Zion Virgin River Dream

Sony Takes a Gamble

I've been contemplating a new camera body this summer. I've grown frustrated with how easily my sensor gets contaminated when I switch lenses all the time. By the time I finished the last cycle my Canon 60D took images that looked like they had chicken pox. I had to spend a small fortune to get it cleaned but I know that the dirt will return as soon as the next cycle begins. The only way to keep a camera clean is to never open it. But since I have several lenses (with another one being contemplated for astro photography) the only solution is to buy more bodies and commit each one to a certain lens. I'll do that for my 2 main lenses (the Canon wide angle and telephoto) and only swap in the astro lens when I'm doing night shooting. I'll have to set up a system for making those changes as clean as possible (maybe inside a big plastic bag to minimize environmental contact) and keep them to a minimum.

Anyway, I've been watching the camera market intently since January and it's become very interesting. Canon opened the bidding with their 5D SR, a 50 megapixel monster that sells for almost $4K. It is an interesting offering but has one serious drawback ... the same noise issues that plague my 60D. Canon sensors are just horrendously noisy and there's no getting around that. I'd need to get seriously dedicated to noise reduction and to buy some not so cheap software to help mitigate the issues this noise creates. But I'd at least not have compatibility issues with my lenses.

Sony offers the only serious competition for the Canon bodies. Their mirrorless design leaves room for adapters that allow the use of almost any lens from any manufacturer but, up until now, there were big issues. Auto focus was painfully slow and often failed so manual focusing was almost a given. That's OK most of the time but when you're trying to take candid photos (like on the street) it's a huge problem. And the image stabilization systems in most lenses didn't work very well either. It was a mess and, quite frankly, the first version of their high pixel count camera, the A7R, had some serious issues with shutter noise, vibration and lifetime. I know a lot of pro photographers made the switch but they were not all really happy with it. But, just this month, Sony introduced the next round ... the A7R II, and it looks like a game changer. It has a big sensor, 42 megapixels, so it competes directly with the new Canon but the really exciting ideas involve 5 axis image stabilization in the camera (by moving the sensor) and auto focus is now fast because they have 399 phase detection sensors spread across the sensor and they work with Canon auto focus lenses. I've seen several videos and the system is very fast indeed. They also seemed to be listening to their customers and made major changes in the software so HDR shooters have more bracketing options and video shooters can now shoot 4K internally to the camera. This last item is a huge advance ... a small camera that shoots ultra HD to the internal memory card (not everything is great ... only 8 bit and the color space is somewhat limited but still...). And the new sensor is very low noise so I can do my HDR thing and my star photo thing and even my video thing all with the same camera. Price is an issue ... $3200 ... and $399 for the adapter, but it's still a major step for them and for me. I can now get the resolution I want, a full-frame 35mm image and some really nice features that will make my life a whole lot easier. Now, all I need to do is find that $3600 and I'll be set to go ... hmmmmm.

Zion Virgin River Dream

Take the Zion park shuttle to the very last stop ... the Temple of Sinawava ... and take the path toward the narrows and you find the Virgin River. This river made the Zion Canyon and the narrows and pretty much the whole park so it's a big deal. In this area the river runs through a lot of rock fall, stuff sloughing off the nearby canyon walls, which makes for many turbulent pools and small waterfalls. It's an extremely picturesque area so I spent most of a day there. One place, in particular, caught my attention. Many rocks had pushed together to create an elevated pool which cascaded over the resulting dam and waterfall. I'm always looking for moving water as it gives me a chance to work with my 10 stop neutral density filter (here and here and you'll need an adapter ring to fit your lens). You've seen the effect I'm sure ... cascading water turns into the neatest mist. You achieve this by using this really dark filter which pushes your exposure times out to 30 seconds or longer. The result is an exposure that obliterates all evidence of individual drops and shows only a ghost of what's actually there. You get an image with some really sharp features (rocks mostly) and everything else is so ethereal. It's a really interesting effect.

Anyway, I spent quite a while at this waterfall and took many images. This one is probably the best of the lot although I'll develop all of them to make sure. This is a single exposure, extensively processed in Lightroom. I used several radial filters to highlight the rocks (especially the one in the middle) and worked with the colors to pull out the water and rock colors. Very dramatic I think.

Zion Dream - 106mm(1.6 crop),f/22,30 sec,ISO 100,license CC BY-NC 4.0

Great Sand Dunes Snowstorm

Water, water everywhere but...

Traveling the West was an education in water and the lack thereof. Everywhere I went I confronted the impact of the devastating drought that is topic number one throughout that part of the country. I saw it in the empty reservoir behind Glen Canyon Dam, in the complaints of rangers in Grand Canyon about the complete lack of essential spring floods and the accumulation of damaging sand and silt in the Colorado River, in signs everywhere to conserve water ... I couldn't get away from the impact. And then there's California's Central Valley. You'd never know there was a drought given the massive amounts of water they use to keep their crops alive. I was amazed at some of the things the farmers were doing. I saw more new orchards being planted and watered than made sense given the water is running out. And, in the heat of the day, I saw massive watering operations going full tilt ... imagine the evaporation and how much water never got to the thirsty plants. I seems many haven't gotten the message that water is RUNNING OUT. Farmers think it's an infinite resource along with several large municipal water authorities (I'm looking at you LA). In Mono Lake the LA water authority came around in the 1920s and basically confiscated all the streams that fed the lake. You can imagine the outcome ... the lake almost disappeared. It took decades of fighting and court battles to get even a little of that water back and now the drought is sapping that supply to death so the lake is still very much in trouble. And you read about the convoluted legal arrangements and you no longer need to wonder how this all came about. It involved politicians so the outcome was foregone ... an absolute screw up. They made the mistake of creating fixed allocations ... each entity got a certain absolute amount of water and, unfortunately, the amount they worked with was a historically high measurement. Now there's not as much water but everyone still wants their fixed allocation and screw everyone else. It's a huge mess and I'm not sure if anyone, but especially politicians, can square the circle to fix it. But fix it the must because the future of the West depends on finding a solution. It should be interesting ...

Great Sand Dunes Snowstorm

As I've stated before, I spent a month in the Great Basin of Utah and Arizona because the cap for my 15 year old Nissan pickup needed to be special ordered. When the day came to have it fitted I was informed by the store that the truck carrying it had been diverted down into Texas and Oklahoma and would be delayed for 4-5 days. I wasn't about to sit around Albuquerque waiting at $65/day in a hotel so I jumped in my truck and headed north into Colorado and the Great Sand Dunes. I got dumped on big time ... two nights of heavy, wet snow (which collapsed my tent at 3 am) and froze my proverbial ass off. But bad weather makes for amazing photographs and I got a ton. The dunes were covered with a frosting of white and the sky was heavy with storm clouds ... a photographer's dream for sure. So I put the 70-200 mm f/4 zoom on the DSLR and went hunting for nice compositions. Along the road into the park there were downed trees and that's where I found exactly what I wanted. This is an HDR of 3 images with some Lightroom touches at the end. It's nice and pleasing to the eye and those storm clouds ... what more can I say.

Great Sand Dunes - 70mm(1.6 crop),f/18,HDR,ISO 100,license CC BY NC 4.0

Humboldt Redwood Renewal

From the Bit to the Small...

It's often amazing the diversity of images I get involved with. Most of the time I'm shooting the big, even colossal works of nature. Take the Grand Canyon, certainly among the biggest of features one finds on this planet. I've made dozens of panoramas of the canyon, a few which I've already shown you (with more to come over the next few months). Or Yosemite or Bryce or Crater Lake ... they are all massive in scale. They are usually the images that get the most attention when posted on 500px or Flikr. That's because they are grand and impressive and have a major WOW factor. That's how it should be.

But I also shoot the small. You've seen a few ... raindrops on my truck's window or the Spruce cones would be another example. I love those shots because they show the beauty in the simplest of nature's many offerings. To not shoot them is to overlook a majority of the beauty around us. To not stop and admire the new growth on a Redwood tree would be a shame as it can be and often is amazing. So, next time you're somewhere spectacular, turn your eye toward the small and see the beauty that's all around you. It makes the greater beauty even more magnificent.

Humboldt Redwood Renewal

It was early summer when I hit the Humboldt Redwoods in northern California. But at the altitude where these majestic trees grow it was still spring and new growth was everywhere. It's almost iridescent against the dark green of the mature trees. You really have to be blind to miss it. I was wandering through these huge stands of trees and this bright green was all around me. So it was only natural that I'd turn my lens onto these little jewels and start shooting. I love this one because the light, softened by the shallow depth of field at f/4, frames the growth perfectly. A pristine gem on the smallest of scales.

Renewal - 35mm(1.6 crop),f/4,1/20 sec, ISO 100,license CC BY-NC 4.0

Grand Canyon North Rim Storm

Flush the Summer Goodbye...

It's been a bummer summer here in Crimea. I was really looking forward to spending at least part of this summer on the Black Sea with the family but that appears to have gone in the proverbial crapper. We've had zero good days this month so far and it's already 2/3 done. It's either too cold and/or the wind is too strong making the beach uncomfortable. And this year the bus company that provides transportation to the beach changed from a very nice VW bus with comfortable seats to this POS Bogdon municipal bus that overheats and is exceedingly uncomfortable to endure for the hour+ it takes to get there. Add to that the insult of raising the price 33% and you've got a good formula for not ginning up the excitement needed to make the trip. So we've been a grand total of once so far and it doesn't look to get any better going forward. No one is happy about this but there's not much we can do to fix it. Just grouse and bitch and hope, against hope, that it gets better soon.

Grand Canyon North Rim Storm

My last stop on this cycle was at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. It was a roll of the dice so to speak as I knew the camp grounds and even the cabins would be booked full and then some. They also have a policy of no 'overnight camping' which is a polite way of saying ... no sleeping in your car or RV in the parking lots or overlooks. I decided to challenge that position and slept in my truck for 2 nights in the parking lot at the lodge. No one bothered me but I think that's probably from oversight more than anything else. The single ranger had other things to worry about than people sleeping in their cars. So I got away with a slight transgression.

On my second day I went out to Royal point which is the eastern most overlook. It's near the spot where the Colorado enters the main canyon. It was a very hot day so I found a shady spot not too far from the bathrooms, ate my lunch and settled back to await the evening. Around mid-afternoon the sky darkened and it started to rain. As any photographer knows, rain is a good thing as it creates drama. Mundane scenes suddenly become interesting and photogenic. I had already selected a nice overlook to visit in this event so I drove as quickly as possible there and set up the camera. The result was a very pleasant surprise and I have now processed the files for your enjoyment.

Grand Canyon North Rim Storm - 16mm(1.6 crop),f/18,HDR,ISO 100,license CC BY NC 4.0

Lassen Seed Cones

Early Thoughts on the Next Cycle...

I've only been in Crimea for a few weeks but I'm already thinking about the next cycle of my travels. I can't deal with all the driving ... almost 10K miles last time ... so I want to limit my wandering a bit. Also, many of the places I visited will be closed due to snow in the winter so I need to seriously change my tactics in future visits. Right now I'm thinking about several ideas ... one has me spending a month or more in Southern California, visiting LA for several weeks and Joshua Tree plus Death Valley for a week each. It should be a nice time then with moderate temperatures. I want to really get into the Valley as there are some spectacular areas that are really off limits in the summer's searing heat. I'm interested in sunrise/sunset sessions on the extensive salt flats plus the sand dunes and even the race track if I'm willing to brave a dirt road again. I also want to get a good, fast prime lens and get serious about astro photography. I'm a big fan of Tom Lowe and his TimeScapes work. And finishing the work on my video of LA is hanging out there so there's lots to be done.

There's also a more extensive visiting of coastal lighthouses ... I only saw a few ... with the aim of producing a book sometime in the future. The amazing image from Point Arena has me salivating to find and shoot more stunning panoramas that show off the majesty of these guardians and their charges. I'll be more diligent this time and do my homework before leaving.

I'm also contemplating an expansion of my hardware. I really need another camera body so I can dedicate each of my two major lenses (the Canon wide angle and telephoto) to a body and avoid all the dust problems that plagued me last time. I don't mind changing once in a while but I was often going back and forth in a single session and my camera was heavily contaminated because of it. Then there's that fast prime ... maybe the new Sigma 24mm f/1.4 which is getting such rave reviews. I may also buy a new, fast Apple MacBook Pro as an alternative to lugging a big desktop computer around. I could hook my ViewSonic 23" to that little laptop and edit my photos much easier and have more room in my truck as a nice benefit. I hate carrying all my computer parts back and forth, risking their destruction or theft as I lug them through security and customs. I've already had my briefcase unpacked once by TSA and that's enough ... thank you very much. Those clowns have no legal liability should they destroy my gear (or 'confiscate' it as contraband if they so desire). They went through my suitcase on the trip home and created the potential for a major disaster because they didn't put any of the stuff back together, just stuffed everything in the bag and left their little notice absolving themselves of any liability should something happen. I had two large bottles of BBQ sauce in there and they tore open the plastic bag I had them in, then left both bottles on top of my clothes waiting for something to crush them so they would explode. Very unprofessional and stupid. I need to simplify as much as possible the transportation of gear between Russia and America. It's heavy and fragile ... not a good combination when traveling half way around the world.

Lassen Seed Cones

I've already written about what a special place Lassen Volcanic National Park is. I want to get back there someday to explore further the amazing things in that place. But, for now, I'll just show a very small part of why it's so special. I was exploring the debris field to the north of the volcano which is extremely interesting. They left the field untouched ... no cleanup whatsoever ... after the 1915 eruption. They wanted to see how the surrounding forests recovered. So there's a lot of new growth (relatively speaking) and many new spruce and other trees have taken root in the rich volcanic soil. As I strolled around the area I came across a lot of new growth and started shooting up close with my wide angle. This image is just one of many I have and I may post others if I can. It's a single shot, simply washed through the Develop module of Lightroom. I love the colors and the contrast. And the sharpness of that lens just keeps me amazed. Sometimes it's the little things that we overlook that are truly the most beautiful and intriguing.

Spruce Cones - 29mm(1.6 crop),f/4.0,1/2000 sec,ISO 100,license CC BY-NC 4.0

Point Arena Light

West Coast Lighthouses

I'm a big fan of lighthouses. Although they've outlived their purpose in most areas, they are still a big reminder of the hazards ships used to face and man's efforts to mitigate the risks. They are always in the most dramatic places ... near rocky shores or perched precariously on dangerous cliffs ... and manned by the most insanely crazy men (and occasionally women) who sought the solitude and braved the dangers. They are largely ceremonial now, historical landmarks to an age long gone.

I guess I was disappointed by the lighthouses I found in California. I'm used to the dramatic spires of the East, thrusting high into the sky so their lights could be seen for miles. Some of the old houses in California are like that but most are very ugly and lacking in charm. I drove for miles to see the light at Point Reyes and was floored by how downright ugly it was. Same with the light in Pacific Grove, no more than a light perched on the roof of a small house. Really wasn't worth shutter cycles to take a picture. So it was very gratifying to drive out to Point Arena and find the majestic light there... and the dramatic rocks that it was guarding.

Point Arena Light

Near Flumeville in Northern California, on the Shoreline Highway (rt. 1), lies the Point Arena-Stornetta Public Lands and the Point Arena Lighthouse. It watches over some of the most dangerous hazards in the area. The geology is amazing ... massive blocks of sedimentary rock turned literally on edge by the teutonic forces at work as the Pacific Plate collides with the North American Plate. I'm sure many an ancient ship floundered on these rocks before the light was built in the 1870. Today it's a museum but still ... what a majestic location. After seeing so many disappointing lights it was a huge lift to see one so amazing.

Now there's a back story to this image. I arrived, as I often do, in early afternoon so I could scout the location and find the best vantage point. I wanted to shoot as the sun went down so I hung around to see how the fog developed. As a precaution I took a pano which I'd hoped to process during the afternoon but the weather didn't cooperate and I forgot about it. Turns out the fog rolled in like clockwork ... around 3 pm ... and only got worse as the afternoon progressed. By 7 it was obvious there wouldn't be any sunset so I left. As I said, the images from the pano went into my workstation where they languished until a few days ago. I was going through the catalog and came across the folder in Lightroom. Didn't expect much from the images but took the time to run them quickly through Photomatix and Photoshop. The resulting composite image literally blew my socks off. Amazing colors and the composition was nearly perfect. I make a small jpeg and sent it around to family and friends for their comments.

As I waited for the responses I started looking more carefully at the image. It had serious problems that I hadn't noticed in my rush to get it processed. One major problem with HDR appears when there is motion in the scene and the various images have differences. You often get 'ghosts' ... streaks and shadows in your images that cause major disturbances, especially when you try to make a panorama. In this case, Photomatix left huge holes, black areas, in the images which ruined the pano big time. There was also the ever present popcorn noise although it was diminished because the sky was dark. And, when HDR merges images with movement it often creates a muddled result that's not really acceptable for a professional image. These were all issues I had to fix. Fortunately, Photomatix has tools for dealing with ghosts and muddled images and I was able to use them to eliminate the major problems. But it took many iterations to get it right as a fix in one area would create a problem in another. Photoshop's ability to merge images isn't one of its really strong points and sometimes a merge line runs right through the middle of a major focal point (like cutting the light house in half so the top was displaced to the right of the bottom ... a very major muddle). It took several days to get everything right but the result was definitely worth the effort. I'd have to classify this image as one of the best and most stunning of all the photos I took during this cycle. It may be the crown jewel of my trip ... don't you agree?

Point Arena Light - 16mm(1.6 crop),f/18,HDR,ISO 100,license CC BY-NC 4.0

One PS: the light from the 'light' is faked ... most lights today don't sweep dramatically across the water anymore ... it takes too much electricity ... so to add drama I created scatter from an imaginary light because that's what we all expect from our keepers. It's not a deception if I tell you about it and almost every photographer does it. It's expected after all.

Crater Lake Storm

Contrails and other human detritus

I tend to be a landscape photographer ... that means I'm a photographer of natural formations. Natural implies an absence of man and his artifacts and his lame attempts to tame the unruliness of that world. Anyone who's visited a national park or any wilderness area knows that it's almost impossible to erase the human influence. There's always garbage and scars and destruction no matter how far from 'civilization' you run. Surprisingly (or maybe not), the most visible impact is in the sky. I'm always having to deal with jet contrails ... the white lines left by the hot exhaust from jet engines at altitude. This is a major problem in the California parks due to the high traffic flowing into LA. Imagine how jarring that is ... a magnificent image marred by one or more basically straight lines drawn across the sky. And, they are surprisingly hard to remove. It's not like you can just erase them. Of course, both Photoshop and Lightroom have tools for removing unwanted features from an image but they can only do so much. Contrails, being large and obtrusive, often don't lend themselves to this type of surgery so one has to be creative. But it's extremely hard to deal with and getting worse. In Yosemite it's almost impossible to find shots that don't have some type of human artifact in them.

Crater Lake Storm

I was in Crater Lake for 4 days. Three of them brought rain and bad weather. I started feeling a bit waterlogged and then the snow came. But the old saying goes ... when life gives you lemons make lemonade ... and that's what I did. I'd watch the weather from my campsite and, if the sky started to clear, I'd drive the 7 miles to the crater's rim and hopefully find interesting and challenging views. Sometimes I'd not even get to the rim before the fog closed in and forced me to retreat. It's not a good idea to drive the twisting and somewhat dangerous roads leading to the crater when you can't see the road. But several evenings I was lucky and the sky gave me just enough clearance to let the late afternoon sun break through. Those were dramatic images.

Crater Lake Storm- 16mm(1.6 crop),f/18,HDR,ISO 100,license CC BY-NC 4.0

This image was very challenging. Not because of the weather but because of the jet contrails. The open area to the west was almost obliterated by contrails. There must have been a dozen or more. I'm not sure where those planes were going but flying in and around Crater Lake seemed to be on everyone's agenda. I was also forced to redo the entire process several times as there was an added problem with popcorn size noise coming out of Photomatix. I think it has problems with nearly saturated pixels and deciding how to show them in the final image. Whatever it decides, it doesn't work too well. So, to get around the issue I was forced to use Noiseware on the images going into Photomatix and on the HDR images coming out. This seems to knock the noise out but does some serious damage to the sharpness. I like my images sharp and it bothers me that I have to sacrifice even a bit because of this noise amplification coming out of Photomatix. I've sent them emails asking for help but they are silent so far. Fortunately, because Noiseware is so good at obliterating noise I was able to use very aggressive sharpening in Lightroom which brought back at least some of the definition. But I'm still looking for a solution to this problem.

Anyway, once I had the panorama I went to work with Lightroom's content aware fill to see how much of the contrail mess I could fix. It took a while and a lot of retries but I think I did a pretty good job overall. There's a bit of fluff left over but it looks natural enough that I just left it. Hopefully it doesn't do too much damage to the final image. I'll let you be the judge.

Pacific Coast Sunset

Greece...

It looks like Greece has been destroyed ... at least for some time into the future. The Germans and their allies have put together a financial package that guarantees a long and devastating future for the peoples of that beautiful country. I'm not going to comment on who's at fault ... it would appear there's plenty of blame to go around ... but I do want to suggest that, as is always the case, the political class has had a big hand in the outcome. Incompetent and greedy, they have taken a small problem and made it into a catastrophe. And the Greek people are paying the price. I, for one, believe the Euro union needs to be destroyed as it only serves the rich and powerful while enslaving the weaker nations. And it would appear that the EU needs to be dismantled too. What appeared to be a great idea has been twisted and mangled by the politicians into something that only inflicts pain and suffering. I wonder if it's possible to have a world without politicians. Do you think it's possible?

Pacific Coast Sunset

I was finished with San Francisco and licking my wounds as I journeyed north up the Pacific Coast Highway. It had been a very frustrating few days as the afternoon fog had conspired to ruin one day's images after another. I'd almost given up hope until I found an overlook near Jenner, California that showed a great deal of promise. Lots of wild flowers and rocks doing battle with an aggressive surf. It was exactly what my battered ego needed. All that was missing was a cooperative sunset. As is my custom, I settled down to wait, reading a book on my tablet while the sun drifted toward the horizon. To my surprise, the fog held off and the sunset looked like it would be pretty good. There were some storms in the area and they added a bit of anger to the sky which only made the images better. So, as the sun settled in the west I set to work and produced the image below. Came out pretty good and helped lift my bruised spirit just when it was needed most.

Pacific Coast Sunset - 16mm(1.6 crop),f/18,HDR,ISO 100,license CC BY-NC 4.0

Humboldt Redwoods

The Black Sea ... someday

One of the reasons for returning to Crimea, beyond wanting to see my family, was the desire to get to the Black Sea. It's about an hour from our flat by bus. A local company runs buses twice a day and, for a reasonable fee of 200 rubles per person, we are taken to Nova Federovka, a beach town on the western shore of the peninsula. It's not much of a beach town ... the services are third rate and the beach is ... well, the beach isn't something to write home about. It's not well maintained and the water, as the summer advances, gets progressively worse. As I noted yesterday, people here are selfish and greedy and that translates to the water as well. They go to the bathroom in it, throw their garbage in it and treat it like it's their personal sewer. It's not too bad in June and July but by August the water is almost impossible to use. And, we get massive jellyfish blooms as the water warms which makes it even less inviting. So July is our month and, so far, it's been a big bust. The weather isn't cooperating at all. We've not been all that warm so far and it's been windy ... a nasty on-shore wind that stirs up the water (and the dirt) and creates large waves. Not conducive to swimming. So we wind up sitting on the beach and freezing. We've only been once so far and that wasn't pleasant.We wanted to go yesterday but it was very cold and windy and today is the same. We're hoping next week gets warmer but we're fast losing confidence. This may be a bad summer for the beach ... that happens sometimes.

Humboldt Redwoods

They are the most majestic of trees. Not as large as the Sequoia but much more beautiful. Their habitat is limited to a few places along the California coast where the air is misty and cool. They like altitude and the strong sun. They have few enemies other than man and his greed. Fortunately, the remaining groves are protected ... for now.

I found this marvelous specimen in the Humboldt forest in Northern California. You can drive through the forest on state route 254, the Avenue of the Giants. There are several thousand large trees there but this one stood out. It was on the road and easy to find but what made it special are these massive burls. They tell of a life of insult ... of attacks large and small and of the tree's defense. Burls form around damage, protecting the tree from further harm. So this tree has withstood some serious assaults but it's still standing, proud and defiant. It must be very old, maybe 600 years, judging from it's size. And beautiful in it's majesty. I'm glad I made it's acquaintance and hope to visit again in the future.

Humboldt Redwoods - 16mm(1.6 crop),f/11,HDR,ISO 100,license CC BY-NC 4.0

King River

Common Courtesy

It's the little niceties that make life enjoyable. Small things ... like someone holding a door when you have your hands full ... that make you believe in the fundamental goodness of people. The driver who slows and lets you make that right turn into heavy traffic or the person with the full grocery cart who lets you slide ahead of them with your two or three items ... those are the times when you smile and say 'thank you' and really mean it. How uncomfortable would life be without such demonstrations of kindness? You want to know what it's like? Come to eastern Europe, especially the former client states of the USSR. I've been here just over a week and I already been reminded of the screaming lack of civility that characterizes this rat hole. I've traveled extensively around the world and nowhere, not a single place, comes close to the selfishness and greed of this place. Everyone thinks only for themselves and, surprisingly, it's ingrained in the very culture of this region. Being greedy is considered a good thing. Nowhere else have I had someone deliberately close a door in my face as I struggle to carry multiple heavy bags of groceries into our building. I've watched cars wait literally forever for a driver to extend the simple courtesy of yielding a spot for them to make a turn. I've had people shove me from behind as I waited to get on a bus ... despite there being a crowd ahead of me and nowhere to go. I hope that particular moron still nurses the sore shoulder he got when my elbow connected with his chest after the second push.

Why, you ask, is this so important? I believe all civil societies share one important trait ... shared destiny. In these societies, people understand that they all share a common thread, they all breath the same air and that being nice to each other makes everyone's life better. The person who let's you cut in line knows that someone will do the same for them some day. This 'pay it forward' belief makes life somehow more fulfilling and we find it easier to smile. I see so few smiles here and so many miserable people. And when I hold a door for someone here I get, every once in a while, a genuine smile and a 'spaseaba' (thank you). It makes my day when that happens.

King River

King Canyon is one of those parks that gets far too little attention and that's sad. It's a very beautiful place. The largest stand of Sequoia are there and in the adjacent Sequoia National Park. Majestic, ancient trees, some over 2000 years old. And the beautiful valleys and mountains and the King River ... it's a truly wonderful place to visit and enjoy. I spent 2 days there and took many amazing images. This photo is representative of the river. You can imagine the forces that pushed these massive boulders down the river and uprooted those trees. In the spring, as the winter snows melt, this river turns into a raging torrent, moving millions of tons of sand and rocks down to the valley below. Over millions of years this yearly ritual has cut thousands of feet into the granite and created the very impressive King's Canyon. It's awe inspiring and I encourage everyone to visit. Go to Fresno and head east ... you can't miss it.

King River - 35mm(1.6 crop),f/18,HDR,ISO 100,license CC BY-NC 4.0

Golden Gate Bridge

San Francisco disappointment...

I may have already said that San Francisco was a huge disappointment to me. I was so looking forward to some time in the city after a 3 year absence but, when I finally arrived, it was almost impossible to do anything. The problem was my truck ... and finding a safe place to park it. Everywhere I went I saw signs indicating that my truck was at risk of being broken into and I needed to carry all my valuables with me or they would be stolen. Imagine taking all my valuables ... cameras, computers, generator, refrigerator ... all my valuables far exceeded my ability to carry them. So I was always looking over my shoulder and worrying if I'd parked in the wrong place. I'd wanted to find a place to just leave the truck and use public transportation to get around but it was just impossible to find such a place. So, after 2 days of worrying and limiting my activities I threw in the towel and left. I still want to spend time in the city but I need to rethink my strategy and find somewhere, probably outside of the city, to park and ride. But this cycle my plans went up in smoke and I'm not happy about that at all.

Golden Gate Bridge

One doesn't spend time in SF without visiting the great lady in the bay. She just turned 75 a few years ago and looks great. They take excellent care of her as she's an architectural wonder. She actually makes the city look better ... something few bridges can lay claim to. In fact, most of my 2 day stay was focused on capturing images of this great lady. I walked her full length, from the north parking lot all the way to the south pier, and got lots of images. I'm still culling through them but this one is really special. It was taken from the north parking lot looking south. There was a thick fog hovering just above the bridge piers which gave an ethereal look to the image. It was midday so traffic was heavy and, as you can see, lots of people on the bridge. My 200 mm telephoto zoom pulled the image very close, making the distance between piers look much shorter than reality but it gives a really interesting twist to the photo.

Golden Gate Bridge - 200mm(1.6 crop),f/16,HDR,ISO 100,license CC BY-NC 4.0

Area 51 Sunset

In the middle of nowhere...

After a frustrating morning in Death Valley I headed east to a rest area in Nevada. At the intersection of state routes 373 and 95, it was the most desolate place I've been in my wandering. Just a few trees and some picnic tables, this rest area can lay claim to being among the most spartan of locations. It's big claim to fame is the neighborhood ... Nellis AFB, area 51 and the Nevada nuclear test site. They are literally across rt. 95 from the rest area. Lots of ominous signs and fencing tell you that there's something special about the place. But, just when you start getting nervous about all those radioactive holes just over the mountains you look to the south and see ... the Area 51 souvenir stand, gas station and brothel. In the middle of nowhere you find fake aliens and prostitutes in equal abundance (sometimes it's hard to tell them apart ... or so I'm told). Even a big sign up the road ... brothel ahead ... 1/4 mile ... get your rocks off (I added the last part). Really ... I'm not kidding ... a brothel right up against the fence at the nuclear test site. Not sure I'd want to get it on with someone who lives so close to all that radiation. Oh well ...

Area 51 Sunset

So, I'm sitting there in this funky rest area, trying not to melt in the oppressive heat, and I look over my shoulder to the west and can't believe what I'm seeing ... the most amazing sunset I've experienced in my 3 months of traveling. The sky was on fire ... and all I could think of was grabbing my camera and tripod and running as fast as my old legs could carry me toward a spot where I could start shooting. It was just me and a guy on his motorcycle watching as mother nature did her thing to perfection. I kept wondering if there was a connection between this beauty and all the radiation just across the road but, being a trained scientist, I knew there was none. But still ...

Area 51 Sunset - 32mm(1.6 crop),f/18,HDR,ISO 100,license CC BY-NC 4.0

Death Valley Sunrise

Urban Encroachment...

I drove down I5 in California's central valley, hitting all the major national parks as I went south. At Fresno, I turned east on rt. 180 and drove into the Sierra Nevada mountains, heading for King's Canyon and Sequoia National Parks. I was lucky as it was Monday when I arrived and the the campgrounds near the entrance were not completely full. I picked a site high up in the far reaches of the campground, expecting it to be dark as I wanted to play with star photography. Imagine my surprise when, upon returning late from my evening's photo expedition, I was greeted by an overwhelming light display from the central valley bathing my campsite. So much for taking star time lapse. I might as well have been in LA for all the light pollution. It's becoming a big issue for all the national parks I understand. Very few qualify as good places to do astro photography. Only Death Valley had the required certifications. Maybe light pollution isn't a big thing for most of you but it's a huge issue for photographers. Our time is an hour before sundown until an hour after sunrise and anything that disturbs those hours in a major issue.

Death Valley Sunrise

Death Valley can be brutal ... especially in the summer. Near Furnace Creek temperatures are routinely measures in the 120s and 130s. Not a place where any sane person wants to be wandering in the heat of the day. My plan was to leave the rest area on state route 395 around 1:30 in the morning and make the drive over the mountains so as to arrive well before sunrise. I had wanted to photograph a sunrise over the salt flats and I needed to find out where the best spots were in time to get there. That was the plan but it didn't come out exactly as I wanted. I arrived in Furnace Creek just after 4 where I met a group of commercial photographers who were shooting at the sand dunes in the early morning light. A friendly ranger who was escorting them suggested I head south and take the west road to a field he considered pristine. Nice idea but I had two problems ... the sun was already warming the horizon and this spot was a good hour from where I wanted to be and on a dirt road to boot. Scrap plan A. The other big issue was the heat ... it was only 4:30 and the thermometer at the visitor's center read a depressing 95 degrees. The forecast didn't add to my confidence ... 127 by 2 pm. A guy could die in heat like that. So I switched to plan B ... scout the valley, looking for good places to shoot and come back in the winter when it was much cooler and clouds actually formed over the valley and surrounding mountains. So, at 5 am I started driving south along rt. 190, stopping at attractive places and making notes. There's a lot of interesting real estate in the valley but you need to find it ... like diamonds in the rough. I was watching the shadows creep across the valley when I came on a sign ... painter's pallet ... and decided that maybe I could find something interesting there. I drove up this winding road, drawing nearer and nearer to the mountains which were the main attraction. Colors like you wouldn't believe ... whole mountains painted as if by a small child with an errant paint brush. Wild, exuberant colors. So I parked the truck and started walking up a nearby hill to get the proper vantage point. It took forever ... the little hill turned out to be rather larger than I first imagined but finally I found my spot. I took several panoramas as the sun came up and this is the best of the lot. It's been pushed quite a bit as the sun in Death Valley is very intense even before it comes up. But I think the colors are as I remember them ... it was an amazing display for sure.

Death Valley Sunrise - 35mm(1.6 crop),f/11,HDR,ISO 100,license CC BY-NC 4.0

Grand Canyon North Rim Sunset

The 8 hour rule...

I was in California much of the last 2 months of my trip and got to know most of the rest areas along I5 and elsewhere. For the most part they are clean (except the mess outside of Lassen) and safe for the weary traveler. However, they have this ridiculous rule ... you can't stay more than 8 hours out of 24. I understand why ... to a point. They don't want someone living in the rest area. That's what I heard from one snarky cleaning guy as I set up my computer on a picnic table under some big redwood trees up north. I suggested perhaps he was slightly outside his job description and that I had no intention of 'living' in his little kingdom but I did expect some courteous from him. I was a customer and deserved to be treated as such. He crawled away after that but it still made me mad. I used their roads and paid an obscene amount for gas (up to $1 more per gallon than surrounding states) so I indirectly paid part of his salary. When it's very hot and your ride is struggling in the heat you want to pull over and maybe find some shade until the sun get lower in the sky and it cools off some. Or you're tired and want to find a place to cook dinner and sleep ... well 8 hours isn't really enough to do that. But, once the rule exists, there's always someone who feels compelled to enforce it literally. So, when the state trooper would cruise through the area every hour and give you that hard stare you knew it was time to move on ... even if you weren't really ready. It was an insult to a traveler in their state and dangerous. So ... please ... whoever wrote that rule (and similar rules in several other states ... I'm looking at you AZ), back off some ... OK. Make it an unwritten rule ... no one can actually 'live' in a rest area but enforce it with compassion. Is that too much to ask?

Grand Canyon North Rim Sunset

I was heading toward Albuquerque and the cycle's end but wanted to make one last stop. I drove up I15 through Las Vegas and dropped down toward the north rim of the Grand Canyon. It's a very different experience than the south rim. 2500 feet higher, more forested and cooler. And, quite frankly, the canyon looks and feels different. The place was full and then some so I wound up sleeping in the parking lot of the Grand Canyon Lodge for 2 nights but I really wanted to finish this cycle on a high note. On the second day I went out to Cape Royal, a 17 mile drive from the Lodge, and spent the day scouting all the vistas along the drive. There were many but only one, the group picnic area at Cape Royal, gave me a reasonable shot at seeing the actual sunset. So, as I always do, I hung around throughout the long afternoon and, as sunset approached, made my way to the chosen spot. It was a shear cliff, at least 1000 feet straight down, but gave me the vantage point I wanted. I got the usual stares and the obligatory "you're going out there?" question as I set up my equipment and waited for the perfect moment. This time mother nature smiled on me and provided a really beautiful ending to her day. So, enjoy the view ...

Grand Canyon North Rim - 16mm(1.6 crop),f/18,HDR,ISO 100,license CC BY-NC 4.0

Mono Lake Sunset

Cycle is finished...

I'm back in Crimea. Simple statement but with significant implications. The first cycle of my wandering is over. I ran out of gas ... figuratively ... and decided I needed some time back in a familiar environment where I could recover and clean up the amazing number of images I collected over the last 3 months. Haven't added up the total but it's well over 10,000. Not bad for 3 months work. There's lots of good stuff in there but it needs to be culled and sorted and analyzed. I know there's lots of mistakes in the Lightroom database ... keywords aren't right and some images are in the wrong place. And I need to fix a lot of bad stuff in those pictures. For example ... many of my images have jet contrails in them. Really out of place when the subject is nature and her beauty. So I'll be learning all about healing brushes in both Photoshop and Lightroom in the coming days. I've also got issues with how Photomatix treats noise. Seems that several noisy images creates a real mess in Photomatix. I get popcorn sized kernels in the sky for some reason. The best solution I have right now involves running Noiseware on all the images and aggressively knocking back the luminescence noise both before and after Photomatix. That works but there's a price ... I lose some resolution and I hate to give even a little up after so much effort to capture it. But because the final image is almost noise free I can aggressively sharpen and not see any additional sky noise. That helps ... some. But I need to get on the Internet and see what can be done about this problem.

Some statistics for you:

Miles traveled almost 10K. Number of major places visited is 32+. Number of days on the road tops out at about 75 give or take. I'm now an expert on rest areas in 5 states. I've seen more McDonalds than I care to remember (for the free WiFi) and have buckets full of memories ... both good and bad. I'll be talking about much of this in the coming days and weeks so stop by regularly. I promise to be more diligent in my postings ... it turns out to be very hard to find accessible Internet connections that don't have lots of 'issues' and I needed electricity too as my laptop battery went south early in the trip. It's a problem I need to resolve before the next cycle begins.

Image issues...

Most of the images I've put on this blog have been OK but almost every one has issues. I mentioned the contrails and noise already but there's a whole host of things that aren't really right. I plead my situation as the cause ... it's almost impossible to find a good place to edit photos on the road. I often had to set the computer on my truck's tailgate and edit under a tree. Reflections were a constant problem and, as any editor can tell you, background light can make a mess of your colors and everything else. I did all I could but I was often rushed. It was more important to get the images ... to spend time scouting out locations during the day and photograph during the golden hours. Working at night was often prohibited as national parks impose a strict generator rule (no later than 8 pm in most cases ... just as the sun was setting). Everything conspires to make editing a major problem. So, I'll probably be posting some of these images again after they've been given the respect they deserve. Hope you don't mind.

Mono Lake Sunset

Mono Lake is one of those really unusual places in the world. Because it's trapped with no drainage, over time it has become very salty and alkaline. Something like 3.5 times the salinity of the oceans and 100 time more alkaline. When the wind blows, even a little, foam forms on the shore. But, contrary to the opinion of one Samuel Clemens (aka Mark Twain), the lake is not dead. It's brimming with life ... brine shrimp and small flies thrive there in the spring and summer. And birds ... huge flocks of birds come. I was amazed that it's the nesting ground for 80% of all seagulls in California. And it's a major flyway stopover for birds migrating north and south. It's anything but dead. But it's at risk ... big time. The LA water authority, in the 20s, confiscated the fresh water sources for the lake and sent the water west to feed the growing metropolis. Mono Lake started to dry up and that created a major disaster. Only through a long and costly legal battle has the lake been able to partially recover. Of course, just when there's a light at the tunnel's end, the drought really took hold of the west and the recovery plan is in danger again. There's no water, almost no snow pack, and that's spells disaster. They need water and there's none to be found.

Anyway, I was in Yosemite and it was just too tempting to take rt. 120 over the Sierra Nevada and drop down on rt. 395 for a one day visit. I arrived early and went to the visitor's center. It was obvious that the big draw was the tufa ... the calcium carbonate tubes that grow in the alkaline environment of the lake. They form when fresh water, brimming with calcium leached from volcanic mountains to the south, interacts with the alkaline salt water of the lake to form crystals of calcium carbonate. You can actually watch this happen when the conditions are just right. So, in the really oppressive heat of the afternoon, I drove to the south end of the lake and wandered out to the huge formations on the shore. They're not really all that pretty up close but, as a backdrop to a spectacular sunset, they are perfect. It was one of those moments a photographer dreams about and now it's here for you to enjoy.

Mono Lake Sunset - 35mm(1.6 crop),f/18,HDR,ISO 100,license CC BY-NC 4.0

Not much here technically. I bracketed the shot as the dynamic range was way too much for my sensor. Then into Photomatix to get the tone mapped image followed by some final added touches in Lightroom.