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