Stars over El Capitan with climbers on the granite cliffs. Yosemite Valley. This is a stacked image combing 8 separate exposures. Click to see a larger version.
El Capitan is a splendid sight in Yosemite Valley. Small wonder that for decades photographers have been showing up in droves to photographic the iconic granite cliffs. It is the largest block of exposed granite on our planet.
The yellow pin marks the photo location in El Capitan Meadow. I was a short distance from Northside Drive.
When I showed up at El Capitan Meadow a little before 9 pm, there were at least three other photographers out in the meadow taking long exposures with their tripod mounted cameras. Other people showed up, wandered out into the meadow, stared at the magnificent monolith for a while, and then left. By the time I finished I was the only photographer still there.
I chose a location not far from Northside Drive (map above and photo below) so the trees just north of Northside Drive would be prominent against El Capitan. I did not want to include the road or the trees that were being “painted” by car headlights as they drove by (photo below).
I was intrigued by the lights of the climbers high up on the cliffs. Some were making slow upward progress so they were climbing at night. Other lights were stationary so those climbers had stopped for the night.
After a number of shorter exposures (15-30 seconds) at high ISOs to minimize the motion of the stars, I decided to go the other direction and capture star trails with an ISO of 100 and longer exposures around 3-4 minutes. I would have liked to use much longer exposures (20-30 minutes) for really long star trails but the landscape and sky would totally wash out in the light of the nearly full moon. Doing a “stacked image” (several images combined into one long image) was the obvious solution to get longer star trails.
Several months earlier with less than ideal conditions I did my first stacked image in the bright lights of the San Francisco Bay Area. I was pleased with the outcome and the possibilities for the future, so I was ready to try again. El Capitan by moonlight was a great opportunity to make my second attempt. I have been doing night photography for years, but I am new to creating stacked images.
El Capitan in the moonlight. Camera and tripod in El Capitan Meadow. Canon 7D Mark II. Canon EF 15mm f/2.8 semi fisheye lens. 15 seconds, f/5.6, ISO 800. Click to see a larger version.
During one of the long exposures I propped up my other camera body on my back pack and took a picture of my camera mounted tripod. The bent car lights on the road are due to the bowing of horizontal lines from the fisheye lens. I would have preferred to use another tripod to line things up better but you can only carry so much gear onto an airplane. The bright red light in the lower right corner of the camera is the warning light that the camera is in the middle of an exposure. I could see red lights of other cameras glowing around the meadow. The red light on top of the camera is the confirmation light that the auxiliary GPS unit is working.
By the time I quit and decided to move on to the next location had a total of 8 images. The first image started at 9:15:11 pm and the last image ended at 10:00:13 PM, giving a total elapsed time of 45 minutes, 2 seconds. When I returned to the Bay Area I used Adobe Bridge and Adobe Photoshop to create the final image.
The lights of climbers on El Capitan. Click to see a larger version.
This is a cropped portion of the full image at the top of this article. I can tell from the individual photos that there were four climbers in the group at the upper left. Toward the lower right there is at least one more climber working diagonally up a ridge. In this photo there are two other lights (right center, and toward the bottom right) which were pretty much stationary during the time I was taking pictures. There was one additional light on El Capitan that is not visible in this cropped part of image, so there were at least 8 climbers on El Capitan while I was taking pictures.
I always include one or two night photography sessions in my weekend workshops. Once you get things sorted out, it isn’t complicated and it is a lot of fun!
Location
El Capitan Meadow, Yosemite Valley
El Capitan Meadow is a large meadow just to the left of Northside Drive. It is toward the west end of Yosemite Valley and directly south of El Capitan.
Photo Data: Canon 5D Mark III. Canon EF 17-40mm f/4 lens at 17mm. 8 individual images stacked into one photo. All 8 images: f/5.6, ISO 100. Shutter speeds ranged from 298 to 383 seconds. The first image began at 9:15:11 PM PDT. The last image ended at 10:00:13 pm PDT. Total elapsed time: 45 minutes 2 seconds.
Links
How to Create a Stacked Image of the Night Sky
How To Focus Your Lens on Infinity for Night Photography
To learn more about night sky photography, read Digital Photography Exposure for Dummies, one of the highest rated books at Amazon.com. You can learn more here, and order it at Amazon.
Yosemite National Park – the official NPS site.