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Commentary, Locations, Sierra Nevada Fall Color

Sierra Nevada Aspen Hunting and the Weather

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Something to think about for photographers headed to the eastern Sierra to photograph aspen color next week: The seven-day Yosemite to Kings Canyon weather forecast is calling for snow (!) on Wednesday and Thursday, and things don’t look like they’ll totally clear out on Friday. This has some ramifications:

  • Those of us who get to the eastern Sierra by way of one of the trans-Sierra passes may encounter difficulties if the forecast pans out. I would not be at all surprised to see a temporary closure of Tioga Pass Road (highway 120) though Yosemite, and other passes to the north could be affected. This makes for a very long drive for those of us in the SF Bay area!
  • A storm can affect the aspen color display. A cold snap can, or so many of us believe, encourage the colors to change. But wind can also bring down many of the leaves in a hurry. (I once arrived before dawn at North Lake to see – just barely – incredible color conditions in the grove the runs up the hillside on the far side of the lake. Moments later a snow squall blew in, and as the wind began to blow I retreated to my car for a half hour. When it passed, half of the leaves had blown down!
  • On the plus side, an early winter storm can bring some opportunities and advantages as well. Overcast and rainy/snowy weather can intensify the colors and create some very compelling and moody scenes. New snow adds something special to the scene, whether only on the higher peaks above or down among the trees.

It could get interesting, so check those weather forecasts and the road conditions on the mountain highways. Fall in the Sierra is a time of change in many ways. Pacific winter-type weather systems start to move through, and they can range from very mild to virtually full-blown winter storms. While most of them pass quickly, some can last for a few days and close passes. It would be very unusual for such an early October storm to actually mark the beginning of the winter road closures, but mid-October storms have done so in the past.

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Commentary, Locations

Reader Question: Yosemite in October

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“Tom” recently sent me a question about visiting Yosemite in October, and I thought I would reply here where others can see the information, too.

I will be in CA in October and was planning on going up to Yosemite for a few days. Any advice you’d care to share would be greatly appreciated. :)

California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the SierraBefore I answer your question below, you might be interested in my book, California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra, available from Heyday Books and from Amazon. It shares a lot of what I have learned about locating and photographing Sierra Nevada fall color, along with a large collection of my autumn photography in locations from the eastern Sierra to Yosemite Valley.

October may be my favorite time of the year to be in the Sierra in general and in Yosemite in particular. While some things that draw people to Yosemite (waterfalls, for example) are not likely to be at their best, there are many other wonderful attractions at this time of year. October is a transition month in the Sierra, with early October often having the character of late summer and late October often feeling more like early winter. Conditions can change quickly, and warm and sunny days may be followed by a day of rain or snow.

Autumn Light, Yosemite High Country
Autumn Light, Yosemite High Country

I have divided the following description geographically to separately describe Yosemite Valley, the Yosemite high country, and the east side of the Sierra Nevada range.

Yosemite Valley – The busy summer tourism season winds down in September after the Labor Day weekend, and by October the Valley is no longer quite the crowded, urbanized, noisy zoo that it can be on the worst days during the summer. (I generally steer clear of the Valley in June, July, August, and early September.) The meadows will have turned golden brown already, and real autumn colors begin to appear later in the month. While some are subtle, such as the transition of the oak tree leaves, others are quite striking, including brilliant fall colors of maples and dogwood trees. I make a habit of shooting autumn colors in The Valley every fall right around the end of October or beginning of November. (You’ll often find me there on Halloween!) Continue reading Reader Question: Yosemite in October →

Commentary, Locations

Yosemite High Country – A Brief Late July Report

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Carefully timing my visit to miss the weekend crowds, I spent the better part of the last week of July (2011) in the Yosemite National Park high country along and around Tioga Pass Road. I posted the first photograph from this visit earlier today, and more will appear here soon. But while the visit is still fresh in my mind, I thought I’d share a few observations and comments that might be useful to others heading there or to other parts of the high Sierra soon.

In a typical late July, all of the snow is melted out at “campground elevations” (generally 8000′ – 9000′ or so – Tuolumne Meadows is at 8600′), essentially all of the usual high country areas are accessible by trail or cross-country travel, wildflowers are at or near their peak, mosquito populations have reached their peak, and visitors are starting to arrive en masse for day use, camping, and backpacking. With the exception of the influx of visitors, this is not quite a typical season, however.

Snow – As I drove up Tioga Pass Road on July 26, the first surprise was finding that there were still large snow patches in some forested areas as low as 8000′ or so. I don’t recall seeing this much snow so low so late in the season in the past. (My memory may not include the lower elevations at this time of year in 1996, the last year with such impressive snow fall.) I stayed at the Porcupine Flat campground, and at least one site there still had enough snow as to make it pretty unusable. Continue reading Yosemite High Country – A Brief Late July Report →

Commentary, Equipment

An Itinerant Photographer and His iPad: A Second Report

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Some time ago I posted “An Itinerant Photographer and His iPad: A First Report” – and this is a follow-up to that post, written after a few more months of experience with the iPad. It is also an expanded version of something that I posted in a photography forum in response to a question about using the iPad as an image backup device.

One question that seems to come up a lot is whether it is possible/viable to use the iPad as a backup device for making copies of your files in the field. There at least two reasons that you might want to copy your files from your camera’s memory to an external storage. First, you may want to create duplicate backup copies of the image files on your camera memory cards for safety reasons – it is risky to have only single copies of them. Second, some might choose to do this so that they can economize by using a single memory card, transferring files from the card when it is full, erasing the card, and starting over again. I’m not convinced that this makes a lot of sense given the relatively low cost of memory cards today and the risks of having only a single copy of your files.

You can transfer raw files directly from your camera to the iPad using a USB cable and the “camera connection kit” adapter. Here are ome observations based on my experience doing this:

  • It works – you can move your raw files to the iPad and view them there.
  • The process is very slow. Thumbnail previews appear quite quickly, but downloading is a very long process during which I usually find something else to do.
  • You need to think through the memory issues carefully. Your raw files are quite large and the maximum memory in an iPad is currently 64GB. I have the maximum in mine which leaves me about 32GB for photographs. (I have a lot of music and video files on my iPad – perhaps more than the typical user.) There will be very little space for photographs if you get the 16GB model and the 32GB might be tight depending upon what else you store on it.
  • You can view the raw files directly on the iPad. They are not optimized – and raw files need some sharpening and so forth to look their best – but they are fine for previewing images and sharing with others who might want to quickly see what you came up with. Don’t underestimate the value of being able to share files this way. I notice that sharing the images with others on the iPad is often a more natural and pleasant experience than sharing them on a laptop – viewers will frequently hold the iPad and pass it to one another in ways that are rarely seen with laptops.
  • The raw files cannot display at full native resolution – there is some upper boundary currently built into the iPad – though they do  display at a resolution that is considerably larger than that of the iPad screen.
  • I may be missing something that would make the task simpler, but I don’t find it very easy to delete the files from the iPad once they are transferred to my computer.

A bottom line is that you can use an iPad for backing up files in the field, but you need to be aware of several issues before you decide to depend on this. The issues include the very slow file transfer speed and the importance of making sure that the unused memory on your iPad is sufficient for the files you will transfer. With a 64GB iPad, the vast majority of users will have more than 32GB available.

(If the speed and storage space limitations of the iPad are a problem for you, there are other options for backing up in the field. There are specialized back drive products that are designed for making backups of your camera memory cards, or you could use a regular laptop. The tradeoff its greater storage capacity and access to more photo editing applications include shorter battery life and greater size/weight.

What about image editing on the iPad? Several programs are available the provide varying levels of image editing capability.  I use Photogene. It is competent and well-worth the very tiny cost. It provides basic editing features that can let you create decent (but not stellar) jpgs for upload. It does a curve, cropping, black and white conversion, color adjustments, simple sharpening and so forth – but it most definitely is not Photoshop or Light Room. That said, I’ve used it for doing quick edits and web posts from the field. For what it is and for the very low cost, I recommend it. (iPad apps appear so rapidly that it is quite possible that other options will be available by the time you read this.)

Can an iPad replace your laptop? The iPad is only sort of a laptop replacement – I like to simply say that “an iPad is not a laptop,” though it can perform some tasks that you might otherwise use a laptop for. It is great for web browsing and OK for email, though extensive typing on the virtual keyboard is awkward and error-prone. I am fine with it for short emails and short web posts and reading the updating social media sites. You can do better with an external keyboard, but this starts to defeat the small size/weight and convenience of the iPad and makes a laptop look like less of a burden.

Battery life is excellent. Apple is not lying when they claim 10 hours per charge.

The tiny size and small weight make a significant difference. Even my small laptop seems downright large after carrying the iPad instead. It is small enough to easily slip into a side pocket of my camera bag when traveling. I left the laptop at home and carried only an iPad on a weeklong trip to New York City. I was very grateful for the size and weight savings and only mildly inconvenienced by missing some of the power of the laptop I would usually take. What with tripods, lenses, bodies, flash equipment and other gear, I welcome the smaller size/weight of the iPad when a regular laptop is not really needed.

One other reason to have an iPad is that publishing is likely to move increasingly to forms that can be distributed on devices such as the iPad. Photographers would do well to experience and understand this first hand, especially if they intend to distribute their photographs electronically and/or write about photography.

VERDICT:

It will make sense for some photographers and some circumstances, but not for others. There is no universal “right” answer to the question of whether the iPad is a useful tool for photographers – the real question is whether its features will or will not be useful to you. For my part, when I don’t have to do more than minimal editing in the field and I want to share electronic versions of photographs and travel light… I prefer to take the iPad rather than my laptop.

What do you think? Do you use an iPad for photography-related purposes? Are you wondering if it will work for you? Leave a comment via the link found below.