Surprise Sunset

Gary Hart Photography: Moon and Clouds Reflection, Half Dome, Leidig Meadow, Yosemite

Greetings from Iceland. Running a workshop that starts before the sun and often goes deep into the night doesn’t leave a lot of time for blogging. But I want to share this image from earlier this month in Yosemite, along with a few paragraphs about its capture.

We all long for drama in our landscape images, and I try to time each of my workshops to maximize the chances of a special event. Case in point is my recent Yosemite Winter Moon workshop—winter to maximize the chances for snow and dramatic clouds; moon because photographing a moon rising above Yosemite Valley is a fantastic Plan B when the snow and clouds don’t come through.

Unfortunately, Central California has experienced an exceptionally dry winter so far, and what precipitation has reached Yosemite Valley so far has fallen as rain. Of course this is Yosemite, so it’s not as if my January group had nothing to photograph. And the clear skies forecast were great news for the workshop’s grand finale, a full moon rising full moon peeking up from behind El Capitan right at sunset. I photograph a lot of Yosemite moonrises, but this moonrise (that I’d specifically targeted when scheduling the workshop) was especially exciting to me because usually it rises somewhere south of El Capitan, and I’d never photographed it this far north and so close to El Capitan’s summit.

But that wasn’t until our very last shoot—in the meantime, I had a workshop to run. Even without snow and clouds, we enjoyed some really spectacular photography throughout: rainbows on both upper and lower Yosemite Fall (though spring is when Yosemite Falls gets the most water, winter is when it gets the best light). In addition to all that, several last-minute cancellations meant a smaller than usual group, allowing me to take them to a couple of spots that I feel are too small for larger groups.

Throughout the workshop I obsessively monitored the forecast, checking for the chance of even a few clouds to decorate our skies, each time finding absolutely no reason for optimism. But we persisted, concentrating on being in the best place for the warm early and late light, and the rest of the day on locations that don’t need a great (or any) sky.

Even though the prime moonrise wasn’t until our final night, throughout the workshop the moon would still be overhead at sunset as it approaches full (hanging a little lower each evening until the night it’s full), so I try to pick my sunset spots to provide an opportunity to add the moon as an accent to my chosen scene. Which is how we ended up at this bend in the Merced River near Leidig Meadow, two days before our target moonrise.

After a short walk, we arrived about 45 minutes before sunset, and I was shocked to see actual clouds overhead. Not just everyday, ordinary clouds, but an ordered formation of cumulus puffs marching left-to-right toward Half Dome as if divinely summoned, already reflecting the golden light of the low sun—a beautiful harbinger of even greater things to come. Far overhead floated the waxing gibbous moon, 90% of the way to full. And in front of us drifted the Merced River, wide and slow enough to paint a perfect reflection of the entire scene.

With low expectations for anything new at this scene I’ve photographed dozens (hundreds?) of times before, I’d arrived without my camera bag. Oops. Fortunately, the car was just a five minute walk back and I quickly decided this evening might just be worth fetching my camera.

I’m so glad I did, because the light on the clouds that evening hung in there all the way until sunset, gradually shifting from amber, to peach, to a brilliant pink, before finally deepening and fading.

We all photographed fast and furious, trying to keep up with the changing color, and to get as many versions of the scene as possible. I shot it horizontal and vertical, wide and tight, finally settling on this image to process (though I reserve the right to process more later), a vertical composition just wide enough to include a tiny dollop of moon and its reflection.

The clouds were moving fast, and by the time the light left and we’d walked back to the car, they were already exiting behind Half Dome. I saw no forecast for that day that even hinted at clouds anywhere in California. For all I know, they were the only clouds anywhere in the state this evening, but it’s experiences like this that remind me that forecasts are imperfect, and never a reason to completely shut the door on going out with my camera. In fact, the Iceland workshop group had just one of those experiences last night, but you’ll need to wait a couple of weeks to hear that story….