I have to admit that although I’m fortunate to find great photography subjects close to home–often in my backyard!–the act of working really hard for an image brings a lot of satisfaction.  Sometimes working that hard for an image can bring big adventure–and some hair-raising experiences to the table as well.

As I write this, I’m reminded of two such days.  The first is last August, in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.  A friend and I drove up from southern California, and my dad drove out from New Mexico, and we spent a few days making images in the canyons of this wonderful wilderness.  On our second day–my dad’s day to pick how we spent the day–we hiked into Neon Canyon to visit the Golden Cathedral.  The hike was fantastic–7 miles round-trip, all cross country–and the photography was phenomenal.  However, it was August, and we were feeling the August heat–95+ degrees.  I remember standing knee-deep in the Escalante River that afternoon thinking that there really was no place on earth I’d rather be at that moment.  Hiking out of there was also the hottest, hardest work I’ve done in quite a while.

The second day was satisfying in a similar way, but a little more hair-raising.  Again I was with my dad, and we were hiking through the Left Fork of North Creek–the Subway–in Zion National Park.  If you’ve hiked it from top to bottom, you know that the descent from the upper bench into the canyon is a bit hairy.  Although I’m not normally one to flinch at such things, I decided to try an alternate route down that day, as I saw a small trail heading off to my left.  It seemed like a good idea for a while, but suddenly the earth gave out from underneath me, sending me head over heels down a gully…and toward a 75-foot drop off.  After the second turn in the gully, I slid out of my dad’s line of sight, so all he could hear was me cursing and grasping for roots as I slid by.  Finally one stuck, and I stopped, but not before I was bloodied and pretty battered.  To add insult to injury, I landed in someone’s cathole (fortunately I didn’t land in “it” but it was too close for my taste)–don’t ask me who would find that a convenient spot to relieve themselves.  I crawled back up and the rest of the day all I had to worry about was soaking my camera gear.  My elbow still hurts from that day.

Recently, I was talking to a big wall climber who sort of guffawed at my sense of “adventure”.  I guess because I’m not scaling El Capitan, my adventures weren’t quite worthy of praise–maybe because my pack is filled with an SLR body and a bunch of glass instead of a climbing rack, I’m not as cool.  C’est la vie.  Its important to remember that adventure comes in all sizes–its your perception of it that makes it special and memorable.

What are some of your adventures?  Do you have any especially memorable experiences that have come out of working for an image?  Maybe you got caught in an epic storm, or had to outrun a rabid badger.  These are the experiences that make our “backyard adventures” just as cool as redpointing a new route on El Capitan…

The Golden Cathedral, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, Utah

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This weekend, a friend and I drove to Death Valley National Park.  I had heard there is currently water in Badwater Basin, and wanted to see it, as well as photograph it.  Since Death Valley usually does not get enough rain to allow for standing water in the basin, this is a rare event (since January 1, Furnace Creek has received over 2″ of rain).  On Friday, we arrived at Badwater about 3pm, and immediately headed to the West Side Road in search of photo opportunities.

On Friday, another storm moved into the area.  In my experience, bad weather can either lead to amazing light conditions, or to very poor conditions for photography.  Unfortunately, in this case, it was the latter.  There wasn’t much of a sunset on Friday night.  However, after dark, we headed back over to the Badwater parking area and walked out on the salt flat.  Because conditions were poor for star trail photography, my friend and I did some light graffiti–one of his newest hobbies.  I have to disclose that I really did nothing here, except for stand behind the camera, but this one is called ‘Badwater Blooms’.

"Badwater Blooms", Death Valley National Park, February 2010

As we were experimenting with different bloom configurations, the strangest thing happened.  We thought we were alone on the salt flat, but off in the distance, we could make out a figure walking towards us.  Ours was the only car in the parking lot, and no one had arrived, so we tried to say hello, thinking the person may be lost or need help.  The figure didn’t say anything, but as it got closer to us, a bright light appeared behind it, and the figure disappeared, almost as quickly as it had appeared.

I managed to snap this photo before it disappeared.

A strange visitor, Death Valley National Park, February 2010

Was the visitor from another dimension?  Did it exit through a portal that’s only open when Badwater Basin is full of water?  I’m not sure.

Unfortunately, we didn’t have much better light the next morning; in fact, we had really poor light.  However, Saturday night, we had the best light I’ve had in quite some time.  I’ll share those images in my next post.

You can see all my Death Valley images here.

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In my last post, I discussed a few techniques that can be used to effectively shoot panoramas.  All of my examples were of grand landscapes, and they were all landscape-oriented panoramas.  I want to use this post to point out another time you can shoot panos to yield great results.

Last November, we visited the Cedar Mesa area near Blanding, Utah.  Since we were limited on time, we chose to visit a familiar and often photographed Ancestral Puebloan ruin that’s been nicknamed the “House on Fire” (also called the Flaming Roof ruin).  I blogged about that visit here, in November.  While at the ruin, I envisioned someday wanting to print it very large, and wished I had a medium format camera with me.  Additionally, I really wanted to emphasize the “flames” exiting the roof of the ruin.

So, I took 3 landscape-oriented images, but rather than putting them next to each other, I stacked them on top of one another,  thus producing a larger image.  If you click on the image, you’ll see a larger version–the detail is amazing!  That said, it would look even better printed on canvas over your couch

"House on Fire" vertical panorama, Utah, November 2009

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Sedimentary rocks are normally deposited as horizonal layers. Even when folded or tilted by faulting the originally horizontal layering is obvious. Upon closer examination, however, you may see very fine layers (usually 1 to several mm thick) that are at an angle to the main bedding. These tilted layers contained within larger layers are termed cross bedding.

What a mouthful right?  As sandstone is formed, sand is laid down, either by prevailing wind current, or water current.  However, over geologic time, those currents shift, causing sand to be laid down in a different direction.  What you get is cross bedding.  I love all the cross bedding in Zion National Park and thought it would make for a good abstract photo.  To make this, I intentionally underexposed the photo by ~1 stop, to emphasize the shadows, then I converted to black and white in Photoshop and applied a very light tint to the image.

Cross bedding abstract, Zion National Park, January 2010

You can see all of my Zion National Park images here.

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Last week’s Veteran’s Day holiday enabled me to sneak out to Joshua Tree National Park for the night.  In my ongoing series on Topophilia (there will be more posts on that in the near future), I have featured photographers who inspire me to think outside of the box.  In that spirit, I headed out for Joshua Tree, vowing to myself that I would making more images of the park’s namesake plants.  My goal instead was to visit a natural arch, called Arch Rock (and sometimes White Tank Arch), I had recently read about.  

Located on the Pinto Basin Road, the arch is a short hike from the White Tank campground, and I had the place to myself.  I’m still editing images, but here are two I made on my trip.

Arch Rock I, Joshua Tree National Park, November 2009

Arch Rock II, Joshua Tree National Park, November 2009

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I’ve always been attracted to rugged mountains and jagged peaks.  Some of my favorite mountain ranges have had this characteristic: the San Juans in Colorado, the Tetons and Wind Rivers in Wyoming, and of course California’s “Range of Light”–the Sierra Nevada.  As the Sierra moves north from its southern foothills, the peaks get more jagged and rugged, and this is especially evident around the Mammoth Lakes area.  Behind Mammoth Mountain lies the Minarets, a series of jagged peaks, located in the Ritter Range.

I took this simple, graphic, shot of the Minarets at dusk one night in early October 2009.  I waited as the cloud moved south from over Mount Ritter and Banner Peak to hovering over the Minarets.  It only stayed here about 1 minute, before disappearing completely.

The Minarets at dusk, Sierra Nevada mountains, California, October 2009

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Here are some more images from my recent Sierra trip.  Before heading home, we stopped by Devil’s Postpile National Monument to go for a quick hike, and to check out the amazing display of columnar basalt present here.  It was kind of a cool morning, because they essentially closed the gates behind us for the year.  Its neat to know that you’re one of the last people to hike in a place for the whole year.  It was my second visit to the Postpile; although the face of the pile is best photographed in the afternoon (I’ve only been there in the morning), the tops of the columns can be photographed any time.  As it wasn’t overcast, I chose to take a more intimate view of the columns (i.e. excluding the sky) with my wide angle lens to show the expanse:

Columnar Basalt, Devil’s Postpile National Monument, October 2009

And I can’t resist a “self-portrait” in places like this, either:

Columnar Basalt, Devil’s Postpile National Monument, October 2009

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Mono Lake is one of the most bizarre, but most starkly beautiful places I’ve had the pleasure of visiting.  The water loss in the lake over the last 70 or so years has exposed the ghostly and oh-so-strange tufas–rock outcroppings made of calcium carbonate that form because of the lake’s chemistry.  Because of the tufa formations and the stunning Sierra Nevada backdrop, Mono Lake is also very popular with photographers.

On our recent trip, I arrived at the South Tufa parking lot at 6 am–1 hour before sunrise only to find 28 other cars in the parking lot.  Not wanting to be in every photographer’s shot, I left and drove to a nearby parking area, where I was alone.  I hiked to a “field” of sand tufas I know about and was grateful to put a new spin on an oft-photographed lake, as well as avoid the crowds at South Tufa (while I was hiking, I counted another 15 cars pull in the parking lot!).

The sand tufas remind me of something similar to Isengard Tower in the Lord of the Rings:

Sand Tufas at Dawn, Mono Lake, California, October 2009

Sand Tufas at Dawn II, Mono Lake, California, October 2009

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Despite my childhood fears, I’m confident that Mothra will never try to take over the world.  Mothra first appeared in the novel The Luminous Fairies and Mothra (Takehiko Fukunaga), but she has since appeared in several films.  A fictional Lepidopteran, Mothra has characteristics of both moths and butterflies, and while I cannot find any references as to how large she would have been, you can see her next to Godzilla at the right, suggesting she was quite large.

So, how can I be confident a moth this large could really never occur?  Moths and butterflies are arthropods and arthropods have a unique method of growth.  Because they have a rigid exoskeleton, they essentially are wearing a suit of armor that will not grow with them.  You and I have an endoskeleton that grows with us.  For arthropods, growth occurs in several steps:

1. First the existing exoskeleton is shed, or molted
2. The animal plumps itself up with water, causing it to swell
3. A new exoskeleton is secreted around the swollen animal; within a few hours (or days) this new skeleton will harden
4. The swelling goes down, and the animal now has an exoskeleton it can grow into.

During the period between steps 2 and 3 above, the animal is not only helpless, laying as a ‘blob’, but it also has nothing to support its weight.  Its likely that a bug the size of Mothra would have been crushed and killed under her own weight.

So, how big can arthropods get?  The largest terrestrial arthropods are probably the Giant Weta (Deinacrida spp.), found in New Zealand; the largest one documented was ~70g!  However, because water is more buoyant (and supportive) than air, aquatic arthropods can get much larger.   The Japanese Spider Crab (Macrocheira kaempferi) can reach a width of up to 13 feet, and a mass of 20kg (44 lb)!  I had a chance to photograph this crab last week at the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach.

Japanese Spider Crab (Macrocheira kaempferi) Aquarium of the Pacific, October 2009

Despite the fact there was a lot of glare on the glass, I rather like this photo.  Somehow I can’t help but think these crabs are planning a Mothra-like reve….

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How much do you use social networking to promote your photography?  Is it useful to you?  Jim Goldstein wants to know.  He’s compiled the 2009 Photographer Social Media Survey.  It only takes about 10 minutes (I took it last night), but hopefully the results will give some insight into usefulness of tools such as Twitter and Facebook.

Inge Fernau has returned from what must have been an exhausting marathon trip to the eastern Sierra.  Here’s a detailed status report on the fall colors.  Also, G. Dan Mitchell updated us on Inge’s, as well as many other fall color reports (as well as some great shooting tips for the aspens).  As I said last week, its reports like this that make this a great community of photographers.  It looks like peak will be sometime around the weekend of Oct 3/4; I’ll be there Oct 9-11, which will probably be on the tail end of peak, but it will still be pretty, and maybe not quite as busy.  If anyone wants to meet up to shoot that weekend, send me an email.

I saw this blog post months ago, and am glad Phil Colla reposted it this week.  He describes a very useful technique for getting the most out of your RAW images.

Gary Crabbe shared a great story about Galen Rowell this week.  I’m still smiling from it.

The Ansel Adams Gallery announced their first National Parks Photography Contest, opening October 1.  It looks like there will be many great entries.

The Santa Ana winds have been blowing this week in southern California, and true to form, we had fires this week.  I’m hoping the firefighters get a break this fall.  Because we’ve been baking in 100+ degree temperatures, today’s photo is from Death Valley National Park:

Crossing Paths, Death Valley National Park, California, March 2009

Have a great week!

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