on June 15, 2009
The moon can be a powerful photographic element. It can add weight and balance to just about any scene. The problem is figuring our exactly where it’s going to be. I often talk about how important is is to be properly prepared when out photographing but I have to admit that I’m often a “seat of the pants” type of guy.
Several years ago I first met Gary Hart during a weekend workshop. One of the goals was to shoot the rising moon over Half Dome. We all followed to one of his “secret” locations because he had already done the homework and knew where the moon was going to rise. We watched and photographed as the sun went down and then we waited, laughed and talked about the day. After a few minutes someone yelled out: “Is that the moon?” We all spun around and the sound of our talking was replaced by a flurry of shutter clicks. He knew where the moon was going to be and where to place us in order to get the shot. He’s since taught me his technique of retrieving and plotting the moon’s coordinates but the caveat is that you need to do that work ahead of time.
Many of the trips that I make to Yosemite are on fairly short notice. I often don’t have time or simply forget to check the position of the moon before leaving town. Using my iPhone I am able to connect to the Internet and download coordinates but sometimes cell reception in Yosemite can be less than reliable. A month or two ago I discovered Focalware in the iTunes App Store.
Focalware is the best $9.99 that I’ve ever spent. It’s an iPhone application that calculates the time and position of the sun and moon from the palm of your hand. Best of all it doesn’t require an active cellular data connection. You can enter a location or use the phone’s built-in GPS to determine your location. Set the date and time and it gives you a table for altitude and azimuth of both Sun and Moon. All you need is a compass or map to see where the moon will be. The new iPhone 3GS, due out this week, even has the compass built right into the device. You can even save locations to a list to use later, when you have the forethought to check before you leave town.
If you’re a nature photographer that has been wondering if the iPhone is a good idea, this should help swing the vote.
Cheers
Image Honesty
Posted by Doug Otto in Photography on May 15, 2009
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Last week I took a small group of enthusiastic photographers up to the top of Sentinel Dome in Yosemite National Park. The goal was to catch the moon rising over the crest of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Using a technique that I learned from Gary Hart, I knew when and where the moonrise would occur. Getting there was a little bit of a challenge.
Sentinel Dome is an 8100′ granite dome on the South rim of Yosemite Valley. It’s a great vantage point that gives you a 360 degree view of the area. You can see some of the tallest peaks in the Yosemite backcountry and all the way to the Coastal Range to the West. Normally is a fairly short, albeit steep, hike. This time, the trip up the side was through snow. The park service had just opened the Glacier Point road a couple of days prior to our arrival so not many folks had been up there yet. Getting up wasn’t too hard, coming down was a little dicey. The view was, however, certainly worth the effort. Read the rest of this entry »
Due Diligence
Posted by Doug Otto in Photography on April 7, 2009
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There is a common misconception, especially among artists in other medias, that there is no art to photography. One simply arrives at a beautiful location, clicks the shutter, and records something that was already there. While we are recording nature, fine art photography is much more than that.
Photography becomes art when the photographer learns to truly see the scene; using all 4 dimensions to capture a uniquely artistic visualization. By adjusting the parameters of the exposure we’re able to compress or accumulate time. We can leverage that manipulation of time to capture things that they eye, or any other artistic media, simply can’t see. We can change our location, or perspective, to balance the objects in the frame. Just as a painter or sculptor poses their model, we pose the landscape. In a very real sense it’s much less contrived as we are forced to work with what we’re presented with. Read the rest of this entry »
Don’t Miss
Posted by Doug Otto in Photography on February 3, 2009
One Sunday morning, while reading the newspaper I ran across an article about a photographer named Neil Leifer. The headline read “A famous photographer now has an Oscar in his sights.” I did what I usually do when reading the paper and gave it a quick skim. I was primarily looking to see what genre of photography he practiced in an effort to decide whether I wanted to invest additional time reading the article. Very quickly, I was able to determine that he was a sports photographer, which did not interest me much. As I was turning my attention to the next page, just by chance, I happened upon this quote:
“What separates a really good photographer from the ordinary is, when things happen – when you get lucky – you don’t miss. I didn’t miss.”
My reading stopped dead with that line just echoing. Landscape photography is a craft that relies heavily on luck. Sure, we try to remove as much of that as possible but there is only so much we can control. We plot the angle of the sunrise, we can use a GPS to at the exact right spot at exactly the right moment but it all comes down to luck. How many times have you been standing on a mountain waiting for a colorful sunset that never materialized? If luck was with you, and Mother Nature put on the show of a lifetime, did you capture it or did you miss? Read the rest of this entry »
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