Category: Awards

I am excited to announce that my image “Torres Dramatic Sunrise” will be a Highly Honored Landscape in the 2009 Nature’s Best Windland Smith Rice International Photography Awards!  I created this image 2 years ago while backpacking in Torres Del Paine National Park in Chile.  Most trekkers who have visited this location have done so while multi-day trekking and usually only spend 1 night before moving on.  However, my only goal during my visit was to photograph the Torres in epic light, so I spent 5 days/4 nights camping in the same location so that I could photograph the spires each day.  My last morning was the most dramatic.  You can read more about it in my previous post on the Singh-Ray filters blog.

I am proud to announce that my image “Torres Dramatic Sunrise” won 1st Place in the Photography category at the 2009 Edmonds Art Festival Juried Gallery! I was notified while I was in Alaska last week. The following information is from one of my previous posts.

I created this image in Chile’s Torres del Paine National Park in the region of South America better known as Patagonia. I’ve been familiar with these mountains since well before I even knew what a mountain looked like. I was first introduced to the Patagonia clothing company by my Uncle Jerry way back in junior high school while growing up in Michigan. While I was very active in rock-climbing and mountaineering during the 90’s, I read a number of amazing stories about climbing the famous granite spires of the region. Even though I am no longer interested in technical climbing, I had always wanted to visit these legendary mountains and in 2007 I finally had the opportunity to do so. I loved the spectacular scenery so much, that I went back in January 2008. I did not have enough time during my first trip to backpack to the famous Los Torres viewpoint, so I made it my main objective on this second visit. It is a 16 mile roundtrip hike up to the Torres campground, so in order to photograph the mountains at sunrise you need to camp overnight.  I took enough food and equipment to spend 5 days and had uncommonly good weather. Every morning, I would get up an hour before sunrise to hike up the ridge to the famous viewpoint and wait for the sunrise. I did this 4 days in a row, and on my final day I got lucky when the clouds parted for a brief moment and the sunrise light illuminated the spires in golden light. It takes a lot of energy to travel that far for a few images, but the results are worth the effort.

I recently got my 2008 entry returned to me. I again did not have any of my wildlife or landscape images make it into the competition, however, I did have 8 out of my 12 images that I submitted make it to the Semi-Final round of judging, including this image of the spectacular Cuernos at sunrise from the shores of Lago Pegoe in Torres del Paine National Park in Chilean Patagonia. Please visit more of my images from Torres del Paine National Park.