In the Moment:
Michael Frye's Landscape Photography Blog

Starry Skies Adventure Workshop

Venus, Jupiter, and the Moon rising at dawn, Mono Lake, CA, USA

Venus, Jupiter, and the Moon rising at dawn, Mono Lake, Saturday morning

We had a wonderful time during our Starry Skies Adventure workshop last week. We managed to dodge the fires and had four clear, smoke-free nights. It was a really nice group, and photographing under a sky full of stars is always such a great experience.

One of the highlights of the workshop was viewing and photographing a dawn alignment of Venus, Jupiter, and the Moon over Mono Lake last Saturday. It’s hard to convey how gorgeous this was in a photograph, but you’ll find my best attempt above.

We also photographed star trails and the Milky Way, and went to Bodie on our last night. I’ll save the Bodie images for a later post, but you’ll find a selection of other images from the workshop below.

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Stars Over Three Brothers

Stars and clouds over Three Brothers, Yosemite NP, CA, USA

Stars and clouds over Three Brothers, Tuesday evening; 20 seconds, f/2.8, 6400 ISO

Tuesday evening Claudia and I drove to Yosemite Valley. The moon was due to rise about 90 minutes after sunset, so I hoped to photograph the northern end of the Milky Way over Three Brothers, with the rising moon adding a bit of light to the peaks.

We got to the Valley well before sunset, but there were some interesting clouds, so we decided to head to Tunnel View, where we found the usual August assortment of tour buses and people taking selfies in front of the panorama. I photographed some interesting patterns of dappled sunlight and clouds, then, just at sunset, after the crowds had thinned, the sky turned pink and a beautiful array of tufted clouds drifted overhead (below).

We had a little picnic along the Merced River as we waited for the sky to get dark, then I started taking photos of Three Brothers. At first the clouds blocked most of the stars. But the sky gradually cleared, revealing more stars, and then, looking at the photos on my camera’s LCD screen, I could see the clouds taking on a pink hue, and a hint of light on Yosemite Point in the distance. This was the lunar equivalent of a predawn glow, with the moon still below the horizon, but already adding some light and color to the scene. My eyes couldn’t see the color, but the camera could (right).

Later, as the moon rose for real, the clouds and peaks turned gold, just as they would at sunrise. Again, it was too dark for the cones in my retinas to pick up the color, but the camera recorded it perfectly. And some of the cloud formations were spectacular, fanning out in big V shapes above Three Brothers (below).

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Climbing Mt. Hoffman

You don’t always get what you hope for, or what you expect, but that’s okay.

On Saturday, Claudia and I wanted to find a place to view the moonrise, but it’s the wrong time of year to see a full moon rising next to Half Dome, or any of Yosemite Valley’s more interesting rock formations. So we decided to climb Mt. Hoffman, which has a panoramic, 360 degree view from the geographical center of the park. From there the moon would rise over the high peaks near Mt. Lyell in the park’s southeastern corner.

There were lots of clouds that afternoon, so we didn’t know whether we’d see the moon at all, but reasoned that the clouds could create a nice sunset, moon or not. And then there was still a little smoke emanating from the Dark Hole Fire along Yosemite Creek, which might block the light. But you never know until you try, so we started up.

We had both climbed Mt. Hoffman before, but it had been a long time. The peak is pretty close to the road, so the climb to its summit is “only” four miles. It’s a steep ascent though, with an elevation gain of about 2,000 feet, at high altitude, so we definitely felt the climb in our legs and lungs.

Along the way there were great views of the Cathedral Range to the southeast, giving us an excuse to stop and rest. During those breaks we could see some very dark clouds to the east, and occasionally hear a rumble of thunder, so we paid close attention to the weather in case some of that rain and thunder might move in our direction. Luckily the stormy weather stayed to the east.

At one point the sun broke through the clouds and created some dramatic light on Cathedral Peak, so I got out my camera and made a few quick exposures (you can see one below).

Mt. Hoffman actually has several summits. We decided to go to the highest point first (the one with the radio tower), where we met and chatted with a couple of other hikers. As the sun lowered, and light started to get more interesting, I moved down the ridge to line up distant Mt. Conness with some of the cliffs along Mt. Hoffman’s summit ridge.

And then I saw a rainbow in the distance, over Tuolumne Meadows, but the rainbow was blocked by the foreground ridges. I had a choice: go back up to the summit, or down and along the ridge to another viewpoint. I decided going down was quicker, but by the time I got to a viewpoint the rainbow had faded. Oh well.

Getting Down to the Essentials

Wildflowers island and cascade, eastern Sierra, CA, USA

Wildflower island and cascade, eastern Sierra; 100mm, 1/2 sec. at f/16, 100 ISO

It’s been an interesting summer in the Sierra. Last winter was one of the driest on record, but over the last month or so we’ve seen a steady flow of monsoonal moisture flowing up from the southeast, leading to frequent afternoon showers and thunderstorms over the higher elevations. We even heard about an epic deluge two or three weeks ago that flooded the parking lot and some of the tent cabins at the Tuolumne Meadows Lodge.

That extra moisture has kept the streams flowing and flowers blooming in the high country longer than I would have expected. On Saturday Claudia and I hiked up one of the eastern Sierra canyons and found a pretty series of cascades, with an island of late-summer flowers in the middle.

Although I make my share of black-and-white photographs, I’ve always been attracted to color. I often look for color, then try to build a composition around it. As I tell my workshop students, color isn’t enough – you need to find a design to go with that color.

In this case, that design proved to be elusive. The most obvious composition was a wide-angle view with a patch of flowers at the bottom, and the upper cascade above. But there was a distracting pile of logs at the base of the cascade that cluttered the image, with no obvious way to eliminate or minimize the logs. I have nothing against logs, but in this case I was interested in the flowers and water, and the logs broke up the visual flow between the flowers and water, diluting the photograph’s message:

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