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Star and Leaf Trails in Yosemite

Yosemite National Park night photography

Star trails in Yosemite National Park, November 2012

When I arrived in Yosemite to shoot the rising moon in November 2012, I was pleased to find autumn leaves floating down the Merced River. Building upon the “leaf trails” concept I started in the Eastern Sierra last month, I set up for several compositions at night and tried a few short star trails images and a couple of longer time-lapse sequences to capture the motion.

Now a staple shot we pursue in my Yosemite fall workshops, join us to practice these unique shots: this year’s schedule.

Merced River Fall Swirls, Yosemite National Park

Composite star trails shot, fall 2016

If you’d like to try this but can’t join us, search my blog for “star trails” to find my instructional article.

Yosemite Daylight Long Exposure Composite

Daylight long exposure composite, 2017

Star trails and leaf trails in Yosemite, 2013

 

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74 thoughts on “Star and Leaf Trails in Yosemite”

  8. Jeff Sullivan
    Reply

    I wish I could downgrade to Windows 7 +Kirk Mathew Gatzka.  I hadn't heard that Windows 8 would ship that week, so I didn't even pay attention to the OS when I was choosing the laptop, I just wanted a high quality 1920 x 1080 display and a 1TB drive, but what a mistake this ended up being.

  27. Michelle Robinson
    Reply

    Hi +Jeff Sullivan I know you said that I didn't have to circle you back. But I think you can understand that there is a lot of your work that is fabulous. I pinned quite a few. Most of all, I think it is the personality behind the lens that makes the images complete. Thank you so much for stopping by and partaking in my post. Not a lot of people do that – not especially those who have the numbers you have. In my mind, it says something about you as a person, and it is greatly appreciated by me. I have not put you in my "Photographers" circle because I think I would rather follow you on Flickr where there is the "latest activity from your contacts" bit. I enjoy being able to start with what catches my eye at first glance, open it up and then look slowly. Your images are very grand, but there is a lot of subtlety to some of them that I noticed yesterday that probably makes you where you are today. I think many 'fauxtograhers' don't get that. It's not enough to just capture a sunset; and not enough to just do a documentary shot of people walking past; it's not enough to do just an abstract, and it's not enough to capture a towering building; it's not enough to take a head shot and call it a portrait, and most of all, it's not enough to get the horizon straight and call it a landscape. Victor Bezrukov introduced me to the concept of "miksang" last year. In my mind, that is a better way to learn how to photograph – abandon the notion of technique and then add it on after you learn to listen to your instincts about what you want – does that make sense? Or am I just spouting from a creative and overly-idealistic mouth? 

    Thanks again for stopping by. Hopefully you will again when I next post something. 🙂

    Mich

  34. Jeff Sullivan
    Reply

    The short answer is yes, +Bren Redmond, photography is my full time job.  For the hours I put into it, I actually practice it as two full time jobs, perhaps three.  As careers go, I have a huge landscape photography guide book in progress, I sell prints and stock photography, I lead workshops, I sometimes shoot weddings and commercial commissions, and it's my primary source of income.  Then again, everyone with a camera markets themselves as a photographer these days, and rates and revenues have plummeted for many in the industry.  It's a great lifestyle by many measures, but I wouldn't exactly recommend it to anyone as a way to get rich or fund their retirement!

  37. Jeff Sullivan
    Reply

    That question always makes me laugh +Susana Damy.  I live far from cities and I have very dark skies for seeing the stars.  It's so easy to capture star trails, why would I want or have to fake them?   You might find some of my other night work here on Google+ to be interesting:
    https://plus.google.com/photos/107459220492917008623/albums/5639862160248879953
    I'm glad though, if the result seems so exotic that it must be unreal.  As this article on my blog describes, it's actually pretty easy to take star trails shots:
    http://activesole.blogspot.com/2011/05/creating-star-trail-images.html

    Even my daughter +Nicole Sullivan (16) and my son +Thomas Sullivan (13) like to go out and take star trails and other night shots, and they have some great examples of night photography on their streams here on G+.  Drop by and see what they have captured!

    If you really want to see something interesting though, watch the first 3  time-lapse videos on my Night Timelapse playlist on +YouTube:
    Orionid Meteor Shower, Astronomy Day 2012, Eastern Sierra – Music by Life Audience

    If you change the resolution of the video playing to "720p HD" at the bottom of the video and view it full screen, you can actually watch meteor showers I've captured with my camera.  I have gotten a little obsessive about going out to capture them, and I'm going back out for several nights in 2 weeks for the annual Geminid meteor shower in Death Valley National Park.  

    This photo above actually has a HD video shape because it is formed from 100+ shots which will be converted to video to show the motion of the stars and leaves.  One of the things I teach other photographers to do when I lead photo workshops is how to create time-lapse movies themselves.

  39. Jeff Sullivan
    Reply

    Thanks so much +Michelle Robinson, if I can engage people who don't find most landscape all that interesting, I must be doing something right.  The first quote on my blog is this one: 
    "You don't take a photograph, you make it."  – Ansel Adams

    You may have also seen this one associated with the abstract I posted this morning on Flickr:
    "I almost never set out to photograph a landscape, nor do I think of my camera as a means of recording a mountain or an animal unless I absolutely need a 'record shot'. My first thought is always of light." 
    – Galen Rowell

    To many photographs lack a clear subject, but then too many also stop at simply having a subject.  Photography is a rich medium offering composition, lighting and many other tools to influence the viewer's experience.  

    I've never been a big fan of rules.  
    "There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs." – Ansel Adams

    Like a sculptor who sees what a stone wants to be and then lets that piece come into being, to get many results requires "seeing" the potential result beforehand, and taking an approach before the exposure which enables that result to come into being.  This image is a great example.  While the core concepts are fairly simple, the exposure and shutter speed for the leaves and for the desired time-lapse were very different from what I'd use if I were simply creating a star trails shot.

    Sadly, while Flickr has its positive points, the management there seems to have been holding some sort of a bizarre personal grudge against me for the past 2 years, withholding my work from key features on the site.  So while I have photographer friends who hang out there and I drop by, the site only gets a tiny fraction of my work and time.  I've submitted multiple support requests and they haven't taken the time to give me even the courtesy of a response.  Flickr dropped the block on my work from being in Explore for one week earlier this month, and 27 of my recent photos popped into Explore for various days.  The other 27 I already had active in Explore at that time were part of 245 which had rotated into Explore at one time, so the 27 new ones probably also represented 200+ which could have participated if I hadn't been blocked.  Oh well, someone at Flickr apparently really wants that story told over and over again to 1M people on G+ and Facebook so people will know that Yahoo runs communities rigged by the house, so I'm happy to oblige.  

    As for numbers, they are meaningless.  I'll take one real person who engages my curiosity, inspires my creativity, or who challenges my intellect over 100 who don't.  As I mentioned on your post last night, it's good to see you and your work back on G+.

  41. Bren Redmond
    Reply

    I will tell you, I don't know you personally, but I know God is proud of how you show others His beauty that surrounds us. So many don't get it. You do. I appreciate the hard work you put into your photography.

    God bless,
    Brenda Redmond

  68. David Kline
    Reply

    This is great. I would love to repost this over on FB, but the only way I can contrive to do it is to copy the photo itself and upload it to a post, which I don't want to do without your permission. I'd post a link to the blog to credit you. If you'd rather, I'll just stick with the link to the blog. In any case, thanks!

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