Posts tagged ‘Trips’

Jul 6

Summer Trip Day Eight, First Week’s Retrospective

On Monday, I’ll be up early—doing laundry. And I’ll be out late—doing photography. So, I’m writing this blog post in advance, to say a few words about my first week. I’m now halfway through my trip.

A week ago, I imagined this as a photography trip. To me that means seeking the best light—up before down, out after sunset, putting myself in the right place at the right time, and trying hard not to let a good photo opportunity slip away.

Visiting the Rowell’s Mountain Light Gallery the other day, I was reminded about how Galen Rowell worked so hard to be at the right place, in case the light and all the other elements of a good photo came together.

But for me, it hasn’t played out this way. Sure, I’m doing a lot of photography, but I’m not getting up at 3:45 AM to drive to some place an hour away to be there for first light at 5:00 AM.

This is okay for infrared photography; it actually works pretty well in the middle of the day. But for visible light photography, my mid-day hikes don’t yield the best photos. During my five-mile mid-day hike through Devil’s Postpile, I had plenty of time to contemplate this.

Instead, this trip has been about discovering new places. As I was explaining to a friend of mine, I have to get to know a place before I can really capture it with photography. Galen Rowell would sometimes go back to a place many different times, waiting for the conditions to be right—the light, the wind, the snow or rain. This explains why I’ve been to Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge four years in a row.

This has become a kind of a scouting trip for me. I’m figuring out what works and what doesn’t in places like Yosemite, the Bristlecone Pines, and Bodie State Park. I’d like to come back to try different times of the year, with different weather conditions.

I believe that these places have more to say… more to reveal… than I can discover in a quick first-time trip. I’ll be back again. I’ll be more ready. I’ll know more about what I want to accomplish.

In the meantime, I hope you’ve enjoyed the handful of images that I’ve selected for the blog postings for this first week of my trip.

I’ll be back with another post on Tuesday.

Jul 6

Summer Trip Night Seven, Yosemite Falls at Night

Just wanted to post a couple of quick night shots. The Yosemite Lodge is a few hundred yards from Yosemite Falls, so it was easy for me to walk over about midnight and try a few things.

These were taken with a Nikon D700 at ISO 800, with a 17-35mm f/2.8 lens at f/5.6, for about 3 minutes. (Timed with my iPhone’s stopwatch.)

They look somewhat like daylight shots, except for the stars in the sky.

Jul 5

Summer Trip Day Seven, Bodie State Historical Park

Today, I visited Bodie State Historical Park, north of Mono Lake and Lee Vining. Bodie was a gold mining town and is now a ghost town. There are still a couple of hundred building there. Most are standing. A few are falling down.

The image below is the interior of the stamp mill, where the ore was crushed into dust to make it easier to extract gold and silver. (Shot at ISO 6400.)

You can peer into most of the buildings and see the lives that people left behind in Bodie. Wallpaper falling down. Clothes littering the floor…

I walked over to the town cemetery. Many of the graves were from the heyday of Bodie. And a few are more recent, of family members returned, perhaps, to where they grew up.

After I left Bodie, I returned to Yosemite. The Grouse Creek fire continues to grow, and the haze in the valley is worse than when I was here a few days ago.

Tomorrow marks the halfway point of my trip.

Jul 4

Summer Trip Day Six, Devil’s Postpile

I wasn’t sure what to expect, but my time at Devil’s Postpile National Monument turned into a full day of hiking and about a hundred photos.

Today was July 4, so the park was crowded—probably a couple of thousand visitors—their busiest day of the year. They have a shuttle bus system to reduce the number of cars on the narrow, windy roads.

Among other things, the monument protects Rainbow Falls of the San Joaquin River. This photo shows how the falls got its name… (As always, click the images to enlarge them.)

The monument is named after a large, well, “pile” of columnar basalt. Normally perpendicular, there are some places where the columns seem to bend over. This image is infrared, which shows the green foliage as nearly white.

Here’s another infrared shot, of the dead trees left from the 1992 Rainbow Fire, which burned about 8000 acres of forest.

And here are a few other favorite images from my five-mile hike at about 7500 feet of elevation.

Tomorrow, it’s back to Yosemite.

Jul 3

Summer Trip Day Five, The Eastern Sierra

Today was pretty busy. I started the day at the Manzanar National Historic Site. Like many people, I first learned of Manzanar because of the work that the photographer Ansel Adams did there. Manzanar was a Japanese-American internment camp during World War II.

Below are images of the cemetery at Manzanar. Some visitors leave mementos at this monument, including strands of origami cranes.

After Manzanar, I drove down to the Whitney Portal, which is where the trail up Mt. Whitney begins. It was very crowded there, and I only spent a half hour or so before heading down.

Next, I drove to the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest in the White Mountains. The oldest living organism on the planet is thought to be a bristlecone pine in this forest, at a little over 4800 years old. The photo at the top of this post is the skeleton of a bristlecone pine. I did a 4.25-mile moderately strenuous hike at about 10,000 feet. The temperature was in the high 60’s, which beat the high 90’s on the valley floor 6000 feet below.

Finally, on my way back through Bishop, I stopped at the Mountain Light Gallery, which is the gallery started by the late Galen and Barbara Rowell.

Tonight, I’m in Mammoth Lakes, where I just watched the July 3rd fireworks.

Jul 2

Summer Trip Day Four, Yosemite and Mono Lake

I continue to be inspired by my infrared photos. The image above is from the South Tufa area of Mono Lake, near Lee Vining, California. Mono Lake is an alkaline and saline lake, and the tufas are calcite rock formations in several locations there. The infrared camera highlights the interesting clouds we had today.

In Yosemite, the Grouse Creek fire continues to burn, and the Yosemite Valley had even more smoke today than yesterday. I did spend more time at the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias.

Tomorrow, I plan to explore south from Bishop.

Jul 1

Summer Trip Day Three, Yosemite

I spent the day exploring more of Yosemite, hiking to Taft Point, driving to Washburn and Glacier Points, and then spending more time in Yosemite Valley.

The Valley has a lot of smoke in it from the Grouse Fire, which started from lightning about a month ago. It’s a little frustrating that the grand vistas are pretty hazy, but I appreciate the benefits that fire brings to the forest environment.

The image above is another infrared photo. It is the classic view from the “Tunnel View” overlook. El Capitan is on the left. Half Dome is just left of center in the far distance. Bridalveil Falls is in the lower right.

Tomorrow, I work my way back through the Yosemite high country, and will end up in Bishop, on the other side of the Sierras.

PS: My friend Nancy wanted a photo of me driving through one of those “tunnel trees”. The California Tunnel Tree in the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias isn’t big enough for a car (and they don’t allow them there anyway). When the tunnel was cut in 1895, they didn’t foresee the size of today’s cars. No car, but here I am under the tree.

Jun 30

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Summer Trip Day Two, Yosemite

I drove down to Yosemite today—my first time visiting this park.

I like to get to know a place before I try to get serious with my photography. I spent some time at Tuolomne Meadows, and some time in Yosemite Valley. In the valley, I took some of the iconic shots that you’ve seen from other photographers. Of course, as I mentioned in my earlier post, if it’s in Yosemite Valley, somebody’s taken the photo before.

I am doing something a little different—I brought my Infrared Nikon D200, and trying a few infrared shots. The image above is an infrared shot of Upper Yosemite Falls in afternoon light, converted to black and white with Nik Software’s Silver Efex Pro.

I also brought along my video camera. I’m not good at video yet, but I’m working on it.

Tomorrow is another day in Yosemite.

Jun 29

Summer Trip Day One, Reno

Just a quick blog post to say that there’s no blog post today.

Thanks to an “equipment change”, I had a four-hour layover in DFW and it took me a lot longer to get to Reno than expected.

I did have dinner with one of my best friends from college and her family. It was great catching up.

See you tomorrow.

Jun 28

Summer Trip Day Zero, Austin

Tomorrow morning, I leave for Reno, Nevada. I hope to see an old friend, and spend some time near Lake Tahoe. And then on to Yosemite National Park.

I’ve never been to this section of the country before, and I’ve been looking forward to this trip for a couple of months.

Yosemite, of course, has been made famous by photographers such as Ansel Adams, William Neill, and scores of others. I have a good friend who has mentioned that she’s intimidated by Yosemite—“how to take a unique, interesting picture when every square inch of the place has been photographed before?”

I also realize that the week before July 4 isn’t the best time to visit a major national park if I want to avoid crowds.

But I’m not going with a list of “must have” shots. I’m not going with an agenda. I’m not going with much of a schedule to keep.

Will I shoot the iconic pictures of El Capitan, Half Dome, waterfalls? Probably. Maybe just for my own memories—or for some photographic “B roll”, as it were. Or maybe I’ll find a perfect shot.

I do hope that Yosemite Valley will be one of those places that takes my breath away when I see it. Places like Crater Lake in Oregon, or the Grand Canyons of the Colorado or the Yellowstone.

But if I go into this with fixed ideas of what I’m going to shoot, I might miss something beautiful right in front of me. Recently, I’ve had some great lunch conversations with one of my best friends about this—about being ready to let good things happen in life, rather than trying to force them to happen.

I’m optimistic. See you on the road.

Conservation Photography and Other Photo Adventures