Sensational Sandstorms

I just returned from a brief weekend trip to Death Valley, in hopes of catching some exciting storm light over the sandy dunes. Noah predicted a clearing storm friday evening over death valley, but you never know where the actual front of the storm is going to be, or the character of the clouds. My friend Julia and I arrived at one of Death Valley’s many remote dunes on Friday afternoon in a gray drizzle. There was some structure in the clouds, so it looked like I might be able to get something interesting. Unfortunately the sky to the Southwest (where the sun would set) looked completely overcast and gray. We hiked out to the dunes, and soon the wind and rain picked up. Standing on the crest of the dunes we were pelted by stinging sand and rain. I tried to find a composition that captured the experience, but it wasn’t working out – it’s hard to compose when you can hardly keep your eyes open because of the sand! That and the clouds turned into a flat gray ceiling. In any case, here’s what it look like..

Sand and rain storm in the dunes, doesn’t look like much of a chance for a sunset does it?

We wandered around the dunes for about an hour and a half, looking for a nice composition in case Zeus wanted to clear out a patch of the clouds and shine some light on my over sized sandbox. Well, about 15 minutes before the sun went down, a hole suddenly opened in the West, and golden light streamed through! It was one of the most incredible transformations in conditions I’ve ever seen.

“Don’t Stare at the Sun!” ~ Dunes in Death Valley National Park, CA
The Tech: Canon 5DmkII, 16-35mm mkII @ 24mm, tripod, polarizer (for lens protection from the sand mostly)
Exposure: iso 100, f/22, 1.3 sec
Processing: I had to clone out some flare from the sun, fortunately it wasn’t so bad as to ruin the image!

With raging storm clouds over head, and a clear view to the sun, it was clear the sunset would do something special.. and it did. The colors were everywhere. I frantically searched for what I thought would be the best composition, and ended up with these two.

“Dune Storm” ~ Dunes in Death Valley National Park, CA
The Tech: Canon 5DmkII, 16-35mm mkII @ 24mm, tripod, polarizer
Exposure 1: iso 200, f/16, 2.5 sec
Exposure 2: iso 200, f/16, 0.6 sec
Processing: Manually blended exposures for the sky and sand dunes

“Sandy Treasures” ~ Dunes in Death Valley National Park, CA
The Tech: Canon 5DmkII, 16-35mm mkII @ 24mm, tripod, polarizer
Exposure 1: iso 200, f/16, 5 sec
Exposure 2: iso 200, f/16, 1 sec
Processing: Manually blended exposures for the sky and sand dunes
Notes: In the heat of the moment I forgot to turn the polarizer 90 degrees from the last shot, though it wouldn’t have changed much.

After the colors faded we started the trek back to the car, and came across another lovely scene. The clouds still retained some glow, even though this was about 15 min or so after the peak color.

“Sandy Dreams” ~ Dunes in Death Valley National Park, CA
The Tech: Canon 5DmkII, 16-35mm mkII @ 24mm, tripod, polarizer
Exposure: iso 800, f/16, 20 sec
Notes: I didn’t want too much movement in the clouds (or foreground sand, which was still blowing around). Thus I opted for iso 800 to get just a hint of movement.

As we made our way back to the car, we noticed a light in the direction we were walking. Could another car be out here? That seemed unlikely.. then we realized it was our car, we had left the lights on! Fortunately one of my headlights is dead (apparently, didn’t know that till now), so the car started no problem. If both had been working who knows how long we might have been there! We made our way to a spot to camp for the night. We had another two days to spend, but after a sunset like the one we just had, it’s hard to be inspired by anything less until the magic wears off. Add to that that most of Death Valley is so iconofied by photographers, that it’s difficult to find something new, unique, and that’s also interesting of course. We woke up at 4:30am to try our luck at the famous Mesquite Flat Dunes, but the sky wasn’t exciting and I wasn’t being inspired. We spent the rest of the day roaming some of the many slot canyons in the park. It’s impossible to beat the colors and curves of the sandstone slots in Utah, but the conglomerate and marble formations in the rough canyons in Death Valley have an appeal of their own.

“Nature’s Mosaic” ~ Death Valley National Park, CA
The Tech: Canon 5DmkII, 16-35mm mkII @ 24mm, tripod, polarizer
Exposure: iso 100, f/18, 0.8 sec

We spent the following sunset wandering the main dunes, but the clouds weren’t cooperative this time, so it was time to turn to the abstract side of things.

“Punctured Brains” ~ Death Valley National Park, CA
The Tech: Canon 5DmkII, 16-35mm mkII @ 30mm, tripod
Exposure: iso 100, f/16, 1/25th sec

It’s too bad the clouds didn’t cooperate, since I’d found an interesting and new take on these dunes.. oh well, another day. The following morning (5:20am wake up call) we went out to a spot near Badwater I had scouted out the day before. You’ve probably all seen the classic take on badwater, it’s pretty neat as you can see from the lowest point on land (282 feet below sea level) all the way up to Telescope Peak (11,043 feet), and these strange polygonal salt formations stretch on for miles. I had already spent my creativity from there with this image you may remember. But there’s a lot of potential there for other takes, especially after it has recently rained. And what do you know, the weekend before we went there was a huge rainstorm in the valley that dumped almost 2 inches over the arid desert. Now, a week later, strange salty slugs and rifts began to emerge from the moist salty plains. Not sexy or beautiful in the classical sense (unless you’re a slug), but I thought it was a rather interesting and strange scene worthy of a photo.

“Salt Slugs” ~ Salt Flats, Death Valley National Park, CA
The Tech: Canon 5DmkII, 16-35mm mkII @ 16mm, tripod, polarizer
Exposure 1: iso 200, f/22, 1.3 sec
Exposure 2: iso 200, f/22, 0.3 sec
Processing: blended the two exposures and selectively warmed and saturated the clouds to how they impacted my in the field.
Notes: To get this unique perspective I had to get real low – so low that I had to reverse the center column on my spiffy new Gitzo 2542L tripod.. which got a good breaking in at the dunes! Thank goodness for Live view, otherwise this would’ve been a nightmare to compose with my head between the camera and the tripod legs, and my nose in the muddy salt.

With problem sets awaiting us, we decided to head home on Sunday, but made a few adventures to lesser visited spots along the way. One of which took us through a small paradise of a canyon, through the cottonwoods and willows, along a babbling creek, over some boulders and scree slopes, and finally, after much scrambling, to an absolutely incredible location. No photo can do this spot justice, it’s one of those places that you need to experience to understand and appreciate. I spent probably 2 hours trying to find a composition that did justice to this little paradise, and this is what I eventually settled on. Meanwhile Julia took a nap. I don’t blame her, I probably could have too.

“Desert Water” ~ Death Valley National Park, CA
The Tech: Canon 5DmkII, 24-105mm @ 67mm, tripod
Exposure: iso 100, f/16, 0.4 sec
Notes: Usually water scenes call for a polarizer, but there wasn’t much water here other than the falls, so no need to break that one out. Also, I just happened to luck out with the light – the cloudy skies provided wonderful even lighting, and the shutter speed my iso and aperture choices gave an ideal shutter speed (to retain some texture, but have a nice sensual flow as well), so no need for the ND filters.
Processing: A fair amount of curves adjustments to get the exposure evened out throughout the scene.

And that brings this journey to a close, unfortunately. I’m probably going to have to take the next two weekends off, maybe I’ll find some time to go birding, but I’ve got to get some studying time in. In three weeks time I’ll be meeting Marc Adamus in the Eastern Sierras for some shooting. Marc is an incredibly talented and creative landscape photographer, and he actually does this for a living. Needless to say I’m really looking forward to hanging out with him in one of the best places around, hopefully I can learn a few things about the business world of fine art landscape photography as well. Speaking of Marc, you may notice I’ve added a list of some of the photographers that continue to inspire me. There’s a lot of good work out there, but these photographers are out there pushing the limits in style, composition, vision, and processing. Of course Galen is no longer with us, but his influence lives on.

By the way – for any of you on flickr – I’ve recently started posting my images there under florisvb.
I also have restarted posting on photo.net under floris.
Feel free to add me as a contact to keep up to date on my work, and whether you feel qualified or not, let me know which images strike your fancy! (hey, you’re reading this, so you probably like my pictures.. that makes you qualified)

Now I’m going to go dig out some more sand from my ears and scalp (you know, I bet some of those hollywood folks actually pay for facial treatments like the one I got for free from that storm), followed by learning about Lie algebras and groups, take care!

Spring Showers

For many of you it’s probably still winter, but here in Southern California, where there isn’t really a winter, it’s already the beginning of spring. In fact, the seasons here don’t make any sense at all. Last November there were flowering trees on Caltech’s campus, and now the desert blooms are slowly starting to awaken. In mid January it was 85 degrees.. but of course this morning it hailed, so who knows what the season is. Up until this past weekend it had been an unusually dry start to the year, but that all changed on friday. A big storm rolled in and proceeded to dump rain everywhere, and of course snow at the higher elevations. Death Valley got about 2 inches of rain over the weekend, shutting down many roads in the process. While you’d think that would suggest a good wildflower season, rangers are saying the rain might actually have washed away all the seeds! Now if we can find out where they all went… I can’t wait to see what happens a few weeks from now!

I had been watching the weather reports, and given this news, along with the chance of it clearing over last Saturday night, I made a dash for Joshua Tree National Park to try to catch some interesting light. I arrived on Saturday in the pouring rain, but it’s a desert, so storms like this often come in short bursts. An hour before sunset the clouds started to break, and the resulting light was nothing short of beautiful. Last time I was here there was not a single cloud in sight, and I discovered an area ripe with compositional potential. Unfortunately most of these scenes were sunrise locations.

Don’t forget to click on the image to see the big version… these little ones just don’t even come close.

“Desert Zen Garden” ~ Joshua Tree NP, CA
The Tech: Canon 5D mkII, 16-35mm mkII @19mm, tripod, polarizer
Exposure: iso 100, f/16, 1/4th sec
Processing: lots of curves layers and burning/dodging to get the exposure evened out.

The previous rains had really brought out the colors in the plant life around, and I had noticed a bunch of plants with bright red stems (biologists/plant lovers… any ID’s?). Well, as I wandered back to the car after the cloud show was over (I’m still undecided on those images), I stumbled across this scene. The Joshua Tree, red stemmed plants, rocks, and moon all came together.

“Desert Moonlight” ~ Joshua Tree NP, CA
The Tech: Canon 5D mkII, 16-35mm mkII @18mm, tripod
Exposure 1: iso 400, f/14, 3 min
Exposure 2: iso 400, f/14, 30 sec
Processing: I blended the two exposures to get even lighting for the sky and foreground.

At this point it was time to turn in for the night (yes, around 7pm.. time to sleep!). After filling my stomach with a can of chili, I curled up in my sleeping bag in the back of the car and tried to ignore the full moon. I awoke at 5:30 (I keep my watch on summer time, so it felt like 6:30am), gave the door a good few whacks to loosen the ice that had frozen it shut over night, and head out to await the morning glow. Most of the clouds had dissipated, and I was afraid I wouldn’t get the image I had come for. As I ran around to find another scene that could use the available clouds, suddenly a wispy puff willed itself into existence, as if it could read my mind! I raced back to the spot, carefully set up my composition, and caught the moment just in time! While I originally had hoped for more clouds, the more I look at this one, the more I like the minimal sky – it brings out the foreground textures and light more, which is what this scene is really about. Sensual granite foreground rocks like this are hard to find in the park, so I’m going to milk this spot for all it’s got.

“The Granite Sensation II” ~ Joshua Tree NP, CA
The Tech: Canon 5D mkII, 16-35mm mkII @20mm, tripod
Exposure: iso 100, f/16, 1.6 sec
Processing: I actually took two exposures, one for the color in the clouds, then another just a minute or two later for the light gracing the top of the rocks. By that point the cloud had dissipated already, so blending the two I was able to capture my vision.
Note: While I have no ethical problem blending two images taken from the exact same scene within a very short period of time, I would never mix skies and landscapes from different places or significantly different times.

Mostly satisfied with how my quick adventure turned out, I started to head home to get back to learning various things pertaining to control and dynamics and such. But… on my way out the clouds just looked too good. So I hoped out and went out to find an interesting scene. The trouble with much of Joshua Tree is that I prefer compositions with interesting and curvy foregrounds, and those can be hard to find. Much of the park is a collection of these amazing looking trees, but little opportunity to make the image ‘mine’. Well.. I stumbled on this egg, a nest of eggs rather. And together with the clouds and stream of light the scene came together.

“The Egg” ~ Joshua Tree NP, CA
The Tech: Canon 5D mkII, 16-35mm mkII @16mm, tripod, polarizer
Exposure: iso 100, f/16, 1/40th sec
Processing: Again I actually took two exposures, one for the cloud forms and another for the light on the rocks, which only lasted about a second or so!
Note: see previous image.

If these storms keep coming as they’re predicted to do, I’m bound to make another trip to some desert this weekend.. maybe the dunes, I miss playing with sand. While the rangers said the wildflower seeds may have all washed away, I’m keeping my hopes up for a spectacular display this year! Of course, nothing is going to compare to the lush and diverse explosion of spring that I had in Ithaca last year. I recently went digging through some old folders, and much to my surprise found this file, which had been neglected in favor of other less qualified ones. In any case, it was discovered, and now it’s here for your viewing pleasure. And this little web file doesn’t compare to the detail that’s there – you can see little rain drops on those azalea flowers! It’s not often that nature arranges such a complex scene with such perfection (of course, aided by several hours of trying various compositions). While this might look like paradise, it was hell to get, a zenlike hell though. I spent hours wading through knee deep swamp water, being bitten by flocks of mosquitoes (yes flocks), and somehow managed to keep the camera dry from the drizzle. I returned 5 times before I found the right composition and light, but I consider this one of my very best compositions to date, so the effort was definitely worth it! Photographing a marsh like this is incredibly challenging, but also most rewarding.

“The Spring Explosion” ~ Sapsucker Woods, Ithaca NY
The Tech: Canon 5D, 17-40mm @ 19mm, tripod, polarizer
Exposure: iso 200, f/16, 1/4th sec
Processing: In addition to the usual burn/dodge and local contrast adjustments I do, I applied a slight diffuse glow to bring out the magic and humid nature of the place – not Orton, but something of my own devising, a trade secret if you will

And just for fun, here’s a bird for you bird lovers… probably the most handsome Rufous Hummingbird I’ve ever encountered, a feisty one too.

Rufous Hummingbird ~ Pasadena, CA
The Tech: Canon 5D mkII, 500mm f/4 + 1.4x tc, monopod
Exposure: iso 3200, f/5.6, 1/125th
Processing: cropped to 12 MPix, and with iso 3200.. look at that detail! I did do a bit of noise reduction on the background, but boy are these files gorgeous!

And don’t forget all of these images are available as limited edition fine art prints… and the detail and colors you see in those make these pale in comparison. Proceeds go towards funding more adventures, and hence more material for you to enjoy, and perhaps eventually a book, can you think of a better cause?!

Also, for those of you who use flickr, I’ve started posting my images there, so feel free to look me up.. of course that will ruin the suspense of these posts, but you’ll have to come here for the stories! This is me: florisvb.

Okay.. time to study again so I can run off next weekend.. can’t wait to play in the desert sandbox!

Sandy Sinews

While the slot canyons in Southern Utah are a bit too far of a drive from my home in Pasadena for a day trip, fortunately California’s Southern deserts have their own version of these incredible places. Last friday Ali, my girlfriend, and I drove out to the Mecca Hills Wilderness, across the valley from Palm Springs. This place is an incredible wasteland of sand and stone that has been carved into eerie and sensational shapes over thousands of years by the occasional rainstorm. I wasn’t feeling great on the way down, and woke up with a slight fever, but what was I to do, drive home without even going for a short hike?! Fortunately the ibuprofen helped make me feel a bit better, and Ali and I went out to do the short ladder canyon/black canyon loop off the end of painted canyon road. I would have thought such a place would be relatively devoid of other people, but to our astonishment there were over 20 cars parked in the lot when we left around noon! Ladder canyon gets its name from the many ladders that have been put into place to facilitate hiking; without them you would need a good deal of technical equipment to make it through.

Me on the larger of the ladders in the canyon, photo by Ali.

Shortly after the main dryfall the narrows started in earnest. The canyon was about 3-4 feet wide and about 50-100 feet deep, so a respectable slot even by Utah standards! The walls were rough and sandy with interesting twists, carvings, and stones cemented in – very different from the smooth sandstone canyons I was used to from Utah. As the sun started to strike the walls near the entrance and exit of the slot, reflected light created incredible and bizarre hues and color transitions, moving from warm tones to cool blues in the shadows deeper in the canyon. I added very little saturation to these images, and while it may be hard to believe, those bizarre colors are natural!

“Conglomerate Passageway” ~ Mecca Hills Wilderness, CA.
The Tech: Canon 5D mkII, 16-35mm mkII, tripod
Exposure: iso 200, f/16, 1 sec

“Sandy Sinews” ~ Mecca Hills Wilderness, CA.
The Tech: Canon 5D mkII, 16-35mm mkII, tripod
Exposure: iso 200, f/18, 4 sec

I certainly plan to return to this place, hopefully before it gets too hot! There are bound to be more strange canyons and weird shapes that are waiting to be discovered (without the company of 20 car loads of people). That’s it for now.. back to making myself feel better and learning differential geometry..