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Fall Night Photography in Yosemite

Night photography in Yosemite National Park, copyright Jeff Sullivan 2012

Fall star trails over El Capitan, November 2012

Night photography of fall colors provides calm conditions and even lighting, plus the addition of starry skies.

I’ve captured long exposures of colorful fall leaves floating down streams in the past, but the concept of combining them with star trails occurred to me in 2012.  When I arrived in Yosemite to find clear, starry skies, I had a lot of fun capturing leaves drifting down the Merced River.  Conditions couldn’t have been more perfect.  There was wind upon arrival during the day to knock the leaves out of the trees, but then it calmed down for nice sky reflections as I shot.

I lead workshops to pursue these types of shots in Yosemite… check my Yosemite schedule for details!

Leafnado

Yosemite Falls at Night

Yosemite Fall Reflection at Night

Autumn Nights in Yosemite Valley

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208 thoughts on “Fall Night Photography in Yosemite”

  1. and in fact thats what earth looked like in the begining before animals were created,and at ps.37;11 it says the meek will inherit the earth and find abundance of peace…29 says they will live there forever…..i want to be there!!!!!

  2. +L'lori Holland This blog post describes how I make these star trails images:
    Creating Star Trails Images
    http://activesole.blogspot.com/2011/05/creating-star-trail-images.html
    On a full moon night like this, you get the landscape illuminated, and less expensive cameras can be used because I only needed f/4 or f/5 and ISO 2000 or 2500.  Although an individual photo may have a lot of noise at that ISO setting, when you combine many images in the star trails software, nearly all of the noise disappears.  That's one of the great things about star trails processing… it makes night photography accessible to more photographers.

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