From the parking lot I trudged through the snow with my camera in my coat and made my way to the waterfall. It really is a set of three main falls emptying into a river that gracefully curves around an outcropping. On clear days the mountain looms impressively in the background. I was first here seven years ago on a cloudy summer day. I waited for about 15 minutes and finally got a bit of sun on the mountain, as seen here. This time in the whipping snow, the shape of the mountain was only hinted at. i thought at the least I would descend to the end of the path and photograph the falls and call it good. Slipping and sliding my way down the path i got to the end and proceeded to shoot bursts of images, with the plan to blend them in post-processing to create the nice blurred effect of falling, flowing water. There was no way I was going to fiddle with a tripod in those conditions. After a minute or two of that I started climbing up the path until I got to approximately where I set up my tripod 7 years before, and lo! The lovely shape of Kirkjufell began appearing out of the gauzy whiteness. The snow was still falling, though not as intensely. After waiting another minute I began shooting hand-held vertical bursts with the intent of creating a panorama. I quickly shot five frames comprised of 10-15 exposure bursts and thought: not ideal, but I think this will work!

Later, in our Reykjavík before flying home the next day, I processed the image. Each frame comprised of multiple exposures I stacked, aligned and blended in Photoshop to achieve the water-blurred look I was looking for. Then the five resulting images were photo merged as a panorama in Lightroom. That large image I then brought back into Photoshop for cleanup, to add contrast, and to sharpen. The image above, I think, attests to the values or persistence and patience in photography!

Words and Photograph Jeff Clay

The post Patience and Persistence Pay Off appeared first on Wasatch Camera Club.

I think everyone would recognize images of the Tiger’s Nest, a Buddhist monastery built on the side a cliff in the Paro valley of Bhutan. A meditation cave was used at this location from the 9^th century onward while the first Buddhist monastery was built in the year 1692, and has been revised and rebuilt on a number of occasions over the years, including following a major fire in 1998. Visiting the monastery is one of the highlights of any trip to Bhutan. 

The day of our visit to the Tiger’s Nest started at a local hotel with a quick breakfast at 5:15am. We were hiking before 6am with two primary objectives for this early start; avoiding the crowds that build up if you start hiking later in the morning and a goal to complete the round trip and return to the hotel by mid-afternoon, when the temperature is at it’s warmest.



It is not a particularly demanding hike, only about 3 miles, but it does start at 8,600 feet climbing to the monastery location at 10,300 feet, so the altitude inevitably slows you down. The hike gradually meanders through a forest, but occasionally you come to a clearing which provides a clear view of the Tiger’s Nest. As photographers we always take another photo as the light is forever changing and you are getting a different angle as you slowly gain altitude. You finally reach a viewing platform that provides a clear view of the Tiger’s Nest at the same level further along the cliff, the famous postcard shot. From this viewing platform, there is an opportunity to descend a few hundred feet and then climb back up to the Tiger’s Nest. The local Buddhist monks offer a very informative tour of the monastery, explaining the different meditation learnings that take place in each of the 8 temples and highlighting some of the beautiful paintings. Unfortunately, though understandably, photography is prohibited within the monastery.


Now having completed the hike, taken all the standard shots of the monastery and completed the tour it is time to descend. But my inclination is not just to march down quickly and return to the hotel – there are opportunities for other unique photographs during the descent.

Bhutan is a predominantly Buddhist country – about 80% of the total population practice this religion. Along the hike up to the Tiger’s Nest I noticed there were many rows of prayer flags hanging amongst the trees. So I decided I would try to get an image of the Tiger’s Nest that is framed by the local prayer flags in the trees.  

Every time I saw a row of prayer flags, I looked to see if there was a clear view of the monastery through the trees. Most times it was negative as there were branches or leaves constraining the view. Finally, I found a row of prayer flags that revealed a clear view of the Tiger’s Nest when they fluttered in the wind.  So I composed the image, set my aperture wide open to reduce the depth of field within the shot and a fairly fast shutter speed. The camera was set to manual focus, as I wanted to avoid any chance of the autofocus detecting the prayer flags blowing in the wind, and manually focused on the Tiger’s Nest. Then I waited for some wind to cause some movement in the prayer flags and reveal the Tiger’s Nest in the image. I was shooting in continuous mode, which is 12 frames per second on my Canon R5 so was able to select the one shot within a sequence which fully revealed the Tiger’s Nest appropriately framed by the prayer flags.

In summary, it was great day completing one of the iconic hikes in the world to visit the Tiger’s Nest. On the ascent I captured some standard views of the monastery as the light changed during the morning, while on the descent I captured a different image with a unique perspective.

The post Getting a Different Perspective appeared first on Wasatch Camera Club.

Benjamin specializes in creating striking wide-field compositions with the Milky Way rising over surreal landscapes. I too shoot wide-field Milky Way images with landscapes. However, in the past my modus operandi has been to go to a given location – usually Utah’s West Desert or somewhere in the Southwest – campout and set up cameras at that location to shoot all night. What we did in the Wadi Rum was a bit different. We would typically head out to a location for sunset shots then maybe move to another location that had strong foreground interest like a mushroom rock, narrow canyon, or arch, shoot that at blue hour/twilight and then (maybe) move again to shoot the Milky Way as it rose during the night. We would often be back at our desert tent camp/hotel somewhere around midnight or 1 am and would set up to shoot more Milky Way images or perhaps star trails. Long nights they were!

The blue hour shots were our foreground images and as such were usually single images up to 30 seconds in duration and at low ISO. For the Milky Way images the camera was mounted on a star tracker that moves with the rotation of the earth and if properly setup will result in pinpoint star images. The goal is to reduce the signal-to-noise ratio by stacking as many images as feasible. Some of us were also using nebula boasting filters and/or astro-modified cameras (that boost the light from nebulae), which meant that our Milky Way shooting time was multiplied by the number of different filters we were using. As well, in the first half of the evening – say 9 pm to 1 am – the Milky Way was at a left-leaning angle as it slowly rose and moved from east to south. By about 3 am the Milky Way was finally fully straight-up. That meant that if you wanted a so-called Milky Way arch you shot it early in the evening. If you also wanted the straight-up Milky Way, you needed to stay up until 3 am! Of necessity that meant that you shot your foreground often miles from where you did your Milky Way work. In the end, the goal was to blend a foreground image with a stacked Milky Way image, though they were rarely shot in the same location. Though the locations may have been miles apart the composition has to ring true for me. This means that the focal length for both the Milky Way and the foreground images must be the same. As well, I paid strict attention to shooting the foreground in the same direction as the Milky Way would be shot. With that as background, let’s move to my Camels by Night image.

The Wadi Rum is not known for its sand dunes, but there is one long, relatively low-lying one and we arranged for a camel herder with two of his camels for a series of sunset shots. These were a success and the camels’ work finished, they just hung-out near where our dinner was being prepared. I took the opportunity to photograph the camels as a foreground shot more on a whim and wasn’t sure if I would use it. Because of awkward positioning I would often forego using a tripod for the blue hour shots and I did that with a series of around 50 images shot low to the ground at around 8:10 in the evening. The one I ended up using had the prone camel with his head up and looking at me (curious animals they are!) and the standing camel in profile but with its mouth open. The camera I used is an unmodified Sony A7IV with a Rokinon SP 14mm f/2.4 Lens, one of the better lens for wide-field astrophotography. The settings were f2.4, 3200 ISO, and 1/13 second. During dinner the wind came up, so we returned to our tent camp to shoot Milky Way images, which worked out well as the wind died down by the time we arrived there.

The Milky Way images were captured with the same camera and lens and are comprised of 2 sets of 6 images each. First, between around 1:40 and 1:55am I captured six 2-minute exposures with no filter (RGB). The settings were 800 ISO and f 2.4. Then, using an IDAS NB12 filter (a dual band filter with one 12nm narrowband centered on the hydrogen-alpha emission line that creates the bright red glow from various galactic nebulae) and starting around 2 am I began capturing the next set of six exposures but at four minutes each. Settings were f2.4 and ISO 3200. That was it for my fieldwork.

At the computer I selected which camel/landscape shot I wanted to use. Since it was shot at 3200 ISO I ran Lightroom’s A.I. Denoise, straightened the horizon a bit, adjusted various levels and exported to Photoshop where I cleaned up some camel dung and footprints with the Generative Fill tool. I also applied Topaz Sharpen AI. I then extended the sky again with Generative Fill to accommodate the full Milky Way image.

The Milky Way shots were “a bit” more work. First, in Lightroom I ran the A.I. Denoise tool on all 12 images. I then exported them as TIFF files. These I then imported into an astrophotography package called AstroPixelProcessor. This is wonderful software to stack images. I use it for my telescope images as it is very good also for running calibration files which remove noise from those deep-sky objects images. APP outputs a FITS file which is the standard astronomical data format endorsed and used by NASA. In this case, since I had both RGB and Hydrogen-alpha data, two FITS files were created and then brought into PixInsight, the heavy-weight slugger of astrophotography applications. I won’t go into the details about what I did in that application (though you can message me if you want those details!). Once I had one finished Milky Way image, back in Photoshop I simply selected the Sky Replacement tool and substituted my Milky Way image for the twilight sky in the blue hour shot. A few more final Lightroom adjustments and et voila: Camels by Night!

More Wadi Rum images can be seen here.

The post From the Sand to the Stars: Anatomy of a Desert Night Shot appeared first on Wasatch Camera Club.

I was recently in Sri Lanka and was at the country’s most revered Buddhist temple for a ceremony (Sri Dalada Maligawa in the city of Kandy, built in 1595). Wandering the main temple area I saw this beautifully painted hallway that lead into some gardens. The curved walls glowed with late afternoon light and people were passing in and out. I knew a good photograph was likely with the right conditions. Awareness. The light was right but eventually the glow would dissipate as the sun lowered. As well, the temple hall would eventually fill with people for the ceremony and no photography would be possible in that direction. Soon would work, but not later! Opportunity. I snapped a few photos when there was just a few people passing in and out of the hallway including of a young tourist posing for her friend’s iPhone. It was a nice snap but photographing tourists was not what I was looking for. I needed a better, local “model,” perhaps a woman in colorful sari, or maybe an orange-robed monk? Surprising, there were almost no monks around. Usually in temples like this I see quite a few, but not here. Persistence. So, I just waited for someone of interest to pass through the hallway. There were a number of possible “models” though in most cases there were too many people, as I wanted to isolate one or two people not photograph a crowd. Suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, a young monk appeared, smiled at me — as I smiled at him — and he proceeded towards “my” hallway (I had become very possessive of this small section of the temple!). In he walked! Patience. In 3 seconds I took 26 frames (yea for burst mode!) as he traversed the hallway and — bonus — no one else entered it! My ISO was high because I did not want him as a blur as my shutter speed was high enough to freeze him and my aperture was open enough to ensure I would not lose focus on him for that short distance. Noise I would fix in post-processing. Preparedness. I could see on the LCD that I had done the best I could in those 3 seconds. Later that night I selected the image I most liked and processed it using Lightroom’s AI Noise Removal, Lens Blur, and Perspective Correction tools. In Photoshop I used Generative Fill to remove both a flag and one person standing in the garden. A touch of DXO’s Nik Color Efex and Topaz’ Sharpen AI rounded out my post-processing.

A lot does indeed go into “Serendipity!”

The post A Serendipitious Image appeared first on Wasatch Camera Club.

While I was trying to photograph sparrows, I learned about the Sagebrush Sparrow. One mistake I made during my early days in photography was not to study and learn about my subjects. I randomly went to places and tried to photograph birds in that place. This caused a lot of issues with long travels, for instance: driving for 10 hours at night to reach a location, trying to photograph a bird early in the morning, and then driving 10 hours back home. This was counterproductive and I was not getting the experiences I sought (spending time with birds.)

To be a good bird photographer, you must be a good birder. Once I started learning about birds, I realized that the Sagebrush Sparrow nests in Utah. In fact, it is one of the most commonly found birds if you know its habitat (sagebrush). I found that they are in the western part of Utah. I studied the bird’s behavior and reviewed e-bird checklists to understand when and where they are reported. I tried to photograph them and often failed to make an image. In life, luck and skill are only about 10-20%; the rest of the part has to be filled with patience, hard work and perseverance. With these skills, you can achieve anything you want to, whether it is photography or other facets of life. As a result of my perseverance, I finally found a few spots close to my home and photographed the Sagebrush Sparrow from my car using the vehicle as a photo blind.

Ultimately, it is not just a sparrow for me: it is an image I will cherish for the rest of my life. It is a lesson and an experience that I will remember forever.

Text and image by Krishna Prasad Kotti

The post It’s Just a Sparrow appeared first on Wasatch Camera Club.

One of Ansel Adams’ most famous photographs, Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico has quite an interesting story behind it. If you are not familiar with it this video made with his son is quite instructive: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_Ar5ZPuKUM (the section starting around 5:44 cuts to the chase). As Adams often said, “The negative is the score, the print is the performance.” Or, “You don’t take a photograph, you make it.” Edward Weston was famous for spending weeks making one print after another of a given image and chucking the rejects into a growing pile until finally he arrived at the print that he visualized. Now, despite what the “pro” in the first paragraph yammered on about, many of us follow the same general path laid down by the (real) pros of yore, substituting Lightroom (and Photoshop and other soft tools) for the darkroom. This doesn’t necessarily mean that we can be sloppy in the field. We should try to get right as much as possible with our camera settings, given the light and subject matter. And, there is no fix for badly composed images (well, with A.I., that is isn’t exactly true anymore, but we’ll leave that aside for now). Often shooting is an act of conscious (or unconscious) compromise and we take what we can as serendipity doesn’t knock repeatedly.

With the above in mind, let’s take a look at what was involved in the making of this image, Sunrise Comes to Thasang, Nepal. First it is clearly a panorama and has a very large dynamic range, from the top of the snowy peaks to the deep shadows of the valley and village. In the field, I horizontally hand-held and bracketed three 1-stop exposures for the left view then swiveled and did the same for the right view. The ISO was 200 and the aperture was f8. That was it for the “taking” of the image. In Lightroom, even though the ISO was low, I was concerned about noise in the shadow areas so I ran the new DeNoise AI tool on each of the 6 images (I was also shooting with a Lumix Micro 4/3s mirrorless, so the file size was only 20mp). I then executed Lightroom’s built-in Photo Merge>HDR Panorama tool. I often use the LR/PS plug-in Aurora HDR 2019 and though it has a lot of functionality, sometimes it yields an over-processed image. The Lightroom HDR tool is pretty even-handed in its processing. With the blended HDR pano image and still in Lightroom I was able to tone-down the near-blown-out highlights on the snows above but I could only partially alleviate the deep valley shadows. I opened the file in Photoshop and then using DXO’s Color Efex Pro toolset I was able to provide a bit more contrast overall whilst applying a radical graduated neutral density filter than allowed me to maintain the light on the ridge line and at the same time significantly open up the shadows in the valley/village so that details could finally emerge. Finally, I ran Topaz’ Sharpen AI application which often does a superlative job sharpening and reducing noise. This provided the final punch – the “making” – of the image and was in fact what I visualized (more or less) back in May when I first captured the frames.

Words and photo Jeff clay

The post You don’t take a photograph, you make it appeared first on Wasatch Camera Club.

Sadly, we never had another opportunity for night photography. And, no, this is not a real stupa or chorten…I still have THAT image in mind!

Words and photo Jeff clay

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Image and words by Jeff Clay

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Image and words by Jeff Clay

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The Japanese devised haiku poetry centuries ago as a way to describe nature with seeming simplicity. But upon closer examination, the true spirit of haiku reveals a none-too-obvious complex face. It depends upon a juxtaposition of ideas and images brought forth with the use of a kireji or cutting word. The reader is meant to meditate upon the deeper meaning behind the deceptively simple lines. 

I would never pretend to be anything but a dabbler in this rarefied art form, but I do find it stimulating and creative to try and distill a complex image into three very brief lines. Good photographs — and certainly paintings as well — should stand on their own: as the representative things-that-they-are. Though of course, what exactly an image is varies greatly from viewer to viewer. Ansel Adams was criticized for never having people in his images. Never mind that the statement is false, the impression is what Ansel responded to when he quipped that there were always at least two people in his photographs: the photographer and the viewer. The photographer certainly had his perspective when he captured the scene. You, the viewer bring your own set of perceptions (and prejudices!) to the gallery when you gaze at the hanging image.

Image and words by Jeff Clay

So, what does this have to do with haiku? Perhaps not much. But on occasion I stare at a photograph I have taken and words come to mind. “Sky so delicate…” begins the thought process. Once I start, it must be finished. Both the photograph and the haiku can and do stand separate.

But, together…they become something more.

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