We all love a beautiful sunset, especially when the clouds glow with color. The same happens with sunrise although there may not be as many of us up to enjoy it. There’s something special about sunsets and sunrises that bring joy and wonder to our hearts.
My personal favorite is sunrise. I like to arrive while it’s still dark and set up my camera in the cold, crisp morning air. I like standing under the fading stars waiting for the sun to come. I like the stillness of the earth at that time of day. For me, it’s magical.
To get the most out of sunrises and sunsets, it’s helpful to know what’s going on in the sky. (I’ll talk just about sunrises now but much of the same things apply to sunsets.) A lot depends on the clouds. If the sky is completely overcast then you’re not likely to have much of a sunrise or sunset. If the sky is clear then you’ll have a totally different experience. But if the sky is strewn with scattered clouds you may be in for a wonderful experience. And yet it’s hard to predict.
The November Big Sur photography workshop offered some of the best conditions I have ever seen. Read more about it.
We wrapped up the 2014 winter Big Sur workshop last night with a spectacular sunset at Point Lobos in Carmel, California. But hold on. Before we get to that I want to share with you some of the highlights from this week.
Let’s start with a funky photograph I got at the Santa Rosa Creek estuary way south down in Cambria, California. I went up to Cambria a couple of days before the workshop started for a little exploring. It paid off. I call this one, “Get Your Ducks in a Row.”
Also that same day I caught a surfer catching a wave. The surf was definitely up.
We start the workshop Monday in San Simeon at the southern end of the Big Sur coast. To get it off to a good start we photographed sunset at the southern end of the impressive Big Sur headlands. And we were treated to some equally impressive light.
Luck favors those who are parepared – and patient.
You read this story again and again. The setting may be different but the plot is always the same.
It’s a dreary, overcast day. You had planned this photo session for months, scouting it on Google Earth for the best location, checked the sun position on TPE (The Photographer’s Ephemeris), and received inspiration from the photographs of other photographers. You made travel plans and booked lodging.
You arrived early at the iconic location, having traveled across the country and driven many miles in a rental car to get there. But as you approach the sky turns dark with low hanging, gray clouds. The light is a disappointment but you walk out to a viewpoint and set up anyway. You keep telling yourself that good fortune happens to those who are prepared.
The minutes tick by and the sun, unseen behind a thick cloak of clouds, continues its inexorable decent to the horizon. Other photographers join you and you ask each other, “Will it happen?” Most shrug their shoulders and reply, “It doesn’t look like it will.” It turns chilly and a cold breeze starts blowing. Many photographers mutter, “It’s not going to happen,” pack up their gear and head back to their cars and a warm meal waiting them in the comfort of a nearby restaurant.
Big Sur in California is beyond description. Join me as I share some of my favorite locations ane experiences along this beautiful coast.
There are some places you have to see to believe, experience to begin to understand – Grand Canyon, Niagara Falls,… Photographs don’t begin to capture the feelings you have. Big Sur is such a place.
Big Sur is a 100 mile stretch of the California coast that has no competition for sheer grandeur anywhere on the West Coast. Henry Miller claimed it was the way the Creator intended the world to be.
The first thing that comes to most people’s minds are the towering Santa Lucia mountains that plunge headlong into the blue Pacific Ocean. And there’s no doubt, this is what characterizes Big Sur. The mountains in some places are a mile high and drop to the sea in only two miles. Statistics – interesting but they don’t begin to convey the feeling you have in your stomach when driving the Cabrillo Highway, the two lane road that clings to the cliffs, snaking its way from San Simeon in the south to Carmel-by-the-Sea in the north.
Wherever you have such a precipitous coastline you’ll find plenty of cliffs into which the surf endlessly crashes. You can experience calm seas like the photograph above. After all it is the Pacific. Or you can get a little more action.
There’s a lot of talk about workflow. But it all begins with importing, organizing and selecting your photo files when you return from the workshop.
I recently returned from seven fantastic days of an exciting photography workshop in the Eastern Sierra (any day or night in the Eastern Sierra is fantastic). I organized all of my photographs in Lightroom. And I thought it would be a good idea to share the steps I go through in case you might find it useful.
Import
I try to keep up with importing the photographs from the day’s shoots into the copy of Lightroom running on my laptop. I’m not going to go into the specifics of the import process but you can read about it here.
I’ve set up Lightroom to apply certain adjustments to the files as they are imported. For example, Lightroom applies adjustments in the following Developer areas – Basic, Tone Curve, Detail (capture sharpening), Lens Correction (lens make and model) and Camera Calibration (Process and Profile). The details are spelled out in this post.
Watch a short video that displays the beautiful alpenglow at Cedar Breaks National Monument in Utah.
Photography is all about light. In nature photography we study the weather, time of day and time of year to learn all we can about light. And the more diligently we study light the more it pays off.
One of my favorite types of light is alpenglow. There is a bit of confusion about what it is. Many people think it’s the sunlight shining on the mountain peaks during sunset, after the valleys below are in shadow. And while this is beautiful, that’s not it.
There’s a lot of talk amongst photographers about shooting in the golden hours – around sunrise and sunset. There’s no disagreement that the light is wonderful at those times of the day. The low angle gives excitingly long shadows and the fact that the sunlight has to travel through more of our atmosphere means it’s a bit softer and a lot warmer.
So you often find a lot of photographers lining up for sunset shoots at iconic locations. The bridge over the Virgin River in Zion is a perfect example. I’ve got to admit, I love to shoot sunsets from the bridge myself. Most photographers will arrive early and stay about 20 minutes after the sun disappears below the horizon at which time the pack up and head off to dinner.
I like to stay till I can’t shoot any more. The light show isn’t over by any means when the glow on the clouds fades. It’s just a lot more subtle. As the light fades exposure times increase and when you get up to 30 seconds then ISO starts to bump up.
Why do I like this light so much? Well, because there is so much going on. Many complex and intricate things are going on in the sky above. You end up getting a delicate play of warm and cool light. Everything is enveloped in a quiet, soft luminance. It can be a magic unlike any other time of day.
I was shooting on that famous bridge in Zion back in November. If it hadn’t been for my two friends shooting with me I would have been the only one on the bridge. Everyone else had long gone. I was shooting HDR, 5 bracketed shots, something I’ve found to be very effective (don’t forget, the sky stays bright long after the sun disappears). Each shot was varied by 1 1/3 stop. Post processing consisted of Photomatix and a little Light Room. Here’s what I got. (You can click on these images to enlarge them.)
Watchman at Twilight
A few weeks before I took this Zion twilight shot I found myself in Death Valley on the Mesquite Flats Dunes, again at sunset. I set up on this one composition and shot it for about an hour and a half. Many people like the stark contrast created by the sun playing on the undulating surfaces of the dunes. I like it too.
Mesquite Dunes Sunset
But a while later comes the real show, at least for my money. The play of colors becomes outrageous with reds, magentas, purples, oranges, yellows and blues. And I love the forms and textures of the sand. It’s truly amazing.
Mesquite Dunes Twilight
So for my money, you’ll see me out there (usually by myself) until I can’t shoot any more. Hey, why don’t you join me and see for yourself.
Then and only then I’ll pack up my gear and head off for dinner.
Note: All of the above photographs are HDR, not just Zion.
What I’d like to do is keep a journal of the steps I go through and the decisions I make when creating the Zion Canyon print. It was shot on 11/24/2007 near the Great White Thrown turnout. I was there the day before closer to sunset and realized this shot needed to be taken about an hour earlier. So I came back at 4:15 the following day. The shot required both stitching (vertical panorama shots) and HDR (three exposures bracketed at +/- 1 stop) for a total of six shots.
The image was shot down by the Virgin River although it’s not in the picture. The foreground is a meadow in the shade with two cottonwood trees. The middle ground is a Navajo sandstone cliff jutting in from the right, also in the shade. The background is a tall cliff, also Navajo sandstone, that is still catching some sunlight. The sky is cloudless and blue.
Here then are the steps I’m going through to take these six shots from RAW to a finished print. It will probably not be completed today. Sorry I can’t show the before and after of each step. That would be interesting.
