“What is the subject?” When you’ve greeted the sun at the base of Lower Yosemite Falls, your senses are so overwhelmed, you simply might not know that answer to that question. But as the sun starts to creep its way down the face of the wall, it all becomes very clear. The spray is hitting you in the face and coating all your gear. The breeze blows your hair and fills your smell with the sweet aroma of Cedar. And then the color hits and you can barely get out the words….”WOW!” The falls are simply spectacular!
Once you take those couple of overall, “I was here shots,” it’s time to get back to “What’s the subject?” The rainbow which appears for a short time under only the right conditions is simply so cool to watch as it dances with the mist. For the first time, many shot video this morning just to be able to take the experience back home. But when it comes to the single clicks, zooming in tight with the 70-200 and ripping the frames when you saw the highlights your wanted with the D4, the magic of the moment is forever captured. To me, it’s very rewarding to share this valley secret with the folks, even more when coated with spray, all you see are the biggest smiles! Life gets no better in photography!
Ya, back in Yosemite Valley again and you know what, the rocks are all in the same spot. And it’s still as gorgeous as ever! There is water in the falls (Upper Yosemite Falls at night pictured here) and clouds are in the forecast, it will be a great week. The challenge for me is, for some one who has been to a location hundreds of times, how to you approach it photographically to comeback with something new? The trick is there is one is two fold, follow the light and, make every click count! While the rocks are the same ones as on my first visit to the valley 45yrs ago, everything else is new which includes how my heart now responds to them. It does require not falling in the trap of shooting what I’ve shot before which means pushing because some views just don’t change. It means taking a deep breath and feeling more and lastly, remember to move the feet. The tripod has legs, so do you so move and look! Hope you’ll check back to see how I do this week as I approach my 1000 day in the Valley.
So I’m home for a few days, finally. I’ve only been home up till now since the 1st of the year, 8 days. I’ve got this really, really cool tool here, The Photo Trap that I want to use on a project I’m doing with our No Flying Squirrels. Well, to use the Photo Trap, I need to have flying squirrels. While I was gone, Sharon would check on them at night and most nights when she looked, they were there. All was good.
Three weeks ago I was heading out to the airport, heading to Grand Canyon. It was my normal departure time for the airport, 01:00. I was just going up the onramp to the highway and crossing in front of me was a adult Bobcat! I stopped and watched because in my 50yrs in Mammoth, I have never seen a Bobcat. Bears, Mtn Lions, Coyotes, you bet. Bobcat, never! So I watched, texted Sharon and then headed up the highway once it passed. While I was gone, Sharon was talking to our neighbor, a second home owner who told them they saw a Bobcat one night staring in their window at them. Sharon found it hard to believe, figured it was somebodies lost house cat. Well, since I’ve gotten back home from the Grand Canyon, the last few nights, we’ve had no squirrels. I had the Photo Trap, D4, SB-900s and other goodies ready to go, but no subjects. Time is running out, about to be on the road again for three weeks.
So I’m taking the dogs out a 23:00 for their last trip of the day. As always, I do a 360 with my maglite to check the trees for owls and the like. I come over to our tree that has all the flying squirrels to see if any appeared and what do I see perched on the branch, a Bobcat! It’s just lying there, watching the dogs and me and not doing a thing! I go to the door and yell in the house to Sharon there’s a Bobcat in tree 3!. I hurry the dogs up, get them in the house and up the stairs I go. And there the Bobcat laid, watching us watch it. It’s a juvenile, pretty small and really cute.Sharon says, “Can’t you get a picture of it?” It’s 23:00, it’s just nine feet from the door. I said I don’t think so. But I still grabbed the D4, 70-200 & SB-900 and while knowing it was a no win situation, made the click. You see the results above. We then continued to watch it for quite a while. I finally slowly open the door trying to get a shot. I take a step forward and it slowly turned and climbed the tree. That was it. The next morning in the fresh snow I went looking for tracks. On the other side of the property I found its tracks. I also found the tracks of what appears to be a bunny family, most likely the reason for it being on our property.
Last night, we were looking every five minutes to see if it returned. Just before 23:00, fresh tracks appeared going right under our deck door and heading to the tree. We never saw it last night, haven’t got a photo of it but we have the vision of that Bobcat nine feet away, looking at us looking at it forever exposed on the thin emulsion of our minds. It was a good night!
Well, when that happens it tend to throw everything into chaos! Why, because taking what the mind’s eye is telling us and cramming that into the viewfinder can simply be sensory overload. When you see those magical, heart warming, soul stirring God beams the panic sets into capture them because we know, we just know how special they really are. No matter who you are or where you were raised, they stir something inside. And that’s what we want our photography to do, stir something inside. So you could say that capturing successfully God beam is an easy way to make that something stir inside. Just how so you do that, capture them God beams?
We were incredible fortunate to have many opportunities on our K&M Adventures Grand Canyon to have a whole bunch of God beam opportunities so discussing them was a hot topic. What I can pass along is what I’ve found works for me hoping it helps you. First, you gotta ask yourself, what’s the subject? It is the God beam so then you have to make sure in the viewfinder, that’s what you see. God beams often are associated with a hole in the clouds which is BRIGHTER than the beams. Since we know that the mind’s eye goes to light and bright first, if you want the viewer to see those God beams, that bright spot can’t be in the final photo. You can do that simply by not including it in the photo when you go click. You must follow through with that same thinking when you finish the photograph! How do you do that? Well, during our digital darkroom session, I demoed at least three different ways to make your finishing clicks compliment your camera clicks. I got a real kick when I showed how, with moving just two sliders in ACR, in a heartbeat I finished the photos and folks saying, “I would have never guessed you could do that!” These are simple D4 / 24-70 clicks. Photography is all about light, it is what makes the photo. It’s our job to find it, caress it, love it and then share it. You do that when you have just a droplet or when blessed with heavens of light!
Have you ever noticed how moths can find even the smallest drop of light in the night? Ever wonder how they do that (or why?)? I do especially when they are buzzing about bugging me. But I don’t really think we’re much different, other than we don’t have wings. We seem to gravitate to light just like moths, but I think at times we miss the smallest, simplest light in favor of the big, bright light. This past week in Grand Canyon, I once again thought about how much light we really need?
I’m not talking exposure here, don’t want to step on that land mind. Rather, I’m talking about in the overall scheme of our image, how much of the scene, subject, story needs to have light on it? Can we make do with the smallest possible amount and still have a successful photograph? I want to propose that ya, we can be successful with the smallest amount of area lit. Why?
With the mind’s eye going to light and bright first, does it take much to trigger this response? I think when the overall scene is dark, then no, the smallest amount will do. And when you add to that color, texture, sharpness and some other elements, how can the mind’s eye help but latch onto that spot, instantly? Then if all of is true, how much light do YOU need?
Read a good book lately, a mystery perhaps? Was the book really good because the author didn’t put everything on the table at once? You had to continue to read to get all the pieces so you could get to the light at the end of the tunnel. What if you incorporated this same communication technique in your photograph?
Rather than going and lighting everything, perhaps try adding more shadows, mystery to your photograph using just a dabble of light strategically placed. This is an example of what I’m talking about. The morning sun just peeked through a hole in the morning clouds. It was raining so the beam of light was displayed in the falling rain until it smacked into the temple and lit it up. Making the photo took no more than realizing that this was all the light the photograph needed. Anymore light and the beam would disappear and the small degree of detail lost in a sea of information. So next time you’re out shooting, be it with ambient light or flash, ask yourself as you peer through the viewfinder, “How much light do you need?”
So, have you ever been to the Grand Canyon? If you have, then what you see here probably looks familiar. Why? Because the rocks haven’t changed for a while, what we’re seeing has been around long before us and our cameras. As a matter of fact, it really begs the question, can we take a photo of the Grand Canyon that hasn’t been taken before? The answer is of course but more importantly, it’s a new photograph to us and that’s what really matters. With then in mind, the Grand Canyon is totally new but we of course want to do better than we’ve seen. This means you gotta simple put yourself in front of something interesting. That’s where light comes in!
Above is a click taken during the one hour prior sunset on our first day of our K&M Adventure – Grand Canyon. You can see the moment as you watch the Time Lapse created using the Time Lapse feature in the D800 and 24f1.4AFS. With the thousands of Grand Canyon images already in my files, just adding makes no real sense. But adding just a few that not only sum up the current visit but the magnificence that is the Grand Canyon, that makes sense. Here’s where that light thing plays such an important role. Because light is never the same, never! It’s this magical force that can turn your world upset down. The trick is to be ready for that moment. That’s why I made the Time Lapse. You can see during this hour that there are times when, the light really wasn’t special. Then you can see that moment when the D4 / 24-70AFS was the perfect tool to capture that moment of light on the down pour. WB is set to Cloudy, image underexposed and the final image, that one special capture that brings home the special moment. When somewhere where I’ve spent a lot of time, I put the challenge to myself that is pretty darn simple. Can one click tell the story?
