Love to capture photos while traveling the world or near your home? Ready to improve your photography techniques? Join award-winning photographer Kyle Adler for a special online workshop on the basic principles of travel photography. We’ll cover how to plan your travel with an eye toward photography, how to pack, a few simple technical matters, and general approaches to various genres including landscape, cityscape, portrait, night photography, street, sports/action, food/beverage photography, etc. The session will be kept small so we can be interactive. This workshop is suitable for all photographers from beginners through enthusiasts to semi-professionals and professionals. Hope you can participate in this rare opportunity to learn a wide range of practical travel photography techniques in a concise 75-minute format!
I’m breaking radio silence to share a few images from my crazy experiment, “Dances with Comet”. Last Friday night, while observing Comet NEOWISE with my wife from a hilltop near our home, I realized I’d never seen a photo capturing a dancer (or any human being in motion) under a bright comet. So Saturday morning I put out a call for dancers, and quickly had several guinea pigs for my experiment. Saturday night I lugged my Profoto lights and modifiers through the forest and up the hill, accompanied by wonderful local dancers Esra and Nupur. We faced two immediate challenges: there were more than 20 bystanders watching the comet, and the low horizon was clouded out. Fortunately most of the observers left before the comet began to set into the haze, so I set up my gear and we started to shoot. We had about an hour before the cloud cover made NEOWISE appear too dim to see clearly in the images. Turns out our timing was good, because the next several nights have been overcast in the SF Bay Area, and now the comet is dimming as it heads away from the sun and past earth, not to return for 6800 years.
A huge thank-you to my two talented and brave dancers, contemporary dancer Esra and garba dancer Nupur. We had a great time and made some epic images that are unlike any others. Hope you enjoy the photos from this unique photoshoot.
Why was this experiment such a challenge technically? To expose a comet, a long exposure of at least 3-5 seconds is required, but to capture a dancer in motion requires an extremely fast shutter speed. To capture both the dancer and comet in the same exposure needs some careful planning. I used professional studio strobe lighting set to fire in “freeze mode” at about 1/8000 of a second to capture an instantaneous moment of the dancer’s movement, while leaving the shutter open for a full 3 seconds to properly expose the night sky. Because it was nearly pitch dark where the models were dancing, they were lit only by the momentary strobe lighting, which froze their motion. The remainder of the 3-second timed exposure allowed for the comet and stars to be properly exposed. To achieve point stars (i.e., without visible star trails caused by the rotation of the earth), I wanted to limit the exposure time to just three seconds, and I also needed to use an aperture of f/6.3 or smaller to have enough depth-of-field for both the dancer and the sky to be in focus. These limitations forced the usage of a high ISO of at least 3200.
Note that no digital trickery was used to make these images. Each photo was made in a single take (no composite images): I opened the shutter for 3 seconds to expose the night sky, first firing the studio strobes for about 1/8000 of a second to capture the dancer’s movement. In post-processing, I removed some noise and made a few adjustments to the tone curves and color temperature, but no pixels were shifted in the making of these photos.
Having just returned from leading a 2.5-week photography tour through Chile and Easter Island and including the July 2 total solar eclipse, I’d like to share a few favorite images. You can find the full photo gallery here: https://www.kadlerphotography.com/Travel-Photography/Chile-Eclipse.
Santiago Cathedral’s tower reflected in the windows of a modern glass office building.Glorious cityscape of Valparaiso.We were fortunate to visit Valparaiso on the day of the Festival of St. Peter and St. Paul.We were fortunate to visit Valparaiso on the day of the Festival of St. Peter and St. Paul.We were fortunate to visit Valparaiso on the day of the Festival of St. Peter and St. Paul.Sea lion sibling rivalry.The diamond ring effect signals the start of the 2.5-minute period of totality.A timelapse montage showing the path of the sun across the sky during the entire solar eclipse and through to sunset.What we do on photography tours.Glorious landscape around the Miscanti Lagoon.Three species of native pink flamingo live in the Atacama Salt Flat.Pattern and texture on the Atacama Salt Flat.Three species of native pink flamingo live in the Atacama Salt Flat.We were so fortunate to travel during a new moon in winter to the Atacama Desert. There’s no better combination of time and place for viewing (and photographing) the Milky Way.Tatio Geyser Field.Old church in the village of Machuca.Valley of the Moon.We enjoyed a breathtaking sunset at Kari Viewpoint in the Atacama Desert.Group portrait of the entire Photography Tour team in front of the seven Mo’ai of Ahu Akivi on Easter Island.Orongo Crater.Gorgeous sunset over the ocean behind mo’ai.Ahu Tongariki is the largest ceremonial platform on Easter Island, once holding 16 mo’ai. After the mo’ai were toppled during a period of civil unrest and then, more recently, devastated by a tsunami, 15 of them were reconstructed with help from Japan.Traditional Rapa Nui face painting on Anakena Beach.Vai Te Mihi performed a show of traditional Rapa Nui dance and music.Vai Te Mihi performed a show of traditional Rapa Nui dance and music.Vai Te Mihi performed a show of traditional Rapa Nui dance and music.Worth the 3 AM wakeup call! A once in a lifetime opportunity to photograph the Milky Way above mo’ai on Easter Island. We had a bit of cloud cover, but overall I was very pleased with the resulting images.
Chile’s Atacama Desert, with its clear and dark skies and perfect latitude, makes a stunning location for capturing the Milky Way.
Not too long ago, making images of the Milky Way was not practical for most photo enthusiasts. Only astronomers and a handful of professional astrophotographers had the expensive equipment required to capture sufficient light from the cluster of quite dim stars that we refer to as the Galactic Core in the night sky. Shooting with a very long exposure didn’t do the trick for the Milky Way, because leaving the camera’s shutter open for more than about 15-30 seconds would blur each star’s image due to rotation of the Earth. These blurs, called star trails, could make for striking images with the stars appearing to streak in circles across the sky, but the subtle beauty of the Milky Way would be lost with these long exposures.
But in the last 5-10 years, camera sensors have become much more sensitive to light, and now it is possible–indeed quite easy–for photo enthusiasts to photograph our home galaxy without expensive specialized equipment.
Here’s how:
You will need a camera with a sensor that can gather a lot of light and with a shutter that can be kept open for a long time. These requirements limit the range of suitable cameras to full-frame DSLRs and mirrorless cameras, as well as a few higher-end crop-sensor cameras. You will also need a fairly fast wide-angle lens: I recommend a zoom or prime (fixed focal length) lens with a focal length of 14-16mm on a full-frame camera, and a maximum aperture of f/4 or faster. For astrophotography I most often use the Nikon 16-35mm f/4 lens. It’s got great image quality and is well built, and it is wide enough and fast enough for the purposes of capturing the Milky Way. For those with the financial means, buying or renting a very fast wide-angle lens such as the Nikon 24mm f/1.4 allows for gathering even more light.
You will also need a heavy, solid tripod. I’ve been successful using a lighter weight tripod for Milky Way shots while traveling, but a good professional tripod is better. I use the SLIK 615-315 with a ball head.
Finally, you’ll want to have a remote shutter release, either a hardwired cable release or a wireless remote release. This is to trigger the camera without touching it, so as to avoid blurring the image from the vibration of your touch.
Once you have the right equipment, it’s fairly straightforward to photograph the Milky Way. Choose a dark sky area, far away from the light pollution of any cities or other sources of stray nighttime light. It’s best to plan your Milky Way shoot at or within a couple of days of a new moon to further minimize extraneous light in the sky. Shoot toward the Galactic Center where the stars of the Milky Way appear brightest and most colorful. Note that the Galactic Center is not visible at all times of year at all latitudes; in many locations in the Northern Hemisphere, it is visible only during the summer months. To plan for where the GC will be on any given date and time and at any given location, I use a smartphone app called PhotoPills: PhotoPills in App Store.
While the Milky Way is lovely as a subject in its own right, a really good image also needs to include interesting foreground and/or middle-ground elements in its composition. The image below, made in Chile’s Atacama Desert, is appealing because the Milky Way is seen rising above a dramatic indigenous algarrobo tree.
The Milky Way is seen arched through the sky of the Atacama Desert above a local algarobbo tree in silhouette. Careful composition adds drama to your Milky Way images by including Earth-based subjects as well as the sky.
With your fast wide-angle lens on your full-frame camera, all mounted on your stable tripod, you are ready to shoot. Remove any filters on the lens, set your camera on full manual mode, select a fast ISO (I usually start at about 3200 and sometimes have to go even higher) and a wide aperture (f/4 or wider), and choose a shutter speed of 20-25 seconds (shorter if your lens is longer than about 18mm). You can use the 500 Rule, which states that shutter speed should be approximately 500 divided by the focal length of the lens; for example, for a 16mm lens you can use a shutter speed of not longer than about 31 seconds. Turn off your autofocus on your lens or camera, as it will not work in so dark a setting; instead, manually set your focus to a point near infinity where the stars appear sharp in your viewfinder (or better yet, on your live-view screen). I like to tape my lens to this setting before it gets dark, so I know the focus won’t change while I’m out in the field in the dark. It’s also a good idea to turn off your camera’s long-exposure noise reduction feature, if it has one, as this wastes time in the field and it’s equally effective to reduce the noise in Lightroom during post-processing. Of course, you want to be sure you are shooting RAW files.
Go ahead and shoot a lot of frames, experimenting with different ISO settings and compositions. It is often a good idea to get a very long exposure, sometimes several minutes long, so that your foreground subjects will be properly exposed. The frames with the foreground well exposed can later be combined in Photoshop with the ones in which the night sky is properly exposed.
This image was made from several frames: one long exposure for the lake, trees, and mountain in the foreground and middle-ground, and several different 25-second exposures that each captured a different meteor during the peak of the Perseid Meteor Shower. The resulting image shows all of these objects quite prominently, along with the Milky Way.
You may want to combine several different images to see all the features of the night sky and the terrestrial objects clearly.
In post-processing your Milky Way images, select a white balance that makes the sky and star colors appear natural, apply enough noise reduction to remove visual noise from the high ISO capture but not so much as to soften the appearance of the stars too much, and add some visual punch by painting additional contrast and clarity over the Galactic Center.
Worth the 3 AM wakeup call! A once in a lifetime opportunity to photograph the Milky Way above the iconic mo’ai on Easter Island. We had a bit of cloud cover, but overall I was very pleased with the resulting images.
With practice, you’ll find that capturing the Milky Way is within your reach, so long as you have suitable equipment and the patience required to compile enough images that a few will turn out to be successful. I believe it’s well worth the effort because a good Milky Way shot is so subtle, colorful, and strikingly beautiful. Good shooting!
Have you created a Milky Way image that you love? What were the key components to your success? What were the challenges you faced? Please share your thoughts and experiences here.
Want to read more posts about photographic techniques? Find them all here: Posts on Techniques.
Iconic Moroccan scene: No visit to the Sahara Desert would be complete without experiencing a dromedary ride across the sand dunes. Ever try to photograph while clinging on for dear life atop the lurching single hump of a dromedary? I have. The best advice for shooting in situations like this one is to preset your camera to a very fast shutter speed in order to freeze the motion, use your camera’s or lens’s stabilization feature, and capture a few bursts of many shots in quick succession. You’re unlikely to get any award-winning photos while traveling on camelback, but using these tips you can at least capture some of the adventure of the experience.
My wife and I recently returned from a lovely adventure traveling through Morocco.
OAT’s Morocco Sahara Odyssey itinerary took us from the administrative capital
of Rabat to the ancient cultural capital of Fez, to the thrilling and
otherworldly Sahara Desert including a stay in a luxurious private tented camp
nestled among the sand dunes, into the High Atlas Mountains, then on to the
quintessential overload experience for all the senses that is Marrakesh, and
finally to fabled Casablanca. Throughout this adventure we had the
opportunity to meet and learn from local Moroccan people of diverse backgrounds
and trades. Morocco is a special
destination for photographers of all levels: whether you’re shooting with 40
pounds of professional gear (and the backache to prove it) or just using your
phone’s camera, this is an adventure that will engage your creativity to capture
sweeping desert landscapes, street scenes among the vibrant and bustling souks,
ancient cityscapes, lovely portraits, and exotic wildlife.
Our Moroccan adventure began in the capital city, Rabat. Rabat boasts
a twelfth-century mosque and minaret that would have been the world’s largest
had they been completed.
When strolling through any city I’m
always on the lookout for interesting patterns of color and texture. This bustling urban scene impressed me with
its repeating pattern of blue taxicabs framed by manicured palm trees and
whitewashed buildings.
From Rabat we traveled to
ancient Fez, with its rich Moroccan cultural legacy.
At a souk (marketplace) in the old part of Fez, a vendor prepares thin
layers of dough for cooking. Many
photographers expect Morocco to be a challenging destination for portraiture
because some of its people hold to traditional beliefs and would prefer not to
be photographed. We found this to be
only partly true. As in any other
country, in Morocco one should always ask permission before shooting closeup
photos including any person. But in
today’s Morocco, particularly in urban settings, people have smartphones and
are quite accustomed to being photographed.
Your trip experience leader can act as a local “fixer,” helping
introduce us to the people we meet and translating for us to help pave the way
for photography. But with or without a
local guide, the traveler who makes an effort to get to know their subject
first is likely to be rewarded with a richer understanding of the local culture
and some lovely portraits by which to remember its people.
Traditional
leather dyeing process at a tannery in Fez.
The tannery staff take pride in continuing to employ natural methods as
opposed to the chemical processes used by most modern tanneries. As we looked down on the dyeing vats from the
roof of the tannery’s adjacent four-story shop building, I was struck by the
stunning array of vibrant colors. I used
a moderate telephoto lens to compose the image and underexposed the shot by one
stop to concentrate the saturation of the colors.
Our
intrepid group poses wearing traditional Moroccan turbans at the caravansary,
an ancient rest stop along the trade route where camels were fed and sheltered
on the ground floor while their people were taken care of on the upper floors. It’s always fun to capture some shots of the
entire group while traveling. Here, I
used a wide-angle lens to include everyone along with the surroundings, a
technique referred to as an environmental portrait. The trick when photographing people through a
wide-angle lens is to keep the lens exactly level to the ground rather than
pointing it up or down, which causes unflattering distortion.
After
spending several days in Fez, we traveled through the Middle Atlas Mountains
into the Sahara Desert. The stark,
otherworldly features of the desert were a highlight of the trip. Far from being a desolate and lifeless place,
the Sahara is teeming with flora and fauna and home to some of the friendliest
people we’ve met.
Traveling
through the Middle Atlas Mountains between Fez and Erfoud, we stopped to view Barbary
apes in their habitat in a cedar forest within a national park. Tips for better wildlife photography include
using a long telephoto lens to allow shooting from a safe distance so as not to
endanger you or your subject, selecting a high ISO setting and a fast shutter
speed, and grabbing a burst of many shots so as to increase the chances of
walking away with at least one really good one.
Meet Moha,
whose father many years ago found ground water just below a seemingly lifeless
patch of land in the Sahara Desert and decided to plant there. Moha, shown here with his granddaughter, took
over the farm from his father and now tends to more than 150 date trees. He showed us his entire impressive operation. When making portraits of two people, it’s
best to wait for them to relax and then to catch the moments when they are
interacting with each other and not the camera.
I used a wide aperture setting (small f-stop number) to soften the
background, which helps emphasize the people in the foreground.
Hiking to the top of a massive sand dune
near our tented camp to enjoy happy hour, I captured this landscape photo of a
Saharan sunset. Not all landscapes need
to be photographed using a wide-angle lens.
In this case I wanted to compress the apparent distance between the
far-off layers of dunes, so I used a moderate telephoto lens. Underexposing by one stop helped concentrate
the colors in this scene.
Sand surfing down from our perch on the
dunes. Because this photo was shot in almost
total darkness well after sunset, I had to boost my camera’s ISO sensitivity
setting. This allowed the use of a small
enough aperture (high f-stop number) to keep the whole scene in sharp focus and
a fast enough shutter speed to freeze the action.
Spectacular night sky in the middle of
the Sahara Desert featuring a brilliant Milky Way and a meteorite above rolling
sand dunes. Because our private tented
camp was situated in a remote spot among the dunes, I had only to walk a few
steps from our tent to find a dark-sky location for night photography. Today’s cameras are much better at capturing
nighttime scenes, but there are still some complexities in getting your shot:
use a sturdy tripod and a remote shutter release to keep your camera
stationary, employ a wide-angle lens to include more of the sky, focus manually
so that the stars appear sharp, and select a fast ISO setting and wide aperture
(small f-stop number) to allow a shutter speed of no longer than twenty seconds.
A longer exposure risks that the stars will move during your shot.
This region of the Sahara is known for
its Gnawa musicians. Originally from
Sub-Saharan Africa, their ancestors escaped slavery and migrated north,
bringing ancient folk traditions with them.
Today pre-Islamic and more modern musical forms are integrated into their
performances. The famous photojournalist
Robert Capa once said, “If your photos aren’t good enough, you’re not close
enough.” This is not universally true
but it’s certainly a helpful reminder when shooting portraits that we shouldn’t
be afraid to get really close to our subjects—assuming we have their permission
and we’re not disrupting their activities.
I used my go-to portrait lens, a moderate (85mm) telephoto prime
(non-zoom) lens with a very wide aperture (very low f-stop number) to be able
to get this closeup without disturbing the performance. The wide aperture allows a faster shutter
speed to freeze the motion and also softens the background so that the
drummer’s features are emphasized.
We had a chance meeting with Aicha as
she carried a tree she planned to use for firewood through the alleys of the
village of Tinjdad. Our wonderful trip
experience leader Mohammed broke the ice by asking Aicha some questions about
her life and her activities that day.
She had quite a few questions for us, too, and found the interaction to
be very amusing. With her permission I
made this delightful portrait that expresses her wisdom and curiosity about the
people she has just met.
En route from the Sahara to the ancient and
chaotic city of Marrakesh, we visited several villages and met some of their people.
An eleventh-century
village and fortress that is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. For village scenes, I find it’s helpful to
look for a while without the camera and wait for an interesting visual story to
come to mind. Only then do I choose the
right focal length lens to tell the story.
There are many ways to photograph an historical place, so be sure to
find a story that has meaning to you.
In the
village of Asfalu, Ahmed and his wife Leila welcomed us into their home. I love this portrait of one of their daughters,
13-year-old Nouhayla. After getting to
know each other, she agreed to pose for the photo and I suggested we move into
the courtyard outside their home where there was an uncluttered
background. The background is at least
as important as the foreground subject when composing a photo, so don’t be shy
about moving your subject.
Marrakesh
is a place unlike any other. Its ancient
souks inhabit the narrow alleys of the medina (old city). Jemaa el-Fnaa Square, a UNESCO World Heritage
Site in the heart of town, bustles day and night with thousands of visitors
from near and far.
We enjoyed
coffee at a café atop a nearby building and were afforded a panoramic view at
sunset over Jemaa el-Fnaa Square. Any
camera yields great results when photographing a scene this vibrant and
lively. Just choose a composition that
speaks to you and fire away. I do
recommend checking that the horizon line is level while composing your shot, as
it’s easy to get carried away with the excitement of the scene and to shoot
with an uneven horizon.
One of
countless thousands of vendor stalls along the labyrinthine alleys of Marrakesh’s
medina. I was intrigued by the array of
identically shaped jars, each with its own vibrantly colored contents. To ensure the lines of the shelves were not
distorted, I used a medium telephoto lens and shot from slightly further
back. Wide-angle lenses have the effect
of distorting parallel lines unless great care is taken when composing the
photo.
A few
travelers from our group used our free time to hike among the hill towns of the
Imlil Valley in the High Atlas Mountains.
We were afforded glorious views of nearby villages as we trekked along
the narrow trails. This scene of a
village at the base of the mountain appeared around a bend in the trail.
A beautiful
tagine (Moroccan stew) served at lunch during our hike. We were amazed by the flavor and appearance
of this dish, especially given our location at a tiny rooftop café in a remote
mountain village. Capturing photos of
food is rarely easy and certainly was a challenge in dazzlingly bright
sunlight. I moved the tagine under a
canopy, positioned a black placemat behind it, and shot from an oblique angle
to bring out the contrasting colors and textures in the dish. During post-processing, I cropped a bit more
tightly and darkened the background to make it completely black.
Leaving
Marrakesh behind, we traveled to Casablanca, our final stop before returning home.
The Hassan
II Mosque in Casablanca is the world’s third-largest mosque, accommodating
105,000 worshipers. Only the mosques in
Mecca and Medina are bigger.
Photographing very large and tall buildings poses a challenge. To include the whole structure a very
wide-angle lens is required, but if the camera is tilted up or down even a
little bit, the lines of the building are distorted. Here I used an ultrawide lens but ensured the
camera was kept exactly level to the ground to minimize distortion.
Iconic Moroccan scene: No visit to the Sahara Desert would be complete without experiencing a dromedary ride across the sand dunes. Ever try to photograph while clinging on for dear life atop the lurching single hump of a dromedary? I have. The best advice for shooting in situations like this one is to preset your camera to a very fast shutter speed in order to freeze the motion, use your camera’s or lens’s stabilization feature, and capture a few bursts of many shots in quick succession. You’re unlikely to get any award-winning photos while traveling on camelback, but using these tips you can at least capture some of the adventure of the experience.
My wife and I recently returned from a lovely adventure traveling through Morocco.
OAT’s Morocco Sahara Odyssey itinerary took us from the administrative capital
of Rabat to the ancient cultural capital of Fez, to the thrilling and
otherworldly Sahara Desert including a stay in a luxurious private tented camp
nestled among the sand dunes, into the High Atlas Mountains, then on to the
quintessential overload experience for all the senses that is Marrakesh, and
finally to fabled Casablanca. Throughout this adventure we had the
opportunity to meet and learn from local Moroccan people of diverse backgrounds
and trades. Morocco is a special
destination for photographers of all levels: whether you’re shooting with 40
pounds of professional gear (and the backache to prove it) or just using your
phone’s camera, this is an adventure that will engage your creativity to capture
sweeping desert landscapes, street scenes among the vibrant and bustling souks,
ancient cityscapes, lovely portraits, and exotic wildlife.
Our Moroccan adventure began in the capital city, Rabat. Rabat boasts
a twelfth-century mosque and minaret that would have been the world’s largest
had they been completed.
When strolling through any city I’m
always on the lookout for interesting patterns of color and texture. This bustling urban scene impressed me with
its repeating pattern of blue taxicabs framed by manicured palm trees and
whitewashed buildings.
From Rabat we traveled to
ancient Fez, with its rich Moroccan cultural legacy.
At a souk (marketplace) in the old part of Fez, a vendor prepares thin
layers of dough for cooking. Many
photographers expect Morocco to be a challenging destination for portraiture
because some of its people hold to traditional beliefs and would prefer not to
be photographed. We found this to be
only partly true. As in any other
country, in Morocco one should always ask permission before shooting closeup
photos including any person. But in
today’s Morocco, particularly in urban settings, people have smartphones and
are quite accustomed to being photographed.
Your trip experience leader can act as a local “fixer,” helping
introduce us to the people we meet and translating for us to help pave the way
for photography. But with or without a
local guide, the traveler who makes an effort to get to know their subject
first is likely to be rewarded with a richer understanding of the local culture
and some lovely portraits by which to remember its people.
Traditional
leather dyeing process at a tannery in Fez.
The tannery staff take pride in continuing to employ natural methods as
opposed to the chemical processes used by most modern tanneries. As we looked down on the dyeing vats from the
roof of the tannery’s adjacent four-story shop building, I was struck by the
stunning array of vibrant colors. I used
a moderate telephoto lens to compose the image and underexposed the shot by one
stop to concentrate the saturation of the colors.
Our
intrepid group poses wearing traditional Moroccan turbans at the caravansary,
an ancient rest stop along the trade route where camels were fed and sheltered
on the ground floor while their people were taken care of on the upper floors. It’s always fun to capture some shots of the
entire group while traveling. Here, I
used a wide-angle lens to include everyone along with the surroundings, a
technique referred to as an environmental portrait. The trick when photographing people through a
wide-angle lens is to keep the lens exactly level to the ground rather than
pointing it up or down, which causes unflattering distortion.
After
spending several days in Fez, we traveled through the Middle Atlas Mountains
into the Sahara Desert. The stark,
otherworldly features of the desert were a highlight of the trip. Far from being a desolate and lifeless place,
the Sahara is teeming with flora and fauna and home to some of the friendliest
people we’ve met.
Traveling
through the Middle Atlas Mountains between Fez and Erfoud, we stopped to view Barbary
apes in their habitat in a cedar forest within a national park. Tips for better wildlife photography include
using a long telephoto lens to allow shooting from a safe distance so as not to
endanger you or your subject, selecting a high ISO setting and a fast shutter
speed, and grabbing a burst of many shots so as to increase the chances of
walking away with at least one really good one.
Meet Moha,
whose father many years ago found ground water just below a seemingly lifeless
patch of land in the Sahara Desert and decided to plant there. Moha, shown here with his granddaughter, took
over the farm from his father and now tends to more than 150 date trees. He showed us his entire impressive operation. When making portraits of two people, it’s
best to wait for them to relax and then to catch the moments when they are
interacting with each other and not the camera.
I used a wide aperture setting (small f-stop number) to soften the
background, which helps emphasize the people in the foreground.
Hiking to the top of a massive sand dune
near our tented camp to enjoy happy hour, I captured this landscape photo of a
Saharan sunset. Not all landscapes need
to be photographed using a wide-angle lens.
In this case I wanted to compress the apparent distance between the
far-off layers of dunes, so I used a moderate telephoto lens. Underexposing by one stop helped concentrate
the colors in this scene.
Sand surfing down from our perch on the
dunes. Because this photo was shot in almost
total darkness well after sunset, I had to boost my camera’s ISO sensitivity
setting. This allowed the use of a small
enough aperture (high f-stop number) to keep the whole scene in sharp focus and
a fast enough shutter speed to freeze the action.
Spectacular night sky in the middle of
the Sahara Desert featuring a brilliant Milky Way and a meteorite above rolling
sand dunes. Because our private tented
camp was situated in a remote spot among the dunes, I had only to walk a few
steps from our tent to find a dark-sky location for night photography. Today’s cameras are much better at capturing
nighttime scenes, but there are still some complexities in getting your shot:
use a sturdy tripod and a remote shutter release to keep your camera
stationary, employ a wide-angle lens to include more of the sky, focus manually
so that the stars appear sharp, and select a fast ISO setting and wide aperture
(small f-stop number) to allow a shutter speed of no longer than twenty seconds.
A longer exposure risks that the stars will move during your shot.
This region of the Sahara is known for
its Gnawa musicians. Originally from
Sub-Saharan Africa, their ancestors escaped slavery and migrated north,
bringing ancient folk traditions with them.
Today pre-Islamic and more modern musical forms are integrated into their
performances. The famous photojournalist
Robert Capa once said, “If your photos aren’t good enough, you’re not close
enough.” This is not universally true
but it’s certainly a helpful reminder when shooting portraits that we shouldn’t
be afraid to get really close to our subjects—assuming we have their permission
and we’re not disrupting their activities.
I used my go-to portrait lens, a moderate (85mm) telephoto prime
(non-zoom) lens with a very wide aperture (very low f-stop number) to be able
to get this closeup without disturbing the performance. The wide aperture allows a faster shutter
speed to freeze the motion and also softens the background so that the
drummer’s features are emphasized.
We had a chance meeting with Aicha as
she carried a tree she planned to use for firewood through the alleys of the
village of Tinjdad. Our wonderful trip
experience leader Mohammed broke the ice by asking Aicha some questions about
her life and her activities that day.
She had quite a few questions for us, too, and found the interaction to
be very amusing. With her permission I
made this delightful portrait that expresses her wisdom and curiosity about the
people she has just met.
En route from the Sahara to the ancient and
chaotic city of Marrakesh, we visited several villages and met some of their people.
An eleventh-century
village and fortress that is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. For village scenes, I find it’s helpful to
look for a while without the camera and wait for an interesting visual story to
come to mind. Only then do I choose the
right focal length lens to tell the story.
There are many ways to photograph an historical place, so be sure to
find a story that has meaning to you.
In the
village of Asfalu, Ahmed and his wife Leila welcomed us into their home. I love this portrait of one of their daughters,
13-year-old Nouhayla. After getting to
know each other, she agreed to pose for the photo and I suggested we move into
the courtyard outside their home where there was an uncluttered
background. The background is at least
as important as the foreground subject when composing a photo, so don’t be shy
about moving your subject.
Marrakesh
is a place unlike any other. Its ancient
souks inhabit the narrow alleys of the medina (old city). Jemaa el-Fnaa Square, a UNESCO World Heritage
Site in the heart of town, bustles day and night with thousands of visitors
from near and far.
We enjoyed
coffee at a café atop a nearby building and were afforded a panoramic view at
sunset over Jemaa el-Fnaa Square. Any
camera yields great results when photographing a scene this vibrant and
lively. Just choose a composition that
speaks to you and fire away. I do
recommend checking that the horizon line is level while composing your shot, as
it’s easy to get carried away with the excitement of the scene and to shoot
with an uneven horizon.
One of
countless thousands of vendor stalls along the labyrinthine alleys of Marrakesh’s
medina. I was intrigued by the array of
identically shaped jars, each with its own vibrantly colored contents. To ensure the lines of the shelves were not
distorted, I used a medium telephoto lens and shot from slightly further
back. Wide-angle lenses have the effect
of distorting parallel lines unless great care is taken when composing the
photo.
A few
travelers from our group used our free time to hike among the hill towns of the
Imlil Valley in the High Atlas Mountains.
We were afforded glorious views of nearby villages as we trekked along
the narrow trails. This scene of a
village at the base of the mountain appeared around a bend in the trail.
A beautiful
tagine (Moroccan stew) served at lunch during our hike. We were amazed by the flavor and appearance
of this dish, especially given our location at a tiny rooftop café in a remote
mountain village. Capturing photos of
food is rarely easy and certainly was a challenge in dazzlingly bright
sunlight. I moved the tagine under a
canopy, positioned a black placemat behind it, and shot from an oblique angle
to bring out the contrasting colors and textures in the dish. During post-processing, I cropped a bit more
tightly and darkened the background to make it completely black.
Leaving
Marrakesh behind, we traveled to Casablanca, our final stop before returning home.
The Hassan
II Mosque in Casablanca is the world’s third-largest mosque, accommodating
105,000 worshipers. Only the mosques in
Mecca and Medina are bigger.
Photographing very large and tall buildings poses a challenge. To include the whole structure a very
wide-angle lens is required, but if the camera is tilted up or down even a
little bit, the lines of the building are distorted. Here I used an ultrawide lens but ensured the
camera was kept exactly level to the ground to minimize distortion.
Having just returned from leading a 2.5-week photography tour through Chile and Easter Island and including the July 2 total solar eclipse, I’d like to share a few favorite images. You can find the full photo gallery here: https://www.kadlerphotography.com/Travel-Photography/Chile-Eclipse.
Santiago Cathedral’s tower reflected in the windows of a modern glass office building.Glorious cityscape of Valparaiso.We were fortunate to visit Valparaiso on the day of the Festival of St. Peter and St. Paul.We were fortunate to visit Valparaiso on the day of the Festival of St. Peter and St. Paul.We were fortunate to visit Valparaiso on the day of the Festival of St. Peter and St. Paul.Sea lion sibling rivalry.The diamond ring effect signals the start of the 2.5-minute period of totality.A timelapse montage showing the path of the sun across the sky during the entire solar eclipse and through to sunset.What we do on photography tours.Glorious landscape around the Miscanti Lagoon.Three species of native pink flamingo live in the Atacama Salt Flat.Pattern and texture on the Atacama Salt Flat.Three species of native pink flamingo live in the Atacama Salt Flat.We were so fortunate to travel during a new moon in winter to the Atacama Desert. There’s no better combination of time and place for viewing (and photographing) the Milky Way.Tatio Geyser Field.Old church in the village of Machuca.Valley of the Moon.We enjoyed a breathtaking sunset at Kari Viewpoint in the Atacama Desert.Group portrait of the entire Photography Tour team in front of the seven Mo’ai of Ahu Akivi on Easter Island.Orongo Crater.Gorgeous sunset over the ocean behind mo’ai.Ahu Tongariki is the largest ceremonial platform on Easter Island, once holding 16 mo’ai. After the mo’ai were toppled during a period of civil unrest and then, more recently, devastated by a tsunami, 15 of them were reconstructed with help from Japan.Traditional Rapa Nui face painting on Anakena Beach.Vai Te Mihi performed a show of traditional Rapa Nui dance and music.Vai Te Mihi performed a show of traditional Rapa Nui dance and music.Vai Te Mihi performed a show of traditional Rapa Nui dance and music.Worth the 3 AM wakeup call! A once in a lifetime opportunity to photograph the Milky Way above mo’ai on Easter Island. We had a bit of cloud cover, but overall I was very pleased with the resulting images.
Chile’s Atacama Desert, with its clear and dark skies and perfect latitude, makes a stunning location for capturing the Milky Way.
Not too long ago, making images of the Milky Way was not practical for most photo enthusiasts. Only astronomers and a handful of professional astrophotographers had the expensive equipment required to capture sufficient light from the cluster of quite dim stars that we refer to as the Galactic Core in the night sky. Shooting with a very long exposure didn’t do the trick for the Milky Way, because leaving the camera’s shutter open for more than about 15-30 seconds would blur each star’s image due to rotation of the Earth. These blurs, called star trails, could make for striking images with the stars appearing to streak in circles across the sky, but the subtle beauty of the Milky Way would be lost with these long exposures.
But in the last 5-10 years, camera sensors have become much more sensitive to light, and now it is possible–indeed quite easy–for photo enthusiasts to photograph our home galaxy without expensive specialized equipment.
Here’s how:
You will need a camera with a sensor that can gather a lot of light and with a shutter that can be kept open for a long time. These requirements limit the range of suitable cameras to full-frame DSLRs and mirrorless cameras, as well as a few higher-end crop-sensor cameras. You will also need a fairly fast wide-angle lens: I recommend a zoom or prime (fixed focal length) lens with a focal length of 14-16mm on a full-frame camera, and a maximum aperture of f/4 or faster. For astrophotography I most often use the Nikon 16-35mm f/4 lens. It’s got great image quality and is well built, and it is wide enough and fast enough for the purposes of capturing the Milky Way. For those with the financial means, buying or renting a very fast wide-angle lens such as the Nikon 24mm f/1.4 allows for gathering even more light.
You will also need a heavy, solid tripod. I’ve been successful using a lighter weight tripod for Milky Way shots while traveling, but a good professional tripod is better. I use the SLIK 615-315 with a ball head.
Finally, you’ll want to have a remote shutter release, either a hardwired cable release or a wireless remote release. This is to trigger the camera without touching it, so as to avoid blurring the image from the vibration of your touch.
Once you have the right equipment, it’s fairly straightforward to photograph the Milky Way. Choose a dark sky area, far away from the light pollution of any cities or other sources of stray nighttime light. It’s best to plan your Milky Way shoot at or within a couple of days of a new moon to further minimize extraneous light in the sky. Shoot toward the Galactic Center where the stars of the Milky Way appear brightest and most colorful. Note that the Galactic Center is not visible at all times of year at all latitudes; in many locations in the Northern Hemisphere, it is visible only during the summer months. To plan for where the GC will be on any given date and time and at any given location, I use a smartphone app called PhotoPills: PhotoPills in App Store.
While the Milky Way is lovely as a subject in its own right, a really good image also needs to include interesting foreground and/or middle-ground elements in its composition. The image below, made in Chile’s Atacama Desert, is appealing because the Milky Way is seen rising above a dramatic indigenous algarrobo tree.
The Milky Way is seen arched through the sky of the Atacama Desert above a local algarobbo tree in silhouette. Careful composition adds drama to your Milky Way images by including Earth-based subjects as well as the sky.
With your fast wide-angle lens on your full-frame camera, all mounted on your stable tripod, you are ready to shoot. Remove any filters on the lens, set your camera on full manual mode, select a fast ISO (I usually start at about 3200 and sometimes have to go even higher) and a wide aperture (f/4 or wider), and choose a shutter speed of 20-25 seconds (shorter if your lens is longer than about 18mm). You can use the 500 Rule, which states that shutter speed should be approximately 500 divided by the focal length of the lens; for example, for a 16mm lens you can use a shutter speed of not longer than about 31 seconds. Turn off your autofocus on your lens or camera, as it will not work in so dark a setting; instead, manually set your focus to a point near infinity where the stars appear sharp in your viewfinder (or better yet, on your live-view screen). I like to tape my lens to this setting before it gets dark, so I know the focus won’t change while I’m out in the field in the dark. It’s also a good idea to turn off your camera’s long-exposure noise reduction feature, if it has one, as this wastes time in the field and it’s equally effective to reduce the noise in Lightroom during post-processing. Of course, you want to be sure you are shooting RAW files.
Go ahead and shoot a lot of frames, experimenting with different ISO settings and compositions. It is often a good idea to get a very long exposure, sometimes several minutes long, so that your foreground subjects will be properly exposed. The frames with the foreground well exposed can later be combined in Photoshop with the ones in which the night sky is properly exposed.
This image was made from several frames: one long exposure for the lake, trees, and mountain in the foreground and middle-ground, and several different 25-second exposures that each captured a different meteor during the peak of the Perseid Meteor Shower. The resulting image shows all of these objects quite prominently, along with the Milky Way.
You may want to combine several different images to see all the features of the night sky and the terrestrial objects clearly.
In post-processing your Milky Way images, select a white balance that makes the sky and star colors appear natural, apply enough noise reduction to remove visual noise from the high ISO capture but not so much as to soften the appearance of the stars too much, and add some visual punch by painting additional contrast and clarity over the Galactic Center.
Worth the 3 AM wakeup call! A once in a lifetime opportunity to photograph the Milky Way above the iconic mo’ai on Easter Island. We had a bit of cloud cover, but overall I was very pleased with the resulting images.
With practice, you’ll find that capturing the Milky Way is within your reach, so long as you have suitable equipment and the patience required to compile enough images that a few will turn out to be successful. I believe it’s well worth the effort because a good Milky Way shot is so subtle, colorful, and strikingly beautiful. Good shooting!
Have you created a Milky Way image that you love? What were the key components to your success? What were the challenges you faced? Please share your thoughts and experiences here.
Want to read more posts about photographic techniques? Find them all here: Posts on Techniques.
Those of us who live in the San Francisco Bay Area can count many blessings, but one I am most thankful for is our fairly close proximity to Yosemite National Park. The second oldest national park in the US, Yosemite is a photographer’s dream. Since the days when Ansel Adams helped make the park famous through his masterful landscape photography, shutterbugs of all stripes have been flocking there to try to capture some of its indescribable beauty. Most of us will never be an Ansel Adams, but that doesn’t stop me from returning to Yosemite at least once per year to give it my best shot, as it were.
Without doubt, there are many iconic views in the park that are relatively easy for even novice photographers to render. There is majesty in the panorama over Yosemite Valley as seen from the famous Tunnel View lookout. One doesn’t even have to venture off the main park road to shoot a nice image of Half Dome or El Capitan. But Yosemite offers so much more to the photographer who’s willing to look a bit more closely, to hike a little instead of jumping out of a car to shoot, or to come to a spot at unusual times, including the middle of the night.
In this post, I’ll share a few images I made in Yosemite National Park over the past year, but none of them will be a postcard-type shot that you’ve seen 1000 times before. And we’ll talk a bit about how to find and capture these less discovered views.
While hiking in the Tuolumne Meadows area, 5000 feet above Yosemite Valley, we were caught in a freak hailstorm at the remote Dog Lake. Instead of throwing a rain cover over my gear and running for shelter like a normal person would do, I set up my kit and started shooting. This image plays off the contrasts between the peaceful and violent sides of nature and between the light and the shade. It is a composite of several different shots made at different exposures, put together in Lightroom’s HDR (high dynamic range) merging tool.
Yosemite offers unusual and dramatic views to those willing to get away from the roads and brave some harsher conditions. Buy this photo
Another less-visited attraction in the park is the wonderful Chilnualna Falls. The lower waterfall is actually quite an easy hike from the parking area at the trailhead, and its little swimming hole makes for a refreshing break on a hot summer’s day. Here’s a shot of my younger daughter enjoying a dip in the swimming hole just under the falls. To blur the water, I used a slow shutter speed, which could only be achieved in the harsh mid-day light by attaching neutral-density filters to the lens. Neutral-density (ND) filters are an essential accessory for the landscape photographer, because they block most of the available light from reaching the camera’s sensor, allowing you to use a slower shutter speed to blur motion and/or a wider aperture to throw the background out of focus.
These reduce the amount of light that reaches the camera’s sensor, so you can use slower shutter speeds to blur motion, or so you can use a wider aperture to get a shallow depth-of-field, even in bright sunlight.
A neutral-density filter allows a nicely blurred shot of the waterfall at Chilnualna Falls. Buy this photo
Another lovely hike in the high country of Tuolumne Meadows is Cathedral Lakes. On our way back from these pristine and remote lakes, we passed this granite rock dome. I used a polarizing filter on a wide-angle lens to bring out the details on the surface of the rock and to lend more drama to the sky. Then, in post-processing, I converted the image to black-and-white to emphasize the remarkable texture of the granite slab’s surface. For more discussion about converting images to black-and-white, take a look at my earlier post: B&W Photography post.
Using a polarizing filter can darken and add drama to skies, reduce unwanted reflections, and render stunning detail on shiny surfaces. Converting an image to black-and-white can bring out the textures and patterns that may be less prominent when viewed in a color image. Buy this photo
Just because a place is glorious in its own right doesn’t mean we can’t include people in our photos. Putting humans in a landscape adds a personal touch, provides a sense of scale, and often tells a more compelling story than would an image of the same place without people. Here I’ve included my daughters in a landscape from the incomparable summit of Sentinel Dome.
Including people in landscapes layers a human narrative on top of the natural story. I like the added color, and humor, from the addition of my daughters in their college logo hats. I’ve chosen a wide aperture to soften the focus on the lovely background. Buy this photo
You don’t have to stop shooting when the sun sets. Some of the most wonderful images of Yosemite are made after dark. I came to this spot not far from the edge of the meadow in Yosemite Valley, and right on the bank of the Merced River, quite late at night when the sky was very dark. I set up my camera and wide-angle lens on a tripod and made a 25-second exposure at a high sensitivity (ISO) setting. The resulting image shows the spectacle of the Milky Way arched above the terrestrial grandeur of Half Dome and other Yosemite landforms. For more discussion of capturing the Milky Way, visit this post: Milky Way photography post.
A favorite image of mine: The Milky Way above Half Dome. Note that not every landscape image needs to be in “landscape orientation”. Buy this photo
Next time you are fortunate enough to visit Yosemite National Park, try to discover some new places, visit favorite places during less-visited times of the day (or night), and include some people for a human component to the story. Your images will stand out from the millions of others made in this glorious park!
Do you have a favorite photographic experience from Yosemite to share? Please leave a comment to let us know.
Having just returned from leading a 2.5-week photography tour through Chile and Easter Island and including the July 2 total solar eclipse, I’d like to share a few favorite images. You can find the full photo gallery here: https://www.kadlerphotography.com/Travel-Photography/Chile-Eclipse.
Santiago Cathedral’s tower reflected in the windows of a modern glass office building.Glorious cityscape of Valparaiso.We were fortunate to visit Valparaiso on the day of the Festival of St. Peter and St. Paul.We were fortunate to visit Valparaiso on the day of the Festival of St. Peter and St. Paul.We were fortunate to visit Valparaiso on the day of the Festival of St. Peter and St. Paul.Sea lion sibling rivalry.The diamond ring effect signals the start of the 2.5-minute period of totality.A timelapse montage showing the path of the sun across the sky during the entire solar eclipse and through to sunset.What we do on photography tours.Glorious landscape around the Miscanti Lagoon.Three species of native pink flamingo live in the Atacama Salt Flat.Pattern and texture on the Atacama Salt Flat.Three species of native pink flamingo live in the Atacama Salt Flat.We were so fortunate to travel during a new moon in winter to the Atacama Desert. There’s no better combination of time and place for viewing (and photographing) the Milky Way.Tatio Geyser Field.Old church in the village of Machuca.Valley of the Moon.We enjoyed a breathtaking sunset at Kari Viewpoint in the Atacama Desert.Group portrait of the entire Photography Tour team in front of the seven Mo’ai of Ahu Akivi on Easter Island.Orongo Crater.Gorgeous sunset over the ocean behind mo’ai.Ahu Tongariki is the largest ceremonial platform on Easter Island, once holding 16 mo’ai. After the mo’ai were toppled during a period of civil unrest and then, more recently, devastated by a tsunami, 15 of them were reconstructed with help from Japan.Traditional Rapa Nui face painting on Anakena Beach.Vai Te Mihi performed a show of traditional Rapa Nui dance and music.Vai Te Mihi performed a show of traditional Rapa Nui dance and music.Vai Te Mihi performed a show of traditional Rapa Nui dance and music.Worth the 3 AM wakeup call! A once in a lifetime opportunity to photograph the Milky Way above mo’ai on Easter Island. We had a bit of cloud cover, but overall I was very pleased with the resulting images.
My wife and I area avid eclipse chasers. One of the joys of seeking out total solar eclipses is their geographic dispersion: each total eclipse can be viewed only from a narrow band of land or sea whose swatch could cut across any corner of the globe. This means the dedicated eclipse junkie could, and eventually will, end up traveling to nearly any given remote spot on the planet. In March, 2015, we had the opportunity to observe and photograph a total solar eclipse in Longyearbyen, the only population center in Svalbard, the vast island in the Norwegian Arctic. This wonderful trip was conducted by A Classic Tour Collection (http://aclassictour.com/travel-company/), specialists in eclipse tours. Home to more polar bears than humans, Svalbard is a place of remarkable pristine beauty located closer to the North Pole than it is to mainland Norway.
In a previous post I provided a primer on eclipse photography. You can review that post here: Post on Eclipse Photography. And don’t forget to book your travel for the upcoming Great American Eclipse on August 21, 2017.
Today’s post focuses on Svalbard’s photographic treasures. The village of Longyearbyen itself is very distinctive. The world’s northernmost permanent settlement, it was built to enable the mining industry in the region. The landscape and architecture are very unusual and starkly beautiful.
This row of miner’s cottages, each painted a vibrant color, makes a nice subject. I overexposed the foreground and background snow to emphasize the richly saturated colors of the houses. Buy this photo
Any Arctic location affords the possibility of seeing the Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights). The conditions must align properly: dark sky, clear weather, and it helps to be near a peak in the solar cycle. While I’ve seen more impressive displays in the past, the aurora we observed in Svalbard was still impressive.
To capture the Northern Lights, use a fast wide-angle lens and a sturdy tripod. As a starting point for exposure, try an ISO setting of about 800 and shutter speeds from about 4-15 seconds. Experiment to see what works best. Buy this photo
The stark icy landscapes surrounding Longyearbyen are otherworldly. I photographed this glacier-covered mountain near sunset, and we enjoyed the excitement of climbing it the next day.
To make this image of an icy butte on the outskirts of the village, I used a tripod and exposed using spot metering for the rocky parts of the mountain. Buy this photo
When shooting in very cold climates like Svalbard in March, it’s important to keep both your gear and yourself safe and functional. Check out this post on shooting in extreme conditions: Post on Extreme Conditions.
One of the trip highlights was a polar bear safari by snowmobile. Zipping along pristine ice fields at speeds up to 75 km/hour while the Arctic sun slowly set was thrilling. Our turnaround point was an old campsite on the shore of the Barents Sea. It truly felt like the edge of the world. Due to an incident earlier in the day, in which a group of campers was attacked by a polar bear and forced to shoot it, we did not encounter any of the skittish bears that night. We did, however, see the doomed animal’s footprints in the fresh snow.
My wife hikes alongside the tracks of a polar bear shot to death earlier the same day. This dramatic image was made in near total darkness, so I was forced to use flash as the main lighting source. In these situations, I dial down the power of the flash by at least one stop and try to position it for maximum dramatic impact. Buy this photo
One of my favorite images from the trip, this was made on the shore of the Barents Sea at sunset. Landscapes like this one need to be composed especially carefully to best showcase elements in the foreground, middle ground, and background. I chose a vantage point low to the ground to emphasize the ice floes. While I also experimented with using a bit of fill flash, I preferred this image with natural light only. Buy this photo
On eclipse day, there is a palpable air of excitement. Here is a shot of astronomer and leading eclipse expert Jay Pasachoff preparing for the eclipse along with one of his students.
Even during an exciting event like a total solar eclipse, it’s important to remember to document the people and activities in your group. Buy this photo
The diamond ring effect signals the start of the period of totality. Buy this photo
After the eclipse viewing, we enjoyed a dogsled ride back to Longyearbyen village. I wanted to capture the feeling of exhilaration as the dogs pulled us rapidly along the snow fields into a wide-open horizon. To capture that emotion, I shot from the perspective of the rider, handheld, using a fast shutter speed and a fairly wide focal length. Buy this photo
Wildlife is a favorite genre of photography in nearly any region. During our ascent of a glacier-covered mountain, we were fortunate to observe several Svalbard reindeer, the world’s smallest subspecies. I used a telephoto lens and exposed for the animal’s fur, as using an auto mode would have underexposed the main subject due to the bright snowy background. Buy this photo
Longyearbyen is the world’s northernmost settlement, so it stands to reason it would contain the world’s northernmost church. Care must be taken when photographing architecture using a wide-angle lens not to distort the perspective. Buy this photo
Your intrepid author photographing the total solar eclipse. Buy this photo
Parting shot: After returning from Svalbard, I created this montage of several images each depicting a different phase of the eclipse. Buy this photo
I hope this article inspires you to want to visit Svalbard. While extra effort is required to visit the world’s most remote and extreme destinations, the returns are enormous in terms of the beauty and unique photographic experiences.
Have you visited Svalbard or other Arctic destinations? What was most memorable? Please share your thoughts here.
Want to read more posts about travel photography destinations? Find them all here: Posts on Destinations.
We’re recently returned from a two-week adventure in Ireland and Scotland. Our itinerary sandwiched a week of hiking in the glorious southwestern regions of Ireland (Counties Kerry and Cork) in between brief stays in the major cities of Dublin and Edinburgh. The photographic opportunities in these regions are remarkable, with lovely landscapes, historic architecture, and a generous friendly culture evident everywhere. I provide an overview in the form of a photo essay in today’s post, and upcoming posts will feature more details on specific places or types of subjects from the trip.
The Irish pub remains a central focus of life on the Emerald Isle. In cities and tiny rural villages, the pubs are places for people to come together and catch up with old friends, make new friends, listen to live traditional music, and of course drink a pint or two. This image was made in Dublin’s famed O’Donoghue’s Pub, where in the 1960s bands such as the Dubliners sparked the Irish folk music revival. To make portraits in pubs, where the lighting is dim and the use of flash is out of the question, use a fast lens and a high ISO setting. You need a shutter speed of at least 1/80 of a second to get a reasonably sharp image of musicians at work. Buy this photo
It may come as a surprise (or not) to learn that Ireland’s most popular attraction is the Guinness Storehouse tour in Dublin. Here my wife pulls a perfect pint of the “black stuff,” which we then enjoyed in the Gravity Bar atop the storehouse with views overlooking all of Dublin.
Another low-light shot, this image was made with ambient light only, using a fast lens and relatively high ISO. Remember to capture some shots of your traveling companions. Buy this photo
I highly recommend a visit to the very remote Gougane Barra peninsula. There’s only one hotel, which offers outstanding food and views over a tiny island with a picturesque church and the ruins of a Sixth Century monastery. A photographer’s paradise!
St. Finbarr’s Church stands on a tiny island on the Gougane Barra Peninsula. To make this image, I shot in the early morning when the quality of light was compelling, got down low to include the rushes in the lake, and used a polarizing filter to bring out the textures in the water and sky. Buy this photo
Don’t put away your gear when the sun sets! On a rare clear night in rural Ireland, the photography is stunning. Here’s an image of the Milky Way sprawling above the ruins of St. Finbarr’s Abbey, a Sixth Century monastery.
To capture the Milky Way, use a sturdy tripod and a relatively fast lens with a high ISO setting. In most cases, a shutter speed of 20-25 seconds is best, but here I used a somewhat shorter exposure to avoid having the cross appear washed out in the site’s artificial light. Buy this photo
We then hiked a portion of the long-distance Sheep’s Head Way. You’ll rarely encounter completely clear skies while walking in Ireland, but the changeable conditions can create opportunities for glorious landscapes. This lovely image was made just as the rain let up and the sun poked out, generating a vivid rainbow that spanned over the green fields and ancient walls.
Here I used my go-to landscape lens, the Nikon 16-35mm f/4 lens, fitted with a good circular polarizing filter. I adjusted the angle of the polarizer carefully to enhance the sky without weakening the refraction of the rainbow. I got down low to the ground to include the leading line from the old wall. Other compositional elements include the sheep in the field and the dramatic clouds in the sky. Buy this photo
At the end of the Sheep’s Head Way sits the lovely Bantry House, owned by the family since 1750. Climb the hill behind the house to capture the house and its gardens with the harbor behind. Buy this photo
On our way to the start of our next day’s hike in Killarney National Park, we stopped at a viewpoint called Priest’s Leap for this lovely view. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: remember to include yourself and your travel companions in some of your images. Set up the camera and either mount it on a tripod or show another person how to release the shutter. For more on how to make images including yourself, read this post: Post on Including Yourself
This image at Priest’s Leap was made using a normal lens with polarizing filter, stopped down to maximize depth-of-field. Buy this photo
Ireland is filled with forests that exude a sense of mystery and magic. Look for the little things as you walk: a flower or shamrock, a moss-covered tree, a tiny stream. All that rain has the happy side-effect of making Ireland the greenest place I’ve ever seen.
Slow down and seek out the little natural details around you, like this moss-covered tree in Killarney National Park. Buy this photo
The legendary Gap of Dunloe outside of Killarney stretches for eight miles through mountains and valleys, along streams and by ancient farmhouses. It can be traversed by horse-drawn carriages called “jaunting cars,” but the intrepid photographer will want to hike it instead.
The Gap of Dunloe offers compelling photographic subjects like this stream flowing in a valley surrounded by mountains. A good wide-angle lens with a polarizing filter brings out the color and texture in such a landscape, even on a “soft day” like this one. Buy this photo
We spent every evening in Ireland visiting a pub or two. These pubs differ in character, but all reflect the generous and friendly local culture, and many offer live music.
At a pub in Killarney, I was chatting with this fiddler during a break between sets, and made this portrait using natural light with a fast portrait lens, a wide aperture, and a high ISO. Buy this photo
My essential portrait lens:
We were fortunate to stay two nights in Killarney at the wonderful Lake Hotel. The hotel grounds include the ruins of an ancient castle situated on a lake with mountains behind. During breakfast on our second morning, I noticed the cloud cover had lifted but there was still mist hanging on the side of the hills around the lake. I ran up to our room, grabbed my thirty pounds of camera gear, and rushed outside to capture the ruins with the mist enshrouding the lake and mountains.
There was no time to set up a tripod as the warming sun was burning away the magical mist on the lake, so I shot this image handheld. Buy this photo
Our final day’s hike was the beautiful Wild Atlantic Way from Ventry to Dunquin. The lovely views of the Atlantic are punctuated with green fields dotted with odd “beehive huts,” some dating back to the Neolithic Period. To make this landscape incorporating ancient stone beehive huts and walls, I shot down across the fields to the sea, being sure to keep the horizon level. Buy this photo
The picturesque Blasket Islands were home to a community of Irish-speaking farmer-fishermen until they were forced to evacuate in 1953. This is one of Ireland’s most gorgeous stretches of coastline, captured here using a wide-angle lens with polarizer. Rotate the filter until the sky is dark and dramatic. Buy this photo
After Ireland, we spent a few days in Edinburgh, Scotland. This image was shot along the Royal Mile.
Be on the lookout for unusual perspectives. This image juxtaposes the different colors and textures of the statue in the foreground with the cathedral in the background. Buy this photo
Dining is an essential part of any trip, and Edinburgh offers many opportunities to savor the new Scottish cuisine. This lovely smoked salmon plate (with accompanying wee dram of whisky) was captured at the Tower Restaurant atop the Scottish National Museum.
Have you visited Ireland? What did you find most memorable? Any tips on photographing this enchanted place? Please share your thoughts in the comment box after this post.
Chile’s Atacama Desert, with its clear and dark skies and perfect latitude, makes a stunning location for capturing the Milky Way.
Not too long ago, making images of the Milky Way was not practical for most photo enthusiasts. Only astronomers and a handful of professional astrophotographers had the expensive equipment required to capture sufficient light from the cluster of quite dim stars that we refer to as the Galactic Core in the night sky. Shooting with a very long exposure didn’t do the trick for the Milky Way, because leaving the camera’s shutter open for more than about 15-30 seconds would blur each star’s image due to rotation of the Earth. These blurs, called star trails, could make for striking images with the stars appearing to streak in circles across the sky, but the subtle beauty of the Milky Way would be lost with these long exposures.
But in the last 5-10 years, camera sensors have become much more sensitive to light, and now it is possible–indeed quite easy–for photo enthusiasts to photograph our home galaxy without expensive specialized equipment.
Here’s how:
You will need a camera with a sensor that can gather a lot of light and with a shutter that can be kept open for a long time. These requirements limit the range of suitable cameras to full-frame DSLRs and mirrorless cameras, as well as a few higher-end crop-sensor cameras. You will also need a fairly fast wide-angle lens: I recommend a zoom or prime (fixed focal length) lens with a focal length of 14-16mm on a full-frame camera, and a maximum aperture of f/4 or faster. For astrophotography I most often use the Nikon 16-35mm f/4 lens. It’s got great image quality and is well built, and it is wide enough and fast enough for the purposes of capturing the Milky Way. For those with the financial means, buying or renting a very fast wide-angle lens such as the Nikon 24mm f/1.4 allows for gathering even more light.
You will also need a heavy, solid tripod. I’ve been successful using a lighter weight tripod for Milky Way shots while traveling, but a good professional tripod is better. I use the SLIK 615-315 with a ball head.
Finally, you’ll want to have a remote shutter release, either a hardwired cable release or a wireless remote release. This is to trigger the camera without touching it, so as to avoid blurring the image from the vibration of your touch.
Once you have the right equipment, it’s fairly straightforward to photograph the Milky Way. Choose a dark sky area, far away from the light pollution of any cities or other sources of stray nighttime light. It’s best to plan your Milky Way shoot at or within a couple of days of a new moon to further minimize extraneous light in the sky. Shoot toward the Galactic Center where the stars of the Milky Way appear brightest and most colorful. Note that the Galactic Center is not visible at all times of year at all latitudes; in many locations in the Northern Hemisphere, it is visible only during the summer months. To plan for where the GC will be on any given date and time and at any given location, I use a smartphone app called PhotoPills: PhotoPills in App Store.
While the Milky Way is lovely as a subject in its own right, a really good image also needs to include interesting foreground and/or middle-ground elements in its composition. The image below, made in Chile’s Atacama Desert, is appealing because the Milky Way is seen rising above a dramatic indigenous algarrobo tree.
The Milky Way is seen arched through the sky of the Atacama Desert above a local algarobbo tree in silhouette. Careful composition adds drama to your Milky Way images by including Earth-based subjects as well as the sky.
With your fast wide-angle lens on your full-frame camera, all mounted on your stable tripod, you are ready to shoot. Remove any filters on the lens, set your camera on full manual mode, select a fast ISO (I usually start at about 3200 and sometimes have to go even higher) and a wide aperture (f/4 or wider), and choose a shutter speed of 20-25 seconds (shorter if your lens is longer than about 18mm). You can use the 500 Rule, which states that shutter speed should be approximately 500 divided by the focal length of the lens; for example, for a 16mm lens you can use a shutter speed of not longer than about 31 seconds. Turn off your autofocus on your lens or camera, as it will not work in so dark a setting; instead, manually set your focus to a point near infinity where the stars appear sharp in your viewfinder (or better yet, on your live-view screen). I like to tape my lens to this setting before it gets dark, so I know the focus won’t change while I’m out in the field in the dark. It’s also a good idea to turn off your camera’s long-exposure noise reduction feature, if it has one, as this wastes time in the field and it’s equally effective to reduce the noise in Lightroom during post-processing. Of course, you want to be sure you are shooting RAW files.
Go ahead and shoot a lot of frames, experimenting with different ISO settings and compositions. It is often a good idea to get a very long exposure, sometimes several minutes long, so that your foreground subjects will be properly exposed. The frames with the foreground well exposed can later be combined in Photoshop with the ones in which the night sky is properly exposed.
This image was made from several frames: one long exposure for the lake, trees, and mountain in the foreground and middle-ground, and several different 25-second exposures that each captured a different meteor during the peak of the Perseid Meteor Shower. The resulting image shows all of these objects quite prominently, along with the Milky Way.
You may want to combine several different images to see all the features of the night sky and the terrestrial objects clearly.
In post-processing your Milky Way images, select a white balance that makes the sky and star colors appear natural, apply enough noise reduction to remove visual noise from the high ISO capture but not so much as to soften the appearance of the stars too much, and add some visual punch by painting additional contrast and clarity over the Galactic Center.
Worth the 3 AM wakeup call! A once in a lifetime opportunity to photograph the Milky Way above the iconic mo’ai on Easter Island. We had a bit of cloud cover, but overall I was very pleased with the resulting images.
With practice, you’ll find that capturing the Milky Way is within your reach, so long as you have suitable equipment and the patience required to compile enough images that a few will turn out to be successful. I believe it’s well worth the effort because a good Milky Way shot is so subtle, colorful, and strikingly beautiful. Good shooting!
Have you created a Milky Way image that you love? What were the key components to your success? What were the challenges you faced? Please share your thoughts and experiences here.
Want to read more posts about photographic techniques? Find them all here: Posts on Techniques.
Having just returned from leading a 2.5-week photography tour through Chile and Easter Island and including the July 2 total solar eclipse, I’d like to share a few favorite images. You can find the full photo gallery here: https://www.kadlerphotography.com/Travel-Photography/Chile-Eclipse.
Santiago Cathedral’s tower reflected in the windows of a modern glass office building.Glorious cityscape of Valparaiso.We were fortunate to visit Valparaiso on the day of the Festival of St. Peter and St. Paul.We were fortunate to visit Valparaiso on the day of the Festival of St. Peter and St. Paul.We were fortunate to visit Valparaiso on the day of the Festival of St. Peter and St. Paul.Sea lion sibling rivalry.The diamond ring effect signals the start of the 2.5-minute period of totality.A timelapse montage showing the path of the sun across the sky during the entire solar eclipse and through to sunset.What we do on photography tours.Glorious landscape around the Miscanti Lagoon.Three species of native pink flamingo live in the Atacama Salt Flat.Pattern and texture on the Atacama Salt Flat.Three species of native pink flamingo live in the Atacama Salt Flat.We were so fortunate to travel during a new moon in winter to the Atacama Desert. There’s no better combination of time and place for viewing (and photographing) the Milky Way.Tatio Geyser Field.Old church in the village of Machuca.Valley of the Moon.We enjoyed a breathtaking sunset at Kari Viewpoint in the Atacama Desert.Group portrait of the entire Photography Tour team in front of the seven Mo’ai of Ahu Akivi on Easter Island.Orongo Crater.Gorgeous sunset over the ocean behind mo’ai.Ahu Tongariki is the largest ceremonial platform on Easter Island, once holding 16 mo’ai. After the mo’ai were toppled during a period of civil unrest and then, more recently, devastated by a tsunami, 15 of them were reconstructed with help from Japan.Traditional Rapa Nui face painting on Anakena Beach.Vai Te Mihi performed a show of traditional Rapa Nui dance and music.Vai Te Mihi performed a show of traditional Rapa Nui dance and music.Vai Te Mihi performed a show of traditional Rapa Nui dance and music.Worth the 3 AM wakeup call! A once in a lifetime opportunity to photograph the Milky Way above mo’ai on Easter Island. We had a bit of cloud cover, but overall I was very pleased with the resulting images.
My wife and I area avid eclipse chasers. One of the joys of seeking out total solar eclipses is their geographic dispersion: each total eclipse can be viewed only from a narrow band of land or sea whose swatch could cut across any corner of the globe. This means the dedicated eclipse junkie could, and eventually will, end up traveling to nearly any given remote spot on the planet. In March, 2015, we had the opportunity to observe and photograph a total solar eclipse in Longyearbyen, the only population center in Svalbard, the vast island in the Norwegian Arctic. This wonderful trip was conducted by A Classic Tour Collection (http://aclassictour.com/travel-company/), specialists in eclipse tours. Home to more polar bears than humans, Svalbard is a place of remarkable pristine beauty located closer to the North Pole than it is to mainland Norway.
In a previous post I provided a primer on eclipse photography. You can review that post here: Post on Eclipse Photography. And don’t forget to book your travel for the upcoming Great American Eclipse on August 21, 2017.
Today’s post focuses on Svalbard’s photographic treasures. The village of Longyearbyen itself is very distinctive. The world’s northernmost permanent settlement, it was built to enable the mining industry in the region. The landscape and architecture are very unusual and starkly beautiful.
This row of miner’s cottages, each painted a vibrant color, makes a nice subject. I overexposed the foreground and background snow to emphasize the richly saturated colors of the houses. Buy this photo
Any Arctic location affords the possibility of seeing the Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights). The conditions must align properly: dark sky, clear weather, and it helps to be near a peak in the solar cycle. While I’ve seen more impressive displays in the past, the aurora we observed in Svalbard was still impressive.
To capture the Northern Lights, use a fast wide-angle lens and a sturdy tripod. As a starting point for exposure, try an ISO setting of about 800 and shutter speeds from about 4-15 seconds. Experiment to see what works best. Buy this photo
The stark icy landscapes surrounding Longyearbyen are otherworldly. I photographed this glacier-covered mountain near sunset, and we enjoyed the excitement of climbing it the next day.
To make this image of an icy butte on the outskirts of the village, I used a tripod and exposed using spot metering for the rocky parts of the mountain. Buy this photo
When shooting in very cold climates like Svalbard in March, it’s important to keep both your gear and yourself safe and functional. Check out this post on shooting in extreme conditions: Post on Extreme Conditions.
One of the trip highlights was a polar bear safari by snowmobile. Zipping along pristine ice fields at speeds up to 75 km/hour while the Arctic sun slowly set was thrilling. Our turnaround point was an old campsite on the shore of the Barents Sea. It truly felt like the edge of the world. Due to an incident earlier in the day, in which a group of campers was attacked by a polar bear and forced to shoot it, we did not encounter any of the skittish bears that night. We did, however, see the doomed animal’s footprints in the fresh snow.
My wife hikes alongside the tracks of a polar bear shot to death earlier the same day. This dramatic image was made in near total darkness, so I was forced to use flash as the main lighting source. In these situations, I dial down the power of the flash by at least one stop and try to position it for maximum dramatic impact. Buy this photo
One of my favorite images from the trip, this was made on the shore of the Barents Sea at sunset. Landscapes like this one need to be composed especially carefully to best showcase elements in the foreground, middle ground, and background. I chose a vantage point low to the ground to emphasize the ice floes. While I also experimented with using a bit of fill flash, I preferred this image with natural light only. Buy this photo
On eclipse day, there is a palpable air of excitement. Here is a shot of astronomer and leading eclipse expert Jay Pasachoff preparing for the eclipse along with one of his students.
Even during an exciting event like a total solar eclipse, it’s important to remember to document the people and activities in your group. Buy this photo
The diamond ring effect signals the start of the period of totality. Buy this photo
After the eclipse viewing, we enjoyed a dogsled ride back to Longyearbyen village. I wanted to capture the feeling of exhilaration as the dogs pulled us rapidly along the snow fields into a wide-open horizon. To capture that emotion, I shot from the perspective of the rider, handheld, using a fast shutter speed and a fairly wide focal length. Buy this photo
Wildlife is a favorite genre of photography in nearly any region. During our ascent of a glacier-covered mountain, we were fortunate to observe several Svalbard reindeer, the world’s smallest subspecies. I used a telephoto lens and exposed for the animal’s fur, as using an auto mode would have underexposed the main subject due to the bright snowy background. Buy this photo
Longyearbyen is the world’s northernmost settlement, so it stands to reason it would contain the world’s northernmost church. Care must be taken when photographing architecture using a wide-angle lens not to distort the perspective. Buy this photo
Your intrepid author photographing the total solar eclipse. Buy this photo
Parting shot: After returning from Svalbard, I created this montage of several images each depicting a different phase of the eclipse. Buy this photo
I hope this article inspires you to want to visit Svalbard. While extra effort is required to visit the world’s most remote and extreme destinations, the returns are enormous in terms of the beauty and unique photographic experiences.
Have you visited Svalbard or other Arctic destinations? What was most memorable? Please share your thoughts here.
Want to read more posts about travel photography destinations? Find them all here: Posts on Destinations.
Having just returned from leading a 2.5-week photography tour through Chile and Easter Island and including the July 2 total solar eclipse, I’d like to share a few favorite images. You can find the full photo gallery here: https://www.kadlerphotography.com/Travel-Photography/Chile-Eclipse.
Santiago Cathedral’s tower reflected in the windows of a modern glass office building.Glorious cityscape of Valparaiso.We were fortunate to visit Valparaiso on the day of the Festival of St. Peter and St. Paul.We were fortunate to visit Valparaiso on the day of the Festival of St. Peter and St. Paul.We were fortunate to visit Valparaiso on the day of the Festival of St. Peter and St. Paul.Sea lion sibling rivalry.The diamond ring effect signals the start of the 2.5-minute period of totality.A timelapse montage showing the path of the sun across the sky during the entire solar eclipse and through to sunset.What we do on photography tours.Glorious landscape around the Miscanti Lagoon.Three species of native pink flamingo live in the Atacama Salt Flat.Pattern and texture on the Atacama Salt Flat.Three species of native pink flamingo live in the Atacama Salt Flat.We were so fortunate to travel during a new moon in winter to the Atacama Desert. There’s no better combination of time and place for viewing (and photographing) the Milky Way.Tatio Geyser Field.Old church in the village of Machuca.Valley of the Moon.We enjoyed a breathtaking sunset at Kari Viewpoint in the Atacama Desert.Group portrait of the entire Photography Tour team in front of the seven Mo’ai of Ahu Akivi on Easter Island.Orongo Crater.Gorgeous sunset over the ocean behind mo’ai.Ahu Tongariki is the largest ceremonial platform on Easter Island, once holding 16 mo’ai. After the mo’ai were toppled during a period of civil unrest and then, more recently, devastated by a tsunami, 15 of them were reconstructed with help from Japan.Traditional Rapa Nui face painting on Anakena Beach.Vai Te Mihi performed a show of traditional Rapa Nui dance and music.Vai Te Mihi performed a show of traditional Rapa Nui dance and music.Vai Te Mihi performed a show of traditional Rapa Nui dance and music.Worth the 3 AM wakeup call! A once in a lifetime opportunity to photograph the Milky Way above mo’ai on Easter Island. We had a bit of cloud cover, but overall I was very pleased with the resulting images.
Those of us who live in the San Francisco Bay Area can count many blessings, but one I am most thankful for is our fairly close proximity to Yosemite National Park. The second oldest national park in the US, Yosemite is a photographer’s dream. Since the days when Ansel Adams helped make the park famous through his masterful landscape photography, shutterbugs of all stripes have been flocking there to try to capture some of its indescribable beauty. Most of us will never be an Ansel Adams, but that doesn’t stop me from returning to Yosemite at least once per year to give it my best shot, as it were.
Without doubt, there are many iconic views in the park that are relatively easy for even novice photographers to render. There is majesty in the panorama over Yosemite Valley as seen from the famous Tunnel View lookout. One doesn’t even have to venture off the main park road to shoot a nice image of Half Dome or El Capitan. But Yosemite offers so much more to the photographer who’s willing to look a bit more closely, to hike a little instead of jumping out of a car to shoot, or to come to a spot at unusual times, including the middle of the night.
In this post, I’ll share a few images I made in Yosemite National Park over the past year, but none of them will be a postcard-type shot that you’ve seen 1000 times before. And we’ll talk a bit about how to find and capture these less discovered views.
While hiking in the Tuolumne Meadows area, 5000 feet above Yosemite Valley, we were caught in a freak hailstorm at the remote Dog Lake. Instead of throwing a rain cover over my gear and running for shelter like a normal person would do, I set up my kit and started shooting. This image plays off the contrasts between the peaceful and violent sides of nature and between the light and the shade. It is a composite of several different shots made at different exposures, put together in Lightroom’s HDR (high dynamic range) merging tool.
Yosemite offers unusual and dramatic views to those willing to get away from the roads and brave some harsher conditions. Buy this photo
Another less-visited attraction in the park is the wonderful Chilnualna Falls. The lower waterfall is actually quite an easy hike from the parking area at the trailhead, and its little swimming hole makes for a refreshing break on a hot summer’s day. Here’s a shot of my younger daughter enjoying a dip in the swimming hole just under the falls. To blur the water, I used a slow shutter speed, which could only be achieved in the harsh mid-day light by attaching neutral-density filters to the lens. Neutral-density (ND) filters are an essential accessory for the landscape photographer, because they block most of the available light from reaching the camera’s sensor, allowing you to use a slower shutter speed to blur motion and/or a wider aperture to throw the background out of focus.
These reduce the amount of light that reaches the camera’s sensor, so you can use slower shutter speeds to blur motion, or so you can use a wider aperture to get a shallow depth-of-field, even in bright sunlight.
A neutral-density filter allows a nicely blurred shot of the waterfall at Chilnualna Falls. Buy this photo
Another lovely hike in the high country of Tuolumne Meadows is Cathedral Lakes. On our way back from these pristine and remote lakes, we passed this granite rock dome. I used a polarizing filter on a wide-angle lens to bring out the details on the surface of the rock and to lend more drama to the sky. Then, in post-processing, I converted the image to black-and-white to emphasize the remarkable texture of the granite slab’s surface. For more discussion about converting images to black-and-white, take a look at my earlier post: B&W Photography post.
Using a polarizing filter can darken and add drama to skies, reduce unwanted reflections, and render stunning detail on shiny surfaces. Converting an image to black-and-white can bring out the textures and patterns that may be less prominent when viewed in a color image. Buy this photo
Just because a place is glorious in its own right doesn’t mean we can’t include people in our photos. Putting humans in a landscape adds a personal touch, provides a sense of scale, and often tells a more compelling story than would an image of the same place without people. Here I’ve included my daughters in a landscape from the incomparable summit of Sentinel Dome.
Including people in landscapes layers a human narrative on top of the natural story. I like the added color, and humor, from the addition of my daughters in their college logo hats. I’ve chosen a wide aperture to soften the focus on the lovely background. Buy this photo
You don’t have to stop shooting when the sun sets. Some of the most wonderful images of Yosemite are made after dark. I came to this spot not far from the edge of the meadow in Yosemite Valley, and right on the bank of the Merced River, quite late at night when the sky was very dark. I set up my camera and wide-angle lens on a tripod and made a 25-second exposure at a high sensitivity (ISO) setting. The resulting image shows the spectacle of the Milky Way arched above the terrestrial grandeur of Half Dome and other Yosemite landforms. For more discussion of capturing the Milky Way, visit this post: Milky Way photography post.
A favorite image of mine: The Milky Way above Half Dome. Note that not every landscape image needs to be in “landscape orientation”. Buy this photo
Next time you are fortunate enough to visit Yosemite National Park, try to discover some new places, visit favorite places during less-visited times of the day (or night), and include some people for a human component to the story. Your images will stand out from the millions of others made in this glorious park!
Do you have a favorite photographic experience from Yosemite to share? Please leave a comment to let us know.
Chile’s Atacama Desert, with its clear and dark skies and perfect latitude, makes a stunning location for capturing the Milky Way.
Not too long ago, making images of the Milky Way was not practical for most photo enthusiasts. Only astronomers and a handful of professional astrophotographers had the expensive equipment required to capture sufficient light from the cluster of quite dim stars that we refer to as the Galactic Core in the night sky. Shooting with a very long exposure didn’t do the trick for the Milky Way, because leaving the camera’s shutter open for more than about 15-30 seconds would blur each star’s image due to rotation of the Earth. These blurs, called star trails, could make for striking images with the stars appearing to streak in circles across the sky, but the subtle beauty of the Milky Way would be lost with these long exposures.
But in the last 5-10 years, camera sensors have become much more sensitive to light, and now it is possible–indeed quite easy–for photo enthusiasts to photograph our home galaxy without expensive specialized equipment.
Here’s how:
You will need a camera with a sensor that can gather a lot of light and with a shutter that can be kept open for a long time. These requirements limit the range of suitable cameras to full-frame DSLRs and mirrorless cameras, as well as a few higher-end crop-sensor cameras. You will also need a fairly fast wide-angle lens: I recommend a zoom or prime (fixed focal length) lens with a focal length of 14-16mm on a full-frame camera, and a maximum aperture of f/4 or faster. For astrophotography I most often use the Nikon 16-35mm f/4 lens. It’s got great image quality and is well built, and it is wide enough and fast enough for the purposes of capturing the Milky Way. For those with the financial means, buying or renting a very fast wide-angle lens such as the Nikon 24mm f/1.4 allows for gathering even more light.
You will also need a heavy, solid tripod. I’ve been successful using a lighter weight tripod for Milky Way shots while traveling, but a good professional tripod is better. I use the SLIK 615-315 with a ball head.
Finally, you’ll want to have a remote shutter release, either a hardwired cable release or a wireless remote release. This is to trigger the camera without touching it, so as to avoid blurring the image from the vibration of your touch.
Once you have the right equipment, it’s fairly straightforward to photograph the Milky Way. Choose a dark sky area, far away from the light pollution of any cities or other sources of stray nighttime light. It’s best to plan your Milky Way shoot at or within a couple of days of a new moon to further minimize extraneous light in the sky. Shoot toward the Galactic Center where the stars of the Milky Way appear brightest and most colorful. Note that the Galactic Center is not visible at all times of year at all latitudes; in many locations in the Northern Hemisphere, it is visible only during the summer months. To plan for where the GC will be on any given date and time and at any given location, I use a smartphone app called PhotoPills: PhotoPills in App Store.
While the Milky Way is lovely as a subject in its own right, a really good image also needs to include interesting foreground and/or middle-ground elements in its composition. The image below, made in Chile’s Atacama Desert, is appealing because the Milky Way is seen rising above a dramatic indigenous algarrobo tree.
The Milky Way is seen arched through the sky of the Atacama Desert above a local algarobbo tree in silhouette. Careful composition adds drama to your Milky Way images by including Earth-based subjects as well as the sky.
With your fast wide-angle lens on your full-frame camera, all mounted on your stable tripod, you are ready to shoot. Remove any filters on the lens, set your camera on full manual mode, select a fast ISO (I usually start at about 3200 and sometimes have to go even higher) and a wide aperture (f/4 or wider), and choose a shutter speed of 20-25 seconds (shorter if your lens is longer than about 18mm). You can use the 500 Rule, which states that shutter speed should be approximately 500 divided by the focal length of the lens; for example, for a 16mm lens you can use a shutter speed of not longer than about 31 seconds. Turn off your autofocus on your lens or camera, as it will not work in so dark a setting; instead, manually set your focus to a point near infinity where the stars appear sharp in your viewfinder (or better yet, on your live-view screen). I like to tape my lens to this setting before it gets dark, so I know the focus won’t change while I’m out in the field in the dark. It’s also a good idea to turn off your camera’s long-exposure noise reduction feature, if it has one, as this wastes time in the field and it’s equally effective to reduce the noise in Lightroom during post-processing. Of course, you want to be sure you are shooting RAW files.
Go ahead and shoot a lot of frames, experimenting with different ISO settings and compositions. It is often a good idea to get a very long exposure, sometimes several minutes long, so that your foreground subjects will be properly exposed. The frames with the foreground well exposed can later be combined in Photoshop with the ones in which the night sky is properly exposed.
This image was made from several frames: one long exposure for the lake, trees, and mountain in the foreground and middle-ground, and several different 25-second exposures that each captured a different meteor during the peak of the Perseid Meteor Shower. The resulting image shows all of these objects quite prominently, along with the Milky Way.
You may want to combine several different images to see all the features of the night sky and the terrestrial objects clearly.
In post-processing your Milky Way images, select a white balance that makes the sky and star colors appear natural, apply enough noise reduction to remove visual noise from the high ISO capture but not so much as to soften the appearance of the stars too much, and add some visual punch by painting additional contrast and clarity over the Galactic Center.
Worth the 3 AM wakeup call! A once in a lifetime opportunity to photograph the Milky Way above the iconic mo’ai on Easter Island. We had a bit of cloud cover, but overall I was very pleased with the resulting images.
With practice, you’ll find that capturing the Milky Way is within your reach, so long as you have suitable equipment and the patience required to compile enough images that a few will turn out to be successful. I believe it’s well worth the effort because a good Milky Way shot is so subtle, colorful, and strikingly beautiful. Good shooting!
Have you created a Milky Way image that you love? What were the key components to your success? What were the challenges you faced? Please share your thoughts and experiences here.
Want to read more posts about photographic techniques? Find them all here: Posts on Techniques.
Having just returned from leading a 2.5-week photography tour through Chile and Easter Island and including the July 2 total solar eclipse, I’d like to share a few favorite images. You can find the full photo gallery here: https://www.kadlerphotography.com/Travel-Photography/Chile-Eclipse.
Santiago Cathedral’s tower reflected in the windows of a modern glass office building.Glorious cityscape of Valparaiso.We were fortunate to visit Valparaiso on the day of the Festival of St. Peter and St. Paul.We were fortunate to visit Valparaiso on the day of the Festival of St. Peter and St. Paul.We were fortunate to visit Valparaiso on the day of the Festival of St. Peter and St. Paul.Sea lion sibling rivalry.The diamond ring effect signals the start of the 2.5-minute period of totality.A timelapse montage showing the path of the sun across the sky during the entire solar eclipse and through to sunset.What we do on photography tours.Glorious landscape around the Miscanti Lagoon.Three species of native pink flamingo live in the Atacama Salt Flat.Pattern and texture on the Atacama Salt Flat.Three species of native pink flamingo live in the Atacama Salt Flat.We were so fortunate to travel during a new moon in winter to the Atacama Desert. There’s no better combination of time and place for viewing (and photographing) the Milky Way.Tatio Geyser Field.Old church in the village of Machuca.Valley of the Moon.We enjoyed a breathtaking sunset at Kari Viewpoint in the Atacama Desert.Group portrait of the entire Photography Tour team in front of the seven Mo’ai of Ahu Akivi on Easter Island.Orongo Crater.Gorgeous sunset over the ocean behind mo’ai.Ahu Tongariki is the largest ceremonial platform on Easter Island, once holding 16 mo’ai. After the mo’ai were toppled during a period of civil unrest and then, more recently, devastated by a tsunami, 15 of them were reconstructed with help from Japan.Traditional Rapa Nui face painting on Anakena Beach.Vai Te Mihi performed a show of traditional Rapa Nui dance and music.Vai Te Mihi performed a show of traditional Rapa Nui dance and music.Vai Te Mihi performed a show of traditional Rapa Nui dance and music.Worth the 3 AM wakeup call! A once in a lifetime opportunity to photograph the Milky Way above mo’ai on Easter Island. We had a bit of cloud cover, but overall I was very pleased with the resulting images.
Not too long ago, making images of the Milky Way was not practical for most photo enthusiasts. Only astronomers and a handful of professional astrophotographers had the expensive equipment required to capture sufficient light from the cluster of quite dim stars that we refer to as the Galactic Core in the night sky. Shooting with a very long exposure didn’t do the trick for the Milky Way, because leaving the camera’s shutter open for more than about 15-30 seconds would blur each star’s image due to rotation of the Earth. These blurs, called star trails, could make for striking images with the stars appearing to streak in circles across the sky, but the subtle beauty of the Milky Way would be lost with these long exposures.
But in the last five years or so, camera sensors have become much more sensitive to light, and now it is possible–indeed quite easy–for photo enthusiasts to photograph our home galaxy without expensive specialized equipment.
Here’s how:
You will need a camera with a sensor that can gather a lot of light and with a shutter that can be kept open for a long time. These requirements limit the range of suitable cameras to full-frame DSLRs and advanced interchangeable lens mirrorless cameras. You will also need a fairly fast wide-angle lens: I recommend a zoom or prime (fixed focal length) lens with a focal length of 14-16mm on a full-frame camera, and a maximum aperture of f/4 or faster. For astrophotography I most often use the Nikon 16-35mm f/4 lens. It’s got great image quality and is well built, and of course it is wide enough and fast enough for the purposes of capturing the Milky Way.
You will also need a heavy, solid tripod. I’ve been successful using a lighter weight tripod for Milky Way shots while traveling, but a good professional tripod is better. I use the SLIK 615-315 with a ball head.
Finally, you’ll want to have a remote shutter release, either a hardwired cable release or a wireless remote release. This is to trigger the camera without touching it, so as to avoid blurring the image from the vibration of your touch.
Once you have the right equipment, it’s fairly straightforward to photograph the Milky Way. Choose a dark sky area, far away from the light pollution of any cities or other sources of stray nighttime light. Shoot toward the Galactic Core where the stars of the Milky Way appear brightest and most colorful. To plan for where the GC will be on any given date and time and at any given location, I use a smartphone app called PhotoPills: PhotoPills in App Store. Try to include foreground and/or middle-ground subjects to add interest to your composition. The image below, made at Yosemite National Park, is appealing because the Milky Way is seen rising above the iconic peak known as Half Dome.
The Milky Way is seen arched through the sky above Half Dome and other landforms in Yosemite Valley. Careful composition adds drama to your Milky Way images by including Earth-based subjects as well as the sky. Buy this photo on my website
With your fast wide-angle lens on your full-frame camera, all mounted on your stable tripod, you are ready to shoot. Remove any filters on the lens, set your camera on full manual mode, select a fast ISO (I usually start at about 3200 and sometimes have to go even higher) and a wide aperture (f/4 or wider), and choose a shutter speed of 20-25 seconds (shorter if your lens is longer than about 18mm). You can use the 500 Rule, which states that shutter speed should be approximately 500 divided by the focal length of the lens; for example, for a 16mm lens you can use a shutter speed of not longer than about 31 seconds. Turn off your autofocus on your lens or camera, as it will not work in so dark a setting; instead, manually set your focus to a point near infinity where the stars appear sharp in your viewfinder (or better yet, on your live-view screen). I like to tape my lens to this setting before it gets dark, so I know the focus won’t change while I’m out in the field in the dark. It’s also a good idea to turn off your camera’s long-exposure noise reduction feature, if it has one, as this wastes time in the field and it’s equally effective to reduce the noise in Lightroom during post-processing. Of course, you want to be sure you are shooting RAW files.
Go ahead and shoot a lot of frames, experimenting with different ISO settings and compositions. It is often a good idea to get a very long exposure, sometimes several minutes long, so that your foreground subjects will be properly exposed. The frames with the foreground well exposed can later be combined in Photoshop with the ones in which the night sky is properly exposed.
This image was made from several frames: one long exposure for the lake, trees, and mountain in the foreground and middle-ground, and several different 25-second exposures that each captured a different meteor during the peak of the Perseid Meteor Shower. The resulting image shows all of these objects quite prominently, along with the Milky Way.
You may want to combine several different images to see all the features of the night sky and the terrestrial objects clearly. Buy this photo on my website
With practice, you’ll find that capturing the Milky Way is within your reach, so long as you have suitable equipment and the patience required to compile enough images that a few will turn out to be successful. I believe it’s well worth the effort because a good Milky Way shot is so subtle, colorful, and strikingly beautiful. Good shooting!
Have you created a Milky Way image that you love? What were the key components to your success? What were the challenges you faced? Please share your thoughts and experiences here.
Want to read more posts about photographic techniques? Find them all here: Posts on Techniques.
Note: There are still a few spaces available on this epic photographic journey! Please book soon to ensure you will have the chance to photograph a total solar eclipse as well as many other wonders of Chile and Easter Island.
I am thrilled to be leading a remarkable photography tour during the summer of 2019 that features a comprehensive photographic itinerary through Chile and Easter Island, including the rare opportunity to observe and capture images of a total solar eclipse, one of the most spectacular natural events visible on Earth. Learn more and book your space here: Chile Eclipse Photography Tour.
From Jun. 27 through Jul. 10, 2019, join our small group of photography enthusiasts and experience the thrill of shooting a total solar eclipse as well as capturing the full range of Chile’s spectacular beauty including a visit to fabled Easter Island. Chile is a dream destination for travel photographers, offering breathtaking scenery, unique wildlife, unparalleled astrophotography, and fascinating cultural encounters. We’ve planned this unique itinerary to provide ample opportunities to capture unforgettable images that you won’t find in travel brochures and on postcards.
Our extraordinary photographic journey will take us from the historic and vibrant capital city of Santiago and colorful Valparaiso, to La Serena and Isla Damas for in-depth workshops on eclipse photography in preparation for capturing extraordinary images of the total solar eclipse in this region, then on to the stark otherworldly beauty of the Atacama Desert with the darkest skies on Earth that are perfect for astrophotography, and finally to mystical Easter Island where we’ll have the opportunity to meet and photograph the native Rapa Nui people in exclusive photo shoots we have customized to capture a strong sense of the people and the place.
Award-winning professional travel photographer Kyle Adler will be shooting alongside tour participants and will provide personalized in-the-field instruction. During our optional informal workshops, we’ll review our recent images, plan our shot list for upcoming locations, and cover techniques to make the best images possible. Topics will be tailored to the group’s interests and may cover any aspects of travel photography from shot planning to capture technique, and on to post-processing and image sharing. Unlike most photography tours, we will place a special emphasis on learning to use the camera as a bridge to enhanced understanding of the land and people we visit. Photographers of any level will see their images improve, and non-photographer friends and family are also most welcome to join this tour. You can make memorable images using whatever camera gear you wish to bring; it is not necessary to invest in specialized gear.
My wife and I area avid eclipse chasers. One of the joys of seeking out total solar eclipses is their geographic dispersion: each total eclipse can be viewed only from a narrow band of land or sea whose swatch could cut across any corner of the globe. This means the dedicated eclipse junkie could, and eventually will, end up traveling to nearly any given remote spot on the planet. In March, 2015, we had the opportunity to observe and photograph a total solar eclipse in Longyearbyen, the only population center in Svalbard, the vast island in the Norwegian Arctic. This wonderful trip was conducted by A Classic Tour Collection (http://aclassictour.com/travel-company/), specialists in eclipse tours. Home to more polar bears than humans, Svalbard is a place of remarkable pristine beauty located closer to the North Pole than it is to mainland Norway.
In a previous post I provided a primer on eclipse photography. You can review that post here: Post on Eclipse Photography. And don’t forget to book your travel for the upcoming Great American Eclipse on August 21, 2017.
Today’s post focuses on Svalbard’s photographic treasures. The village of Longyearbyen itself is very distinctive. The world’s northernmost permanent settlement, it was built to enable the mining industry in the region. The landscape and architecture are very unusual and starkly beautiful.
This row of miner’s cottages, each painted a vibrant color, makes a nice subject. I overexposed the foreground and background snow to emphasize the richly saturated colors of the houses. Buy this photo
Any Arctic location affords the possibility of seeing the Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights). The conditions must align properly: dark sky, clear weather, and it helps to be near a peak in the solar cycle. While I’ve seen more impressive displays in the past, the aurora we observed in Svalbard was still impressive.
To capture the Northern Lights, use a fast wide-angle lens and a sturdy tripod. As a starting point for exposure, try an ISO setting of about 800 and shutter speeds from about 4-15 seconds. Experiment to see what works best. Buy this photo
The stark icy landscapes surrounding Longyearbyen are otherworldly. I photographed this glacier-covered mountain near sunset, and we enjoyed the excitement of climbing it the next day.
To make this image of an icy butte on the outskirts of the village, I used a tripod and exposed using spot metering for the rocky parts of the mountain. Buy this photo
When shooting in very cold climates like Svalbard in March, it’s important to keep both your gear and yourself safe and functional. Check out this post on shooting in extreme conditions: Post on Extreme Conditions.
One of the trip highlights was a polar bear safari by snowmobile. Zipping along pristine ice fields at speeds up to 75 km/hour while the Arctic sun slowly set was thrilling. Our turnaround point was an old campsite on the shore of the Barents Sea. It truly felt like the edge of the world. Due to an incident earlier in the day, in which a group of campers was attacked by a polar bear and forced to shoot it, we did not encounter any of the skittish bears that night. We did, however, see the doomed animal’s footprints in the fresh snow.
My wife hikes alongside the tracks of a polar bear shot to death earlier the same day. This dramatic image was made in near total darkness, so I was forced to use flash as the main lighting source. In these situations, I dial down the power of the flash by at least one stop and try to position it for maximum dramatic impact. Buy this photo
One of my favorite images from the trip, this was made on the shore of the Barents Sea at sunset. Landscapes like this one need to be composed especially carefully to best showcase elements in the foreground, middle ground, and background. I chose a vantage point low to the ground to emphasize the ice floes. While I also experimented with using a bit of fill flash, I preferred this image with natural light only. Buy this photo
On eclipse day, there is a palpable air of excitement. Here is a shot of astronomer and leading eclipse expert Jay Pasachoff preparing for the eclipse along with one of his students.
Even during an exciting event like a total solar eclipse, it’s important to remember to document the people and activities in your group. Buy this photo
The diamond ring effect signals the start of the period of totality. Buy this photo
After the eclipse viewing, we enjoyed a dogsled ride back to Longyearbyen village. I wanted to capture the feeling of exhilaration as the dogs pulled us rapidly along the snow fields into a wide-open horizon. To capture that emotion, I shot from the perspective of the rider, handheld, using a fast shutter speed and a fairly wide focal length. Buy this photo
Wildlife is a favorite genre of photography in nearly any region. During our ascent of a glacier-covered mountain, we were fortunate to observe several Svalbard reindeer, the world’s smallest subspecies. I used a telephoto lens and exposed for the animal’s fur, as using an auto mode would have underexposed the main subject due to the bright snowy background. Buy this photo
Longyearbyen is the world’s northernmost settlement, so it stands to reason it would contain the world’s northernmost church. Care must be taken when photographing architecture using a wide-angle lens not to distort the perspective. Buy this photo
Your intrepid author photographing the total solar eclipse. Buy this photo
Parting shot: After returning from Svalbard, I created this montage of several images each depicting a different phase of the eclipse. Buy this photo
I hope this article inspires you to want to visit Svalbard. While extra effort is required to visit the world’s most remote and extreme destinations, the returns are enormous in terms of the beauty and unique photographic experiences.
Have you visited Svalbard or other Arctic destinations? What was most memorable? Please share your thoughts here.
Want to read more posts about travel photography destinations? Find them all here: Posts on Destinations.
Those of us who live in the San Francisco Bay Area can count many blessings, but one I am most thankful for is our fairly close proximity to Yosemite National Park. The second oldest national park in the US, Yosemite is a photographer’s dream. Since the days when Ansel Adams helped make the park famous through his masterful landscape photography, shutterbugs of all stripes have been flocking there to try to capture some of its indescribable beauty. Most of us will never be an Ansel Adams, but that doesn’t stop me from returning to Yosemite at least once per year to give it my best shot, as it were.
Without doubt, there are many iconic views in the park that are relatively easy for even novice photographers to render. There is majesty in the panorama over Yosemite Valley as seen from the famous Tunnel View lookout. One doesn’t even have to venture off the main park road to shoot a nice image of Half Dome or El Capitan. But Yosemite offers so much more to the photographer who’s willing to look a bit more closely, to hike a little instead of jumping out of a car to shoot, or to come to a spot at unusual times, including the middle of the night.
In this post, I’ll share a few images I made in Yosemite National Park over the past year, but none of them will be a postcard-type shot that you’ve seen 1000 times before. And we’ll talk a bit about how to find and capture these less discovered views.
While hiking in the Tuolumne Meadows area, 5000 feet above Yosemite Valley, we were caught in a freak hailstorm at the remote Dog Lake. Instead of throwing a rain cover over my gear and running for shelter like a normal person would do, I set up my kit and started shooting. This image plays off the contrasts between the peaceful and violent sides of nature and between the light and the shade. It is a composite of several different shots made at different exposures, put together in Lightroom’s HDR (high dynamic range) merging tool.
Yosemite offers unusual and dramatic views to those willing to get away from the roads and brave some harsher conditions. Buy this photo
Another less-visited attraction in the park is the wonderful Chilnualna Falls. The lower waterfall is actually quite an easy hike from the parking area at the trailhead, and its little swimming hole makes for a refreshing break on a hot summer’s day. Here’s a shot of my younger daughter enjoying a dip in the swimming hole just under the falls. To blur the water, I used a slow shutter speed, which could only be achieved in the harsh mid-day light by attaching neutral-density filters to the lens. Neutral-density (ND) filters are an essential accessory for the landscape photographer, because they block most of the available light from reaching the camera’s sensor, allowing you to use a slower shutter speed to blur motion and/or a wider aperture to throw the background out of focus.
These reduce the amount of light that reaches the camera’s sensor, so you can use slower shutter speeds to blur motion, or so you can use a wider aperture to get a shallow depth-of-field, even in bright sunlight.
A neutral-density filter allows a nicely blurred shot of the waterfall at Chilnualna Falls. Buy this photo
Another lovely hike in the high country of Tuolumne Meadows is Cathedral Lakes. On our way back from these pristine and remote lakes, we passed this granite rock dome. I used a polarizing filter on a wide-angle lens to bring out the details on the surface of the rock and to lend more drama to the sky. Then, in post-processing, I converted the image to black-and-white to emphasize the remarkable texture of the granite slab’s surface. For more discussion about converting images to black-and-white, take a look at my earlier post: B&W Photography post.
Using a polarizing filter can darken and add drama to skies, reduce unwanted reflections, and render stunning detail on shiny surfaces. Converting an image to black-and-white can bring out the textures and patterns that may be less prominent when viewed in a color image. Buy this photo
Just because a place is glorious in its own right doesn’t mean we can’t include people in our photos. Putting humans in a landscape adds a personal touch, provides a sense of scale, and often tells a more compelling story than would an image of the same place without people. Here I’ve included my daughters in a landscape from the incomparable summit of Sentinel Dome.
Including people in landscapes layers a human narrative on top of the natural story. I like the added color, and humor, from the addition of my daughters in their college logo hats. I’ve chosen a wide aperture to soften the focus on the lovely background. Buy this photo
You don’t have to stop shooting when the sun sets. Some of the most wonderful images of Yosemite are made after dark. I came to this spot not far from the edge of the meadow in Yosemite Valley, and right on the bank of the Merced River, quite late at night when the sky was very dark. I set up my camera and wide-angle lens on a tripod and made a 25-second exposure at a high sensitivity (ISO) setting. The resulting image shows the spectacle of the Milky Way arched above the terrestrial grandeur of Half Dome and other Yosemite landforms. For more discussion of capturing the Milky Way, visit this post: Milky Way photography post.
A favorite image of mine: The Milky Way above Half Dome. Note that not every landscape image needs to be in “landscape orientation”. Buy this photo
Next time you are fortunate enough to visit Yosemite National Park, try to discover some new places, visit favorite places during less-visited times of the day (or night), and include some people for a human component to the story. Your images will stand out from the millions of others made in this glorious park!
Do you have a favorite photographic experience from Yosemite to share? Please leave a comment to let us know.
My wife and I area avid eclipse chasers. One of the joys of seeking out total solar eclipses is their geographic dispersion: each total eclipse can be viewed only from a narrow band of land or sea whose swatch could cut across any corner of the globe. This means the dedicated eclipse junkie could, and eventually will, end up traveling to nearly any given remote spot on the planet. In March, 2015, we had the opportunity to observe and photograph a total solar eclipse in Longyearbyen, the only population center in Svalbard, the vast island in the Norwegian Arctic. This wonderful trip was conducted by A Classic Tour Collection (http://aclassictour.com/travel-company/), specialists in eclipse tours. Home to more polar bears than humans, Svalbard is a place of remarkable pristine beauty located closer to the North Pole than it is to mainland Norway.
In a previous post I provided a primer on eclipse photography. You can review that post here: Post on Eclipse Photography. And don’t forget to book your travel for the upcoming Great American Eclipse on August 21, 2017.
Today’s post focuses on Svalbard’s photographic treasures. The village of Longyearbyen itself is very distinctive. The world’s northernmost permanent settlement, it was built to enable the mining industry in the region. The landscape and architecture are very unusual and starkly beautiful.
This row of miner’s cottages, each painted a vibrant color, makes a nice subject. I overexposed the foreground and background snow to emphasize the richly saturated colors of the houses. Buy this photo
Any Arctic location affords the possibility of seeing the Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights). The conditions must align properly: dark sky, clear weather, and it helps to be near a peak in the solar cycle. While I’ve seen more impressive displays in the past, the aurora we observed in Svalbard was still impressive.
To capture the Northern Lights, use a fast wide-angle lens and a sturdy tripod. As a starting point for exposure, try an ISO setting of about 800 and shutter speeds from about 4-15 seconds. Experiment to see what works best. Buy this photo
The stark icy landscapes surrounding Longyearbyen are otherworldly. I photographed this glacier-covered mountain near sunset, and we enjoyed the excitement of climbing it the next day.
To make this image of an icy butte on the outskirts of the village, I used a tripod and exposed using spot metering for the rocky parts of the mountain. Buy this photo
When shooting in very cold climates like Svalbard in March, it’s important to keep both your gear and yourself safe and functional. Check out this post on shooting in extreme conditions: Post on Extreme Conditions.
One of the trip highlights was a polar bear safari by snowmobile. Zipping along pristine ice fields at speeds up to 75 km/hour while the Arctic sun slowly set was thrilling. Our turnaround point was an old campsite on the shore of the Barents Sea. It truly felt like the edge of the world. Due to an incident earlier in the day, in which a group of campers was attacked by a polar bear and forced to shoot it, we did not encounter any of the skittish bears that night. We did, however, see the doomed animal’s footprints in the fresh snow.
My wife hikes alongside the tracks of a polar bear shot to death earlier the same day. This dramatic image was made in near total darkness, so I was forced to use flash as the main lighting source. In these situations, I dial down the power of the flash by at least one stop and try to position it for maximum dramatic impact. Buy this photo
One of my favorite images from the trip, this was made on the shore of the Barents Sea at sunset. Landscapes like this one need to be composed especially carefully to best showcase elements in the foreground, middle ground, and background. I chose a vantage point low to the ground to emphasize the ice floes. While I also experimented with using a bit of fill flash, I preferred this image with natural light only. Buy this photo
On eclipse day, there is a palpable air of excitement. Here is a shot of astronomer and leading eclipse expert Jay Pasachoff preparing for the eclipse along with one of his students.
Even during an exciting event like a total solar eclipse, it’s important to remember to document the people and activities in your group. Buy this photo
The diamond ring effect signals the start of the period of totality. Buy this photo
After the eclipse viewing, we enjoyed a dogsled ride back to Longyearbyen village. I wanted to capture the feeling of exhilaration as the dogs pulled us rapidly along the snow fields into a wide-open horizon. To capture that emotion, I shot from the perspective of the rider, handheld, using a fast shutter speed and a fairly wide focal length. Buy this photo
Wildlife is a favorite genre of photography in nearly any region. During our ascent of a glacier-covered mountain, we were fortunate to observe several Svalbard reindeer, the world’s smallest subspecies. I used a telephoto lens and exposed for the animal’s fur, as using an auto mode would have underexposed the main subject due to the bright snowy background. Buy this photo
Longyearbyen is the world’s northernmost settlement, so it stands to reason it would contain the world’s northernmost church. Care must be taken when photographing architecture using a wide-angle lens not to distort the perspective. Buy this photo
Your intrepid author photographing the total solar eclipse. Buy this photo
Parting shot: After returning from Svalbard, I created this montage of several images each depicting a different phase of the eclipse. Buy this photo
I hope this article inspires you to want to visit Svalbard. While extra effort is required to visit the world’s most remote and extreme destinations, the returns are enormous in terms of the beauty and unique photographic experiences.
Have you visited Svalbard or other Arctic destinations? What was most memorable? Please share your thoughts here.
Want to read more posts about travel photography destinations? Find them all here: Posts on Destinations.
Note: There are still a few spaces available on this epic photographic journey! Please book soon to ensure you will have the chance to photograph a total solar eclipse as well as many other wonders of Chile and Easter Island.
I am thrilled to be leading a remarkable photography tour during the summer of 2019 that features a comprehensive photographic itinerary through Chile and Easter Island, including the rare opportunity to observe and capture images of a total solar eclipse, one of the most spectacular natural events visible on Earth. Learn more and book your space here: Chile Eclipse Photography Tour.
From Jun. 27 through Jul. 10, 2019, join our small group of photography enthusiasts and experience the thrill of shooting a total solar eclipse as well as capturing the full range of Chile’s spectacular beauty including a visit to fabled Easter Island. Chile is a dream destination for travel photographers, offering breathtaking scenery, unique wildlife, unparalleled astrophotography, and fascinating cultural encounters. We’ve planned this unique itinerary to provide ample opportunities to capture unforgettable images that you won’t find in travel brochures and on postcards.
Our extraordinary photographic journey will take us from the historic and vibrant capital city of Santiago and colorful Valparaiso, to La Serena and Isla Damas for in-depth workshops on eclipse photography in preparation for capturing extraordinary images of the total solar eclipse in this region, then on to the stark otherworldly beauty of the Atacama Desert with the darkest skies on Earth that are perfect for astrophotography, and finally to mystical Easter Island where we’ll have the opportunity to meet and photograph the native Rapa Nui people in exclusive photo shoots we have customized to capture a strong sense of the people and the place.
Award-winning professional travel photographer Kyle Adler will be shooting alongside tour participants and will provide personalized in-the-field instruction. During our optional informal workshops, we’ll review our recent images, plan our shot list for upcoming locations, and cover techniques to make the best images possible. Topics will be tailored to the group’s interests and may cover any aspects of travel photography from shot planning to capture technique, and on to post-processing and image sharing. Unlike most photography tours, we will place a special emphasis on learning to use the camera as a bridge to enhanced understanding of the land and people we visit. Photographers of any level will see their images improve, and non-photographer friends and family are also most welcome to join this tour. You can make memorable images using whatever camera gear you wish to bring; it is not necessary to invest in specialized gear.
