Tufa By Moonlight And Flashlight
Last month I went to the Montrose Arts And Crafts Festival and a met fellow photographer, Paul Renner. Paul leads photo safaris to Africa multiple times a year that are quite special. Having grown up in Tanzania makes his safaris unique and I look forward to going on one someday(Check out his website here). From our long conversation I found out that he was leading a workshop in the Eastern Sierra and I decided to attend. The first evening the group went to the “Mono Lake Tufa State Natural Preserve” to shoot the tufa formations by full moonlight and by flashlight. For the shot above, I waited for the moon to rise so that it would provide a glow about the tufa tower as well to generate an interesting silhouette(37 secs @ f/8).
We also experimented with lighting the tufa with various types of flashlights to get some fun compositions.
As the sun set and the full moon rose, the entire group lined up, tripods and cable releases ready, setting up exposure. I set up for ISO 200 f6.3 for 13secs to allow light from everyone flashlight to illuminate the tufa towers. When everyone was ready, we all tripped shutters at the same time.
A little later I broke away from group in search of some interesting tufa and found this set with just a bit of sun light left on the horizon. The moon provided a lot of light so there was not a lot of need to use the flashlight. This one was ISO 400 f/16 for 8.5sec to keep the foreground and background sharp.
For this photo, thought I would have some fun with my flashlight. Set up for ISO 200 f11 for 20secs so my flashlight provided more of the light to the tufa and then I moved the flashlight in the zig zag pattern making it look like christmas lights.
For this last one, one of the other members of the group had a flashlight with a ref bulb, ISO 200 f/8 for 80secs.
During the next 4 days the group enjoyed photographing Bodie State Historical Park, Rock Creek, the Minarets, and the upper portions of Bishop Creek.
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