Lunar Eclipse Sequence, 1:23 a.m. to 4:49 a.m., August 28, 2007
Before getting to the topic at hand, I want to let you know that eight people have signed up for the Eastern Sierra Fall Color Workshop since I announced it last Thursday. The limit is twelve students, and I’m sure it will fill up soon, so if you’re thinking about signing up don’t procrastinate!
Okay, on to the eclipse. Before dawn this Saturday, December 10th, viewers in the Western U.S. and Canada will be able to see a total lunar eclipse. If you live in the eastern half of the U.S. unfortunately you’ll only be able to see a partial eclipse. People in most of Europe, Asia, and Australia will also be able to see a total eclipse, though in Europe it will be visible at moonrise on Saturday evening. This NASA page shows where the eclipse will be visible throughout the world, and this page shows more detail for western North America.
Moon Position
If the weather cooperates, and you want to try make your own eclipse photographs, here are some tips. (I’ve copied some of this from my post a year ago, but the information about the moon position is all new.)
My preferred crop for this image of Bridalveil Fall doesn't fit any of the common print sizes.
In the comments for my last critique, Michael Glover asked a question about cropping and aspect ratios. I get this question a lot, as many people feel that they must crop their images to a certain size—4×6, 8×10—for printing. So I thought I would expand on my answer to Michael and address this issue in more depth here.
The problem with cropping to fit a particular aspect ratio for printing is that you can compromise the photograph’s esthetics. The accompanying images of Bridalveil Fall show what I mean. Below you’ll find the uncropped version, with its original 2:3 (or 4×6 or 8×12) aspect ratio, and a version cropped to a 4:5 (or 8×10) ratio.
To me, the uncropped version leaves too much empty space on the right and left sides, while the 4:5 ratio is too square, and a bit static. I prefer the crop at the top of this post, which lies somewhere in between.
(Click here if you have trouble viewing this video)
Can you create HDR images in Lightroom? Yes! Well, sort of. Lightroom only works with one photograph at a time, so you can’t blend different exposures of a scene together. But you can handle some high-contrast scenes in Lightroom, without HDR software or Photoshop, by using Lightroom’s tools to exploit your camera’s full dynamic range. I explain how in this latest video.
Like many inventions, this technique was born out of laziness. I wanted to avoid the sometimes tedious process of blending exposures manually in Photoshop, with HDR software, or my favorite plugin, LR/Enfuse. I also try to keep my adjustments flexible by using Lightroom’s non-destructive workflow whenever possible.
This technique only works with Raw images, and scenes where the contrast isn’t extreme, but I keep finding more and more situations where it does work. If you try it, let me know how you make out!
As always, be sure to view this in high definition (720p) to see the tools and sliders clearly.
Michael Frye is a professional photographer specializing in landscapes and nature. He is the author and photographer of The Photographer’s Guide to Yosemite, Yosemite Meditations, and Digital Landscape Photography: In the Footsteps of Ansel Adams and the Great Masters, plus the eBook Light & Land: Landscapes in the Digital Darkroom. He has written numerous magazine articles on the art and technique of photography, and his images have been published in over thirty countries around the world. Michael has lived either in or near Yosemite National Park since 1983, currently residing just outside the park in Mariposa, California.
Reading David duChemin’s eBook A Deeper Frame got me thinking about how we perceive depth and space in photographs, and how lens choice affects that perception.
David says that because photography turns “a world of three dimensions into two,” that “if we aim to create photographs that create within the reader a deeper, fuller, longer experience, it falls to us to recreate that depth.”
There’s no question that wide-angle lenses are better tools for creating a sense of depth in a photograph than telephoto lenses. Telephotos make objects appear closer together than they really are, compressing space and flattening the perspective. Wide-angle lenses make objects appear farther apart than they really are, expanding the sense of space, and, if used correctly, creating an illusion of depth.
These two photographs from my recent trip to the redwoods illustrate the difference. Both images include the same rhododendrons and redwoods.
In the top image I stepped back with a telephoto lens (130mm) and isolated part of the bush against two redwood trunks. It looks like the rhododendrons are only a few feet in front of the trees, but they’re not. They’re at least 20 feet away—illustrating the compression effect of the telephoto lens. The sense of depth is minimal.
Living near Yosemite I often photograph moving water—big, thundering waterfalls, small cascades, and everything in between. If you watched me photographing some of these scenes, you’d see me pressing the shutter over and over again without moving the camera or changing any of the settings—just click, click, click, click, click…
Am I just wasting space on my Compact Flash card? No—there’s a method to this madness. Water moves. A waterfall or river changes from one second to the next. In fact it’s never exactly the same twice. So while my composition, shutter speed, and aperture may be the same, each photograph is different, and some are bound to be better than others.
Redwoods, ferns, and rhododendrons near the northern California coast
Last week my wife Claudia and I visited our son Kevin in Arcata, California (he goes to Humboldt State University there). Arcata is just north of Eureka, along the northern coast of California, in redwood country.
Eleven years ago we’d camped in this area, and hiked a beautiful trail through the redwoods (nine-year-old Kevin complaining the whole way, especially on the steep climb back). The next morning I returned alone with my camera, found the forest enveloped in dense fog, and made one of my favorite photos ever.
I’d never gone back to that spot, but forecasters predicted patchy fog for last Wednesday morning, and it seemed like a good time to go. So we rose early and drove through fog, then sun, and back into fog. As we neared the trailhead I caught a glimpse of a roadside redwood grove that took my breath away. In the fog it was just so beautiful, so… primeval. I felt I’d traveled back in time a million years.
I’ve been using Lightroom since Adobe released the beta version in 2006. Over the years I’ve learned many shortcuts, and in this video I share some of my favorite tips – things I use all the time to streamline my workflow:
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