Slickrock and Shadow

Tallest Grass  In the field, looking at the bland clouds and hazy grey skies, I had to decide how to make an interesting photograph of my dear little cabin.  I wasn't satisfied with my standard shots taken from 2 to 6 feet above the ground.  The ground cover wasn't interesting enough to shoot down.  The skies weren't good enough to shoot up.   So I changed perspective radically by inverting my tripod and getting very, very low to the ground . . . so low that my subject (the cabin) was mostly obscured.  It became a complimentary subject while the grass and yellow flowers became my new star.  Even so, this is a less saturated picture than most landscapes.  It feels grey/neutral in many ways and accurately represents the colors that day.

Sunset with star burst effect and foreground detail Seeing sunset at White Sands National Park is a highlight of my year.  All the elements combined to give me a dream as the daylight disappeared.  As most people do, I walked out on the Alkali Flat trail.  This is no secret and I found it to be the most crowded and busy trail out on the dunes.  The only way I got away from tourist footprints was to just hike a mile beyond the trail markers.  The further I went, the more pristine the dunes became and it's tempting to just keep going . . . .  In my case the sunset happened and I found myself 2.5 miles away from the car.   I set up my tripod for the sunset shot at an angled dune that was catching light down its' diagonal slope.  I got shots without the sun but found my shot that included the sun was best.  This has lots of interesting pieces with the sun bursting its' rays being the top attraction.  The next eye-catching feature is the...

Grasses are thick, making it hard to spot the water Great Salt Lake's Shoreline Preserve State Park is the perfect sunset stroll.  The distances are do-able, everything is flat and the views vary enough from place to place to keep everyone happy.  Fall and Spring are pleasant times, thought the mid-day winter might be OK too.  If you get the timing right, birds might be migrating through the area, though that was not my passion.  I enjoyed the sunset over the lowland marshes and really liked the two lookout towers.  They give new perspectives and serve as good photo subjects.  Bonus!  Make the journey.  You won't be disappointed.   Two towers at the Preserve Reflecting pond Curling Boardwalk

Yellow Wildflowers growing among Lava Rock Unexpected beauty in the bleak desert is the reward that "desert rats" have come to love.  On a Sunday evening I went out for a casual drive to Joe Blake Hill.  Never knowing what I would find, I got out and looked around.  In the peak of bloom these yellow flowers popped with color.  The black lava rock provides a natural dark contrast to the lovely yellow.  I adjusted my ISO to allow a quick enough exposure to prevent wind from blurring my flowers.  Then I composed my shot and pressed the button.  Sometimes I just don't know if a shot will be any good but I shoot with hope.  This was one of those moments.  I believe there are several stages to photography. 1.  Planning the excursion. 2.  On-site photography:  composition and camera settings to capture the moment. 3.  Post-processing to polish and develop what I saw in step #2. On this occasion I only saw the p...

A small human figure sits near the edge of Toroweap looking down into the deep canyon. A sitting woman in the distance caught my attention as sunset approached.  She was backlit and the sun was far enough north in the sky to be out of frame.  The sun sent some amazing orange rays of light on the far canyon cliffs which then bounced off the redwall where I stood.  The dark greens of the Colorado River at the bottom of the canyon separate the two dramatic sides.  Rock with a View

Cottonball Clouds at Sunrise:  They Floated over the Islands Sunrise or sunset at the ocean is a fabulous life experience.  The golden hour light enhances any prime landscape location and a trip to Tonga is included.  The morning clouds were a little of everything during my trip:  overcast and grey, bland blue skies and partly cloudy.  The partly cloudy skies are the best for photography as the clouds take on various hues of the rainbow and contrast well with the clear areas.  My lead photo was taken at the end of the trip when unusually tall clouds floated over the islands like marshmallows or cotton balls.  They were beautiful and seemed like moving islands themselves.  The low angle of light also catches on the boats nearby for better yacht photos too. Sailboats at the Golden Hour:  a sure-fire successful photo Morning light catching an anchored sailboat I had better sunsets than sunrises.  I can't say if Tonga is alwa...

Barren Winter:  yellow stubble for grass and a hidden sun A winter visit to Montana afforded me an opportunity to shoot my little remote cabin in subzero temperatures.  Wind and rain made things cold indeed.  The large cloud did not however spoil the sunset because some golden yellow rays came down between the cloud and the mountains.  Grass was short, dead, awaiting summer temperatures to revive.  

Yellow Rock within Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument is one of many fabulous natural beauties! Yellow Rock, Utah remains one of the most unique and beautiful locations I've ever visited.  I've traveled in pursuit of great photo locations for 12 years now and Yellow Rock remains one of the most photogenic in memory.  I visited this remote location once, in 2008 (before blogging, so I thought it deserved a blog post now).  After 9 years, this photo remains one of my favorite.  I'd ascended the monolith, huffing and puffing, until I reached the top.  I searched around, looking for good photo subjects.  I discovered this wavy line of white and deep purple etched on the yellow sandstone.  Just about this time, sunset happened and the last sun rays shone on the distant cliffs and clouds. Processing note:  This photo was before HDR and multiple exposure blending.  I shot with a Lee graduated neutral density filter to balance out the...

Alien Planet:  Dramatic skies with orange and purple reflected light shone over Lake Powell's Dungeon Canyon I've done some posts on Lake Powell before and this year I'll add to this growing category.  Each year Lake Powell gives me a surprise.  The changing water level reveals or conceals different things year to year.  A great beach one year is gone the next.  A picturesque promontory can disappear in a season. Dungeon Canyon is near Rainbow Bridge.  It's pretty small and cannot give anchorage to more than a handful of boaters.  This year I found a good beach to anchor a boat and enjoyed some family time.  Storms threatened but did not truly strike until the final day.  With these storms came some dramatic skies.  One evening the sky shone bright orange long before the last light of sunset.  I grabbed my camera with its' 16-35mm wide angle lens and began searching for a good photography subject to match the dramatic skies....

Rocket Tower:  ruins of some unknown structure now left standing along the train tracks on the east side of the Salton Sea. The Mojave Desert is my kind-of place:  hot, vast, unpopulated.  I explored the area around the Salton Sea for a few days.  The attractions here are the kinds of things that would be condemned in a city:  broken and rotten shacks, buildings in ruin and being overtaken by the sand. The biggest drawback is the stench of rotting fish which grows quite strong as you near the water.  I can only describe the smell this way:  imagine dumping 1,000 cans of tuna fish into 100 porta-potties and then sticking your nose into the worst-smelling part.  That's the Salton Sea smell! But if you can bear the smell, there is much to discover.  Bombay Beach community has lots of ruined buildings and some that are inhabited (by those with no sense of smell).  I found it pretty busy with people, kids, photographers and other ga...

Spectacular Sunset at Font's Point Fonts Point at Anza Borrego Desert is the must visit location in this region.  The views stretch all the way into Mexico and the Borrego Badlands form hundreds if not thousands of canyons that are woven together in the most beautiful natural landscape.  It is easy to drive here on the dirt road.  Step out of your car and Boom! you are there. The great thing about fonts point is that it is just not one location.  You can walk along the edge for miles in every direction.  I spent quite a bit of time walking in one direction and then I would come all the way back and go in the other direction because the views are amazing everywhere. Remember to stay after the sun goes down because the light becomes a dark glow on the land.  This is one of the better sunset locations I have visited in my life!  It should not be missed. Looking down a Canyon Twisted Ridges descend hundreds of feet Great Sunset view fro...

Ocotillo in Fading Light Ocotillo are my favorite plant and I found a few perched over Fonts Point when I made my sunset visit.  The star of this location is the badland formations extending out far into the distance.  I used the ocotillo plants as foreground subjects with the obvious background being the badlands. Some shots are from sunset and others from dusk.  I even found a fallen plant nearly ready to drop into the canyon.  I shot its' photo very close to the canyon edge. As things became darker, my shutter speed went from 1/60 second to 1/4 second.  To prevent even slower shutter speeds, I increased my ISO to 400 for the above shot and opened aperture to f/8.  I had to do this avoid blurred ocotillos as the wind made them sway back and forth. My last is the same plant as my first shot, just about 60 minutes earlier. Ocotillo silhouette in Anza Borrego Clinging to the Edge at Fonts Point Fonts point with Dead Ocotillo Fonts ...

Jumbo Rocks Panorama -- click on picture for larger view I had to visit Jumbo Rocks in Joshua Tree.  I've seen so many pictures of these amazing and balanced rock conglomerations that my thoughts of JTNP immediately bring up the Ansel Adams photo of the balanced boulder.  So I went. These rocks are right in the middle of the largest campground in the whole park.  People are coming and going.  Just finding a parking space was difficult.  From a distance, I could see that this formation stands taller than many of the surrounding hills and mounds.  One of those mounds served as my location for this panorama.   From 400 feet away, I shot with my 300mm lens on a tripod and slowly moved across this rock formation.  Back home I stitched all these together to create a massive file.  It's a different look at this classic place, and one that I am happy with.  

Ryan Ranch Ruins with Yucca at Dusk On my visit to Joshua Tree National Park, I had two days:  two sunsets and two sunrises.  Being the best time of day to capture a quality photograph, I debated carefully over where I ought to be to get the best photo.  I try to put myself in a good place at the right time and hope for something special.  JTNP has plenty of locations.  My wish list included the cholla cactus garden, Ryan Ranch, the Lost Pencil, Hidden Valley, Key's View, Jumbo Rocks, White Tank to name a few.  This is the kind of decision that faces a photographer when visiting a major national park:  too many good things.   I whittled the list down a bit by seeing what had been shot extensively.  Jumbo Rocks, Cholla cactus garden and Key's View are photographed so much that I felt a visit to those locations would be unlikely to yield an original photograph.  (I did visit most of these locations in the day, though.)  Ryan R...

Mount Kinesava Sunset The Chinle trail in Zion National Park has been overlooked by me for years.  I know it existed but had felt the motivation to trek there.  This trail is sun exposed and lacks the encircling canyon feeling for which Zion is famous.  Instead this is open desert.  Mount Kinesava is the beautiful monument standing for everyone to see.  I figured a winter visit would be best for photography because the southern-facing mountain would receive more lighting at sunset. I hiked here in late November, getting up on the Rockville bench before sunset.  However I found that the cloud color and lighting got better just after the sun set.  Using my Lee neutral gradient filters, I took this and several other photos to capture this fantastic light.  

ISO 400, f/11, Shutter speed 1/50 second ISO 50, f/16, Shutter speed 1/4 second Among the many things out of my control, the wind probably is mentioned the least.  We tend to talk about the light more than anything else.  Clouds certainly enhance a photograph and I love the beautiful partly cloudy sky.  Wind can only be seen in the effects it has on movable objects.  In a sandstorm, it can create dramatic effect on the sand dunes.  Usually wind is a foe to good photography because it makes for blurry moving objects. Wind is almost always present on the Montana prairie.  As I made my annual trip to photograph my favorite cabin, the wind was blowing moderately.  I decided to try a couple of different photographs to capture the wind.  I wasn't sure if I would like them more or less than the perfectly still shots.  To be truthful, I wasn't sure of my still shots would work at all because of the wind. On the left I chose a very slow s...

A-Bay Sunset with Palms Trees, an Orange Sky and the Pacific Ocean Highly contrasting situations landed themselves to photography of silhouettes.  On my recent trip to the Big Island I found myself gazing at a wonderful sense over "A-bay" in Waikaloa.  The palm trees clustered together in a way that allowed the sunshine to come between a couple of them.  Moving slightly to one side I was able to get the composition I desired. The next artistic decision related to exposure.  If I decided to try to expose properly for the trees, the sunshine and the sky would be "blown out" white.  That would lose the beautiful colors of red and orange.  Instead I exposed for the sky and allowed the palm trees to simply go to black. In another situation on the other side of the island, I did the same thing at sunrise. Pololu Silhouette at Sunrise

Marching Men:  Arches National Park Marching men are located in the northwest corner of Arches National Park.  This area is also called Klondike Bluffs and is located at the end of the dirt road.  The drive up to that point is relatively easy.  A hike is then necessary to reach the marching men.  This takes about one hour of hiking (one way). There is a climb just north of the marching men that has quite a bit of sand as well as vegetation and rock.  These are all choices for foreground subjects when composing a photo.  With the sun creeping low, the shadows across this sand dune caught my eye. A word on camera settings:  the marching men are are in the distance, so a small aperture of f/16 and hyperfocal distance were used.  I shot two different configurations:  each as the 3 largest "men".  The horizontal was shot at 32mm focal length.  The vertical at 45mm focal length.  You may notice that the higher focal leng...

Arches Windows Section Panoramic Sunset Having only one sunset in Arches National Park, I thought long and hard about which location to choose.  This was near the end of my trip to Moab and I felt weary.  I'd previously debated between the Windows section, delicate arch, and the marching men.  Perhaps choosing the easy way out, I decided to shoot a panorama of the Windows section.  However I did not simply take one picture and call it quits.  Instead, it shows the location far away from the Windows and set up my 300mm f/2.8 lens on a heavy tripod.  Shooting quickly but deliberately level at sunset, I captured more than 20 images from the left to right.  The golden hour was truly beautiful. At home, I stitched these together to create my most successful and beautiful panorama.  The power of a panorama comes out when these are viewed very large.  I encourage you to visit my website where you can see this in original size.  It's huge...

Chesler Park at Sunset:  The grassy meadow surround the sandstone towers is gorgeous. Chesler Park is a very special place.  Of all the locations I have visited, this is one of the most difficult to reach.  That difficulty is part of the reason it is so special.  If you are here as the sun sets, you basically have this wonderful meadow and collection of spires to yourself.  The "park" is never crowded because there is no easy access to Chesler Park.  Several miles hiking is required. Armed with a precious camping permit at Chesler Park campsite #4, my daughter and I hiked in from the Joint Trail.  We set up our tent and camp between 2 wonderful round boulders and I started to wander around the meadow preparing for sunset. The golden hour can be prolonged more than one hour in the right conditions with clouds and changing weather patterns.  The golden hour can also be shortened to 10 minutes when the skies are empty of clouds.  Such w...