When night falls at a national park, many visitors pack up and head home — but dark skies offer rare wonders worth staying up to see. Get tips on where to go and ways to photograph parks after dark.
“Half the park is after dark.” This phrase was coined by the astronomer and artist Tyler Nordgren in 2010 as part of a series of posters he created of nightscapes at public lands. National parks are some of the best places in the country to see dark night skies. Still, many visitors head home after sunset, not even considering the sights they’re missing out on.
This episode, photographer and night-sky enthusiast Jeff Pfaller speaks with host Jennifer Errick on some of the techniques he uses to take stunning images of stars, synchronous fireflies and other phenomena at national parks. He explains how he got started, the three essential capabilities you need your camera to have, why right now is an excellent time to see the northern lights, and reasons he recommends Yosemite as an ideal place for admiring dark skies.
The Secret Lives of Parks is a production of the National Parks Conservation Association.
Episode 38, Photographing Parks After Dark, was produced by Jennifer Errick with help from Todd Christopher and Bev Stanton
Original theme music by Chad Fischer.
Learn more about Jeff Pfaller’s photography and preorder his upcoming book at jeffpfaller.com
Learn more about the National Park Service night sky program and look up astronomy programs in your area at nps.gov/subjects/nightskies/
Get information about certified dark-sky parks at darksky.org
Learn more about this podcast and listen to the rest of our stories at thesecretlivesofparks.org
For more than a century, the National Parks Conservation Association has been protecting and enhancing America’s national parks for present and future generations. With more than 1.6 million members and supporters, NPCA is the nation’s only independent, nonpartisan advocacy organization dedicated to protecting national parks.
And we’re proud of it, too.
You can join the fight to preserve our national parks. Learn more and join us at npca.org
Episode 38
Photographing Parks After Dark
Jennifer Errick: When night falls at a national park, many visitors pack up and head home, but not Jeff Pfaller.
Jeff is a photographer fascinated with night skies, capturing vibrant displays that are often hidden to the naked eye. He shares some of the rare wonders park visitors can see at night and explains why Yosemite is the perfect place where beginners can grab a camera and start venturing out into the darkness.
I'm Jennifer Errick, and this is The Secret Lives of Parks.
“Half the park is after dark.”
This famous phrase was coined by the astronomer and artist Tyler Nordgren in 2010 as part of a series of posters he created of nightscapes at national parks. One of my favorite posters in his collection is a swirly, blue-tinted illustration of Old Faithful at Yellowstone erupting under the stars next to the words "Where the world beneath meets the world above."
National parks are some of the best places in the country to see night skies. Still, many visitors will plan elaborate sightseeing itineraries at parks during the day, then head home after sunset, not even considering all the sights they're missing out on. Winter is the best season for stargazing. It's a time of reduced humidity and cloud cover when some of the brightest constellations are visible in the sky. If you haven't thought about taking a trip to a park after dark, now is an excellent time to try it.
Jeff Pfaller: As humans, our mythmaking and stories center around stars in the night sky. There's not a single culture that doesn't have a story about why the moon does what it does or why the stars do what they do. I mean, we literally navigated and found our way by the stars when we started exploring. So it's hard not to feel connected to that when you're out there.
Jennifer Errick: That's photographer Jeff Pfaller. He always loved exploring national parks, and in 2020, when he lost his day job, he briefly considered becoming a park ranger. Instead, he turned more seriously to his passion as an artist.
In October, he's releasing a book of his photography called Dark Skies: Rare Phenomena in America's National Parks. This new collection features captivating dark sky images at more than 30 national park sites. I spoke with Jeff earlier this month about how he got started, ways he captures his stunning photographs, and how amateurs like me can brush up on a few skills and enjoy exploring too.
How did you first become interested in exploring parks after dark?
Jeff Pfaller: I think I became interested in the night sky kind of by accident. We own property up in Wisconsin, and it's dark up there, and I'd never taken a picture of the Milky Way before, so I decided to go out and just play around with it and see what happened. My pictures weren't perfect. They were kind of blurry. I didn't really know how to pull focus on the stars, but it was one of those things where the first picture that came out, there was the Milky Way, and it's so much more than you can see with your naked eyes. I became obsessed at that point.
Jennifer Errick: How long ago was that?
Jeff Pfaller: That was 2017, 2018.
Jennifer Errick: Mm-hmm.
Jeff Pfaller: I knew I wanted to get more into photography and thought about what I could potentially do, and national parks are obviously something that I love and spend a lot of time in. So I thought a book about the parks would be great, but there's so many books out there. I was struggling with what perspective I could add to what was already there. And then when the pandemic happened, I was out of work, like a lot of people were. And I discovered this event called Firefall, which is in Yosemite, two weeks in February, the angle of the sun lines up just right. It shines only through the waterfall at sunset, so it basically looks like lava is flowing off El Capitan, the big mountain in Yosemite. I was like, "Oh, my gosh, I have to shoot that." So I did a two-week trip, so 14 days. I went to 14 parks. And then the end of that trip was two days in Yosemite to try and see the Firefall event in Horsetail Falls.
My first viewing probably spoiled all future viewings for me because it didn't happen the first night. The second night, there were clouds. So the vibe from the other photographers where we were standing was kind of like, "Okay, it's probably not going to happen tonight either." But then 15 minutes before sunset, the clouds went away, and it went from nothing to everything, like that... Everybody in the valley started cheering. The waterfall looked like somebody had thrown a match into it. It was just one of those incredible moments. After that, it kind of all clicked together in my head, because if you visit a park, you know there's not a lot of people stay out past sunset. But then after I visited Yosemite, I started getting these notifications about, well, if you like Horsetail Falls in February in Yosemite, you'd probably also like moonbows in Yosemite, which are rainbows caused by moonlight.
Jennifer Errick: Now, this was new to me. Can you explain this phenomenon?
Jeff Pfaller: A rainbow caused by moonlight sounds like something that a poet would make up. Not a lot of people know about moonbows either. So there are three nights over the course of the spring, April, May, and June, the dates of the full moon, you need water flow. So that's when the waterfalls in Yosemite are kind of at their peak. When the moon shines through the mist of the waterfall at a certain angle and you are standing at another angle, you'll see a rainbow in the mist of the waterfall. To your naked eye, it might not necessarily look like a rainbow, but then cameras can let in more light than our eyes can. So when you take a picture of it with six-second, eight-second exposure, the color will just jump out. So a fairly common experience is, even for the people who are there photographing this phenomenon, everybody will be standing there and saying, "Oh, is it happening? Is it not happening right now?" Checking the time, "Oh, I think it's supposed to be happening." And then they'll take a picture and look at their camera, and say, "Oh, my god, there it is."
Jennifer Errick: Do you need special equipment? Or what kind of equipment do you usually take with you when you're photographing at night?
Jeff Pfaller: Phones are getting so much better at photography, especially nighttime photography, iPhones in particular. But I would say, for somebody who is interested in photographing dark sky phenomenon or making sure that they can see it, you're probably going to want a camera that allows you to control three things. The ISO, which is how sensitive the sensor in your camera is. You want to be able to control the aperture, which is how much light your camera will let in. So how big the lens will open or be shut. And then you also want to control the shutter speed, how long the shutter is open, because then you can kind of dial in the different settings that you need for the different types of phenomenon. So for the Horsetail Falls event, for example, it's around sunset, there's still lots of light, so your shutter is only going to be open for a half second, let's say. But if you're photographing the stars, you're going want to keep your shutter open for 13 seconds, but you could keep it open all night. That's how star trail photos are taken, is your shutter just left open.
Jennifer Errick: Sure, yeah.
Jeff Pfaller: And then you need a tripod, obviously. If you can hold your camera steady for more than a second, you should probably be a surgeon because that's amazing. So having a tripod that you can set your camera on is very helpful.
Jennifer Errick: So those three elements you are talking about, a typical SLR or DSLR, I'm assuming, will suffice for that.
Jeff Pfaller: Right.
Jennifer Errick: Okay.
Jeff Pfaller: Even smartphones I think will let you control, I mean, shutter speed for sure, but any DSLR should be... You're looking for a camera that has a manual mode, or at the very least an aperture priority or a shutter priority mode. Typically, those kinds of cameras have all three. And yes, they're relatively affordable. Especially if you're willing to buy used, you can get one for not that much money. And then also renting camera is also an option. I've done that before. So you can get pretty nice equipment for not that much money.
Jennifer Errick: How long do you think it took for you to really feel comfortable mastering those skills and feeling like, "Yes, I'm ready to go out there and be a photographer"?
Jeff Pfaller: Prior to 2018, my struggle with most of my photography was, because I had the DSLR camera and I had the gear, but I would come back from vacations or travel and look at my pictures and say, that doesn't really look like how it felt to be there, if that makes sense.
Jennifer Errick: Yes, I feel that way all the time.
Jeff Pfaller: Yeah, right, like, "Oh, I didn't really do it justice." And then around in the 2019 neighborhood, I took a trip to Antarctica, and I told myself, I'm probably going to go there once. Right?
Jennifer Errick: Right.
Jeff Pfaller: So if I'm interested in capturing images, I should probably get it right the first time. So I had three entry-level lenses, so I sold those three and invested in one lens that I felt could cover a variety of situations. Also, I learned a bit more about post-production, and I remember coming back on the boat and looking at those pictures and thinking like, "This is how it felt to be there." I felt like the pictures finally did it justice. That brings me a lot of joy because the things I photograph are hard to see even with your eyes. So being able to show the parks in a way that even people who visit them might not get to experience them is really cool. So even if I don't sell a single picture, I've still gotten all the joy that I want to get out of it because I was there and I saw the thing and I helped somebody else see it too.
Jennifer Errick: Coming up after the break, Jeff shares why right now is a great time to see the Northern Lights, reasons Yosemite is an ideal park to see after dark, and why one photo in his new book stands out as his favorite.
Jeff Pfaller: It felt like the universe was lining up, but it was also a quieter moment that I was able to have the space to appreciate. Forget the camera, forget all the other things. It was just like a moment just for me in the Apostle Islands.
Jennifer Errick: That's coming up next. Stay with us.
[music break]
It's a new year and a new administration, but here at NPCA, we have the same old nonpartisan resolve to protect our national parks, no matter who's in charge. Last week, President Trump signed a series of executive orders, some of which could affect public lands and the staff who manage them. Find out the latest issues we're keeping an eye on at npca.org/eo and share your thoughts with us at stories@npca.org. Thank you as always for listening.
[music break]
One of the things I really love about your book is that it's not just stargazing, that you're also capturing things like the synchronous fireflies at Great Smoky Mountains, and lightning in storms. How did you pick these different sections for how you wanted to organize the book?
Jeff Pfaller: That's a good question. When I was first thinking about the book, I thought it would just be a book of all stars and the moon. But as I went along, it was a mix of phone, technology, the social and search algorithm feeding me, "Okay, there's these other really interesting things that you should be aware of." And then also, friends and family would then start pointing me to things that they thought I would be interested in. And then I would say the last third is experiences that I wanted to have with my kids. I've got three kids. There was a lunar eclipse in 2022 that my three kids, we went up camping in Governor Dodge State Park. I didn't know if they would want to stay up for the whole time, because I had a pretty young one at the time. But they came out for the whole three hours, and they were just sitting next to me in the parking lot, chatting away while I took a picture every five minutes.
It was just this really nice time out in the woods. There were these coyotes that started howling five minutes after the eclipse started, which — that was their first time hearing coyotes in the wild. So that was really cool to see them all go silent immediately and the eyes go wide. They're like, "What is that?" Which then I did three hours later when five minutes before the eclipse ended, the coyotes all started howling again, which I never experienced that, where it becomes pretty clear like, "Okay, the wildlife, they know something's happening." When the annular solar eclipse of 2023 happened, my middle child and I drove 20 hours one way to Canyonlands to see it. So yeah, we drove 20 hours to see something that lasted four minutes.
Jennifer Errick: That sounds like about the right ratio for that.
Jeff Pfaller: Yeah, right.
Jennifer Errick: How old was your child at the time?
Jeff Pfaller: This was 2023, so he was 14. Yeah, just turned 14. Yeah.
Jennifer Errick: 14. Wow.
Jeff Pfaller: Yeah. That's nice because yes, the eclipse was great, but the road trip and the experience of going over there and just that one-on-one time with him was great.
Jennifer Errick: You also have the Aurora Borealis, and I will admit, this is something I have never seen, but it's my understanding that we're experiencing a lot of solar activity right now. Is this a good time to be experiencing the Northern Lights?
Jeff Pfaller: Yeah, absolutely. So right now we are either entering or at the top or just exiting, there's debate around where we're at because it's in an exact science, a solar maximum. So the sun goes through 11 year cycles of activity. How the Northern Lights work is, the sun is beaming stuff at us all the time. And when solar flares happen, it will also eject actual material and particles. All that travels through space. It hits the Earth's magnetosphere, which surrounds the planet and protects us from some of the sun's activity. And then the charge of those particles interacts with the charge in the Earth's magnetosphere and the atmosphere, and it creates those displays. It's a great time to see it. Not that you can't see it when we're in a solar minimum, but just the number of opportunities is far fewer. So it's kind of a numbers game when it comes to the Northern Lights.
Jennifer Errick: That was one of my questions for you. Are there tips or is it really just patience and luck? And it sounds like the tip is, be patient and be lucky.
Jeff Pfaller: Yeah. Yeah. I've been a very lucky photographer, but I'm also a very stubborn photographer. Like I said, I was willing to drive 20 hours to see one thing. But yes, there's a number that you want to pay attention to. There's debate whether or not it's the right number. But for a beginner, it's simple, it's called KP. So it's basically how much solar activity there is across the planet. So it's planet-wide average, which is why it's not really exact. But if you Google it, you can find maps that will indicate how far south you can expect the lights to come. So you want to pay attention to the KP level to understand if you're in the range. You obviously want to understand the weather and cloud cover specifically. And then after that, it's just being patient, being willing to give it three or four hours at least, because it ebbs and it flows and it changes. It can go away and it can come back. So you kind of got to give it a chance.
The other thing I would say about the Northern Lights is, it's also similar to moonbows in that if you're comparing it to the photos that you've seen, it's not going to be as vibrant. It will look silvery. If it's strong enough, you will start to see the tints of the color. Or its potential, if it's weak enough, that you might not be able to see it at all with your naked eyes, and you would need a camera with a long exposure time to let more light in so that you can see the pillars or the patterns of the shapes and the colors in the sky.
But usually what I tell people to look for is, if you're out and you have a pretty strong feeling that the Aurora is out or you're not sure, take a picture with your phone or your camera, it'll be pretty obvious if the color's shining through. If you don't have that and you're just doing it with your naked eye, look for weird clouds in the sky, and then that's probably it. First time people say, it just looks like weird clouds. And then once you know you're looking for, you won't be able to unsee it.
Jennifer Errick: That's amazing that the experience is so heightened with a camera. I really didn't realize that because I'm not a photographer.
Jeff Pfaller: I mean, that was an artistic choice that I had to make with a book. Should you go for a natural look or a more edited look? There's a lot of things in the book that, again, because a human eye is kind of bad in low-light conditions, if you go out, you're not going to be able to see things as they look in the book. So I had to make that choice of, do I show the world the way it appears to us or do I show what exists beyond our perception? I chose to go with the world that exists beyond our perception because these things are hard to see, but it doesn't mean that they're not there. I wanted to kind of show them in their widest aperture. With dark skies, a lot of people don't think about it immediately when they think about park conservation, but if there's light pollution or too much light in these spaces, you can't see these type of events.
Jennifer Errick: Have you noticed a difference in light pollution since you've been photographing?
Jeff Pfaller: I would say the main thing that I feel like I've noticed in terms of the night sky changing is actually up in the atmosphere. When I first started, seeing the space station or a satellite or something like that streak across your photo was pretty rare. Your first inclination was, "Oh, did I capture a meteorite or a falling star or something like that?" But now it feels like nearly every photo that I take at night has at least three satellites going across it. They're faint. You might not notice it, but it is there. So it does seem like the night sky is being filled with more objects far beyond the atmosphere.
Jennifer Errick: You had mentioned that Yosemite is one of the places that you recommend most for someone who's starting to explore enjoying and photographing night skies. Why do you love Yosemite?
Jeff Pfaller: Do you have six hours to do the podcast?
Jennifer Errick: I wish I did.
Jeff Pfaller: No, I think the amount of iconic landscapes, it's got two dark sky events, the Horsetail Falls phenomenon and moonbows. It's just a special place, but it's also, it's popular. Those things draw people. And it's odd because I tend to shy away from some of the busier places, because there's just so many people. But for whatever reason, the Yosemite hides their crowds well. It is a busy park, specifically in the summertime, but it doesn't feel crowded. It feels like there's still room. If you want to go outside the valley, you can get away from the people pretty easily. And if you want to stay out at night, you can go to a place like Tunnel View where you're going to be standing shoulder to shoulder with a few hundred people during sunrise, but you stay past sunset or get there before sunrise, and you might have the place to yourself. There's no selfie sticks, there's no other people. You can just kind of go there and sit and have a moment, and it feels like there's nobody else in the park with you.
You might see the headlamp of somebody climbing up El Capitan, or you might see the headlamp of a hiker way back in the back country. So you're with other people and you feel connected to these people that you can't see, but you're simultaneously alone. And then you've got the night sky as your source of inspiration. The other really nice thing about it is, because it is popular, it's really accessible. So it's relatively easy to get around no matter what your physical ability level is. You could spend an hour in Yosemite driving around and not get out of your car, and you get to see El Capitan and Half Dome and Bridalveil Falls and Yosemite Falls and all the things. But you could spend a lifetime there and not run out of things to do and be continually surprised. You don't have to hike miles to see the things that you want to see, if you don't want to.
Jennifer Errick: Do you have favorite parts of the park that you'll go to with your children as well, or do you tend to go solo?
Jeff Pfaller: Yeah, I go with friends. I've gone with family. I've gone by myself. So yeah, depending on the people that I'm with, we'll adjust what we're doing. One of my favorite places to go that maybe isn't on a lot of folks' radar is up in the High Sierra in Tuolumne Meadows. It's up out of the valley, so it is a little bit longer drive to go there, 45 minutes or an hour. So it's just enough to where it knocks down the crowds a little bit. But you can see Half Dome from an angle that you can't see it from in the valley. You could walk to the top of upper Yosemite Falls if you want to, so you can just get up out of the valley and look down on it, which is just another perspective that you can take on it. Mariposa Grove is an excellent place to go to if you want to see big trees.
Jennifer Errick: Yes.
Jeff Pfaller: Not to denigrate Redwoods National Park or Sequoia National Park, those are both gorgeous, but I feel like my favorite grove of big trees, it's that grove in Yosemite.
Jennifer Errick: Were there unexpected surprises or just moments when you were just like, "Wow," as you're gathering these?
Jeff Pfaller: Yeah, it's challenging to pick one because any of these are once-in-a-lifetime things and each of them have a special place in my heart. But I think probably my favorite moment, it's not the most visually stunning, but it's the last photo in the book, and it's of sunrise. So that's kind of the way that I structured the book. It starts with sunset, with Horsetail Falls in Yosemite, and then you kind of spend all night with the stars and the moon and all those things, and it ends at sunrise. So it was early May, there was a Northern Lights display that it was the strongest one we'd gotten in 20 years. It was going all night. It came and it went. I took breaks, and then it would start again. And it was just running all over the place all night up in Apostle Islands in Northern Wisconsin.
So the sun was starting to rise, so it was kind of like that quiet moment where you feel like you've got the whole world to yourself. The rest of the world is asleep. I took this picture, and you can still see wisps of Aurora with the red and the orange colors from sunrise. If you know much about the Northern Lights and Aurora, you know how bonkers that is, that there can be sunlight in the sky and you can still see these things that are incredibly faint, even fainter than the stars. The moon can wash out the Northern Lights. So that was probably my favorite subtle, unexpected moment in the book, is just not a lot of people would be able to see something like that. It felt like the universe was lining up, but it was also a quieter moment that I was able to have the space to appreciate. Forget the camera, forget all the other things. It was just like a moment just for me in the Apostle Islands.
Jennifer Errick: That must have been an incredible feeling of luck.
Jeff Pfaller: It's very easy to take it for granted and forget it's there, but I don't think there's been a single person that I've been in Yosemite with where that first moment that you step outside the car and you look up, I don't think there's been a single person who doesn't audibly gasp. Yeah, it's just there in your face and you forget that it exists until it's shown to you.
Jennifer Errick: What a beautiful story.
Jeff Pfaller: Circadian rhythm, like the rhythms of people and animals and plants, this is kind of at the root level of programming. Light and dark defines the rhythms that everything on this planet goes through as part of their daily life. So, keeping the dark dark is only going to help nature thrive, help it not be disrupted, and also help humans thrive, because we rely on the dark as well.
Jennifer Errick: We'll have more resources in the show notes so you can bundle up and go wandering into that half of the park most people miss after dark.
[End theme]
The Secret Lives of Parks is a production of the National Parks Conservation Association.
Episode 38, Yosemite After Dark, was produced by Jennifer Errick with help from Todd Christopher and Bev Stanton.
Original theme music by Chad Fischer.
Learn more about Jeff Pfaller’s photography and preorder his upcoming book at jeffpfaller.com
Learn more about this podcast and listen to the rest of our stories at thesecretlivesofparks.org
For more than a century, the National Parks Conservation Association has been protecting and enhancing America’s national parks for present and future generations. With more than 1.6 million members and supporters, NPCA is the nation’s only independent, nonpartisan advocacy organization dedicated to protecting national parks.
And we’re proud of it, too.
You can join the fight to preserve our national parks. Learn more and join us at npca.org.