Slickrock and Shadow

Loblolly Bay has a place for you Anegada is the favorite of all the British Virgin Islands for many people.  Here you get away from any hustle and bustle of life even more than in the lower BVI.  Being extremely flat and surrounded by a protective coral reef, Anegada has marvelous beaches.  Cow Wreck is my favorite for being alone.  Loblolly Bay can be all yours if you arrive before noon.  That's what I did and found an empty swath of white sand and turquoise waters.  Loblolly is also known for excellent snorkeling.  For this photograph, I hoped to capture a piece of paradise.  I also wished to make it inviting, like it was just waiting for you to come.  I moved the bench slightly, so as to be in the shade of the umbrella and composed the shot with a sweeping bay and beach in the background.  I was careful to get low enough to separate the umbrella from the horizon, putting it up with the clouds. 

Cow Wreck Beach, Anegada, British Virgin Islands Sporting an atrocious name, Cow Wreck Beach doesn't attrack many visitors.  On the north shore of the northern-most British Virgin Island, this beach is hard to reach.  Most visitors take a plane, a sailboat and then some ground transportation to sink their toes into powder-soft white sand.  Of all the beaches in the world, this is one of the most beautiful and lonely.  If you ever get to Anegada, be sure to visit Cow Wreck.  It's much less crowded than Loblolly bay and truly gives you an "at-the-end-of-the-earth" feeling . . . and that's a good thing.

Paria Mud Cracks:  when the mud is moist, these are extremely slippery! It had rained the previous week.  The mud was still moist and very slippery.  This is what I hoped for:  dramatic puzzle-piece mud cracks leading through the canyon floor. In composing this photograph, I wanted the cracks to take center stage.  I wanted them to lead to another interesting photography subject as well.  I found a very shallow pool and a rock standing in front of a dark wall.  I tried several compositions with a 16-35 mm lens but I was not satisfied.  I switched to a 17 mm tilt shift lens and took several pictures, shifting the lens up and down in order to have a very good view of the mud cracks at my feet.  These were stitched together in Photoshop.  Black-and-white processing seemed appropriate for this dramatic subject.

Face Canyon Narrows Face Canyon is a beautiful location in the southern portion of Lake Powell, also known as Glen Canyon recreation area.  Before the Glen Canyon dam was completed, these narrow slot canyons were much like Buckskin Gulch or Antelope Canyon.  As water has filled the canyon, these narrows have become very unique indeed!  Although the walls of the canyon are close enough to permit touching both sides at the same time, the water is profoundly deep.  This is not something that can be waded. I discovered this particular branch of Face Canyon while traveling in a kayak.  I made 4 visits to this location.  On my 2nd visit I attempted to wedge my tripod against the wall so that I could take a photograph.  The walls are too steep, too slippery.  On my last attempt I realize that is photos would have to be taken handheld.  This is difficult to do when you are sitting in a kayak and a slight breeze is blowing in the canyon.  ...

Emerald Pool at Norris Geyser Basin Yellowstone has too many nooks to explore in a lifetime.  Having visited Norris Geyser basin occasionally over the last 30 years, I've always wanted to explore what they labeled "back basin."  This is a longer trek than the "porcelain basin" to the right.  The first think you reach is the beautiful Emerald Pool.  Though lacking the green emerald color, the light wonderful blues make it a highlight. Next comes the highest geyser in the world, Steamboat Springs.  I wasn't shooting off for me so I worked my way down the ramp to the lower basin.  I liked the view back up towards Steamboat and shot the following picture when the cloud came into the right position. Hot Drainage below Steamboat Geyser Then several lovely pools followed.  Echinus is the largest and the most red/orange.  Several in the shades of green and blue come here and there. Echinus Geyser is really a pool Abstract detail shot a...

Crested Pool in the Old Faithful area Yellowstone Park is filled with natural wonders.  On my recent trip to the park, I saw 2 beautiful pools into beautiful locations.  Yellowstone Park is known for wonderful colors and fragile beauty. Crested Pool is not far from Old Faithful.  As one of the first attractions you will find as you are walking away from the lodge, adjacent to Castle geyser.  What makes this cool so lovely it is the thin eggshell white crests that surrounds the water.  Surrounding that is a wonderful orange matte in the shape of an amoeba.  In the distance, the fire hole river and some climbing mountains give wonderful setting. Farther north in the park, and Norris geyser basin, Emerald Pool is on the way to Steamboat geyser.  I usually think of emeralds as green but this is a very lovely turquoise color instead.  The colors can change over the years.  When it was named, I assume it had a green color.  (For anoth...

Bursting Bubbles Occasionally we see proof that mother nature has a wonderful sense of humor.  One location which always makes me smile, laugh and giggle is the Artists Paint Pots in Yellowstone National Park.  Not only are bubbles popping right and left.  The mud is thick and spews out in all directions.  Silly sounds of popping, bubbling, guggling and more surround visitors.  And the smells . . . sulfur is unmistakable.

Wild Montana Increasingly seen these days, multiple-exposure photographs show off greater dynamic range of light and dark in a single scene.  The "old school" method was to use gradient neutral density filters.  I have those and they work well if the horizon is perfectly level. The "new school" method is to take multiple exposures and then blend them together manually in photoshop. There is also another method, which I'd call the "school dropout" method which uses an HDR program to create an automatic blend of these photos which the computer finds beautiful.  I own the most up-to-date HDR program and it does not create natural-looking shots. So, for this shot, I used the "new school" photoshop blending, relying heavily on the lightest shot to give this work a gorgeous luminance.  

Mustard in Bloom I have mentioned luck before as a photographic asset.  Luck gives you the unexpected ray of light, dramatic shadow, picturesque cloud or rainbow.  In this case, luck gave me a field of mustard.  Instead of traveling the usual route from Montana to Utah, I took a scenic route past Mesa Falls.  Just south of that, I came upon this gorgeous field of mustard flowers.  They were at peak bloom and covered the horizon. With luck, you have to drop what you had planned and take the opportunity.  I stopped the car and spent several minutes wandering the skirts of this field, photographing the immense field and sky, trying to take in the beauty of the many.  

Lupine Wildflowers and small Montana Cabin at sunset  I visit southwest Montana each year for one week.  Each years looks different depending on how much rain/snow they've had and how early/late in the summer I go.  This lonely cabin sits in a big valley and I've taken to shooting it each year.  Sometimes I try sunset, others at sunrise, others with different lenses, etc -- I want to get something NEW each year.  That's the challenge:  to get a quality shot that isn't a copy of prior years. This year the lupine wildflowers were out in force.  That's very exciting!  The last 5 minutes of direct sunlight shone on these flowers as the day ended.  I'd actually found this bunch of flowers an hour earlier as the best bunch in the area.  I'd picked a few stray grass blades out.  When I returned with a few minutes of dying light, I was so happy to find a perfect bouquet. This is the first time I've written about this 8-year projec...

Montana Bloom:  This photo obeys several landscape photography rules. Lupine wildflowers were in bloom last month in Montana.  Patches of purple mixed in with the green grassland, coloring the charming land.  How to capture this beauty?  I decided to go back to the "rules" of landscape photography and see what happened.  Here are a few of the rules I followed: 1.  Foreground interest.  The flower is the obvious choice here.  The challenge comes in how to include this flower and everything else.  A wide-angle lens positioned just above the highest petals allows the viewer to get a whiff of lupine but still see the wider landscape above. 2.  S-curve.  The S-curve is used mostly in figure photography, particularly the female form.  This same curve can be used when it appear in landscape.  The lovely stream makes such a curve and connects the foreground to the background, helping me obey two photography rules. 3. ...

Headshot portraits are out of this world with the Canon 85mm f/1.2 L lens Portrait photography is an opportunity that every serious photographer will face at one point or another.  Friends and family know how serious I am about photography and ask about getting their photos taken.  This is always a wonderful opportunity and I look at it as a very enjoyable service.  I also hope to do the best possible and provide a professional portrait as good as anything they could obtain anywhere. The gear and style of shooting is very different from landscape photography.  Instead of methodically setting up a heavy tripod in the silence of the wilderness, I find myself talking and shooting quickly so that the subject does not become overly tired from posing.  Instead of wide-angle lenses with very small apertures and long shudder speeds, long telephoto lenses with wide apertures and very short shudder speeds are used.  There is no time for a tripod. Late in 201...

Secret Waterfall, Zion National Park Keeping secrets is fun if you know that your secret is highly desired by others.  I discovered a secret waterfall in Zion National Park and it is so much fun and such a wonderful find, that I have to post something about it.  However I will keep its location a secret.  What I will share is how beautiful it is.  I want to share the beauties of nature and how I can best capture it with photography. This particular waterfall was reached after hiking several hours.  There is no trail.  There is no trail head.  It was simply a rumor.  I can say that along the way I saw several small fish in the stream, climbed over multiple boulders, crisscrossed from side to side of the water countless times.  The journey was mostly enjoyable. As I was approaching the end of this hike, I saw the split waterfalls noted above.  My heart leapt with excitement.  I spent a couple of hours here taking a lot of photogr...