The Wild Photographer

All About Night Photography with Jeff Pfaller: Eclipses, Stars, Fireflies, and Much More

• Episode 65

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Court sits down with Jeff Pfaller to go deep on photographing the night: Milky Way fundamentals, foreground strategy (and why your cell phone flashlight is secretly a lighting tool), photo stacking workflows, fireflies (including the Smokies synchronous phenomenon), eclipse photography and logistics, editing philosophy, and gear that matters most when it’s 10:30pm and your fingers are questioning your life choices.

Key Topics Include:

  • The importance of planning a night photo shoot during the day
  • Double exposures for night photography to capture the landscape
  • Firefly photography
  • The mindset needed for photographing and publishing a photo book
  • A step by step playbook for Eclipse photography
  • Some amazing advice for assembling the perfect camera kit for you

You can find Jeff (including his fabulous book) at:

Book - https://jeffpfaller.com/products/dark-skies-photography-book

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/pfallerj

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/jeffpfaller

YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/user/pfallerj

Court's Websites

Sponsors and Promo Codes:


Court (00:00)
Hey folks, welcome back to another episode of The Wild Photographer. I'm your host, Court Whelan and I've got another great guest for you today, Jeff Pfaller He is the author of a recently published book on dark skies, primarily in US national parks. Exquisite photography, dark skies don't just mean astrophotography to him, star photography. It means aurora borealis. It means amazing moonscapes.

It's just really a litany of various things to photograph after the sun goes down. But the reality is he as a photographer is much, more than that. And we're going to do a deep dive into his life, his world and his view of photography in today's episode. think you're going to really enjoy the variety of perspectives that he offers. I really resonated with him and I think you're going to love and learn from what he has to offer.

Court Whelan (00:47)
But before we get to the episode, I wanted to thank Art Storefronts. Art Storefronts is a website that I love for so many reasons. Probably first and foremost, it just is a one-stop shop. Very easy, very highly effective way to sell photographic art, really any art, but I of course specialize in photography, to sell photos online. That's what I'm getting at here. They have incredible promo tools.

Not only is the website just beautifully laid out and they walk you through every step of the process to design it and format and upload your shots. They even go not just one extra mile, but multiple extra miles to help you even sort and cull your artwork to figure out what pieces actually are going to sell the best. When they do select that, they upload it, they keyword it, and they give you all these amazing tools to help promote your artwork. This might be social, this might be blog, this might be direct emails. They even

give you an entire marketing calendar at the start of every month to tell you what they're going to do to automatically do this promo for you. It's, it's just absolutely amazing. And I have to say at the very core of it, it's just a great photo presentation website. They show you the mockups. They show you the, the renderings of what your photos look like on different walls and different houses and different background colors and different frames, all sorts of stuff. They seamlessly integrate with Bay photo and other

Photo printing platforms in order to actually get your photos printed and drop shipped, meaning you don't have to pre-order them and, house them and store them in your house. They just automatically go through once an order is put through. So art storefronts is just a game changer for my artwork. I should also say one of the things ⁓ that I love most is the ability to sell merchandise. Like they actually integrate with platforms to sell things like throw pillows and mugs and blankets and puzzles and.

Christmas ornaments, like It's kind of amazing the various places you can place your art. And again, it's just all automated and simple and easy via art storefronts. So big fan of theirs, great partners of the podcast. If you mention the wild photographer when contacting art storefronts, you will get an entire free website build. Like they actually build the whole thing for you. Again, just if you mentioned the wild photographer podcast, when you sign up,

or register or supply your email or the first person you talk to. It's that easy. once again, artstorefronts.com is where to find out more information there.

Next, I'd like to think Bay Photo. So Bay Photo is who I use to print all my personal pieces. If I'm doing any sort of gallery work, even fulfilling for my website, I use Bay Photo and they're another great sponsor of this podcast. If you use the code TWP25, so TWP like the wild photographer 25,

You will save 25 % off any one wall display order with that promo code. This includes metal prints and acrylic prints, frame prints, epic prints, canvas wrap, and so much more. They are incredible. They are the real pro level choice here. I think one of the coolest ways to really see your art, experience your art, showcase your art is through print. I know we're very much in the digital age these days, but print is still king.

And I got to say of the pieces I've printed through Bay Photo, I've printed some metal prints. I've printed some on really high quality photo paper and they just come out amazing and they're very, very easy to work with. Their website's fantastic. So once again, Bay Photo is a really, really great resource. Their ordering system is slick and intuitive. It's really developed by photographers for photographers.

So it's got a lot going for it. I highly recommend you check them out. I really just friend to friend, I highly recommend considering printing out some of your photos. It just gives them such a new life. If you're used to scrolling through social, if you're used to just creating slideshows for your computer or for your TV, and that's the majority of how you look at your finished product, highly recommend you take another step forward, go to print, get some things on your wall, get some things framed, and consider using Bay Photo.

So once again, if you would like that promo code, it's TWP25 for 25 % off any wall art order. All right, let's get into the episode now.

Court Whelan (04:58)
Jeff, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for joining.

Jeff (05:00)
Yeah, thanks so much for having me. Looking forward to talking to you.

Court Whelan (05:02)
As always, I'm going to launch right into it because you are a man of many talents and I'm a man of many questions. So, I know of you for incredible night sky, dark sky, astrophotography, and so much more. And I want to start the conversation with your techniques and your mindset in going into night photography. So if you were to distill your techniques, your, your mentality, going into a night photo shoot, into a handful of key factors, key takeaways.

For the audience, what might they be?

Jeff (05:32)
the thing to keep in mind with astrophotography specifically is, you know, there's definitely a kind of foundation that you can start from, right? So if you think about photographing the stars, once you figure out your settings for shooting Milky Way, constellations, you name it, it's probably going to be the same no matter where you go. And the challenge then is about finding interesting compositions. So you can do that from

your backyard a lot of the time. You'll just head out in your backyard with your camera, you're gonna want a tripod.

And for most people, if you've got like a DSLR or a mirrorless camera, we get super tactical almost immediately, but just do ISO 1600,

have your aperture be wide open so you want your F number to be as low as possible on your lens, and then do like 10 or 13 seconds. And that should probably be...

good enough to be a starting point and then you can adjust and dial things up down from there. And then once you've got that, then yeah, it's really about finding an interesting location. know, I do a lot of scouting during the day because it's kind of hard to figure out when you're out at night, it's 11 p.m., 3 a.m., what have you. It's kind of hard to find the good angles and the good compositions.

So spend a little bit of time.

during the day as well, going out. There's plenty of apps that are on your phone, like Google Sky Maps and Stellarium and PhotoPills. mean, pick whichever one that you want. And just kind of walk around during the day and use the night AR mode on it. And you can see where the Milky Way is going to be, where the moon's going to be. And you can kind of get organized early on so that when nighttime comes and you've got all sorts of things to think about, like how do I stay warm? How do I not trip over a tree root?

How do I not run across animals? Like you've at least got your plan in place and you've got your settings, you know what your camera should be set to and you can just focus on worrying about the weather and getting lucky and those kinds of things.

Court Whelan (07:25)
Yeah, I often bill astrophotography as the easiest and hardest photography at the same time. It's easy in the sense that there really are one set of settings. Like you're not going to be too variable from that, like little tweaks, but it's the hardest for everything you just said. It's figuring out where in the night sky it's going to appear. You have to have interesting foreground elements. Are you going to have any sort of

Additional lighting in the scene. Are you gonna try to use the phase of the moon to do some foreground lighting? And then yeah making yourself comfortable because to do it. Well, you've got to be out there for a while So I want to touch on the foreground element thing and it you know foreground mid-ground background all the same like in other words What else is in the photo besides the stars? I think a lot of people just starting out

will think, well, it's those beautiful stars that I love looking at with my eyes. And so that must be what I want to primarily photograph. But I will advocate, as I'm sure you probably will, is it's really the rest of the scene that is kind of the, no pun intended, but star of the show. And then the night sky is just that massive cherry on top that brings it all together. But you kind of have to be ultra concerned about the scene. Like what's in front of you? What are the textures? What's the story around that?

Can you walk me through some of your, you you can either go about it like your favorite foreground elements or what you're especially looking for. Like, are you trying to fill the scene a third of the way or are you really just looking around and just getting that spark, that vision, that sort of beginning idea that this could be a good photo and then tweaking once you're in the field. I found that the more you plan for night photography, astrophotography, Northern Lights photography, the better, but.

Yeah, how do you think about that when you think about your individual scene?

Jeff (09:12)
Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, I think for people who are just starting out, ⁓ like don't get too caught up in the planning. Like I remember the first time I took a photo of the Milky Way, semi-successfully, like it's an out focus picture, but like the first time I saw it show up on the viewfinder, I don't even remember. I think, you know, it was in Black River Falls, Wisconsin, and I think it was just, you know, a random state forest. So it was a lake and some woods and it was pretty, but the feeling when...

you see the galactic core of the Milky Way come up on your viewfinder and you've got it, like, don't underestimate that feeling, because that feels pretty cool. But then, yeah, to your point, once you do that a few times, it's like, okay, the stars kind of look the same, like, what else can I do to add some interest to it? So, you know, the way my particular technique in how I photograph the stars is I shoot the foreground during...

blue hour, so it's after the sun's gone down, I think it's like around 40, 45 minutes afterwards. So there's still plenty of light out in the landscape, and so it's illuminating things. So you're not struggling with, do I need to light paint, and is it creating weird shadows? You know, it kind of overpowers the moonlight a little bit, but you can use the moon to kind of fill some things in. But you're still using that kind of soft, ambient light.

to light up the foreground and then wait three, four, however many hours for the Milky Way, moon, whatever it is to do its thing and get in position. And then after the fact, stacking all those together in Photoshop or I the software on Windows is called Deep Sky Stacker. I forget what the name of the software is on Macintosh, but there's a couple different variants of it.

But that's not the only way to do it, right? You could have a star tracker and it's one shot of the night sky. It's following the stars. You can get that crisp point light and can just let in more light for an hour or two hours, whatever you want to do. The stars are nice and sharp. And then it's just really putting two pictures together because you still have the same kind of issue. If the camera's moving, now the ground is going to be out of focus. So let's just generally...

Like the way I'm shooting, think influences what I look for because I'm looking for things that in an ideal world, after sunset, the light's coming from the West. So, ⁓ looking for ways that that light source can kind of fill the landscape. But that's not always the case. ⁓ And I've used the moon before. If there's a full moon, it's kind of...

You love it and you hate it because it can wash out the stars and wash out the Northern Lights. But it can also really brighten up the landscape and create some interesting shadows. I've done a little bit of light painting, but that's also an option that people can do. you can keep it super lo-fi and just use your cell phone. And as long as you've got a remote shutter, just experiment and walk around and shine your cell phone light on something. If it's...

too far away and it's a big cliff or a mountain, it's obviously not gonna light it up. But if you've got a really close foreground, like some bushes or flowers or trees, or you're really close to some interesting rocks or you're on a beach, your phone will be able to light it up a little bit. I've used my car headlights before to do things. It's kind of like whatever you've got with you and just experiment, play around. ⁓ If it doesn't work out, as long as you're shooting in digital, the price of that is pretty low, right? Like you don't have to...

worry about mortgaging your house to develop the film.

Court Whelan (12:32)
Exactly. I like that you said the cell phone flashlight

might be surprised that when you're light painting or essentially illuminating the foreground while you're taking a long exposure, you do not need much light. In fact, the less light, the better you need a very soft, not pinpointed, not strong flashlight. So yes, there are some great companies out there making these 3000 lumen flashlights that are great for

spotting things in the dark and looking at distant landscapes just for fun. But for photography, I often say, yeah, cell phone light, or maybe even like one of those like key chain LED lights. It's like the single little bulb because the softer it is, the easier it is to work with the big, strong, harsh light. You have to turn it on almost like how a flash bulb would be like a split second because it's just, it's so strong. So yeah, that's an excellent technique. And so you mentioned star trackers and that is something I wanted to ask you about.

Jeff (13:17)
Yeah. Yeah, doesn't take much.

Court Whelan (13:25)
I've never actually used one. And for those in the audience that aren't aware, essentially there's this really interesting phenomenon that when you are taking long exposures of stars, you really can't take too long of an exposure, like longer than 20 seconds or 25 seconds, because in fact, the earth is rotating so fast that the stars start to blur. They start to create star trails. And sometimes this is really fun. If you have a...

An exposure that's for several hours long. Those star trails turn into these beautiful spiral shapes across the sky, especially around the North star, this concentric circle. But you know, you, are limited with how much light you can let in your camera because 10, 15, 20, 25 seconds is still not enough to really get a, an evenly exposed scene. So there's an answer in technology out there where these things.

actually have motors in them, very gentle, very slow moving calculated motors where if you pinpoint this little crosshair on the North star, the motor of this tripod head will actually move. So it tracks the stars across the sky. So you now can take super long exposures and not get those star trails, which I think is really quite interesting.

And so these Star Trackers have this incredible ability to give you really long exposures. I've always been very curious about them. They seem like highly technical. They seem like it might almost be beyond me to set up and work well, but have you used them and any thoughts?

Jeff (14:55)
Yeah, I'm in the same boat you are. I've never used one before. But I've watched people use them and it was a guy that I ran into. You make very fast friends when there's three people at a single viewpoint shooting dark sky photography. It's like, well, what else am I going to do? I might as well chat you up. And he's had a Star Tracker and he was like, hey, do you want to give it a try? So it sounded like it was a fairly easy thing to just pop on your tripod. ⁓

and get alignment. I'm sure it's harder than that the first time when you're figuring it out. But yeah, they're an interesting tool. mean, the stacking technique that I was talking about, that's kind of like it's approximating the effect of the star tracker. It's the same kind of principle, right? You're trying to capture hours worth of light and then the star tracker lets you get it all in one shot. So your sensor is just receiving light continuously.

But if you use the stacking technique and you keep your exposure time short to like 13 seconds or 15 seconds or whatever it is, then it's the software kind of creating that effect where it's just layering everything on top of each other. I also like it because you can use it to reduce ⁓ noise in your photos. Although since I've started photographing the noise reduction tools in just the ones that are built into Lightroom,

Topaz, their software has a denoiser. It's pretty incredible what the software can take out of it. So it's getting to the point where I don't necessarily feel like I have to do that stacking technique to specifically get rid of the noise. And I can rely on the software to do it. And it kind of also opens you up to start shooting at higher ISOs so you can have a more sensitive sensor.

there's lots of noise in there and then the software can kind of take care of it. So I haven't done too much experimentation with that, but the technology is coming a long way to help eliminate that issue that ⁓ seemed to have plagued dark-eyed photographers for a long while.

Court Whelan (16:44)
Okay, so kind of a personal question. What do you love about dark sky astrophotography? And then what might you say to folks in the audience that are just kind of dabbling in it or maybe taking some sunset and blue hour photography but haven't gone into that full dark sky? Yeah, why do you like it? And what might you say to them to get them on board?

Jeff (17:02)
Yeah, I mean, I think my answer to that is probably bound up in, so we've talked a lot about photographing the stars, but I consider dark sky photography kind of anything that happens under the cover of night. So there are lots of things. There's rainbows caused by moonlight. So you can Google that. They happen in Cumberland Falls and Yosemite Falls. There's the Northern Lights, there's eclipses, there's lightning storms. And the thing about

A lot of these things, they're rare. The degree of difficulty for photographing them is a little bit higher. ⁓ But to take a step back, being out at night in nature, it's kind of a unique experience because you can go to an incredibly busy place like Tunnel View in Yosemite or Many Parks Curve in Rocky Mountain National Park. And if you come away from there,

not getting hit by a car, you're in good shape because there's so many people and there's selfie sticks and screaming kids and tourists and it's just crawling with people. But if you stay there 45 minutes after sunset, you basically get the place to yourself and you feel like you are the only person for miles. You feel like you've got the whole park to yourself. If you're a photographer, it's nice because you don't have to worry about people in your shot.

Although you do have to worry about cars and flashlights and headlamps, that's a whole other frustration that we can probably talk about earlier, but you feel truly alone. ⁓ The stars are magic, yes, but when you're photographing something like a lunar eclipse or the aurora or something that maybe is a little bit more unusual, meteors, comets, you name it, you feel like the universe is just giving you this gift that's just for you.

because you're the only one seeing it, probably.

That's kind what I like about nature photography anyway, is you can stay in the same spot for hours and it changes so many times. the nighttime moments just feel a lot more fragile and a lot more ephemeral. You hear sounds that you wouldn't have heard during the day, just from a sensory experience, it's very, very different. You can hear your heartbeat in your ears if it gets...

quiet enough.

And it's part of, I think as humans, we're also hardwired to have this reverence and awe for the stars, right? Because we navigate across the globe using the stars as our navigation. Our success as a species, if we didn't have the stars, we would probably be stuck on whatever continent we started from.

You know, it was how we bonded with each other when we came back to the village after like a day of hunting and gathering. Like we just tell ourselves these stories. There's not a culture on the planet that doesn't have a legend about the constellations. The moon is at godlike status basically in every culture. So there's a bit of that like instinctual thousands of years of evolution. You know, just general awe and connection to the night sky that I also feel when I'm out there. So that's the...

That's the main reason. then like I mentioned before, the challenge of capturing them, it's just a little bit harder. It's interesting. Like you mentioned, it's kind of like chess, right? Like it's ⁓ easy to learn, but hard to master. And I think you hit the nail on the head with your description that astrophotography, it's simultaneously really easy, but also really, really frustrating and hard. So there's something to like setting out to try and...

you know, capture something that happens once every 60,000 years and you've got maybe a couple of seconds to pull it off. And if you can get it, it's great. You know, a lot of the times, like I fail a lot. Like a lot of times I come away with nothing. But yeah, it is rewarding to, you know, set out to do something that not a lot of people see and not a lot of people are able to shoot and being able to get it for yourself.

Court Whelan (20:40)
That is a beautiful answer and that that is why you wrote the book on dark sky photography Which I would certainly like to talk about in a second But yeah, that gets me in live and to take night photos ASAP. So well done Okay, so before I talk about the books I have some questions, you know that's such a an ultimate kind of achievement and goal for so many photographers is to be a published photographer to have a photo book the beautiful words you have in it

But I have another kind of technique question because it's probably the one thing, I've never nailed in night photography and you have just done it superbly. And that is firefly photography. And I've seen some of your photos and holy cow, are they gorgeous. And I don't know if the times I've tried.

My settings are wrong. The place is wrong. If you just need hyper abundance, there has to be some sort of X factor. So I was wondering if you can walk me through photographing fireflies at night.

Jeff (21:35)
Yeah. they are, they're really tricky. I mean, if photographing stars wasn't hard enough, at least they're there, right? Like they're always there. Once it gets dark enough, you can shoot them. But the interesting thing about Fireflies is there's kind of this rapid phase that the landscape goes through where, you know, it's light enough to see the trees and the foliage that they're around. And then there's this really short window where you can see

the fireflies and the landscape and kind of expose for both. And then the landscape completely goes away and you only get fireflies. And it's not like, you know, photographing a mountain or trees or something like that. Like you don't, you don't want to light paint fireflies because that, you know, anybody who's seen insects buzzing around a porch light can confirm this. Like it really messes with insects when you saw shine lights in them. So that, that ⁓ tool in the toolbox kind of, kind of goes away.

But yeah, would say for the Firefly photos that I've got, I'm definitely going to, like you mentioned, abundance. Like I'm going to a place where there's just a lot of Fireflies. ⁓ Yeah, so there's, well, ⁓ there's a phenomena, if you haven't heard of it, maybe your listeners haven't heard of it, in the Great Smoky Mountains, which is already kind of like the mecca for Fireflies. But there's one week in June.

Court Whelan (22:39)
And how do you know that ahead of time?

Jeff (22:54)
⁓ sometimes late May, depending on temperatures, where there's this one species of firefly in this one campground that has their mating week.

And what this particular species does is they blink back and forth in patterns to signal that they're compatible. ⁓ you've got this, picture the most amount of fireflies that you could possibly imagine and then triple it. Like there are tens of thousands of them, just...

floating throughout the woods. And just picture all of those going completely dark for four or five seconds, and then everything comes on at the same time. That's the level of the, once they get synced up, it's really, I do guided trips there, and there was ⁓ this 70-year-old, good old southern boy from Tennessee, and he was just giggling like a little kid, because they were right around his feet, blinking back and forth in patterns. ⁓

Court Whelan (23:48)
Amazing.

Jeff (23:50)
Yeah, definitely the amount is helping my photos out. But it's the same kind of principle as how I shoot the stars. So it's basically stacking them all together. So that's the other nice thing about it. Learn how shoot the stars. And then once you start adding other scenarios, you start to see the patterns and the techniques overlap. So you can kind of build this.

level of or build the skill set and build this knowledge and you can start to apply it to different things. So yeah, basically what you're doing is you're finding place with a lot of Fireflies. The other tricky thing is pulling focus. So pulling focus on the stars is challenging, but at least they're there already. Or they're always there for you to find. The Fireflies go out, so it's kind of hard to focus on them. So what you have to do is you almost have to set up your composition while it's light out.

pull your focus based on the foreground. And then, yeah, you gotta be in a place where you're trusting that there's gonna be lots of fireflies and they're gonna fill the frame. Because once it gets dark, especially if you're in the smokeys and you're under like a canopy, even if the moon's out, there's just not enough light for you to be able to pull focus on anything, ⁓ even manually. And like I said, you don't have that ⁓ fallback of like being able to shine a light on something temporarily to focus on it. So you wanna make sure that you're pulling focus.

while it's still light out before the fireflies get out. And then it's kind of like one of those things where you set up your shot and you're shooting one photo that night, basically. Which a lot of times is what I tell people to try and do anyway on guided trips. don't, cause it's really easy as a photographer to get stressed out about, you know, all the different angles and should it be zoomed in, do it with this lens, like this composition, like, especially with this kind of stuff, like just pick the shot.

Like the one thing that if you got it, you'd be happy with focus on getting that. And then once you've got that, then you can expand the other things. but back to, back to Fireflies. So you've pulled focus, you're in a place with a lot of them. then when the night comes, it's just a matter of like keeping your shutter open. so again, you're going to want to be wide open. You want your ⁓ F number to be as low as possible so that your aperture is just super wide and letting in a lot of light. depending on.

Like I where you're at. Like I said, the Smokies, there's spots that are super covered by foliage and there's not a whole lot in the light of landscape. So you want your ISO to be a little bit higher, like in the 800, maybe 1200 range. But there's also open spots where there's just more light coming down the landscape and then you want to be maybe a little bit lower at like 200, just so you're not like blowing out the landscape. And then...

You just have a long shutter speed. You should be able to do 30 seconds. So if it's not working out with seeing the fireflies, you can play with your shutter speeds up and down. But you want a long exposure. And then once you get that dialed in, basically just have a remote shutter, have it on a tripod. most remote shutters, you can lock it so that it's just shooting.

Continuously like once it stops of the photo it just takes another one and then you just keep your shutter open as much as possible to get as many fireflies as you can and Then after the fact and post-production If you don't move your tripod You can take all those photos and layer them together and stack them in Photoshop So you've got your typically your base like light foreground layer that you took during the day

and then you put all the Firefly shots on top of it and you set the blending mode to lighten. So what that basically does is it takes the lightest pixels in every picture and only shows those. So with Fireflies, like the Fireflies are going to be the brightest thing in the photo for all of them and your base shot of the foreground, that's going to be kind of your filler light shot. And then that will, you'll just get, you'll see all the Fireflies. So in the smokeys you can stack up

nine or ten photos and it feels like there's just loads of them. But if you're in your backyard, you might need to do an hour's worth of photos or something like that if you want to experiment with it. And then the one more thing I would say about Fireflies that's kind of like maybe a hack or a trick or a way to get a cool picture is, it sounds counterintuitive, but take a telephoto lens, so something that's like 70 millimeters, 100 millimeters that neighborhood.

And if you can find a composition where you're going to be shooting through a lot of fireflies. So like, let's pretend you were photographing like a solitary tree in a field, maybe. Like set up your camera. So it's like just a few feet above the ground where the fireflies like to hang out and compose the tree. Cause what that will do is it brings the foreground of the background closer together. And if you're at your widest aperture, like F 2.8, F4, whatever.

Court Whelan (27:56)
Mmm.

Jeff (28:17)
If a firefly goes in front of your lens very close, you'll get this really cool bokeh orb thing going on. And those look really cool if you can pull that off.

Court Whelan (28:31)
Wow. These are exceptional tips. really appreciate it. I might have to join you in the smoky mountains. If you say you guide trips there, that's so cool. Yeah.

Jeff (28:39)
It's a tough ticket to get. So they restrict access to the campground. 20,000 people apply for it and they only let a hundred in per night. So yeah, some people wait years and they don't get in. the way around that is you can book a campsite in the campground, which is still hard. It's like getting a Taylor Swift ticket. ⁓ But if you're willing to...

Court Whelan (28:51)
Interesting.

Mm-hmm.

Jeff (29:00)
you know, check every single day and set up alerts and like basically go on there 50, 60 times. It's doable to be able to get access.

Court Whelan (29:02)
Mm-hmm.

Amazing, so helpful. so remind me the time of night that seems to peak this nice balance of enough light in the foreground, making sure the fireflies are bright enough to stand out from the background. This is kind of like the blue hour or even later or slightly earlier.

Jeff (29:26)
Yeah, I would have to, cause like I said, the, in the Smokies in this particular campground, it's so covered with canopy that it's kind of deceiving how much light is there. So I would have to check like the exact sunset times, but it's basically from like eight 30 or nine o'clock during the summer. If I'm don't quote me on it, but if I'm remembering correctly, I believe sunset was like it's around eight 46.

Court Whelan (29:41)
Mm-hmm.

Jeff (29:55)
that time of year in that particular spot. I know I just said I'm guessing and then gave a specific time, but I think it was in that neighborhood. yeah, like the light starts to go away between 845, 9, 915. And then the fireflies, you can start seeing them between 9 or 930. And then for the synchronous ones in particular, the peak of it happens between 10 or 1030, depending on where in the week you are. Yeah.

Court Whelan (30:01)
Ha

so it is dark. It is like proper darkness.

Jeff (30:22)
Right. So it's important to, you know, that's probably your night, you know, for, and for a lot of astrophotography stuff, you know, show up and don't plan on being there for just five minutes. Like give yourself the space to enjoy it. So, yeah, I like to show up there, you know, like seven, seven 30 to have an hour and a half to kind of go around, find the composition, not feel pressure. If I forget, you know, a bottle of water or, you know, my jacket in the.

In the car, I can go back and get that and not feel like I'm rushing around and then just hang out there until 11, 11.30 at night. I mean, if you get lucky and you see these kinds of things, it's tough to tear yourself away. ⁓ For whatever I do next, I think I should pick something that allows me to get some sleep because when these things are going, it's like you got to leave at some point. But so many all nighters just because like what's happening is unbelievable or.

Court Whelan (31:00)
Mm-hmm.

Jeff (31:14)
a miracle.

Court Whelan (31:15)
yeah, it's just getting better and better and you're thinking I have to leave now? No way. Yeah, I hear you. Well, that's a great explanation. That is super valuable advice.

Court Whelan (31:23)
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Court Whelan (32:16)
I want to switch gears and talk about the book you published and I'm just going to grab a copy that you so graciously sent me here. It's absolutely gorgeous. For those watching on YouTube, you can see, I think it's reversed just because of the mirrored effect of the camera, but we're going to put notes.

Links in the show notes for this book and yeah, it's it's absolutely gorgeous dark skies rare phenomena in America's public lands All things that I love and I know that you love as well. I was wondering You can of course say anything you'd like about the book, but I I'm really keen to hear from You know a photographer's standpoint the journey to get published your thoughts on it kind of What you would recommend to others?

the good, the bad, the ugly of going about this process. I don't know if it's self-published or if you have a publisher, but just kind of providing, know our listeners, I mean, this is probably a goal of most photographers, whether they're just starting or season pro, whether this is going to happen for them in the coming weeks or the coming years, it's certainly something that is dreamy and desirable. So I wonder if you can talk about that.

Jeff (33:19)
Yeah.

Yeah, I appreciate the kind words about the book. I nature does, I mean, know, nature does like 99 % of it. I just show up and wait and be stubborn. But yeah, the book kind of started from the pandemic. So I mentioned it earlier, you know, I had taken my first photo of the Milky Way. And, you know, since that had my, you know, this idea in the back of my head bouncing around like, you know,

what if I had like a national park book that was set at night? And I didn't really know all the different kinds of phenomena that were out there. Like in my head it was stars, Milky Way, trails, the moon, that kind of thing. And the book, there's a chapter on the stars and there's a chapter on the moon, but 70 % of the book is all the other stuff. So that journey of discovery was something that

again, to maybe take a step back, from like the conversation about making a book and it's more about, you know, how you choose what you create as a creative. So I feel like the, thing that helped me, a complete the book, but B kind of be in the right mindset when you put it out in the world. Cause I think, you know, as an artist, a lot of people struggle with like, you know, they make it for themselves and they put it out and what if people don't want it.

What if it doesn't sell? I've invested all this money in it. You know, is it going to be worth it? And I tried to pick subject matter that I was really excited about going out and doing anyway. Like my mindset was, I go out and I don't sell a single book or a single person doesn't buy a photo or whatever, I've still gotten all the value I want out of it. Like I've seen

dozens of once in a lifetime bucket. Like my bucket list is completely empty right now. Like yeah, want, the things on my bucket list are I want to tell my wife I love her. I want to tell my kids I love them. You know, if I got hit by a bus tomorrow, I would want to do more of that stuff, obviously. But from a travel, you know, nature experience perspective, I'm good. I've been very lucky. So approaching it with that mindset, I think, you know, really

helped me kind of focus in on the subject matter I want to shoot. It was something that I was really passionate about. It was really geeked about going to see anyway. So that made the process of putting it together that much more enjoyable because it like it's frustrating. Like it's not easy stuff. There's plenty of times where I would go out and there would be clouds.

Northern Lights chapter was probably the hardest chapter to get. I had not seen them before this book and for two years, I tried to see them and failed. That maybe overstates it. It was a dozen, maybe 15 times of like going out and trying to capture them, but either it was cloudy everywhere within driving distance or the BZ was negative or the

know, coronal mass ejection completely missed Earth or the Aurora route, but I was on the wrong side of the planet. name, you name the reason it probably happened. And if you don't have that kind of like drive and personal investment in, know, I want to see this thing for myself, like book and photography aside, it just makes the process of putting together that much less enjoyable. know, I think most people that want to put, put

a book together probably, are already photographing things that they are really, really geeked about. But I also say like another thing that maybe helped me a little bit was like spending a little time in the beginning thinking about what I could potentially add to the conversation, right? Because there's plenty of books about national parks. There's plenty of photos, like so many Instagram accounts. So it was like, well, what am I?

What am I going to add to that? Like how is my perspective different? And at the end of the day, know, some of these things like they're like this fireflies are pretty popular. You know, like I 20,000 people want to see them. The first chapter in the book, Firefall, the horsetail fall phenomena in Yosemite National Park. Like if you want to know what a million dollars in camera equipment looks like, go there while this is happening because there's a there's definitely a crowd there. But as I

compiled more more shots for the book, like that focus on this specific thing. Things that don't happen very often, that happen in the dark in public lands. There are a lot of people that have a picture of fire fall, are lot of pictures that have a picture of the moon, there are a lot of pictures that people have a picture of the Northern Lights, but I found myself in a situation where I felt like I was one of the few that had pictures of all of them because of that.

time investment, willingness to stay out all night. You know, for the annual eclipse in 2023, my middle child and I drove 20 hours for something that lasted three to Canyonlands. Like, who does that? So I think that, the desire to see it helped power me through the journey to put the book together, if that makes sense, and made the dealing with the failure and the frustrations and the bumps and.

all that stuff along the way. Just was able to push past that, because it's just part of process. And then, like I said, when the time came to publish it, this journey to make it has made me really, really happy. If the book completely flops, I'm 100 % OK with it, because I've still got a lot out of it.

Court Whelan (38:37)
I think that's such an important message to creatives and artists. I don't know if you've read Rick Rubin's, the creative act book. It's, it's fantastic. And that's kind of one of his biggest messages that he says in many different ways, but is that you have to create art for yourself. ⁓ you have to not care what people think and, there will be people that like it and people that don't like it, but creating for yourself, I think is so important. yeah, what

What good advice for ⁓ building a collection, building a book, building a legacy there. So love that. Appreciate you sharing. You mentioned eclipse photography and that's something I wanted to ask about. Another type of photography I have not personally embarked on very much, if at all. I was wondering if you could tell me some of your thoughts and strategies. You have some amazing eclipse shots on your website, in your book, and it's kind of like photographing the moon. There are really only so many ways you can do it, but there are

there is kind of the right and the wrong way to do it, whether it's going to turn out at all. So, yeah, I if you'd walk me through your technique for photographing eclipse.

Jeff (39:38)
⁓ I think the challenging thing about eclipses, I guess, it's even more location constrained than a lot of other dark sky phenomena. It's easy in the sense that if you want to know where an eclipse was going to be in 100 years, it's science, right? Math, they figure it out. They've got that all plotted out. But the challenging part is the weather conditions.

and the travel. So, you know, if people haven't tried to chase an eclipse before, the one thing that maybe sneaks up on you that you don't realize is the traffic. Like it is an absolute nightmare. You know, getting to the eclipse is a little bit easier. Like it'll still feel busy, but it's doable. But leaving, like be prepared to triple whatever travel time you take.

Court Whelan (40:27)
would not have thought about

that.

Jeff (40:28)
Yeah,

it's nonsense. Stop and go traffic for six, seven hours. Because if you think about it, a million people are trying to pack into an area that's maybe 30 miles, 50 miles, or however wide the path of totality is. So that's the challenge. planning ahead is key. Just book a place to stay, like an Airbnb, on the path of totality. You're going to need to do it a year, year and a half out, maybe even two years.

but if you can just find a place in that path, because it's plotted out, that will save you just a lot of headaches The downside to that is if you book a place and you orient all your travel plans around it, if the weather's bad in that spot, now you're kind of out of luck. So there's a little bit of like still needing to be flexible as well with your travel plans, like the...

the annular eclipse that I just mentioned, my son and I were originally planning to go to Crater Lake to see it. So I thought that would be like super cool to be at Crater Lake and looking across it have the crater in the foreground and the time it was coming across, like the eclipse was gonna be low in the sky. So you'd be able to get that in the foreground, the background. But then the entire Pacific Northwest was just clouded out. So we were like, okay, well, let's switch it up. So that was where the, like, we're just gonna drive to Canyonlands, cause it was clear.

and in the path of totality. So think about your travel plans. That said, even if there are, I would say, like light clouds or maybe even mostly cloudy, it's worth, you know, still going out if you can't get to a place where the clear skies are a little bit more certain. So for example, during the 2024 eclipse last year, I saw a video from Dallas. So they were basically completely clouded in.

from first contact, 0 % coverage all the way up until the sun was 99 % covered. They didn't see the weird shadows on the ground, the animals weren't doing weird things, just so it was like, I guess it feels kind of darker, maybe? Like you can kind of tell something was happening, but not really. But then when the sun got completely covered, now there's no light.

kind of shining on the clouds and backlighting and creating that like white blown out effect. And you know, if you're looking at it, your eyes aren't doing that thing where they're trying to like the dynamic range, like the eyes dynamic range is pretty good, but we're still struggling to do it. But when there's no sunlight and you can look at it without the glasses, then you could see the eclipse through the clouds. So for the people at Dallas, it went from nothing to everything like that. And like the entire city just lost their minds.

Court Whelan (42:50)
Hmm.

Jeff (42:53)
It's a really cool video if you look it up and see it. There's plenty of them out there because there were lots of people there. So that's another thing where like, don't necessarily let the weather completely throw you off base, like within reason. Like if it's gonna be in thunderstorms, it's like those thick cumulus clouds where from 6,000 feet up to 30,000 feet, it's just completely, like that's not gonna work, but if it's like a light haze, you should be okay. And then once you get to actually photographing the eclipse,

I find them also particularly challenging because you're literally shooting the brightest objects possible, right? Like the sun, that's the biggest light source. You need the glasses, you need to put a solar filter on the front of your camera because you're pointing your sensor at thousands of nuclear explosions for hours. So you can really ruin your camera if you don't have a solar filter. So make sure you get that. ⁓

Court Whelan (43:48)
And the solar filter

is just like a really strong neutral density filter.

Jeff (43:51)
No, it filters out like a different, ⁓ like, yeah, more wavelengths of the light so that, yeah, the radiation isn't affecting the sensor. So yeah, it does darken it like a neutral density filter, but it also has additional protection in there for your lens. You're also going to want to have, you know, at least 400 millimeters of reach on your lens.

Court Whelan (43:53)
Oh, a different wavelength. Oh. Oh.

Jeff (44:13)
you know, maybe get like a 2X extender to get up to 800 millimeters if you don't have it. Because, yeah, it's going to look with anything less than that, the sun's going to be kind of small. Like there's still really cool compositions to be had of just this black orb hanging in the sky. But if you want like the diamond ring, the corona, you know, this last eclipse, there are ⁓ like.

solar prominences hanging off it that were super cool. Like if you want to get that stuff, you're going to need to be, you know, pretty punched into the sun. So you're going to want to have that. And then you probably want to, mean, nature photography is not really a high pressure sport, right? Like it's a lot of waiting, waiting, waiting, but similar to wildlife, like eclipses, your window is just so short.

Like I mentioned before, you're going from photographing

the brightest source of light in the sky, and then in a second it shifts to basically astrophotography. Like the stars come out, there's a 360 degree sunrise all the way around you, and you have to take off your solar filter, completely reconfigure your settings, and then start photographing it. And then when it comes back, then you've got to do everything in reverse. So, and you've got minutes to pull it off.

if you want like a diamond ring shot, which if people haven't heard of that, you can just Google it. But it's basically like it's when the eclipse is either just going into or just coming out of 100 % totality. So you're getting like the tiniest bit of a point of light exposed in the sun and it blows it out and you get the sun spikes and it looks exactly like what it says it looks like a diamond ring. So you can get the sun and the corona around it.

So that you've got seconds to capture. So that's also really, really hard. And I actually haven't gotten ⁓ one of those yet. So that's still on my photography list of things to want to get. But yeah, so practice your, figure out your settings beforehand, maybe even practice the switch. But then also bake in time to see it with your eyes. The eclipses are probably

Court Whelan (46:07)
You

Hmm.

Jeff (46:23)
You know, they're, they might be my favorite thing to experience because it's, it's as close as you can get to being on another planet. you know, it's easy to understand why our ancestors thought that, ⁓ eclipses were like harbingers of the apocalypse. Like I know what's happening and it's still like, what is going on right now? you you've just got this diamond flower hanging in the sky. ⁓

even though if you've seen it before, you don't really know what to expect and it kind of takes you by surprise. So it's another one of those things where it's like, like yes, you want to get the photo and the challenge is great, but make sure you bake in like 30 seconds at least to just look at it. Because if you're too focused in, like getting the shot and fiddling with settings and messing with your camera, like you can miss something that's absolutely incredible.

So it's nice to be able to take my kids to do that kind of thing, because they don't care about the camera. They don't care about getting the shot. making sure that they get to experience it and feel it is a way that helps me be more in the moment and less worried about the picture, which is probably why I don't have. I've still got things on my list of shots to get during an eclipse, because I'm baking in that time. And that's OK.

by design and that's, I wouldn't have it any other way.

Court Whelan (47:40)
It's so it's so important to know when and why to put the camera down, you know, for a minute or two. ⁓ It's really essential in a lot of what we do, whether it's beautiful landscapes, night stuff, know, Aurora, wildlife moments. Yeah, we're often really quite stuck behind the camera. But being able to really soak in the moment, I think just adds more fuel to the fire for

doing something with your work because it makes a more visceral memory. ⁓ I wanna switch gears a little bit and talk about photo editing So we talked about the stacking and you mentioned some software programs and I believe you can do that in Photoshop pretty easily as well. But talk to me about some of your general edits and I know you do a lot of other nature photography, landscapes, wildlife and all sorts of stuff. just let me know in general, what I'm looking for really is

Any specific techniques that you gravitate to? Because of course there's, you know, a thousand different things you can do. The way you mask, the severity, you know, whether you use any of the meta sliders like the dehaze and clarity that do multiple things at once, whether you use levels or really focus on the histogram or frankly do none of that and just do a little bit of lightening and darkening. lot of pro photographers do that as well. Like they, it's a lot of what they don't do. So I'm just curious, you know, what, is your editing style? What do you sort of gravitate to?

What's your typical workflow when dealing with,

well, let's do it like a two-part question with night photography. We get the stacking, but any sort of edits you're doing for that. And then for kind of everything else, daytime.

Jeff (49:08)
Yeah, I mean, think, again, like big picture. think, you know, the, our, editing is a artistic choice, right? There's a whole bunch of different things that you could do. There's a whole bunch of different approaches that you could take.

And, you know, the photography community is for the most part pretty positive, but it can get pretty, it's pretty spicy sometimes. ⁓ So like there are people that,

oversaturate, HDR, heavy hand editing, and then there are people that are like, no, it should look like how you see it with your eyes. And those people I feel like are just on Reddit constantly, like arguing back and forth with each other.

So if you're learning and figuring things out, maybe you don't need to worry as much about the artistic approach that you're taking because you're just trying to learn. for me,

Like because I was putting together the night sky photography stuff for the book. A lot of the things that I was photographing, you can't really see them with your naked eye the way they appear, right? Like specifically color, like the first thing that kind of leaves you or leaves humans as it gets darker is the ability to see color, especially as you get older. So like I mentioned, rainbows caused by moonlight before.

So it's basically exactly what it sounds like. The moon shines through the mist of a waterfall and it creates a rainbow like at 1130 p.m., 1 1 3 p.m., like whenever it is. And if you're looking at it with the naked eye, it just looks like kind of a white band through the mist because your eye can't see color. But the photo that you're taking is a six second exposure. So it's seeing six seconds of light. It's seeing that full color spectrum.

So pretty common experiences for people to be like, oh, is it happening? It kind of looks like that. And then they look at their camera after they've taken the shot. They're like, oh, holy shit, it's there. So I was already kind of going the route of these are things that aren't really possible to see. The natural picture isn't necessarily as impressive as the edited picture. So my artistic choice was I'm showing these things that

we miss and we overlook. And so I specifically want to show nature in its full spectrum, its full aperture, to reveal a world that's hidden. I've got a section in the book that kind of shows what it looks like to the naked eye, what the raw photo looks like, and then what it looks like edited. So you can get to see the progression and how it changes. So if...

Court Whelan (51:31)
Yeah, was particularly

impressed by that. was a really cool section of the book. think it helps people understand expectations when and if they head out to do their own things. It's something that not a lot of photographers do or would do, or we even just have the clever idea for. But I thought that was, yeah, kudos on that one. I really liked that section.

Jeff (51:48)
Yeah, yeah, mean, a lot of people, I mean, it's why the same reason why the Northern Lights, you know, there are some people that when they see it, they're like, oh, it doesn't look like the pictures. And that's the reason why, because like the photos are so much more saturated because like the camera's letting it more light. And then, you know, you get disappointed because you're expecting, I mean, that's certainly what like the picture I had in my head when I went out, like the snow's gonna be glowing green and the skies could be filled with red and purple.

⁓ you know, it doesn't diminish the experience of seeing it, for me anyway, at all, but there are plenty of people that are like, well, I can't really see that with my naked eye. yeah, it's like demystifying that again, like setting expectations, right? Like if you go in to want to see the lights or a moon bow and you're expecting it to be this full color thing and that's not like, maybe you're, you're potentially let down. But if you go in knowing what it looks like and the why behind it,

⁓ You know the more it's like anything else the more you understand the more you can appreciate it It's still pretty pretty miraculous and wild that these types of kind of things exist ⁓ So yeah, like my personal approach is to like I'm not going the full like super saturated Really heavy-handed editing and probably somewhere in the middle, you know, honestly whatever highlights the particular dark sky phenomena that I'm trying to capture

⁓ so things like, like contrast is important. ⁓ especially when you've got the juxtaposition of dark and fragile light, like you want to play with the contrast, probably be more on the stronger side than, than not to really highlight those differences. using, like the, white and the black balance to make sure you've got that, you know, full spectrum, like you're capturing all the light and you're not losing anything. Also using.

like darkness and masking to draw attention to particular things. So, you know, if there's parts of the landscape that maybe aren't critical to the composition and I really want to draw the eye to something else, you know, using those kinds of techniques to draw attention. And then usually like leaving things like, saturation and color, not...

being super heavy handed with those, like, because particularly with dark side photography, it can start to introduce stuff that just looks really unnatural, like banding in the Milky Way. It highlights noise, those kinds of things. And I'm kind of letting the, you know, the fact that the camera is seeing more light and therefore seeing more of the color spectrum, like that's how I use saturation almost, like kind of trying to get that.

in camera and then just using smaller tweaks while I'm editing to again, highlight or just create a little bit extra emphasis for something. And I would say for people who are learning how to edit, don't be afraid to drag the sliders all over the place in whatever program that you're doing. Put the saturation all the way up. Just see what it does to your picture. Because A, it'll help you understand more about

what it's doing. B, you might get ideas or might spark something like, like what if I like it's introducing all this color there? Like what if I, you know, dial this up a little bit, but it also like particular nighttime stuff, helps me ⁓ balance the photo. So I'll dial the saturation all the way up and then that's where I adjust my white balance to kind of get like, okay, it looks like there's an even distribution of the blue and the yellow and the magenta and the green. And then

Like I'll use that to be able to see the color better, and then I'll dial the saturation all the way back. ⁓

Court Whelan (55:17)
that's fascinating.

That's a really interesting technique. So let me just see if I understood that correctly. You dial saturation all the way up, not planning on keeping it that way, but that's the way you get to see the color in the night sky photo to then adjust the white balance. So the tint and then the temperature. Whoa, that's clever.

Jeff (55:31)
Yeah. Yeah, right. Yeah, exactly. So that, yeah, you're

kind of looking for an equal, like, ⁓ like the yellow and the blue is kind of equally represented, the green, the magenta is kind of equally represented. And then you dial it back and then you get like, just a much better representation of the color. And then if like, you know, let's say, you know, you're photographing some red rocks and you want to like kind of tint the sky red to feel like it goes with the landscape, then you can kind of adjust things, adjust things from there.

So yeah, that's the general workflow for an approach for nighttime photography. I mean, we already talked a little bit about the denoising. The software has just gotten so much better. I think the thing to be careful with with the denoise is sometimes it'll wash out the stars and you'll lose those as well. So kind of pay attention to that.

mean, I think for general landscape stuff, I probably skew a little bit more on the natural side. Like, want it to look like how it felt to be there, if that makes sense. So it's not like I'm going for completely natural. Like, I want to make things feel a little bit more dramatic. I think also, like, you know, when you choose your photos... ⁓

once you get out a bit, you realize that ⁓ you have a very complicated relationship with weather. If it's completely clear, that usually doesn't tend to be that interesting. The light's a lot harder to work with. But now you've got clouds, you've got moody or dramatic skies or fog. That's what creates the gorgeous sunsets and the really interesting shots and the unique opportunities. And you can take a shot of the same thing that

you everybody else has taken a picture of and now yours looks different. So you develop this love hate relationship with Moody, Moody's guys. So yeah, I'm trying to make it feel kind of natural. I think the, maybe the one thing that I do and I, I'm not the only one who does this is for wildlife is specifically masking out

the eyes So like if you can get the eyes of the wildlife in the shot and properly exposed like take the time to brush the the whites of the eyes the Iris and then leave the pupil alone So you've got a mask on just the eyes and again, it doesn't like you don't want to do a lot Yeah, like if you go past like, you know point two five stops and exposure. It's gonna start looking like kind of weird

⁓ But bump up the brightness a little bit, add some texture and some sharpening to bring it to life. You can try some extra saturation if you like the color. But it's just that little extra subtle touch that can really help bring the eyes of the animal to life. it's one of those things where if somebody's looking at it, they probably don't know why.

This picture is better than other pictures, but really focusing on the eyes, and with people too, right? Like if I'm taking pictures of my kids, I'm doing that a little bit ⁓ as well. Just to give that little bit of extra, like drama's not the right word, but just that extra touch to the picture to bring it to life.

Court Whelan (58:29)
Brilliant advice. I love that. I'm going to try it myself.

Okay. So before we get into the gear section of this talk, I have one final question.

What would the so you've obviously accomplished some really great things, not just the travel and then the book, but an amazing website and incredible portfolio. What would the Jeff Pfaller of today tell the Jeff Pfaller just starting out?

Jeff (58:52)
Hmm. God, that's a good question. ⁓ I mean, to take my own advice that I'm giving now to be more present, and to kind of embrace the, failures and the challenges, ⁓ a little bit sooner. ⁓ I mean, it sounds like, you know, I

Tell people like slow down, focus on the experience and not worry about the picture. Makes it sound like I've got it all figured out. I don't. There's definitely times where I get frustrated or I get bumped out by the picture or by not getting the picture or, you know, get annoyed that the weather's not cooperating or I'm cranky because I've been up all night. Like it's not like, you know, I'm giving this advice and it's almost like I'm telling myself this as well. Like I need to remind myself of this a lot. So I don't want to.

create the impression that I've necessarily got it all figured out. But I would just make sure that person knows you're going to see some amazing things and make sure that you take the time to slow down, enjoy it, see it with your eyes, and learn to love the accidents and the things that feel like roadblocks.

the pictures.

Court Whelan (1:00:05)
Beautiful, I love it. Okay, so we are gonna switch into the gear section of this and just curious, what are you shooting on?

Jeff (1:00:11)
Yeah, I've got a Canon R6. I started with an 80D And I've got like a just a general purpose like the f 2.8 24 to 70 lens ⁓ So my solve along the way for specific situations is ⁓ renting gear So I'm pretty you know anti like you can take a good picture with anything

But caveated by like, yeah, there are certain like pieces of gear that you just want. Like if you go to on Safari with your phone with the intent of taking pictures, you're probably going to be a little bit disappointed. Like you're not going to get the small bird that's on the rhino. You're not going to get like the glint in the lion's eyes. Like you need like a zoom lens for that kind of stuff. So there are plenty of situations where you should have like a specific piece of gear, but it's, it's again, like not necessarily about the

Quality and it's more about like does it enable you to get the photo that you want like if you've got 400 millimeters 800 millimeters of reach now you can get the corona on the eclipse and If you get the budget one great if you get spend $10,000 on glass like also great Like it's more about like getting the shot than the quality like if you're talking about going from you know zero to eight on a scale of one to ten You know, it's

less important to spend lots of money and more important to focus on the right tool for the job.

So if I didn't have something, I would just rent the gear early on, like either like a nicer camera body if I knew I was trying to get something for the book, or like said, a zoom lens or a wide angle lens ⁓ based on the situation. Cause there's plenty of websites out there. There used to be two main ones. Now there's just...

⁓ One I think maybe another one's cropped up because it's been a while since I've rented something but You can get a really nice equipment for not that much money Like I mentioned going on Safari. I was there for a month and I think I rented like $8,000 worth of glass and it was like $300 for the month and they shipped it to the UPS store by my house And they gave me the label on the box to send it back. So that's a good way

Court Whelan (1:02:16)
Is this through lens

rentals?

Jeff (1:02:17)
yeah, I forget that one of them closed. It was like, borrow lenses and lens rentals and like, or one bought the other. I can't remember which one stuck around.

Court Whelan (1:02:21)
Yeah. Yeah. Lens rentals

bought borrow lenses and lens rentals. They're actually a sponsor of this podcast and I use them all the time too. So yeah, lens rentals is fantastic.

Jeff (1:02:26)
Okay.

okay, great. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, so yeah, definitely worth it. And especially if you're doing this like once, twice a year, there's a period of time where I didn't need the telephoto lens year round, so renting it just made a lot of sense. And especially for people just starting out, I would

just get the budget kit entry level, whatever, and...

spend the money that you would have spent on the expensive gear on going out and shoot like shooting something incredible, right? Like take the few thousand dollars that you would have spent on like the nice lens and book a trip to like Costa Rica or go on safari or do a road trip to national like whatever you're interested in, like just spend the money on

getting out and practicing shooting with that budget stuff and like learn the techniques, learn what you're using and what you're not using. Like I learned fairly early on that, you know, would rent wide angle lenses when I would go to national parks. And I just didn't find myself reaching for it that often. Like I was doing, you know, pano stitching if I wanted like a depth of field. Like I just, it just wasn't.

bringing it out of my bag and it just was dead weight in there. So I even stopped renting that kind of stuff. So you kind of learn like what you're using, you discover what you're interested in shooting with and then when you're ready to, you know, kind of take it to the next level, then you can make the investment. Cause I I had, you know, like the budget entry level stuff for a while. And then like I went to ⁓ Antarctica on a cruise.

And I was like, I'm probably only going to do this once. So I want to make sure to take advantage of it. So I sold the three budget things and then just got like the one nicer thing that was a little bit more, more flexible because like those other, like the telephoto budget lens and the watt, and then think I had like a 50 millimeter prime as well. Like I just didn't reach for them as much as I was just using the standard one. And it was more focusing on like moving around with my feet and just having the flexibility.

Court Whelan (1:04:29)
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think it's great. Great mentality is getting out in the field more, whether it's in your own backyard, the city park, the state park and the national park nearby. It really that that's the thing that's going to get you to be better and to ultimately take more photos. Certainly a time and a place for better gear. But I think if you're relying on the better gear to get you out more because you're not already doing that or you don't have the appetite for it, I don't think getting the big

$10,000 lens is going to be the thing that gets you to that next level. I think it really is going to be the skills, whether that's the field skills, whether that's the itinerary planning skills, whether it's just knowing what you actually really like to take skills or the editing skills, right? I these are all things that make for demonstratively better photos. ⁓ Okay, so we're getting into the final question. Well, actually, you know, second to final question here, but this is the final gear question. Okay.

piece of gear that is really essential or that you really like for your photography, wherever it might be, picture yourself out in the field somewhere. So piece of gear, but it's not like camera lens related gear. has to be like an X factor, something, something different, but is maybe something that people wouldn't think about.

Jeff (1:05:42)
Yep, right. mean, for me specifically, there are two answers. So the first one is maybe more expected. ⁓ Just like a remote shutter, because it's particularly with nighttime photography, you're on a tripod, like you're locked off. Your shutter is open for a long time. The light is really fragile, so anything can kind of disrupt it or make it blurry.

Like I said before, like a lot of times it's just about like keeping the shutter open.

There's no worse feeling when you're set up and a meteor goes in front of your camera and you're not taking a picture. It's like, ⁓ come on. ⁓ So just having like a shutter so that your camera's not shaking. You can like take all the shots you want without touching it. You can lock it so you don't have to like keep your finger on it. That's, I would say like about as close to

must have like accessory for dark sky stuff specifically. I mean, if you don't have one, you don't have to feel bad, right? Like you can do the two second or the 10 second timer to eliminate the camera shake. It's not necessary, but it just makes things a whole lot less more annoying.

Court Whelan (1:06:47)
Yeah, no, I hear you. It is nice to have, yeah.

Jeff (1:06:50)
And then the other thing would be, yeah, a lot of times, I mean, it's colder at night. So,

Like all the warm things, like the long underwear, the gloves that you can plug in, and they've got the heat warmers built into them. There have been plenty of times, and I still screw up on this, like plenty of times where I just forget like, yeah, I'm gonna be out at night and it's gonna be cold and I'm wearing just hiking pants. I'm like, gosh, I really wish I would have brought my thermal underwear. So bringing your layers, that also goes a long way. And then maybe like a third answer that,

just popped into my head that maybe people aren't thinking about is ⁓ have a headlamp with a red light on it. So like that's just good. If you're going to be out there, like you will be alone a lot, but there might be other photographers there and using a red light, like it's just good dark sky etiquette because the red light, doesn't like ruin landscapes. It doesn't ruin photos. It doesn't make people have to readjust their eyesight. So having a red light headlamp will

ingratiate yourself with your fellow dark sky photographers. And then also if you're photographing fireflies, like that's a, you know, for going to that campground that I mentioned before, that is a requirement. Like they give you sheets of cellophane to put over your cell phone because even the light from a cell phone can disrupt the firefly and their mating rituals. So it also helps the animals out in general.

Court Whelan (1:08:11)
I'm so happy to hear about that conscientiousness. That's so cool that they give that out even for cell phones. I think we need more of that in the world today. I love it. Well, Jeff, this has been fantastic. The final question is where can people find more about you?

Jeff (1:08:16)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, you can go to my site, JeffPfaller.com that's got links to all the socials, prints. The book is on there So my name is spelled P-F-A-L-L-E-R,

And yeah, I will say that ⁓ we talked a little bit about the book.

You know, the fight to protect public lands has been happening for over 100 years. It will happen for another 100. But now feels like a particularly acute moment in history where they need more support than ever. Nonprofits and charities. If you love a national park, there's probably a nonprofit or charity that supports that unit. And they're being asked to do more now than ever before. So any

Purchases the book, I'm planning on donating 20 % of the profits to the units that support the book. I will put that out there. Even if you don't want to buy the book, giving a little bit of extra love to those nonprofits and charities would help protect those lands for future generations. Because somebody 80 years ago decided it was worth protecting for us. So that's the least we can do to pay it forward.

Court Whelan (1:09:30)
Well said, you have to protect what you love. And I certainly do love our public lands. Big advocate for conservation, big advocate for saving public lands and keeping them wild and free. So yeah, Jeff, gosh, thanks so much. I learned a lot. Some really, really interesting bits of information you've ⁓ illuminated, guess, pun intended the firefly conundrum for me and learned lots of tips and tricks on Astro, night, all sorts of stuff. So Jeff, thanks once again for being here. I appreciate it.

Jeff (1:09:58)
Yeah, thank you.


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Court Whelan

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