Slickrock and Shadow

The Queen in Little Egypt Geologic area Little Egypt landscape photography: Rain drizzled for 24 hours straight before my arrival at Little Egypt.  Clouds hung low.  I went here instead of searching for trickling waterfalls in Capitol Reef.  Laurent rates this place as less interesting than nearby Goblin Valley but the more colorful formations here appealed to me.  Many of the goblins here have a unique white stripe of rock running horizontal through them.  The most interesting formations were photographed from a distance using a telephoto lens.  With a focal length of 50-105mm, the plane of focus becomes small even with apertures of f/16.  Focus stacking is a technique to deal with this.  On site, I took 3 photographs of the foreground flowers, the midground bush, and the Queen rock formation.  These must have the same aperture and shutter speed.  They must align perfectly so a tripod is required.  They must be identical ex...

Upper Waikani Falls during a rainstorm. On my second trip to Maui, I visited the lovely city of Hana once again.  On this trip, the rain was falling a lot more.  We had more cloudy days, more use of the windshield wipers and less time getting a tan at the beach.  I was curious to see what the waterfalls would be like on the road to Hana.  I have seen some photographs of them during severe floods:  severe brown massive waterfalls causing destruction.  When I arrived at the picturesque 3 bears waterfall, I was surprised that it did not look more wild.  The image was pretty tame.  In this photograph, I try to capture the highest waterfall above.  You can see it through the trees.  When it is not raining, it is much harder to see and I really did not appreciate it on my first visit.

Typical forest view along the Zanes Trail Val di Funes is a gorgeous location in northern Italy.  If you do a Google search you will know what I mean.  This is part of the Puez Odle National Park.  I was expecting a lot of tourists, hikers and other visitors when I came here.  To my surprise, it was completely deserted.  I seem to have the entire valley and mountains to myself.  To be fair, it had been raining/snowing recently and there was a little bit of a drizzle continuing. The Zanes Trail is advertised as a wheelchair accessible trail in the dolomites.  There are no stairs.  Some of the trail is packed with loose gravel, making it difficult for a wheeled vehicle to go through but possible.  Along the trail there are different signs indicating interesting facts about the wildlife and forest.   Old Cabin at the beginning of Zanes Trail Coming to the Valley from Bolzano would be difficult without some GPS instructions...

Circular Whirlpool  Impressive Cliffs on the Three Ponds and Padre Canyon Trail Padre Canyon is a secret.  Not on the map given out at Snow Canyon State Park, this little gem is something I read about in the local newspaper.  I am not the 1st person to discover this but I believe I am the 1st person to create a trail report documenting my visit during the summer monsoon season.  What would normally be a very beautiful dry canyon, became an absolutely gorgeous, wet slot canyon after we had heavy summer rain.  I anticipated this would be a very good place to visit on a wet day. Padre Canyon branches off from the 3 Ponds trail.  I have always been underwhelmed with this particular trail.  I was hoping to find something better.  Immediately after passing through the high canyon cliffs, the 3 Ponds trail turns to the north (right).  Padre Canyon is to the left (south).  My two daughters and I hiked up the canyon and saw a little tr...