Local Adventures

I’m making an effort to do some more traveling over the weekends this quarter, after all, there are lots of exciting places nearby that I can explore. This is a bit of a random collection of recent adventures, but I’m afraid that if I split it up I’ll get too far behind, so after this you should be all caught up with my adventures!

The Monarchs

Every winter thousands upon thousands of Monarch butterflies come to the coast of Southern California and Northern Mexico to roost over the winter. They particularly seem to like the eucalyptus trees along the California Coast, and one of the best places to see them is next to Pismo Beach (about an hour north of Santa Barbara). About two weeks ago I made the trip up there with two friends to check out the butterflies, and test out my new camera (the Canon 5D mkII). Yes, I got myself a new camera, and so far, it has been completely worth it! We got the butterfly area about an hour before sunset. There was a big group of butterflies hanging out relatively low to the ground (about 15 feet up), which made it possible to get some good views of them.

“The Monarchs” ~ Pismo Beach, CA
The Tech: Canon 5DmkII, 500mm f/4 L IS, 1.4x tc, tripod/sidekick
Exposure: iso 3200, f/5.6, 1/60th second
Processing: I used some ‘Orton’ processing on this one to bring out the feeling of movement and glow of these butterflies.
Notes: I needed to go up to a very high iso to at least freeze some of the motion of the butterflies, but with the new camera, that proved to be at very little cost to the image quality – truly outstanding high iso capabilities!

According to the Pismo Beach butterfly caretakers, there were about 26,000 of them there at the time! If you’re looking to get out to see them yourself, you don’t have long for this year, but check out the places mentioned in this guide.

Land of Boulders

Last weekend I made the trip to Joshua Tree National Park, just about a 2.5 hour drive from home (if there’s no traffic…). The forecast was for sunny blue skies, but I had two shots in mind that could use that normally boring light. My main interest in Joshua Tree isn’t necessarily the Joshua Trees – which are pretty strange indeed – but rather the awesome boulder formations. There’s weird smooth and cracked rocks everywhere, but some of the more interesting ones are by the Jumbo Rocks area. The granite here has been eroded into some really neat round shapes, occasionally leaving near perfect marbles in place.

“The Marbles” ~ Joshua Tree National Park, CA
The Tech: Canon 5DmkII, 24-105mm f/4 L IS, tripod
Exposure: iso 100, f/16, 1/10th
Notes: One of the 5DmkII’s best new features is live view, which basically means you can use the LCD to compose your shot. While that may sound rather silly, it’s an SLR after all, it is incredibly useful! The reason being that you can turn on live view with exposure simulation (so it shows you what the image should look like after you take it), and then you can use depth of field preview to see what the focus will actually be at say f/16. This makes it much easier to optimize aperture and focus settings in the field, rather than relying on hyperfocal distance charts and guess and check.

While the Joshua Trees are strange, the California Junipers can form some pretty strange shapes too. I’m sure I’ll be back at some point to catch the Joshua Trees, though I’ve got to come up with a unique way of portraying them first – there’s too many pictures of them already! Anyways, with the clear blue skies, and the quarter moon (rising after midnight), I was able to give the new camera (and new lens!) a good workout.

“Cosmic Balance” ~ Joshua Tree National Park, CA
Click on the image to see the bigger version, this small size does terrible things to the image!
The Tech: Canon 5DmkII, 16-35mm f/2.8 L mkII, tripod
Exposure 1: iso 100, f/11, 5 sec
Exposure 2: iso 3200, f/2.8, 13 sec
Processing: I layered the two exposures in lighten blend mode to bring out the stars, and used some additional layer adjustments to even out the lighting the way I wanted. The web is robbing me of some of the detail in the blacks, you’ll have to see a print for the real deal!
Notes: The combination of this camera and lens give me effectively 2-3 stops more usable range than my previous set up, that’s 8 times more light! I’ve got a number of other such shots planned, so I hope you like it.

Ever since shooting “The Twilight Blues”, I’ve grown rather fond of this time of day. The moment that the stars come out, yet the land still holds some detail. Capturing this moment is rather difficult, and I’ve found it’s best done by combining exposures from the twilight light with another shot for the stars about an hour later (without moving the camera of course!). Then some careful blending to bring the two together. For images like this, where the darkness contains lots of subtle details, it’s important to view the larger image. Though this still isn’t quite accurate, since the web seems to rob me of a level of blacks.. so you’ll have to see a print under some good lighting to really appreciate it!

The following day I did some scouting, and found at least two interesting spots, and a little less iconic than these spots (which I’d seen in photographs before). I can’t wait to get back there with some clouds to do my discoveries justice! My next destination for the weekend was the Salton Sea, where I was hoping to find some Burrowing Owls.

Burrowing Owls

Amid the farmland, artificial salty lake of Salton Sea, geothermal powerplants and hunting hides, lives a good sized population of burrowing owls. I’m going to go light on the details here, as I hope to have an article coming out in Living Bird detailing the trip – you’ll be sure to hear about it if/when it happens! In any case, I found these silly birds alongside the road and spent the better part of the afternoon with them.

Burrowing Owl ~ Salton Sea, CA
The Tech: Canon 5DmkII, 500mm f/4 L IS, 1.4x tc, tripod/sidekick
Exposure: iso 200, f/8, 1/400th
Processing: I had to clone some color from the left to the right on the bottom to fix some odd blue hues that got in there somehow.

Burrowing Owl ~ Salton Sea, CA
The Tech: Canon 5DmkII, 500mm f/4 L IS, 1.4x tc, tripod/sidekick
Exposure: iso 200, f/8, 1/320th

So the predictions may have said clear and sunny, but the clouds were moving in, and pretty soon I was standing under a rather magnificent sunset! The pink light reflected off just about every surface, including the pair of owls huddling behind a bush.

Burrowing Owl Pair ~ Salton Sea, CA
The Tech: Canon 5DmkII, 500mm f/4 L IS, 1.4x tc, tripod/sidekick
Exposure: iso 1600, f/5.6, 1/125th
Note: This is a heavy crop from the 5DmkII, but it’s still over 9 megapixels – I love this camera for the freedom in post capture cropping it offers, rather than being forced to do so in camera as I was with the 20D. The 5DmkII and 20D have the same pixel density, so I’m not losing any resolution.

As the sunset wound down, I figured I’d shoot the sunset, despite the man-made landscape that I generally avoid. What you see here is some kind of farm, and a geothermal power plant in the back.

“Food and Power” ~ Salton Sea, CA
The Tech: Canon 5DmkII, 16-35mm f/2.8 L mkII, tripod, 2-stop hard GND
Exposure: iso 800, f/16, 20 sec
Notes: The 16-35 produces much nicer flares off bright light sources than the 17-40 ever did, another advantage of this lens. Despite shooting at iso 800, the image quality is spectacular!

Some Pasadena Birds

I’ll start out with what will likely be my last image taken on my 20D, which I’ve now retired (though it’s still around for backup). I’ve been exploring out of focus foregrounds on occasion (as seen in some of the burrowing owl images), and here I tried to go for a dreamy effect around the bird.

Black Phoebe ~ Eaton Canyon, CA
The Tech: Canon 20D, 500mm f/4 L IS + 1.4x tc, monopod
Exposure: iso 800, f/5.6, 1/400th

It might come as no surprise to those that live in Pasadena, or even some other areas of California and the rest of the country, but there’s a rather large population of wild parrots that live here. The rumored story goes that some pet shop on Colorado Blvd burned down in 1959, releasing the birds into lush Pasadena, and they’ve managed to do quite well since then. There’s a number of species around, from little parakeets to rather large Amazons. Usually they’re pretty high up, but yesterday they came down to within range. Incidentally it also rained, which is rather rare here.. it was nice to see some clouds again!

Mitred Parakeet ~ Caltech Campus, CA
The Tech: Canon 5DmkII, 500mm f/4 L IS + 1.4x tc, monopod
Exposure: iso 400, f/5.6, 1/400th

Red-Masked Parakeet ~ Caltech Campus, CA
The Tech: Canon 5DmkII, 500mm f/4 L IS + 1.4x tc, monopod
Exposure: iso 800, f/8, 1/400th

Well, that’s about all the adventures thus far.. hopefully it won’t be too long before I get to share some more!

An Alien World

I gravitate towards weird places. Mono lake is one of those places. So on my trip to the Eastern Sierra, I made sure to stop by there. In fact, I was incredibly lucky with the conditions I encountered. The story starts on christmas morning, when I awoke in my car (probably illegally parked) off the side of the road near the Owen’s river to find an inch or so of snow on the desert vegetation. I tried to find an interesting scene with these unique conditions, but it eluded me. Then I started my trek up north along highway 395 through the driving snow and winds towards mammoth to pick up my skis for an Avalanche Course through Sierra Mountain Guides (more on that later). After getting the skis I holed up in a cafe (fortunately it was open, most things were closed since it was christmas, and blizzarding! Even the ski lifts at mammoth were closed because of the winds!). Well, ‘noah’ said the storm was supposed to be clearing by Mono lake, so I decided to make a play for it, assuming it would make for a nice sunrise. Well, upon arriving about two hours before sunset I found myself making the first tracks through 4 inches of fresh powder under a clearing and dynamic sky, life couldn’t be better!

Photographing Mono lake is a lot like shooting a forest. It is a complex scene with lots of chaotic vertical components, and somehow you have to make sense of it all. I spent the whole evening in a small section of Tufas – the most pointy and vertical ones along the lake. As the sun slid behind the bank of clouds still hovering over the Sierras, I captured this bizarre scene.

“Alien Forest” ~ Tufas at Mono Lake, CA
The Tech: Canon 5D, 17-40mm f/4 L @ 17mm, tripod, 2x 3-stop ND filters
Exposure: iso 50, f/16, 4 seconds
Notes: The ND filters were needed to create a long enough exposure to smooth out the lake’s surface to eliminate distracting and competing textures. This also created a nasty magenta cast, which prompted me to try a B&W conversion (I’m glad I did!).
Processing: This was an incredibly difficult conversion. The original didn’t have nearly this much contrast, but I felt it really brought out the strangeness of the place. I use a B&W conversions in photoshop, and about 12 contrast adjustment layers to selectively tweak the contrasts in various parts to pull apart the tones.

The entire area is volcanic, and there are a number of interesting cinder cone type volcanoes nearby (which I’ll explore further some other day). The lake is incredibly salty, and provides a unique and very productive ecosystem home to lots of birds and other creatures. If you ever pass by here in the summer I recommend going for a swim – it’s surprisingly difficult since you float so well that it’s hard to keep your arms and legs under the water to propel you forward! You’re better off just lying on your back and reading a book. You’ll be in dire need for a shower after though!

This fragile place was put in serious peril when L.A. started to divert water from the lake to quench the growing populations’ thirst. (Also of note is that L.A. county actually owns a large portion of the Owen’s River, notably the area where I photographed those birds from my last post). As Mono’s water level dropped, strange formations called Tufas emerged from the lake, and important bird nesting areas were made accessible to predation. Since the 1970’s significant efforts have been made to restore the water level, and it now rests about 10 meters below the recorded level from 1941 (likely where it will stay). In all honesty, however, I can’t complain too much, as it’s those Tufa’s that make the lake so interesting to me. They are formed exclusively under water, as springs rich in calcium bubble up into the carbonate rich lake water, forming a precipitate also known as limestone. Then as the water levels dropped, these alien towers were revealed.

Continuing from the previous image, I watched the skies as the clouds moved further east, leaving the frame of my original composition. After much searching, I found another composition I liked that included the incredible colors.

“Alien Skyscrapers” ~ Tufas at Mono Lake, CA
The Tech: Canon 5D, 17-40mm f/4 L @ 21mm, tripod, 2-stop hard GND, 3-stop ND
Exposure: iso 100, f/16, 3.2 seconds
Processing: I exposed twice, actually, once with the 2-stop GND and once without (same exposure). Then through an excruciatingly painful post processing session I corrected the GND line created by the filter. This involved going in at pixel level to fix the edges of the tufas.

The color lasted for quite some time, and I managed to shoot another composition (I rarely get more than one per sunrise/sunset).

“Snowy Seas” ~ Mono Lake, CA
The Tech: Canon 5D, 17-40mm f/4 L @ 24mm, tripod, 2-stop hard GND, 3-stop ND
Exposure: iso 100, f/16, 6 seconds
Processing: much less painful than the other two.

Satisfied with my captures from Mono, I headed to June Lake for dinner and to find a place to park my car for the night. Clear skies made for a cold night, and I needed my comforter, sleeping bag, and quilt to keep warm. All my water froze solid, and I even christened a spare container as my pee bottle (not only was it too cold to get out of the car, but I couldn’t exactly pee in the parking lot!). The next morning, with a lot of effort, I managed to break the frost holding the door shut, and made my way to the avalanche course meeting room. Unfortunately the heater was broken, so I didn’t get to warm up (they fixed it the next day). The course was 3 days, and we learned about avalanche terrain, unstable snow, and how to avoid such places (and how to recognize the human elements that are 95% or more of the cause of avalanches involving people), and how to rescue people using beacons, probes, and shovels. The short story is that any slope you would want to ski is avalanche terrain. Whether or not an avalanche is likely depends on the snow pack and weather history, as well as the presence of triggers – something to set off the avalanche. The reason I took the course is because I really want to get out into the Sierras in the winter to do some backcountry winter mountain photography, and would rather not be buried by snow. If you’re at all interested in learning about avalanches, snow, etc., I highly recommend the course I took.

This was a particularly interesting year to take the course, as the snow was incredibly unstable. Avalanches were happening all over the place – some skiers/snowboarders even died in bounds at various resorts like Squaw Valley, CA, and Snowbird, UT. At Mammoth they set off an avalanche with a 12 ft crown with artificial explosives (no one injured). That’s huge! The reason for all the sliding snow was that in november there was a storm where it rained up to 11,000 feet, creating a nice smooth and hard ice layer. In subsequent days small amounts of snow fell, and formed facets (little ice crystals) that act like ball bearings. Pile a few feet of compressed powder on that and you’ve got bricks of snow rolling on ball bearings on a layer of ice, no wonder everything was moving!

On my way out, I made a few stops before getting back home. The first was a location I picked out for the view of Mt. Tom, next to Bishop. The sunrise proved quite spectacular, but the clouds were everywhere except where I wanted them! Such is life. But they were so spectacular, that despite not liking silhouettes, or simple ‘picture of a cloud’ photos, I couldn’t help myself. These were the most sensual and serene clouds I’ve seen – the Sierra Wave it’s called, long drawn out lenticular clouds which often form over Owen’s valley due to the westerly winds and high peaks of the Sierras.

“Good Morning” ~ Owen’s Valley, CA
The Tech: Canon 5D, 70-200mm f/4 L @ 131mm, tripod
Exposure: iso 400, f/8, 13 seconds

And as the sun rose, it created beautiful soft pink light stretching across the snowy desert.

“Snowed In” ~ Owen’s Valley, CA
The Tech: Canon 5D, 70-200mm f/4 L @ 81mm, tripod
Exposure: iso 100, f/16, 1/5th second

With the clear skies predicted throughout the area, I decided to make one more stop on my way home. I had this vision for the Badwater salt flats in Death Valley, and given the moon rise time (ie. no moon) and clear skies, I figured it was worth a try. Also, my parents were hanging out in the wash thereabouts, so it gave me a chance to bring them some oliebollen (yes, that’s an english wikipedia entry on a dutch new years delicacy!) from the dutch baker in Bishop. With compass and camera gear in hand, and warm clothes and some food and water in my pack, I found a nice spot, and started my intricate process of capturing star trails. Almost 3 hours later, I headed back to the wash where my parents had dinner waiting! In addition to snow, the great thing about winter is that even if you stay up for four hours after sunset, it’s still around dinner time). I’m considering submitting an article to various magazines about shooting star trails, as well as static stars (from a landscape photographers perspective), as there’s a lot that goes into one of these. In fact, I even had to invent a new processing and blending method to combine the 30 or so sequential images I took to remove all the gaps that occur if you use methods available on the web. If you’re interested in the details send me an email.

“Geometry of Motion” ~ Badwater Salt Flats, Death Valley NP, CA
The Tech: Canon 5D, 15mm Sigma fisheye lens, tripod, TC-80N3 remote (I use that for everything, but here it was specifically critical)
Exposure: iso 400, f/5.6, 5 minutes… thirty-two of ’em
Processing: complicated. Essentially the idea is to stack all the images in lighten mode in photoshop, which keeps the sky and foreground from the brightest (first) exposure, and the stars from all the subsequent ones come through. But this leaves you with gaps, so there’s some little tricks to fix those (the gaps are a result of the blending method, not the multiple exposures). Also, I corrected for the distortion from the fisheye to some extent.

The title references both the stars, of course, as well as the salt flats themselves. Those weird cracks and lines are the result of continuous change in the salt flats. Occasional rain brings life to the place, sometimes creating a shallow lake (and not long ago one deep enough you could kayak in for a short time!). As the water evaporates, new salt crystals form, and as they expand they create interesting lines and fractures, strangely hexagonal in nature, in the salt plains. After that, I headed back home to study for some exams. But have no fear, I already have a pile of images lined up for the next story!

Westward, Ho!

On the edge of the Eastern Sierra, at the foot of Mt. Whitney (the highest point in the contiguous US at 14,505 feet), lies a fascinating collection of boulders, arches, and desert scenery, known as the Alabama Hills, just outside Lone Pine, CA. This place hasn’t escaped the attention of the world, and has been featured in countless movies, particularly Westerns (one of John Wayne’s favorite spots), but even more ‘recent’ films like Gladiator have scenes that used this rugged terrain as a back drop. There’s literally boulders everywhere of all shapes and sizes – a true natural playground. The rock is very soft and crumbly, and due to spheroidal weathering many of the boulders are shaped into round potato like structures. The area is particularly famous for its arches, which by now aren’t much of a secret anymore – in fact you can get the GPS coordinates for the most striking ones pretty easily. The most popular one is Möbius Arch, made famous by the late Galen Rowell (sometimes it is even referred to as Galen’s Arch). In the early winter morning, soon after the sun kisses the granite arch, a shadow forms on the base of the arch, completing the circle and forming a shape reminiscent of a möbius strip, hence the name. With the snowy Sierras in the background, it can hardly be any more picturesque.

“The Granite Sensation” ~ Möbius Arch, Alabama Hills, CA
The Tech: Canon 5D, 17-40mm f/4 L @ 28mm, tripod, polarizer
Exposure: iso 200, f/16, 20 sec
Processing: Because of the polarizer I had to even out the sky a bit.

The night after I arrived it actually snowed about an inch in the Hills, which doesn’t happen too often. Unfortunately the sunrise was a bit too cloudy to capture anything then, and within a few hours most of the snow had melted (this is a desert, after all). The following morning is when I captured the above photo, in addition to one I had scouted out during the day. I wanted to find a scene that invited the viewer to come in and explore all these crazy boulders, but that turned out to be quite challenging! I found it similar to photographing a forest, in a way, but this time with a background. So I spent many hours wandering through the boulders, looking for a cohesive and interesting scene. During my explorations I came across some petroglyphs as well – clearly the Native Americans liked this place too! I’m not sure if this species still exists, but I think of it as a cross between a cat and a scorpion, perhaps they just had a really good imagination..

The Scorpion-Cat, I suppose the natives either had a great imagination, or knew of some creature I’ve never seen. If you happen to know anything about the age/genuineness of something like this, let me know!

Eventually I found my composition, and after shooting the arch in the predawn glow, I quickly made my way to the spot. The clouds were cooperating perfectly, and turned the brightest pink I’ve ever seen, it was an incredibly beautiful view.

“Westward, Ho!” ~ Alabama Hills, CA
The Tech: Canon 5D, 17-40mm f/4 L @ 24mm, tripod, single axis panorama head, 2-stop hard GND
Exposure: iso 200, f/11, 1.3 sec
Note: Sometimes the internet plays with colors a little, the blues in the sky aren’t quite so ‘nuclear’ in the full rez file.

After exploring these hills for some time I went out into Owen’s Valley around Bishop (after eating some delicious dutch Oliebollen from the ‘dutch’ baker Eric Schat). The winter foliage is really quite beautiful in the valley, lots of bright yet soft oranges, reds, and magentas. I went out scouting for a spot to photograph the Sierras from along the banks of the Owen’s River, and brought along my big lens in case I came across any birds along the way. Within minutes I lucked out and found a Sora, a rather elusive bird creeping through the reeds on the edge of the river.

Sora ~ Owen’s River, CA
The Tech: Canon 20D, 500mm f/4 L IS + 1.4x tc, monopod
Exposure: iso 800, f/5.6, 1/200th

There were a surprising number of birds out for the chilly gray day that it was. I was really hoping to catch a picture of a kingfisher that kept calling from his perches among the beautiful red tinted bushes along the river, but every time I got within visual contact (and still way too far for a photo) he would take off again! As consolation, on my way back to the car, I spotted a Loggerhead Shrike posing in a beautiful collection of dried plants in front of those red bushes, and he was more than cooperative!

Loggerhead Shrike ~ Owen’s Valley, CA
The Tech: Canon 20D, 500mm f/4 L IS + 1.4x tc, monopod
Exposure: iso 800, f/5.6, 1/200th

There’s more to come.. this was quite a successful trip, and I gathered a number of images I’d been hoping for, so check back soon!

The Winter Classic

The winter snows bring something special to the wild, be it forests of giants, majestic mountains, or strange desert scenes. It brings a sense of freshness, of purity, beauty, delicate contrasts, and yes, it brings the abstract nature of places to the forefront by accentuating smooth and sensuous shapes. Well, after my exciting trip to the Sequoias, I headed out to Yosemite, where a similar dumping of the powdery stuff had fallen. Normally I avoid the place; there’s tourists everywhere, and probably just about everything has been photographed. But it is beautiful, quite beautiful. And at least in the winter there’s not as many people around (because it’s cold.. sleeping in a tent is not for the faint of heart). Straying even further from my general style, in a sense, I went specifically for a rather iconic scene: the Gates of the Valley – the grand opening of the glacially carved paradise as seen from the banks of the Merced river. With fresh snow and clear skies to the west at sunset, this place becomes truly stunning. I simply needed to get myself a picture of those sensual stones covered in a layer of fresh snow, and the weather predictions seemed like they were going to cooperate. Most renditions of the scene you will find concentrate on the majestic rock faces in the distance, but it’s the snowy foreground rocks and curves that I was really interested in, so I made them a rather large part of the composition. It was on my second evening that the skies cleared (they’ve got to be clear all the way out to San Francisco to get the best light, and as you can imagine, that’s very rare!), and the show was fantastic!

“Snow Pillows” ~ Yosemite National Park
The Tech: Canon 5D, 17-40mm L f/4 @ 23mm, single axis panorama head, tripod, 2-stop hard GND
Exposure: iso 200, f/18, 5 sec
Processing: two images stitched with PTGui.

Given that this is a photographers mecca, I met a few interesting photographers while waiting for the light to develop, one of whom was a retired professional runner sponsored by Nike, who now travels around photographing at will.. sounds like a good life! Another two folks recognized my car from the previous adventure, it seems when your car gets covered in a foot of snow you suddenly become famous 🙂

It’s hard to find something in Yosemite that hasn’t been done hundreds of times before, not that photographing those scenes isn’t fun, but I don’t find them as fulfilling. Driving through the valley, one of the things that caught my eye was the wind whipped snow and ice covered grasses scattered throughout the meadows. It wasn’t until I’d driven past a number of them and contemplated their delicate nature that I finally saw the scene that worked for me. The mist rising over the meadow and the graceful swirl of texture under the rugged and powerful rock face provided a lovely contrast of textures and emotions for me. This is one of those images that you really should see in a larger format (click on it!) to appreciate it.

“Snow Sketch” ~ Yosemite National Park
The Tech: Canon 5D, 17-40mm L f/4 @ 19mm, tripod
Exposure: iso 200, f/16, 1/8th
Notes: As you might have noticed, I often elect to use iso 200 over 100. With the 5D there’s hardly any difference in noise or dynamic range, and by dropping the shutter speed in half I’m reducing the effects of any wind that might rake across the scene, as was the case here. Or for longer exposures (of a few seconds), dropping the time in half just makes life easier, and there’s no noticeable drawback.
For those of you following my work, you may have noticed that I try to incorporate abstract components in my images, wherever possible. Yet I also like to keep the context of the scene there, so you have the opportunity to find the relationships and shapes yourself, rather than pushing them in your face and leaving you confused and disoriented.

To help give you an idea of how I view things I thought I’d share some insight into my brain regarding this image… When we’re outside, exploring a scene and taking in the sights, there are no edges to the world. You don’t see the world through a camera lens (even I don’t). You see the interactions between the grasses at your feet and the mountains in the distance, and you feel the cold air playing with your hair. Meanwhile, however, you focus in on certain things, like those mountains, the grasses, or the cold. And sometimes you stumble on something really neat, something worth taking some time to look at and ponder. Now, I’ve done the hard part – I’ve gone out and found those spots and moments – but I still want to give you the opportunity to understand what it was like to find them, as if you were out there yourself wandering the meadow. So for example, what struck me here, was the delicate grasses. But without the distant cliffs you wouldn’t understand what they were, or what it was like to find them. And for this image, you can see it in the opposite way as well, the mountains become an abstract painting, but without the context of the meadow, they mean very little. Together, you have a feeling of where you are, and you have the opportunity to isolate those components yourself, and then to see the interesting contrasts between the two. Finding a scene with multiple components that come together, with the appropriate light, is quite the challenge, and often results in my favorite images.

Dissecting the Snow Sketch image above, here you can see the components on their own, and how losing the context dramatically impacts the interest of the image.

Dissecting the Snow Sketch image above, here you can see the components on their own, and how losing the context dramatically impacts the interest of the image.

Then again, sometimes a flat and recognizable abstract, like some strange painting, is what nature calls for. In such a case, I will obey mother Nature’s..

“Ice Painting” ~ Merced River, Yosemite National Park
The Tech: Canon 5D, 100-400mm @ 100mm, handheld
Exposure: iso 400, f/8, 1/125th

Well, that’s about it from this trip, but hopefully soon I’ll be telling you my stories of the time I spent on the Eastern side of the Sierras for Christmas – a wild diversity in scenes from mountains to deserts and everywhere in between.

PS – thanks to all of you who came out to my parent’s house for the photography exhibition and presentation, it was great to meet you all! And if you have any suggestions and connections for places where I could do exhibitions in the future, please, let me know! The more exposure I can get, the more chances I may get for going out on such adventures to share with you all!