Josh Miller

I think I speak for nearly every photographer when I say going to a new location excites me, especially if it is one I have dreamed about for years. We all dream of these once-in-a-lifetime photo adventures. But the truth is for most photographers, the majority of our shooting is actually done in locations that are closer to home and allow us to return more regularly.

There is no place on the bucket lists of more landscape photographers than California’s Yosemite National Park. Nowhere else in the world can a photographer find such a concentration of waterfalls, dramatic rock formations, enormous trees, great light, and easy access shooting. Who hasn’t seen amazing shots of El Capitan and Half Dome and thought, “I need to shoot there someday.”

Sunstars are a great way to fill an otherwise boring, cloudless blue sky with a feeling of drama and excitement. They are often a way to add a compositional element that helps draw a viewer into a scene. Technically, any light source can create a “sunstar” as long as it is a tiny point of light and the camera is set correctly. We often see the star effect in shots of buildings with their lights twinkling at dusk, or the moon in the night sky. Most commonly we see star patterns when the sun is setting on the horizon, but in this case we only see half of the sunstar because the other half is being blocked by the horizon.