Tag: National Parks

Mazama Ridge Fall Colors 1

Mazama Ridge Fall Colors 1

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The most important thing I teach my photography tour clients is how to anticipate a shot. Let’s use my new image of the fall colors on Mazama Ridge as an example of when to shoot. When I was at Mount Rainier National Park last Friday, the sky was clear blue without a single cloud on the horizon. I knew that the best image in these conditions would be when the angle of the sunlight was a few degrees above the horizon and still yellow or orange in color. Experience has taught me where the sun would go down, but I confirmed my guess by using my SunSeeker app on my iPhone. I wanted to shoot this scene as the sunset light settled into the trees and danced across the foliage in front of my camera. The tree shadows added some mystery to an otherwise beautiful but non-dramatic scene. This light only lasted for about 30 seconds before the foliage went into complete shade. I used my Carl Zeiss 35mm f2 ZE lens along with my Singh-Ray LB Warming Polarizer and 2-stop Hard Graduated Neutral Density filter to create this image using only 1 exposure which required minimal processing.

Mt McKinley & Mt Foraker Sunset Aerial 1

Mt McKinley & Mt Foraker Sunset Aerial 1

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During my recent Alaska trip, I was able to see Mt McKinley almost everyday due to the perfect clear weather. To see the mountain even 1 day is very rare, let alone for 10 days straight. My normal landscape images from the ground were just not very exciting, so I hired a small plane 3 times with various friends in order to fly over the Alaska Range at sunset and sunrise. I did not get the sunset image that I was after on my first flight, but I figured out exactly where I wanted to return to shoot on my second flight. I liked this location because I was slightly back from Mt McKinley (left) and Mt Foraker (right) and able to line them up with these repetitive ridges giving the image some depth rather than just a simple mountain portrait.

I created this image while hand-holding my Canon 5DmkII and Carl Zeiss 50mm f1.4 ZE lens with the airplane’s window open so that I could shoot without the glass obstructing my view. My camera body shoots 4fps. If I hold down the shutter release button I get about 12 images before I fill-up the camera’s memory buffer. With my Sandisk 16GB Extreme CF memory cards, I can photograph almost 600 images before my card is full. That comes out to only 2.5 minutes of actual shooting before I fill-up the card! Over the course of almost 3 hours of flying that is a minimal amount of time. There is a lot of teamwork and communication involved between me and the pilot in order for me to create an aerial image like this. Of course, when I am back home I then have to edit 3000 images of the exact same thing looking for minor variations to find the image with which I am happiest.

Mazama Ridge Lupine Sunrise 1

Mazama Ridge Lupine Sunrise 1

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This past Friday, the second in a row, I woke up at 2:30am and drove down to Mount Rainier National Park to photograph wildflowers at sunrise. I have sold a lot of images of Mount Rainier over the years, so it is worth taking the time out of my busy travel schedule to do the quick round trip for just 1 hour of shooting. I parked my car at 5:15am and ran up the trail in about 20 minutes to my favorite flower meadows on Mazama Ridge. I’m always surprised that I never encounter any other photographers up there at sunrise, but I also only visit during the week to avoid the weekend crowds.  For anyone still planning a trip to Rainier, the wildflowers are at their peak, however, I would not describe this year’s bloom as more than ordinary.  I did not encounter any diverse fields of wildflowers and the clouds from the day before had vanished, but I still hoped to create a new unique image. All of my previous well-known photos of wildflowers at Mount Rainier were created using medium and large format film cameras. What a pain in the ass that was. With my large format camera in particular, I had to compose the image using a dark cloth, focusing loupe, and dark ground glass where the image was upside down and reversed, spot meter the scene, stop down to f32, place a Singh-Ray non-LB Warming Polarizer on the lens, position the grad filter correctly, and hope that the wind stopped blowing for a 10-30 second exposure because I was using Fuji Velvia 50 film rated at ISO 25 due to reciprocity failure. Still with me? Let me just state unequivocally that creating this image with my dSLR was a lot easier. I like this picture because of the soft warm light illuminating the lupine in the foreground.

Reflection Lake Wildflowers 1

Reflection Lake Wildflowers 1

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Pictures don’t get any fresher than this! I woke up at 2:30am today and drove down to Mount Rainier National Park to photograph the wildflowers around Reflection Lake at sunrise. I have always wanted to photograph the mountain and reflection in the lake with rosy spireas in bloom, and today I finally timed it right.  I was surprised by how many photographers were there for a Friday. I have gotten spoiled in Alaska not having to shoot around other people. A slight breeze or surfacing fish occasionally disturbed the reflection, so this is as close to perfect as it got.  I am happy with what I created.

For those of you aspiring to photograph wildflowers at Mount Rainier this summer, I did a quick drive up to Paradise before driving back to Seattle, and can confirm that the wildflowers probably need 1-2 more weeks to peak. There are tons of paintbrush and other wildflowers along the side of the road, but the big fields of lupine are only just starting to bloom. I hope to get back down there late next week before I return to Alaska on August 23rd.

Gesellschaft Deutscher Tierfotografen 2010 Interview

Gesellschaft Deutscher Tierfotografen 2010 Interview

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I was recently interviewed by the Gesellschaft Deutscher Tierfotografen (Society of German Nature Photographers).  Previously interviewed photographers include Andy Rouse, George and Verena Popp, Norbert Rosing, and Kevin Schafer.  My interview is currently featured in their triannual magazine Forum Naturfotografie.  It spans 14 pages and showcases 12 of my favorite photographs.  The double page opener is my image “East Pond Vent 1”, taken in Volcanoes National Park in Hawaii.  You can view the entire article here, however, it is in German.

Jokulsarlon Icebergs Sunrise 5

Jokulsarlon Icebergs Sunrise 5

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My regular readers will have noticed that I am a big fan of shooting wide-angle landscape images and seldom use a telephoto lens other than for wildlife photography. I enjoy discovering patterns in nature with a medium telephoto lens, but I prefer to shoot grand and dramatic scenes. I also think that it is technically more challenging. This iceberg detail and reflection picture from Jokulsarlon is a notable recent exception. The blue color of the ice comes from the density of the ice absorbing all the colors of the spectrum, except blue which is reflected. Photographing blue ice is best in overcast conditions, of which I had plenty.

Jokulsarlon Icebergs Sunrise 2

Jokulsarlon Icebergs Sunrise 2

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During my trip to Iceland, I visited the spectacular Jokulsarlon 5 different nights over 2 weeks hoping to photograph an epic midnight sunset. On the night that I finally created this image, the magic light had threatened to overwhelm the clouds for several hours. I don’t remember how I occupied my time for the next hour, but by 2:45am I was set up and ready to photograph the sunrise light when it briefly radiated underneath the heavy clouds and illuminated the mountains above the iceberg choked lagoon.

Seattle Met June 2010 Hiking Opener

Seattle Met June 2010 Hiking Opener

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My image “Spray Park Wildflowers 1” is featured as the double page opener of the hiking feature in the June 2010 issue of Seattle Met. Spray Park is my favorite alpine location at Mount Rainier National Park and is the closest side of the mountain to my home in Seattle. During the brief summer hiking season, I depart my house in the early afternoon, drive for about 3 hours, and hike the 3 miles up to the wildflower meadows to photograph the sunset. It is both a blessing and a curse if the wind is not blowing, a blessing because the fields of lupine and paintbrush are not blowing around in the wind, but a curse because of  the swarms of blood-thirsty mosquitoes that rival any that I have seen in Alaska or Canada. Spray Park is higher than Paradise on the south side of the mountain, so the wildflowers peak about 1 week later, typically mid-August. Based on the cold summer that we are having, I estimate that the wildflowers are going to be a little late this year, which is similar to the year that I created this image during the last week of August.

Jokulsarlon Beach Sunset 2

Jokulsarlon Beach Sunset 2

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I’ve been intending to add some new images from my trip to Iceland, but have had a lot going on the last week. I was pretty underwhelmed by the photos that I’d seen of icebergs stranded on the beach in front of Jokulsarlon before my trip, so this location was not a priority for me to shoot. I scouted this location a few times in the middle of the night, but the clouds and light were terrible. I either did not shoot any pictures or deleted most of them once I got home. However, I created this surprisingly beautiful photograph at 12:30am on my last night at Jokulsarlon.  I love the color that the clouds reflected from the midnight sun. This translucent piece of ice made a nice foreground, as well as the repetition patterns of the larger icebergs behind it. This was also as dark as it got during my entire 15 day visit, which was great for shooting but not for sleeping.

Jokulsarlon Icebergs Sunrise 1

Jokulsarlon Icebergs Sunrise 1

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My regular readers know that I just returned from my 2nd trip to the beautiful but stark country of Iceland. I had previously visited Iceland in 2001 when I was beginning my photography career but had not yet mastered the camera.  I had several regrets from that 1st trip, so it was nice to put them to rest. Shooting conditions where incredibly difficult due to the constant cloudy weather. Also, because it is summer in the Arctic, the sun barely dipped below the horizon between 12-3am. This made for long nights of shooting, which required me to sleep during the day. I started to appreciate the demanding schedule of vampires. One of the locations that I was determined to photograph was Jokulsarlon. This spectacular lagoon is choked with icebergs that have calved off of the Breidamerkurjokull glacier. Is is an abstract photographer’s dream. I created this atmospheric image when the sunrise light briefly illuminated the tops of the thin layer of clouds at 3am.