Moonbow and Light Trail on Yosemite Falls

Timelapse video: youtu.be/gD1cJzsTHMo

Since 2019, I've had the idea of photographing a moonbow on Yosemite Falls while a hiker created a light trail up the trail next to it. My first attempt at this shot was canceled by the pandemic, and then the next few years were too dry for good moonbows. This year's record snowpack finally enabled this photo.

I wrote a Python code to predict where and when rainbows and moonbows could be possible. This involved some fun spherical trigonometry and vector math that I hadn't needed in a while. I was worried that I might have made an error and a whole group of people might make a trip based upon my erroneous predictions. Fortunately, my predictions were accurate, the moonbow appeared right on schedule, and it lasted about 20 minutes when viewed from Sentinel Dome.

Jon-Kyle Mohr and I carried six cameras up to Sentinel Dome, across the valley from Yosemite Falls. Griff Joyce and Mark Vierra, of the Half Dome 50/50/50 adventure and the Yosemite lunar eclipse trip, hiked up Yosemite Falls at the right time. An 82% moon illuminated the scene.

Clouds obscured the sky above, blocking the moon, and filled the valley, blocking my view of the falls. Following some desperate prayers, they cleared exactly as the moonbow occurred. The photo was possible after all!

This is the first of several posts I'll make, since I have a number of angles and variations on this photo. I stacked a bunch of 25-second exposures to produce the light trail. A single exposure was used for the moonbow.

Taken in: United States / California / Curry Village (show map)

Taken on: May 31, 2023

Tags:

yosemite

moonbow

moon

bow

light

trail

night

painting

falls

waterfall

sony

a7R3

Zeiss

100

100mm

milvus

sentinel

dome « less

Sets appears in: • Yosemite

Groups appears in: • High Sierra • yosemite more » • California • U.S. National Parks • Mountains • Landscape Exploration • Polaris (Post 1 - Award 3) • Landscape Astrophotography • CELEBRATING NATURE • Photo Infos • Into the Night Photography • in explore • The Fog / The Mist and The Rain • ☼ Weather of the American West ☈ • Brain Vision. Art. • ☆The Power of Now / Die Kraft der Gegenwart ☆ • Best Photographs on Flickr • Convergence of Nature • Better Than Explore – Make Photography Great Again! • Mes Amis Photographes • People, Places and Faces of the Lonely Remote American West • Weather of the American Southwest ☈ • Places of the American West That Time Has Forgotten • WONDERS OF PHOTOGRAPHY IN GENERAL.MARAVILLAS DE LA FOTOGRAFIA EN « less

Camera: Sony ILCE-7RM3A, f/2.8, 25 sec, 100mm, ISO 1250 (more info) (hide info)

Camera:	Sony ILCE-7RM3A
Lens:	DT 100mm F2 SAM
Aperture:	f/2.8
Exposure Time:	25
Focal Length:	100mm
ISO:	1250
Exposure Bias:	0 EV
Flash:	Off, Did not fire
Exposure Program:	Manual
Exposure Mode:	Manual
Metering Mode:	Multi-segment
White Balance:	Auto
Saturation:	High
Sharpness:	Hard
Color Space:	sRGB
Software:	Adobe Photoshop 24.5 (Windows)
Show full info

Stats: 18,733 views / 56 comments

close tools panel

Badge creator

Use Flickriver Badge Creator to create a badge linking to your photos, your group or any other Flickriver view.

You can place your badge on your Flickr profile, Blog or Website.

Add to your iGoogle or Netvibes page

Flickriver widget for iGoogle or Netvibes can display almost any Flickriver view - most interesting today, by user, by group, by tag etc. Once added to your personalized homepage, just edit widget settings to select your desired view.

Clickr on one of the buttons below to install:

Embed on your Web site

To embed this view, Copy and Paste the following HTML code:

Black background (preview):

White background (preview):

Firefox and Chrome addons

Adds a 'Flickriver' button to your browser. While viewing any Flickr photos page, click on this button to open the same view on Flickriver.

Install in Firefox
Install in Chrome

Search plugin

Add 'Search on Flickriver' to your browser's search box. Works with Firefox and Internet Explorer. Install search plugin

"View on Flickriver" Greasemonkey script

A Greasemonkey script that adds Flickriver links to various Flickr photo pages - user photos, favorites, pools etc, allowing to quickly open the corresponding Flickriver view.

Also, allows quickly viewing any Flickr photo on black background in large size.

Install "View on Flickriver" script

Bookmarklet

While viewing any Flickr photos page, click on the bookmarklet to open the same view on Flickriver.

To install: drag and drop the following link to your Bookmarks toolbar.
IE users - add the link to your Favorites under the Links folder