{"id":1365,"date":"2010-09-06T21:23:00","date_gmt":"2010-09-07T05:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/2010\/09\/06\/photographic-challenges-a-solution\/"},"modified":"2018-09-09T19:56:29","modified_gmt":"2018-09-10T03:56:29","slug":"photographic-challenges-a-solution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/2010\/09\/06\/photographic-challenges-a-solution\/","title":{"rendered":"Photographic Challenges &ndash; A Solution"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"wlWriterHeaderFooter\" style=\"float: none; margin: 0px; padding: 4px 0px 4px 0px;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border: none; width: 450px; height: 80px;\" src=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/widgets\/like.php?href=http:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/2010\/09\/06\/photographic-challenges-a-solution\/\" width=\"300\" height=\"150\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p>A few weeks ago I posed a photographic challenge.\u00a0 What decisions would you make to capture the Bristlecone Moon image?\u00a0 Here\u2019s the photograph again.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/bristlecone_moon_2008.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"display: block; float: none; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; border: 0px;\" title=\"bristlecone_moon_2008\" src=\"http:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/bristlecone_moon_2008_thumb.jpg\" alt=\"bristlecone_moon_2008\" width=\"180\" height=\"260\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a>Bristlecone Moon (2008)<\/p>\n<p>This shot poses some interesting challenges and here\u2019s a link to the first post that spells out the situation in case you missed it.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/2010\/08\/22\/photographic-challenges-the-situation\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Photographic Challenge &#8211; the Situation<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The planning for this photograph actually began several months before. I had the idea of photographing a bristlecone pine with the full moon as it rose behind it through the earth shadow.\u00a0 The earth shadow is that ribbon of color that is projected in the sky above the horizon directly opposite the rising or, in this case, setting sun.\u00a0 So the first step was to select a full moon weekend, contact my buddy, Eric Winter and head up to Grand View campground in the White Mountains.\u00a0 We arrived three days before the full moon to scout the area and find a tree that had everything I was looking for \u2013 an open view to the east that looked down on the Great Basin below.\u00a0 I also new I needed to have enough room to back away from the tree so I could use a telephoto and thus increase the relative size of the moon.<\/p>\n<p>There are only two named bristlecone groves in the Whites \u2013 Schulman Grove where the oldest tree is found (4,700 years old) and the remote Patriarch Grove.\u00a0 The Schulman Grove is at the end of the paved road and just a few miles from Grand View campground.\u00a0 The Patriarch Grove is another 8 miles down a dirt road and when the rangers say it\u2019s a 45 minute drive you\u2019d better believe them cause it is.<\/p>\n<p>The first day we scouted the Patriarch Grove but unfortunately, it is in a broad\u00a0\u00a0 depression that has a large hill to the east.\u00a0 There weren\u2019t any trees that had what I was looking for.\u00a0 The next day we killed some time in Bishop and dropped into <a href=\"http:\/\/www.vernclevenger.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Vern Clevenger\u2019s<\/a> gallery.\u00a0 Vern and I chatted and I told him what I\u00a0 had in mind.\u00a0 He advised me to get the shot one or two nights before the full moon, not the night of the full moon.\u00a0 It turned out to be a critical piece of advice that I needed.<\/p>\n<p>So back up to the Whites and back out the dirt road in a search for THE tree.\u00a0 We scouted a couple of places but none worked out.\u00a0 We climbed back into the truck and continued down the road.\u00a0 \u201cWhat about that tree?\u201d Eric asked as we drove by.\u00a0 It was perfect.\u00a0 Throwing the truck into reverse, we backed up and parked off to the side of the road.<\/p>\n<p>The tree had a clear view of the eastern horizon.\u00a0 There was a large hill to the west but all that meant was that the tree would be dropping into a shadow long before the sun dipped\u00a0 below the horizon.\u00a0 There was enough space to use my 70-200 lens and back up far enough to fill the frame with the tree.<\/p>\n<p>I had printed the moon charts from the internet so I new the precise time and azimuth of the moonrise and was able to figure out where I wanted to position myself.<\/p>\n<p>I started working with compositions well before the moon was due and decided to crop off the ends of the branches because I liked the proportion better.\u00a0 Then I sat on Mother Earth and quietly waited.\u00a0 The shadow from the hill to the west crept across the road toward the tree and finally swallowed it.\u00a0 I sat, looking to the east, waiting for the moon to rotate into view.\u00a0 Sitting up high on the side of the White Mountains I got a strong sense of the earth turning on its axis, rotating until the moon appeared above the horizon.\u00a0 One moment it wasn\u2019t there and the next it was.\u00a0 It was time to go to work.<\/p>\n<p>The moonrise was playing out just like I had hoped.\u00a0 This is when I get nervous.\u00a0 \u201cSlow down, don\u2019t make a mistake,\u201d I kept telling myself.\u00a0 Depth of field: f\/16.\u00a0 Shutter speed: 1.2 sec at ISO 100.\u00a0 Too slow.\u00a0 Bump the ISO to 200.\u00a0 I heard Ansel Adams speak years ago at Pasadena City College.\u00a0 He told the story of taking \u201cMoonrise over Hernandez.\u201d\u00a0 He didn\u2019t have time to take out his spot meter and do his usual zone thing.\u00a0 So he exposed for the moon.\u00a0 He knew it was in full sunlight and he knew what its luminance was without having to measure it.\u00a0 So he put the moon in Zone VII and fired away.\u00a0 I was thinking of him when I realized that I needed to shoot HDR if I wanted the moon to be more than a blank white disk, if I wanted to catch the man in the moon.<\/p>\n<p>So I turned on the camera\u2019s Highlight Tone Priority function to gain a little extra dynamic range, kept the ISO at 200 and bracketed the exposure by one stop.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The focal length was 185 mm and the total elapsed time for the three exposures was about 2 1\/2 seconds.\u00a0 At 185 mm you have 3.2 seconds to get your shot off without the moon (or stars) moving perceptibly.\u00a0 (There\u2019s a formula for calculating that.\u00a0 It\u2019s 600\/focal length in mm.\u00a0 It\u2019s a handy formula to know.\u00a0 See <a href=\"http:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/2010\/01\/02\/ten-tips-for-exciting-nighttime-photography\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Ten Tips for Exciting Nighttime Photography<\/a>.)<\/p>\n<p>So that\u2019s pretty much the whole story.\u00a0 There are other ways go solve this challenge.\u00a0 Carefully exposing the moon to fall at the right end of the histogram without highlight clipping would result in a capture in which both shadows and highlights could be recovered in Lightroom or Photoshop.\u00a0 A graduated neutral density filter is problematic because it would cover part of the tree.\u00a0 So HDR works well in this situation because you get a good exposure on both the moon and the tree.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve returned to this tree several times since September of 2008 when this photograph was taken.\u00a0 It\u2019s one of the stops on our Eastern Sierra workshop.\u00a0 Each time I return it has a different feel to it, a different mood.\u00a0 Here\u2019s what it said to me this year.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/bristlecone_dusk_2010.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"display: block; float: none; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; border: 0px;\" title=\"bristlecone_dusk_2010\" src=\"http:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/bristlecone_dusk_2010_thumb.jpg\" alt=\"bristlecone_dusk_2010\" width=\"260\" height=\"180\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a> Bristlecone Dusk (2010)<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s a remarkable tree and I plan to keep on coming back.<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"http:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/workshops\/workshop_home_page.html\" href=\"http:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/workshops\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Join me on an upcoming workshop.<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/RalphNordstromPhotography.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">To see more of my photographs click here.<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"bawpvc-ajax-counter\" data-id=\"1365\"> (909)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A few weeks ago I posed a photographic challenge.\u00a0 What decisions would you make to capture the Bristlecone Moon image?\u00a0 Here\u2019s the photograph again. Bristlecone Moon (2008) This shot poses some interesting challenges and here\u2019s a link to the first post that spells out the situation in case you missed it. Photographic Challenge &#8211; the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/2010\/09\/06\/photographic-challenges-a-solution\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Photographic Challenges &ndash; A Solution&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[32,94,231,93],"class_list":["post-1365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-how-to-articles","tag-california","tag-photogrpahy","tag-sierra-nevada","tag-workshop"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Nl7-m1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1365"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1365\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4001,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1365\/revisions\/4001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}