Night Photography

Aurora With Meteors

Aurora, Perseid meteors, and lodgepole pine, August 11-12, Yosemite NP, CA, USA

Aurora, Perseid meteors, and lodgepole pine, August 11-12, Yosemite NP, California. This image shows the Aurora Borealis, plus Perseid meteors captured over the course of about two hours.

The night of August 11th was the peak of the Perseid meteor shower. Claudia and I marked this date on our mental calendars, thinking it might be nice to head up to the Yosemite high country and look at some meteors.

As the date approached, solar activity increased, bringing a heightened chance of viewing the aurora – possibly even at our southerly location in central California. The combination of meteors and aurora certainly seemed intriguing. And forecasts indicated that the night of the 11th and 12th was the most likely night to see the aurora.

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Nightscaper Photo Conference: Last Chance for the Early-Bird Discount!

1927 Dodge Graham with gas pumps at night, Bodie State Historic Park, CA, USA

1927 Dodge Graham with gas pumps at night, Bodie State Historic Park, California. In my presentation Complex Lighting With One Flashlight I’ll show how to create rich, complex, sophisticated lighting with just one flashlight – as I did in this photo, lighting the old truck and gas pumps from multiple angles with just one light.

August 31st is the last day to get the early-bird discount on the Nightscaper Photo Conference!

This conference, focused on night photography, takes place September 26-29 in Kanab, Utah. I’ll be making two presentations at this event: Complex Lighting With One Flashlight, and Nighttime Sequences. And I’ll be teaching alongside a stellar lineup of other presenters, including Lance Keimig, Royce Bair, Jess Santos, Matt Hill, Tim Cooper, Rafael Pons, Katrina Brown, and a bunch more. Topics include star trails, auroras, printing, panoramas, deep-space astrophotography, Photoshop selections and masks, planning with PhotoPills – too many more to list them all here, but you can see all the details on the Nightscaper website:

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Moonlight

Yosemite Valley lit by the setting moon,  with Jupiter above, Yosemite NP, CA, USA

Yosemite Valley lit by the setting moon, with Jupiter above, Yosemite NP, California

I’ve been working on my presentation The Magic of Moonlight for the Night Photo Summit next weekend. While going through some of my moonlit images from the past I found this set, all from the night of December 19th and 20th, 2015.

Thinking about that night brings back some great memories. A winter storm started clearing around 9:00 p.m., so I headed up to Yosemite Valley, knowing that the two-thirds full moon was due to set at 1:45 a.m., and as it sank I might find some beautiful, low-angle moonlight to go along with that clearing storm.

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Moonset, Death Valley

Clouds lit by the setting moon, Death Valley NP, CA, USA

Clouds lit by the setting moon, Death Valley NP, California

The night after the rainstorm cleared during our recent visit to Death Valley, the half-full moon was due to set around midnight, and I thought there might be an opportunity to photograph an interesting moonset if the clouds lingered.

Claudia and I ate dinner at our campsite, slept for about an hour, then I got up and checked the weather. Things looked promising, with clouds, but not too many. So we headed to a spot looking over the badlands toward the lowering moon.

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Yellowstone Aurora

Aurora borealis reflected in a thermal pool, Yellowstone NP, WY, USA

Aurora borealis reflected in a thermal pool, Yellowstone NP, Wyoming. 20mm, 10 seconds at f/1.8, ISO 6400. I would typically use a little longer shutter speed for night photos like this, but the aurora was moving and changing quite quickly, so a longer exposure would have caused the pillars to blur and smear together.

Claudia and I are back in Yellowstone. We had such a great time here last year we had to return.

And we’re glad we did. We’ve experienced many memorable moments so far, but the clear highlight was seeing and photographing the aurora borealis (aka Northern Lights) early Sunday morning.

We surely wouldn’t have done this if it weren’t for our friends David Kingham and Jennifer Renwick. Jennifer and David are both wonderful photographers, and know Yellowstone inside out. Before Claudia and I arrived in Yellowstone they saw and photographed an aurora one night. It wasn’t the most intense aurora, but it was something.

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Oak and Eclipsed Moon

Blue oak and eclipsed moon, Sierra Nevada foothills, CA, USA

Blue oak and eclipsed moon, Sierra Nevada foothills, California. 122mm, 1 second at f/11, ISO 6400.

On Sunday a total lunar eclipse was visible in many parts of the world, including our corner of California in the Sierra Nevada.

I’ve photographed many lunar eclipses before. I like capturing sequences of the moon above a landscape in various eclipse stages – if possible. But for this eclipse I couldn’t think of any nearby spot that would add a compelling foreground while looking in the right direction (southeast) for a sequence like that, plus it appeared that clouds might interrupt any attempt at capturing a long eclipse sequence.

Instead, I thought of a lone oak tree in the Sierra foothills that might lend itself to a different treatment: a telephoto view of just the tree and eclipsed moon at dusk. I had photographed this tree before, and it looked like the tree and moon would line up well. Using a long lens would make the moon look larger, plus capturing a single frame like this would require only a brief cloud-free interval to work, while a sequence would need several hours of clear skies.

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