Big Sur #1

So What Happened...

You are all very aware of my issues with money and Crimea. The Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC), has a stranglehold on the Crimea and refuses to let any money into the place no matter the need. I've tried every method known to man, including VISA, Western Union and SWIFT, to no avail. I have to resort to the most draconian methods to get living expenses to my family. What's really frustrating is the folks at OFAC told me directly that living money for personal expenses was OK with them and yet they make it nearly impossible to do just that. This choking of Crimea has reduced the place to near poverty for most as there are only local and rather ineffective banks with little money and no services other than paying utilities which they charge far too much for.

Well, this trip home I tried to send money to the daughter of my wife's cousin, who just graduated university in Ukraine and needed some money to rent a flat and buy some furniture. I figured, wrongly, that SWIFT would be able to handle this as Ukraine is not under any sanctions. Unfortunately, the girl isn't totally aware of the nuances of OFAC control and she listed her home address in Crimea by mistake. Her family lives in Simferopol and, due to the way Ukraine deals with college students and the fact that they still claim Crimea as part of the country, her home address was listed as Crimea, part of Ukraine. Students don't have addresses in the town where they attend school and the bank required her 'real' home address which was Crimea. This little slip seems to have caused OFAC to decide I was trying to send money to Crimea and they blocked the transaction. Now, what really gets my hackles up is the fact that no one bothered to let me know that the transaction was blocked. For 4 weeks my bank kept telling me the money was in Ukraine when, as far as I could tell, it was in an account with OFAC. After 4 weeks of frustration on my side and on the Ukraine side I finally went to my bank and cancelled the whole transfer. It took 10 days to find the money and bring it back. Still don't have a complete explanation of where the money went and why it didn't get to Ukraine but that's the way these government agencies work. They do whatever they want and if it blows up your life ... too bad. There is no accountability and this clusterf**k of an operation has so much power to destroy lives and countries. They are the group that starved 500,000 kids to death in Iraq because they decided that medicines and food had military applications and therefore they were not allowed. Evil personified.

Unfortunately, this fiasco diverted my attention for over a month and kept me from setting up the website for my business and from getting my image sales started. By the time the dust settled on this disaster it was just too late to do anything. So the business is not yet running and there is no website. I hope to get it setup while I'm still in Crimea this time so there's something to sell when I get back in country next spring. I hope...

Big Sur #1

One of my bucket list items for this cycle was to spend time in Big Sur. It is such a spectacular place with cliffs and big surf and too many places to photograph. That was my intention ... but the weather had other ideas. The massive storms last spring washed out huge sections of rt. 1 on the coast, closing everything from Ragged Point in the south to Big Sur Station in the north ... essentially the entire Big Sur area. So I was reduced to driving as far as the closure at Ragged Point, then backtracking to rt. 101 and going north to where I could get to rt. 1 and driving south to Big Sur Station. I got a nice taste of the area but a thorough expedition has to wait for another cycle. However, I do have a not so nice memory of that trip. I stopped in a McDonalds in Salinas before turning west toward the coast. I ordered a chicken sandwich. After taking a few bites I noticed the lettuce was bad, covered with black spots and had a not so pleasant smell. I took it off the sandwich and stupidly ate the rest. I should have taken it back to the counter but was in a hurry to get back on the road. By the time I hit Big Sur Station my stomach was starting to rock and roll and a few miles north I was forced to find a place to park and be really sick. It was a miserable night on the side of the road and I didn't feel even a bit better until the sun was coming up. That's the first time McDonalds sold me bad food and it may be the last time I ever buy from them. Every time I went into a McD to check the Internet my stomach started rocking. Something like that sticks with you for a long time.

Anyway, before I got sick I was able to find a couple of nice spots to photograph. I'm not sure exactly where this location is, but it was just north of the town of Big Sur. Storm was brewing and surf was up big time so the image came out really well. This is a panorama made from HDR images. Lots of work to get everything right. Still a little rough in spots but I wanted to get the image out there so everyone could see it. Enjoy.

Big Sur 1 - 24mm,f/20,HDR,ISO 100,license CC BY-NC 4.0

Joshua Tree Sunset

Cycle #3 is over...

I've been silent now for almost 3 months. I was in America most of the time, doing my normal spring traveling. I had an agenda, as I outlined in previous posts, and most of that when in the garbage. I'll cover, in more detail, most of my trip in future posts but do want to give an overview of the adventure here. I guess the best way to characterize this trip is ... what a mess! Those rains I talked about got me big time and much of the early part of my trip was spent driving in downpours and sitting in parking lots watching water drops run down my truck's windows. It was horrendously bad for the first 6 weeks. There were landslides that closed all of Big Sur and much of the area around Stinson Beach north of San Francisco. There were also closure on the bluffs above the Golden Gate Bridge so it was almost impossible to get any images from that vantage point. I was also snowed out of Crater Lake in Oregon and much of the coast there was so wet it was almost impossible to take pictures. I drove almost 12K miles but got only 8K images to show for all that work. There were days where I didn't even take the cameras out of their bag. It was just so miserable. I had to abandon part of my trip up the coast, leaving at Portland instead of Seattle, because everything was so wet. I'd look at the weather forecast and see 5 days of rain, 2 days of good weather and another 5 days of rain. It was really depressing. So I spent a few days in the Portland area, mostly in the Colombia River Gorge, and then headed south toward places where I knew the weather would be more accommodating. I spent a few days in Yosemite and another few days in Death Valley where I and my gear had a chance to dry out. But even Yosemite was a problem as rt. 120 from the north was closed due to a road collapse. On the good side, the closure cut way back on visitors to the park and I was able to get campsites for all the nights I was there but they had lost all internet access so we had to get up early every day and stand in line to pay for a site. These disruptions were a constant in all the national parks. This year, for some reason, things just didn't seem to be working very well. It was very disruptive not only for my photography but for my communications with my family. I was often out of touch for days at a time which caused my wife and daughter great anxiety. But somehow I persevered and finished the trip on May 30th. Flew from Albuquerque to LA to Moscow to Simferopol in just under 24 hours, arriving late in the evening on the 31st. I've been home for just over a week and am still struggling to acclimate to the 10 hour time change. Flying west to east is really hard, even when you are young and healthy but is brutal for my old bones. I suspect it will be another week before I can sleep through the night and stay awake during the day.

I did meet some interesting people along the way. My wife had advised me to not talk about living in Russia but I didn't think most Americans really cared about my living arrangements. So everyone who asked that basic question ... "Where are you from?" ... got the full details of my life in Crimea. I think only one person was upset by that. Most people thought that was interesting and some even wanted to know more. I spent lots of time talking about America and Trump and what was happening to our country. Can't say I talked to even one Trump supporter. The vast majority thought he was crazy and out of control and couldn't quite understand how we had elected such a clown. They also, almost to a person, had nothing kind to say about Clinton. The universal consensus was both of them were worthless. That gave me some hope for the future but not a great deal.

On the technical side, my gear worked like it was supposed to. I had zero mechanical issues with my cameras and relatively minor issues with the truck. This year was emissions testing time and the truck failed due to it's throwing errors out of the emissions system. That required a trip to the repair shop where they found the EGR system wasn't working right. Turns out a hose had gone brittle and cracked, allowing air to leak into the vacuum system that controlled the valve. Also had an issue with the main drive pulley on the serpentine belt so that had to be replaced. Cost almost $400 but the old gal ran much better afterwards. Also had a punctured tire, probably when I was in Page, AZ, and a slow leak. I had picked up a nail somewhere and it had badly damaged the steel belts so the tire had to be replaced. That was another $79. But considering how much driving I do and some of the miserable places I take that truck, I can't complain about this too loudly. It is 17 years old and some things do wear out unfortunately. I suspect I'll have some major repairs to undertake next year too. All part of the process.

Made some preliminary contacts to begin the commercial side of my business. Found a framing shop/gallery in Albuquerque that has tentatively agreed to sell my stuff. I was going to get that started this trip but other issues (later) got in the way so it has to wait  until the spring. Also had an interesting encounter with SmugMug, the image hosting website, that I'll talk about more in another post. It was an interesting experience for sure.

Anyway, that's the trip in a nutshell. There was a great deal of frustration this time, both with the weather and with all the roadblocks that are being thrown up against people who work and live out of their vehicles. Some states are more tolerant of this lifestyle than others and the most draconian will surprise you. I'll devote an entire post to this issue as I think it's important. A lifestyle is being strangled by those who demand conformity.

Joshua Tree Sunset

One of my first stops was in Joshua Tree NP near LA. I'd always planned to stop there but it was just too out of the way to divert for until this year. I made a conscious effort to go there as my cousin raved about the place. After several missed turns and one or two diversions, I arrived at the park. It is a very interesting place for sure. The signature draw is the Joshua Tree, a desert tree that is unusual and very ... ugly. Can't say I find them all that wonderful to photograph directly but I did some experimenting with back lighting at sunset to get some acceptable images. There are also lots of interesting rock formations and, if one looks carefully enough, lots of interesting plants that fly below the radar. Today's image is one of those.

The first day I was there I spent much of the day just wandering around several of the major attractions. I was scoping the place out, looking for interesting angles and images. I though about photographing the rock formations but generally find they don't translate too well into usable images. You need something more organic to generate interest. Anyway, I was wandering around among the rocks and started to notice that many plants were growing in cracks and crevices and created very impressive contrasts between the stone and the green needles. Rocks in Joshua Tree of very strange ... they look like they formed out of shells of dead marine creatures. They were very rough and give an amazing texture that I though would contrast well against some of the plants. This was my idea at that point. I kept wandering around until I found exactly what I was looking for. There was a pinon tree, very old, growing in a large crack in a big rock. It had been bonsai'd, stunted by the lack of water and nutrition, so was quite small and yet very old. The trunk was gnarled and twisted, giving the impression that this was a tree that had some serious history. And yet, it was only a bit larger than my camera and tripod. It was an interesting setup (see below) as the background didn't really contribute

to the image, being composed mostly of scrub brush and dead stuff. I had to get just the right angle so the tree was highlighted against the sky and was framed by the setting sun's yellow light. You can see the lengths I went to setting up the shot. Fortunately, the sun cooperated as did the sky, giving me just enough clouds to get a nice presentation.

I took a long series of bracketed shots as the sun set, looking for just that perfect combination of light and shadow. I probably sat there for an hour waiting for things to come together. And, fortunately, they did. The image below is the final result. I love the contrasts and how shadow and light interplay. My cousins thought the tree was much bigger and were amazed when I sent them the setup picture. There's not a lot of processing here, just HDR in Photomatix and finishing in Lightroom. I may run these images through RayaPro, the suite of actions for Photoshop from Jimmy McIntyre, once I get my feet wet with that process. He shy's away from HDR because of the distortions it creates and uses blending to create some spectacular images. I'll give it try in a few weeks and post the results here for comparison. Anyway, here's "Joshua Tree Sunset" for your viewing pleasure. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did making it.

Joshua Tree Sunset - 23mm,f/18,HDR,ISO 100,license CC BY-NC 4.0

Half Dome from a different angle

Oroville...

I'm watching the disaster in northern California with great interest this week. I plan to be on the northern California coast sometime in early April so the impact of this flooding on my plans may be major. If the place is stable I may divert to the dam and see if there are any interesting images.

I did want to inject my take on what is happening. California has always had swings in the climate but nothing like this. 5 years of extreme drought followed by biblical rains is not how things are supposed to be. I know many of you don't believe in global warming but this is what one can expect as the atmosphere warms up. Warmer air means more moisture and water is the engine driving the climate and weather. More water means more damaging and extreme events and Oroville is just the tip of a huge problem. How can humanity plan for even more extremes? I don't know. This dam is already huge (the largest in North America) and yet it is being overwhelmed by so much rain. The only way to cope with this is to open the flood gates and then deal with all the damage downstream. I don't know how they deal with this as the rain isn't finished yet and there's almost historic levels of snow in the mountains which has to melt in the spring. They'll be lucky to save the dam and the damage just to the spillways is going to cost a lot of money to fix. And this is just one of many dams in the West. I'll be interested to see how the Colorado River is doing and how the big dams there are handling the water. Should be an interesting spring for sure.

Half Dome from a different angle

If you head south out of Yosemite on the El Portal Road (RT. 140), there's an overlook that provides stunning views of the Foresta Valley and Half Dome in the distance. I was fortunate to be on that road at dusk and to have the opportunity to get some amazing sunset shots. My visit last year came during a stormy period and I had several days of low clouds and rain ... my favorite type of weather for getting really dramatic shots. I had both cameras going, taking both wide angle images of the valley and telephoto shots of the dome shrouded in clouds. This image was captured just as the sun broke through the clouds and lit up the dome which was skirted by a beautiful layer of clouds. An amazing shot for sure.

Half Dome - 200mm(1.6 crop),f/18,HDR,ISO 100,license CC BY-NC 4.0

Kodachrome Basin State Park

Trip is on...

Cycle #3 is about to become a reality. In process of getting plane tickets and planning my itinerary. Looks like I'll hit Albuquerque on March 13th and return home to Crimea on May 30. That's 2 1/2 months. Plan is to hit my old standby, Grand Canyon, followed by Joshua Tree NP near LA and then head north to the Pacific Coast Highway and Julia Pfeiffer Burns SP. I'll work north along the California coast with a several day stop in San Francisco. I want to shoot the Golden Gate at low tide at both sunset and sunrise which means I have to be there on March 29th. I want to get out on the tidal flats near the south pier, ocean side and see what kind of images I can get. It's a bit risky as the place I want to go is under water except at low tide but I am devising a plan so I won't be in trouble. I plan to get shots of the gate from as many angles as I can before heading further up the coast. The intention is to work the coast all the way to Seattle and then head east into the Rocky Mountains and both Glacier and Yellowstone. Not sure if the weather will cooperate but that's the plan. Getting good chains for the truck as a precaution and may also hit REI to buy a good pair of snowshoes just in case. It's going to be a very intense trip but I hope to get a ton of great images to work on when I get back in late May. We'll keep our fingers crossed all goes well and I return safely home. Wish me luck.

Kodachrome Basin State Park

This isn't the most popular place in Utah but it's certainly interesting. I had some time to spare and was in the area so I drove to this small park to spend a few hours. It"s not nearly as dramatic as Zion or Bryce or Arches but there's certainly some pleasant scenery to capture. This image is of a dead pinon (I think) and it was just so nice to look at. Because the air is so dry these trees last for a long time and they take on such a wonderful patina. The sky also cooperated. This is a 5 image sequence, run through Photomatix and then Lightroom to finish.

Kodachrome Basin - 24mm,f/11,HDR,ISO 100,license CC BY-NC 4.0

White Sands

White Sands

Early in last year's trip I headed south from Albuquerque to White Sands. A very interesting place with some wild geology. The 'sand' is really gypsum, the stuff used to make drywall. It peculates out of the ground, carried by ground water. The stuff is actually wet and sticks to everything. Because it's wet it doesn't blow around much so the dunes are relatively stationary. But it does act like sand in many ways so you can see these nice waves that form when the wind blows. Really interesting place and I recommend a visit if you're in the area of southern New Mexico.

I wanted to get some sunset shots but the clouds didn't want to cooperate. Shooting into the sun with the white sand tends to wash everything out and that's what happened this time. When the weather isn't helpful I start looking for interesting features to study so the trip isn't a total waste. I found these interesting waves across the dunes, orientated just perfectly to the setting sun. I love the symmetry and how the alternating sun and shade spots emphasize that regularity. Sometimes there's beauty in the most simple things.

Made with a single exposure, run through Lightroom to bring out the colors. Hope you enjoy.

White Sands - 35mm,f/18,1/2500 sec,ISO 3200,license CC BY-NC 4.0

Balanced Rock, Arches NP

Politics ... not for the faint of heart

I'm not a big fan of Trump. I think I've said that before but will continue to repeat it until he's gone. Unfortunately, if he leaves before term's end we get an even bigger disaster ... Pence. I think Trump picked him as a shield ... shoot Trump and you get this turkey. May just work but who knows. Only people in Indiana, his home state, are happy about his selection because he goes away for a while. He's been a complete wipe-out for that state and they're glad to see him go. Not the best endorsement for national office. Hopefully Trump can keep this bozo under control. We'll see.

Anyway, the Trump administration is about to take office and it will be interesting to see how the country reacts. I'm hoping that a real opposition emerges, not just in the congress but in the streets. Trump won't listen ... he will in fact trash-talk the whole effort ... but it could be a real distraction for him and the congress. His ego is based on stroking and positive feelings and he tends to come off the rails when that warm glow is gone. Even his base will disappear, I suspect, if he and the congress really mess with 'entitlements' (you know, things we paid for but the political class thinks we didn't). But we've entered uncertain times and it's anyone's guess as to the outcome, I personally think this is the beginning of the end for America as any kind of functioning country. The political elites intend to flush the whole thing down the drain and start over. I don't object to that idea but the power at this moment is on the right which isn't a good thing. Regression is not the way to fix this ... going back to the past isn't possible because 1) the past isn't the paradise most of these people long for and 2) the country is much changed from those simpler times. Ask minorities if they pine for the past. Most would probably say no. Even most whites long for a time that never existed. The only way forward is to find a way to coexist. No winners or losers. Everyone has to be part of the solution or it's DOA. But I somehow think our elites can't see this or believe they can somehow keep the whole mess together for a while longer while they bleed the corpse dry. Not going to happen I think.

Balanced Rock

I spent several days this trip at Arches NP near Moab, Utah. The surrounding area is a magnet for all types of off-road activities and the the town is overflowing with dune buggies and dirt bikes. The park is filled with hundreds of sandstone arches and other natural wonders. The geology underlying the park is just as interesting so there's something for everyone. Much of my time was spent around Balanced Rock, a rare piece of geology that really emphasizes the strange nature of the sandstone formations in the area. This rock has been balanced, precariously, on this pedestal for a very long time. Looking at it one expects it to fall at any moment as the center of gravity is not over the pedestal. A small scab of rock seems to be holding the rock in place and it's cracked in many places. I would not be surprised to hear that the rock has fallen. That's one reason I spent so much time there.

I shot many star photos at this rock because it lends itself to the orientation of the milky way. I have several photos of the milky way arching over the rock and I'll show you one in the future. This shot is along the same vein but was taken long before the milky way appeared. It was just at sunset. I was sitting in the parking lot, eating my dinner and talking to several folks who were similarly waiting to do night shots. I saw that the sun was just illuminating the rock and the small butte behind so I took out the 6D with my Samyang 14mm f/2.8 which is the go to lens for night shooting. I was hoping I'd catch a few early stars high in the sky and I did. This is a somewhat different shot in that it breaks all the rules. No thirds, no real compositional elements to speak of, just the night sky and the rock. But it works and I really like it. Hope you enjoy the change of pace.

Oh, by the way, this is a single exposure, run through lightroom to bring out the colors and to remove some of the haze.

Balanced Rock - 14mm,f/4,8 sec, ISO 3200,license CC BY-NC 4.0

Natural Bridge National Park

Cycle #3 Plans...

The next cycle home is in the early planning stages and I thought you'd like to get some details. This year I'll be leaving early as my asthma is already getting much worse. Also, last year I didn't allow enough time for my lungs to heal and I have suffered ever since my return. So I'm planning more like 3 months this year and to leave in early March with a return around June 1. My plan this year is to skip all of southern California and to start somewhere around Julia Pfeiffer Burns SP (south of Big Sur) and slowly make my way up the coast to the Canadian border. I'll spend a few days around San Francisco, visiting some friends and trying to get a good set of images from the Golden Gate and elsewhere. That town is really hard to deal with as its almost impossible to keep people from stealing things from the truck and finding a place to crash at night. 2 years ago I was forced to drive south to Half Moon Bay and sleep in a shopping center to feel safe. Hopefully I can find a better place to overnight this time so I can really concentrate on getting some super shots. I also want to spend time in Crater Lake and other national parks along the coastal range plus maybe get some nice images around Seattle. Then I hope to travel east and hit Glacier NP along with Yellowstone before heading south and back to Albuquerque. I know that snow is especially a problem in Glacier so I may not be able to get much done there but we'll see. Yellowstone is also problematic but I'm hopeful enough will be accessible to make the trip worthwhile. As always, I'll adjust my plans as conditions dictate and get as many images as I can. This year I want to take "timeouts" along the way where I can organize my images and get some downtime to rest. Last year I was overwhelmed with all the personal issues and spent far too much time driving back and forth to Albuquerque to fix them. This put a lot of excess miles on the truck and on me personally. Hopefully not this year. I just want to get my gear and head out, not to return until my travels are over. I'll keep my fingers crossed that's what happens this time around.

Natural Bridges National Park

This is one of those hidden gems that few people know about. It's in the southeast corner of Utah and well worth the drive to see it. Not very big, and only a few standout features but WOW, are they something to see. Unlike the sandstone arches found in Arches NP, these arches are due exclusively to water erosion of hard rock. There's a river (dry most of the time) running through the park and these huge bridges are a direct result of the swirling water slowly eating away the rock until it collapses. What's really nice is you can, if you have the legs, walk down into the river bed and see the rock features up close. There's a very small staff, just a few rangers, and not a lot of visitors so you get the whole place to yourself most of the time. It's definitely worth the drive and a day to see these amazing features.

This is Sipapu Bridge and the surrounding area. The bridge itself isn't obvious but can be seen near the center-right (about 1/3 from the right edge) as an opening in the rock face. Don't feel bad if you can't see it ... I stood at the overlook for a long time trying to find it until someone pointed it out to me. It tends to blend in with the surrounding rock. The big problem is they put the overlook high above the river, on a bluff that's at least a mile from the arch. Not the best place but I understand their reasoning for doing it that way. There's a broad, flat area below the overlook that get's you much closer to the canyon (right on the edge in fact) but you have to negotiate a dry riverbed and walk about a mile to get there. I parked at the picnic area below the overlook and walked down hill until I got to a small bridge over a wash. Get into the wash and walk toward the canyon. You'll see some warn paths off to the right, across the crust, which you should follow. Eventually you emerge onto the flat and then you simply walk along the canyon edge until directly below the overlook. That's where I took this panorama. As always, I set up early and took several sequences as the sun set, then selected the best once I was back on the computer. There are 90 images in this pano, consisting of 5 images per frame. I ran them through Photomatix using the batch processor, adjusting the white and black levels along with strength to get the overall look I wanted. Photoshop was used to create the panorama and I used Lightroom to finish. There were just enough clouds to get an interesting sunset and the canyon speaks for itself. This is all water erosion and it took millions of years to get this far. There are 2 additional bridges, just as interesting, and maybe I'll show them in the future.

Sipapu Bridge - 24mm,f/18,HDR,ISO 100,license CC BY-NC 4.0