Seaside Wandering: Photos from the California Coast

May 9, 2025 Sarah Marino

Seaside Wandering: With a long exposure, strong winter waves soften around coastal rocks along the central California coast.

Note: This is the introductory essay for my portfolio of photos from a recent trip to the central California coast. You can view the full portfolio as a free PDF ebook or as a web gallery.

Right after the holidays, we planned to head to our favorite winter place, Death Valley National Park. As our departure date neared, I started feeling increasingly hesitant about this plan. As I mentioned in our Two Perspectives: Zion National Park ebook, I badly sprained my ankle during that trip, in early November. While my ankle felt a little better with each passing week, it still hurt after doing easy things like chair yoga videos on YouTube and a little unsteady while gently walking around the neighborhood.

One of the very best things about Death Valley is the ability to explore by parking on the side of the road and heading out into the desert. With only a few maintained trails in the park, almost all of this exploring happens by walking cross-country over rocky, uneven terrain—exactly the wrong place for a wobbly ankle. As we discussed last-minute alternatives, heading to the central California coast and maybe dipping into Yosemite National Park for a few days, seemed like the best option. The weather would be fairly mild, the drive would be long but easy, and both spots would feel fresh since we hadn’t visited either place for years.

Monochromatic Wasteland: Ron's Photos from Death Valley

April 25, 2025 Ron Coscorrosa

A 2005 New York Times article, “Unusual Bounty in Death Valley,” described Death Valley National Park as a “monochromatic wasteland,” notable only for that year’s superbloom. The vision of a sea of wildflowers contrasting with a barren wasteland is a compelling image. It’s also deeply wrong.

Ron's 2023 Recap

December 28, 2023 Ron Coscorrosa

While I am sometimes successful in avoiding cliches in my photographs, I am less successful in avoiding cliches for my blog posts. So here is my version of the yearly recap post!

The beginning of the year is a good time to reflect and ruminate on the past year, but since this is the end of the year, I’m going to skip all that and just share some photographs. These are not necessarily my favorite twenty photographs of the year but they are a diverse selection of the places we photographed and visited in 2023, arranged chronologically.

Mindset: A Comparison of Expectation-Driven and Experience-Driven Photography

April 14, 2021 Sarah Marino

Over the weekend, I participated in the Out of Chicago (OOC) LIVE online conference as one of the instructors. This is the third online conference OOC has offered during the pandemic and they all have been such inspirational weekends. (Although the live conference is over, you can still purchase the recordings through April 16 and then access the sessions for the next year.) The organizers always pull together a great mix of inspiration, motivational storytelling, and practical education. I am usually on the side of practical education since that is what comes most naturally to me but last weekend, I had the chance to speak in one of the full conference keynote spots and give an “inspirational” talk. It felt like a big stretch and I was super-nervous leading up to my session but once it was over, I felt like I could do more on the “inspiring” side with some practice.

I chose “shifting your mindset” as the topic of my talk, with a focus on thinking about how you show up and the positive and negative ramifications of the ideas you bring along with you. The role of expectations in nature photography is one of the three areas I talked about, with the encouragement to set aside expectations and show up with an open mind. Generally, I think of expectations as blinders that you put on before you ever get out of the car, often leading to being laser-focused on a preconceived idea that may or may not materialize. By putting the expectations mindset aside, you can instead show up with an openness to serendipity and the opportunities that are in front of you at the moment instead of the conditions or compositions you hoped for that may never materialize.

Chase the Light. Or Maybe Not...

June 23, 2015 Sarah Marino

A few years ago, a typical photography trip for us looked like this… Ron leaves Colorado, driving toward the Canadian Rockies. A few days later, he stops by the Edmonton, Alberta airport to pick up me and our friend Koveh. In a day, we are heading out on a 40-mile, 4-night backpacking trip into the heart of the Canadian Rockies (with Ron and Koveh both recovering from illnesses on the day we depart for the hike). After returning from our backpack, we spend two days driving all around the Canadian Rockies, chasing the light, following the weather, and seeing as many places as we can. Ron and I drop Koveh off at the Calgary Airport and drive to Vermont (yes, Vermont – 2,411 miles away), intent on chasing fall colors and foggy conditions.

We end up spending about a week in Vermont, Maine, and New Hampshire before clear skies come into the forecast. Following the clouds, we end up at Rickett’s Glen in Pennsylvania (383 miles away) for less than 24 hours, hiking along the 6-mile trail featuring 20+ waterfalls twice in one day, and leaving at an absurd time early the next morning so that Ron can drop me off at the Boston Airport for my flight home. Ron drives down to West Virginia and with clear skies in the long-term forecast, heads home as well after about three and a half weeks away.

Chasing the light… Chasing the weather… This is just what landscape photographers do.

Or maybe not.

Call of the Desert

March 2, 2015 Ron Coscorrosa

Resting Rocks, Joshua Tree National Park

“The Desert is calling, and I must go” John Muir didn’t say, but I will.

The desert isn’t as easily loved as other landscapes, like the mountains in Muir’s famous quote. Its beauty is often more subtle, rewarding only those who are willing to slow down and fully immerse themselves in it.

To those who have learned to love desert, who have smelled the creosote or sage brush after a fresh rain, who have admired the way an ecosystem often inhospitable to humans is still thriving with life perfectly adapted to it, who have appreciated the often strange and surreal geological features that call the desert home, who have an inclination to solitude and open spaces, the appeal of the desert is undeniable.

Desert Paradise: Photographing Death Valley National Park

October 16, 2013 Sarah Marino

Desert Paradise: The Landscape Photographer's Guide to Death Valley National Park

Ron and I are thrilled to announce the publication of our second e-book, Desert Paradise: The Landscape Photographer’s Guide to Death Valley National Park. Coming in at more than 130 pages with over 150 portfolio-quality photographs, we hope this guide will serve as an excellent reference for landscape photographers of all skill levels who are interested in visiting Death Valley.

I am often asked by both photographers and non-photographers about my favorite place to photograph. I cannot offer a single answer but can say that Death Valley National Park and Colorado’s San Juan Mountains get to share that top spot on my list. The San Juan Mountains are understandable to most people, but Death Valley? Really?! Yes, really!

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