Summer Sunrises/Sunsets Assignment Winner Aaron Meyers

Congratulations to Aaron Meyers for winning the Summer Sunrises/Sunsets Assignment with his image, “To All in Awe.”

“For the last 10 years I’ve gathered my friends in Yosemite National Park to celebrate my birthday,” explains Meyers. “While cooking dinner I looked up and noticed that the previously cloudless sky had become filled with patches of high clouds. We all agreed to head to Tuolumne Meadows to watch sunset, and quickly scarfed down our food and raced to the meadow. I set up by a nice little pool of water facing west, the direction of sunset and what I had assumed would be the best chance for a colorful sunset. To my frustration, there was not a cloud in the sky to the west.

“The old saying of ‘look behind you!’ couldn’t have been more true on this evening. When I turned around and saw the absolutely GORGEOUS lenticular clouds behind me I didn’t even think ‘grab your camera bag,’ I just took off running for the Tuolumne River, leaving my camera bag and extra clothing behind. I knew I wanted Lembert Dome, the river and the amazing sky in my photo. Thankfully neither bear nor human touched my camera bag during the 30 minutes I was away shooting.

“I took quite a number of photos as the amazing lenticular clouds glowed orange and red. In this case, I stitched 11 photos together to form a 63-megapixel image (my pano had lots of overlapping sections) and then cropped it to a final 40-megapixel image. The title of this photo is a play on the name of the area, ‘Tuolumne’ (pronounced Two-all-um-knee).

Equipment & Settings: Nikon D800 w/ Nikkor 24-70mm ƒ/2.8G ED AF-S; 24mm, ƒ/10, 1/3 sec., ISO 100

To see more of Aaron Meyers’ photography, visit www.aaronmphotography.com and follow him on Facebook and Instagram @aaronmphoto.