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.