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Winter Pastels
I enjoy reading photography blogs, with many serving as excellent sources of inspiration and thought-provoking ideas that I use to help shape and inform my own work. The following three articles have stood out over the last few weeks in their discussion of important topics for landscape photographers. I encourage you to take a few minutes to read each one.
Read MoreHere it is almost February and I am finally getting around to posting my version of the ubiquitous "Best of 2013" post. I hope I don't lose what little Internet credibility I have by being so late. Before we get started with the images, it is important to know that these aren't my best photos of 2013. Yes, the title of this post is a lie.
I haven't edited a high enough percentage of photos from 2013 to have any idea what my best actually are, and I never will. So then, these must be the best photos I've processed in 2013, right? Nope! Many of my favorites aren't included here.
I decided to try something different: narrowing my selection to only abstracts and plants. There are no clouds or skies in any of these photos. Nothing that ties any photo to a specific region or location. None were taken with a wide angle lens (the widest focal length was 44mm, the rest were taken with a 70-200mm zoom, and a 100mm macro lens). There is not a single foreground in the group.
In the future I may post a Part II or even a Part III that includes other types of photos (such as intimates and grand scenic landscapes).
The photos are listed chronologically in order of capture. Click on an image to open the series in a lightbox.
Lily Pads #1
We are very fortunate to have an excellent botanical garden here in Denver. With four distinct seasons, it offers great variety for photography year-round. Although you wouldn’t know it from the lack of macro photographs on my website, I really enjoy photographing nature’s small details and have been working developing a few portfolios of photographs from the garden across seasons and of the diverse displays of cultivated plants.
We headed to the garden on a very rainy day last fall and were treated to a long, enjoyable, and quite damp afternoon of photography. The rain helped saturate the colors and delicate droplets formed on many of the plants. I spent the most time that day at the lily pad pond. Even though the lily blossoms were still in bloom and looked lovely, I focused instead on the lily pad leaves. The little Pac-Man shapes provided a fun subject for photography, with the water droplets adding another element of interest to these plants. Here are a few favorites from that afternoon.
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Note: For more photographs of Yellowstone from this trip, please check out my new Yellowstone gallery.
No one accidentally ends up in Yellowstone. To get to Yellowstone, you have to want to get to Yellowstone.
Despite its remoteness, it is one of the most visited national parks in the US with almost 3.5 million visitors a year, only trailing the Smokies, the Grand Canyon, and Yosemite. For every resident of Wyoming, there are almost six visitors to Yellowstone National Park each year. They all go out of their way to visit the world's first national park, but there is a small problem: they almost all go at the same time.
Over 80% of the parks visitors visit during June, July, and August. The park is beautiful during these three months, with lush vegetation, swelling rivers, and elk and bison calves running around. While it is always possible to get away from the crowds in more remote areas, some of the more interesting highlights, like the Upper, Midway, and Lower Geyser basins or the Mammoth Terraces are packed during these summer months.
The remedy is simple: Go when it's less crowded. Late September and early October offer the best opportunities for seeing the entire park easily when there are less people (with the chance of catching the first snowfall of the year and elk in rut), and winter offers the best opportunity to enjoy solitude (less than 5% of the annual visitors visit during winter months).
The benefits of visiting in winter extend beyond solitude; the entire park has a completely different character. For photographers, scenes that are normally too complex are greatly simplified with snow (boardwalks are often covered by snow and steam hides other non-natural artifacts). The geothermal features of the park produce copious amounts of steam because of the low air temperature, often frosting nearby vegetation.
The struggle for survival of the parks' animals is even more evident as they have to work tirelessly to forage for vegetation buried in snow (not all of them make it, much to the delight of the wolves who are often responsible for their demise and to the coyotes, ravens, and other scavengers who clean up where the wolves leave off). Distant wildlife is easier to spot as well, standing in stark contrast to the snow rather than blending in with the similarly colored landscape.
Travertine Terrace
Yellowstone accessibility in winter is however severely limited. All of the park's interior is closed to vehicle traffic. The Mammoth Terraces and Lamar Valley to Cooke City (both accessed through the north entrance) are the only roads plowed and drivable during winter.
To access the interior, one must purchase a roundtrip ticket for a snow coach or go on a licensed snowmobile tour operating out of the parks' major entrances: West Yellowstone in the west, Gardiner/Mammoth in the north, and the south entrance (which is about an hour north of Jackson, WY on the north side of Grand Teton National Park). The snow coaches and snowmobiles are expensive and slow, though the snow coach operators are extremely knowledgeable about the park. The snow coaches also have some scheduled stops along the way (we made stops at Gibbon Falls, Firehole Canyon Drive, and Fountain Paint Pots) - though the stops are usually too short for one to produce any photographs without feeling rushed.
Hotel/motel-like accommodations are open during winter at Old Faithful, smack in the middle of the Upper Geyser Basin, which is within walking (or snowshoeing or cross-country-skiing) distance of many of the parks' best geothermal features. There is a lot of walking involved, up to 4-5 miles roundtrip for some features, but it never seems that long as there is always interesting scenery along the way (and you are almost guaranteed to see some random geyser go off while walking around). Any area that cannot be accessed by foot must again be accessed by a licensed snow coach or snowmobile operator - often at considerable expense - for day trips that are not always suitable for photography. Food options are also limited, there are two restaurants at Old Faithful - neither of them are great (but only one of them expensive). A limited variety of snacks and drinks are available for purchase in the gift shop.
The other consideration of a winter visit are the cold temperatures. Temperatures below freezing are to be expected, and temperatures below 0 Fahrenheit (-17 Celsius) are not uncommon. The topic of winter clothing could take up another blog post by itself, but in general having multiple layers (a synthetic base layer, thermal layers such as fleece and down or both, and an external wind and water-proof layer) is critical (avoid cotton!). Along with the layered clothing, you should bring a warm wool or fleece hat, gloves, wool socks, and insulated (with at least 400g of insulation) winter boots. Micro-spikes and snowshoes are also very useful (snowshoes may be rented but the hours aren't conducive to sunrise and sunset photography).
Cold temperatures necessitate special care with your camera gear as well. Never bring your freezing cold camera or lenses into a warm hotel room without leaving it in the camera bag or a ziplock bag, otherwise interior condensation will result leaving you, even if temporarily, without a working camera. Tripods that have any moisture in them can freeze shut, so I would recommend extended them while inside and letting them dry out before taking back outside (alternately, you can always leave the legs extended, it's more cumbersome to walk this way, but it's always possible to get a lower camera position from an extended tripod, but not always possible to extend your tripod if it's frozen shut!).
For our visit in winter, we spent three nights at Mammoth/Gardiner (arriving the first night), exploring the Mammoth Terraces and the Lamar Valley during the day. We took a snow coach from Mammoth to Old Faithful and stayed at the Snow Lodge at Old Faithful for four nights, exploring the Upper Geyser Basin, and then returned to our car at Mammoth via snow coach and drove home. An alternate itinerary, and one we will probably do in the future, is substituting Mammoth and the Lamar Valley for the Tetons (which are likewise stunning in the winter), and approaching Old Faithful from the south via snow coach.
The more complex logistics and lack of mobility make a winter trip to Yellowstone difficult, but the payoff is more than worth any difficulty. The amount of diverse and unique natural landscapes and wildlife in Yellowstone make it a great destination for nature photographers any time of year, but coupled with snow, steam, and frost, along with much lower visitation, a winter trip is especially fruitful.
Aurora borealis display over Jökulsárlón glacial lagoon, southern Iceland
It is past one o’clock in the morning and we are sitting at a Walgreens waiting on a prescription that an urgent care doctor was supposed to phone in for me more than an hour ago. I am still hoping to get in a few hours of sleep before heading to the airport for our flight to Reykjavík, but it never really happens. I spend the seven-hour flight playing Tetris and Solitaire on my phone, unable to sleep and feeling miserable overall. Once we arrive in Reykjavík, we pick up our campervan, stop to get a few days of groceries, and head out for the five hour drive to the Jökulsárlón glacial lagoon. We stop to take a two hour nap along the way, arriving in time for sunset. We photograph sunset, heat up a dehydrated meal for dinner, and get ready for a long night. We are now approaching a day and a half with almost no sleep and, not surprisingly, all this traveling has only made me feel even worse.
It is March and we are going to be in Iceland for three weeks. Our primary goal is to see and photograph the aurora borealis (also known as the Northern Lights). Based on advice from some friends who traveled to Norway for the aurora and only saw it once, on the last day of their trip, we decide that we cannot miss an opportunity (opportunity = clear skies+interesting landscape+good aurora forecast+right amount of moonlight). Starting a long trip sick with a growing sleep deficit is a less than brilliant plan, but at about 11:00 pm, we see a faint green glow on the horizon. This is what we had come thousands of miles to see! It all instantly feels worth it.
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A little over two years ago, a few months after my temporary (but currently active) retirement, two things happened:
I made the deliberate philosophical change that remains active to this day: to produce less, but better, work.
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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!
Read MoreIt was a bad year. A historically bad year.
After arriving in the San Juan Mountains in southwest Colorado to photograph fall colors for 10 days, we agreed with the general consensus of other photographers.
Read MoreIt turns out that January 23, 2012 was a good day to be at Ibex Dunes.
My plans were to photograph that sunset at Badwater, it had been raining off and on all day and I was hoping that there might be some water accumulation on the saltpan. As I drove by, I didn't see any pockets of water glistening from a distance, but I did see a bunch of people and photographers. I had already photographed Badwater on this particular trip, with decent conditions, and didn't want to have to compete with other tripods. So I made an impulse decision to try my luck at Ibex Dunes.
This was a gamble - I had never been to Ibex before and I had no idea what the road conditions were like, nor, perhaps more importantly, what the dunes themselves were like, and I wasn't going to have any time to scout. The weather was overcast with intermittent rain and it didn't look like the sun was going to pop out to light the dunes or clouds. I planned on camping overnight, so even if the conditions were not great at sunset I could do a little scouting prior to sunrise.
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The 14,017 Wilson Peak seen from Silver Pick Basin near Telluride, Colorado
The last time I spent much time photographing in Colorado was nearly two years ago during the autumn. It was a spectacular fall, especially in the San Juan Mountains. The aspens seemed especially vibrant, with a rare mix of golds, oranges, and reds in some places. An early storm came at just the right time, leaving the peaks and aspens with a perfect dusting of snow. After so much time exploring so many other places over the last two years, I started to miss Colorado so we added a few trips around here to our list of summer plans.
Spending some time photographing wildflowers in the San Juan Mountains seemed like a good place to start. We planned to start by spending a long weekend in the spectacular American Basin area, located about twenty miles up the Cinnamon Pass road from Lake City. I had a more rugged SUV the last time I visited American Basin but still thought we could make it with Ron’s RAV4. In the last few years, the road has deteriorated quite a bit and we decided to turn around before getting anywhere near the basin. (After hitting a large rock disguised as a sagebrush coming out of Toroweap in the Grand Canyon and getting stuck in the mud out on the Alvord Playa in Oregon, we are trying to make better driving-related choices.)
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The Internet is great. Photography is great. Together? The results are mixed.
Everyone has their reasons for why they photograph, but I would like to think most photographers start out with noble intentions. That they try to produce photographs that are original, creative, and personal. Somewhere along the way things get confused, and praise and popularity become the goals and the photographs are simply the means to that end. As a result, their photography (and photography as a whole) suffers. I'm not just talking about newbies who just got a DSLR last Christmas, I'm also talking about extremely talented and gifted photographers.
It's easy to fall into this popularity trap. I fell into it and have been slowly clawing my way out ever since. Fortunately (?) for me my natural tendency is to be dissatisfied and unhappy with everything I produce, so I never truly fell that far and was (and still am) naturally skeptical of any praise. Others aren't so fortunate and soak up praise like a wet sponge. The Internet, and social-media specifically, is the most perfect praise-exchange (and photo replication) system that has ever existed.
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Waves and Ice at Jökulsárlón's black sand beach, southern Iceland
In visiting Iceland for the first time, I most wanted to see and photograph Jökulsárlón (which translates to glacial lagoon in Icelandic) and the nearby black sand beach. With iconic places, the reality is sometimes terribly disappointing compared to the hype and I assumed that Jökulsárlón might be one of these places. I arrived with measured expectations but was instantly surprised at the size of the lagoon (much, much bigger than I expected) and the overall beauty of the area. The lagoon is surrounded on two sides by impressive mountains and the icebergs - the first I had ever seen - were much more interesting in person than in photos. And, the landscape turned out to be surprisingly dynamic, making for challenging photography. After spending about a week over two separate trips photographing the lagoon and its neighboring beach under all kinds of different conditions, I consider it my favorite place in Iceland and a must-visit in a country that is truly a landscape photographer’s paradise.
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