High Desert Drifter

Now that I live only a little over an hour from Joshua Tree National Park, it's much easier to keep an eye on the weather and head out there only when I have a good chance of hitting the kind of conditions that I prefer.  I did hit it just right on this day last October and was was quite happy with my afternoon of shooting... the sky was absolutely perfect. (Click the image for a detailed view).  I went back a couple of weeks ago on Jan. 2 hoping for something similar, but it turned out a little too overcast and windy, so I'm not sure if anything good will come out of that session (still waiting to process a batch of film), but hoping for the best.  I like to check the Joshua Tree web cam to get an idea of the situation before deciding to make the drive, but things can change a lot in in two hours out there when weather is happening, so it's never 100% guaranteed to be perfect, even after my best efforts.
This was shot with what is probably my favorite tool recently, a panoramic 6x12 (60x120mm) roll film back on my view camera.. great because it allows me to get the benefit of the full width and detail of the camera's large format frame on roll film instead of sheets, which is much cheaper to buy and to process... and faster to use in the field than sheet film in individual holders. I'm only loosing a little bit of the frame at the top and the bottom, which is o.k. because I'm really liking the wide format these days... it seems to make almost any composition more dynamic and interesting than standard full-frame proportions.
One thing I am hoping for this year is to photograph a rare high desert snow dusting, but that will have to wait a while, because we are in a really warm pattern right now and even up here on the mountain at 6000 ft., almost all the snow is melted and gone.

Faerieland

Now there IS an actual area of Bryce named Fairyland Point, but this is NOT it:) I just thought the name so appropriate for this scene, taken not too long after the one in my last post... these clouds are the fringe areas of the storm seen in that shot.  I don't think you can find shapes and textures like this anywhere else in the world.  Although the colors here are fantastic, I find them almost a distraction in a heavily textured view like this, especially in mid-day light where they are much too harsh for my taste, thus the black and white treatment. For most of the day, the clouds were softening the light, making it much nicer to work in color and the rain showers really seem to intensify the red in the soil when it gets wet.
Color stuff coming up next....

The Monster

I must admit I've been back and forth on this one more than a few times. I liked it quite a lot initially, then began to feel that it was not really that interesting, now I am back to liking it again! I've said it before, but it normally takes me some months or even more to get "detached" from images to the point where I can really judge them impartially, like seeing someone else's work for the first time.  Some other photographers I've talked to say the same thing.
This shot definitely makes me think of some alien spider creature about to chop off my tripod legs for daring to take it's picture. In reality, it's the remnants of an ancient Bristlecone Pine, probably laying very still right here in this spot at 10,000 ft. elevation in California's White Mountains, for many hundreds if not thousands of years. Click the image for a larger view on this one.. the texture of the wood is amazing.
I wish the redwood decks on my house were this durable.. I am going to be spending most of the summer repairing and refinishing them:)

The Photographer Contemplates...

This fellow photographer ended up in a bunch of my compositions one particular evening.. he seemed so enthralled with the beautiful sunset sky that he wasn't too busy shooting. Don't know if he was thinking about his foreground setup at all either, being out there on the edge, but to each his own:)... and very nice of him to stand so still for the 8 seconds duration of this exposure.  It didn't bother me much, because I knew I could easily remove him from the scene later if necessary and I just went on undisturbed.  If there's a whole bunch of gawkers standing in the scene, that CAN get to be a problem.  I left him in here this time because I think the figure adds a bit of story to the shot. You might question my choice to render such a colorful scene in monochrome, but I have so many color versions of this already and I like it this way.. your mind's eye fills in the colors and the textures of the rocks, sea and cloud are so awesome all by themselves.  
My posts (and comments, sorry) will probably continue to be irregular for the near future.. the practicalities of life sometimes intrude on creative endeavors and that is my story for now.  In short, we are preparing to leave the city life and move full time to our house in a small village high in the southern California mountains, so life is going to change drastically, but first there is a lot to deal with here as you can imagine. More info on this as it occurs, I suppose.  In the meantime I don't have much opportunity to travel or work on new stuff, but it should all be better in the end.
You can view more beautiful skies from all over the world each week here at the SkyWatch home page.  

Whoosh! Whump! Boom!... Sunset Cliffs

One of the more dramatic results from an afternoon spent watching post-storm waves crash into the rocks at probably our best local surfing/wave-watching spot.  You can't easily get down to beach level here (and wouldn't really want to on a day like this anyway), but there are some nice outcroppings where you can climb down fairly low and shoot back towards shore for a great view with reasonable safety. Amazing how tricky it can be to get the right composition to combine with the just right instant of the waves breaking.. but I sure can watch and work on it for a very long time without getting bored. 
Although the color of the waves was quite nice, I found it to be kind of distracting and decided that I preferred a monochrome approach. A few lucky people get to live right here, as you can see at the top of the frame... not a bad spot for your house, huh?

In the Twilight Zone

"Moonset-Zabriski Point, Death Valley"

I find fairly often that the most interesting light actually occurs in that strange few minutes just before sunrise or just after sunset. Not so with something like the dunes in my last couple of posts, where the sunlight really is necessary to bring out the shapes and shadows, but for this one I found it disappointing as soon as the sun broke the horizon and got to work on the scene.

This spot is probably one of the most photographed in all the west, (and that's saying a lot)... every day, busloads of tourists stop in the parking lot, hike up a small hill to the lookout and shoot I would guess tens of thousands of snapshots. Almost every serious photographer stops by here too.. for that reason I've avoided it for all the years since I moved to California, but I have to admit that I'm glad I finally gave it a "shot":)

No busses and only one car in the lot when we arrived about a half hour before sunrise... one other photog and his wife beat me and were already set up and working. Of course I knew there was a full moon that night since we had been camping out nearby, but for some reason it didn't occur to me beforehand that the moon could still be part of the composition... until I got up to the hilltop and noticed that it was still sitting on the horizon, just about to disappear. I had to rush down to the "tripod spot" in front of a small wall and set up in a real hurry in order to get at least a few shots in the can before it set behind the Panamint Mountains off to the west, beyond Badwater. If I had a bit more time, I could have set up something with a telephoto and got the moon really big and fat sitting over Manley Beacon (the sharp, tooth-shaped landmark rock), but hey, you can't have everything. Anyway, I think it really made the shot and my day. The pre-dawn twilight turned out to be by far the best for this view, although some other interesting formations that can be photographed from here in the other direction worked quite well after the sunrise, at least for a few minutes.

It looks great in color, too, but I am kind of leaning towards this B&W interpretation. Be sure to click for a full view, the details and textures of the eroded landscape are really fascinating.

Check out lots of great sky shots every Friday at the Sky Watch home page.

In some photographs the essence of light and space dominate; in others, the substance of rock and wood, and the luminous insistence of growing things...It is my intention to present-through the medium of photography-intuitive observations of the natural world which may have meaning to spectators... - Ansel Adams

Bare Bones, III- A Photographic Sketch

Probably my favorite of this quickly shot set from my iPhone; good enough I think, that I will return and re-shoot the subject with an actual camera next time I am here. Maybe try some different compositions, but the shapes and contrasts are ideal for a nice image. I'm planning to experiment with this in the future as a "sketching" tool or "visual notebook" of sorts, to quickly pre-visualize scenes and subjects, helping to decide which are worth returning to and how to set them up for the actual shot... much as a painter would quite normally do. I often spend a lot of time in a new location just wandering around, composing images in my mind and getting a feel for what I might want to attempt at a better time of day, so this could be really useful, especially if I have a laptop handy to download and play around a bit during mid-day "down time".

What?... Fall Colors Without Color?

Aspen Trees - Southern Utah

Sure, the leaves were very pretty shades of gold and yellow, but the light at the time was kind of flat and try as I might, I couldn't get any shots from this location to pop as I would like in color, so why not reconsider conventional wisdom and try it in black & white? Aspens seem to be one of those subjects that look great either way... and I am much happier with this now than I ever was with it in color. The thin vertical lines of the trunks and the delicate leaves always give a watercolor painting-like feel that I never get tired of, especially if you can get them against a dark background. Luckily that happens a lot in Utah where the groves tend to line open meadows against the darker evergreens of the forest. I found it interesting when analyzing this scene that I could crop it to almost any section, size or proportion and still end up with a pretty decent composition, so I guess in reality it's a kind of texture study.

Shot one year ago to the day, I came back to this because I'm deciding if I will go foliage hunting this year and where.. it will be more towards the end of the month or into November if I do. And yes, the colors were indeed fantastic.. I will post some color images too:)

"Simply look with perceptive eyes at the world about you, and trust to your

own reactions and convictions. Ask yourself: "Does this subject move me to feel, think and dream? Can I visualize a print - my own personal statement of what I feel and want to convey - from the subject before me?"

- Ansel Adams

Ghost Tree and God Sky

Another example of an image that takes on a life of it's own only after you get home and start to work with it. Of course, it was intriguing enough at the time for me to set up and frame a few shots... and I pretty much had a black and white result in mind under these conditions, but somehow in real life and later in color on the raw exposure, it just didn't have the drama that came through ultimately. Shot near Desert View at the Grand Canyon a short time after my last one from this location (here), I was busy watching the sky develop minute by minute and searching out interesting foreground subjects to use as a foil for the clouds.

I borrow the term "ghost tree" from a local newspaper writer who sometimes does articles about nature, parks and hiking trails, etc. (maybe she in turn borrowed it from someone:) I love it, since this is a fairly frequent subject for me (as you can see from an older post here) and I've always needed a descriptive tag for these skeletal trees. "God sky" speaks for itself.. I almost expected to see a bolt of lightning crash down from the heavens and this dead tree to burst into flames. Honestly, not a good idea to be standing on the edge of a canyon with a metal tripod if there is lightning about.. (there wasn't in this spot at the time).

As usual, check out all the great SkyWatch images of the week right here.

Our job is to record, each in his own way, this world of light

and shadow and time that will never come again exactly as it is today.

- Edward Abbey

Water Study: Time Provides Perspective

This image and a color one to come, were both taken over one year ago near our home in the southern California mountain community of Idyllwild. I made about 40 exposures over the course of several hours, working on the waterfall flowing out of a small local lake. (Hard to call it a "waterfall" compared to one like this, but they can't all be epic:) The whole session has been languishing in my "digital negative cabinet" since then. I had looked through the exposures several times and played briefly with a few, but just had it in my mind that there was nothing really worth developing from this session. Something about the quality of light or color of the rocks just wasn't sitting right with me at the time.

As I've talked about before, it very often pays off to go back and rework things after some time has passed.. shots that you think great in the excitement of reviewing them while brand new, can be evaluated more honestly after the attachment we feel to them has faded. Even better, as in this case, you may find something very worthy that you completely overlooked. Just consider that whatever skill level you are currently at, your eye and technique are constantly changing and developing.

Rethinking the Dunes

I wanted to briefly go back and wrap up my post regarding the Algodones Dunes: "Solitude and Civilization", that I posted a few weeks ago.  At the time, I mentioned working some exposures from that session in both color and monochrome, so here is one B&W version that is very similar in composition to the color one posted previously.  You can see that it's essentially the same shot, although I shifted position slightly to lessen the size of the deep shadow on the right side of the frame.. it seemed a little overbearing in this monochrome version. Other than that, I don't have any strong preference between the two, maybe slightly towards the B&W, so I'd be interested to hear any opinions.

Check out lots of fine B&W images at: The Monochrome Weekly Theme page.  

The Story of "A Vagabond for Beauty"

A small article in the local paper caught my eye and my interest recently, and after searching into it further, the story began to resonate with me on so many levels that I thought it would make for an intriguing entry. I know that many of my readers are fellow photographers, artists, or nature lovers, so hopefully some will appreciate this as much as me. It may mean more or less to you depending on your experience with art history and the lure of the American West.

"There is a splendid freedom in solitude, and after all, it is for solitude that I go to the mountains and deserts, not for companionship. In solitude I can bare my soul to the mountains unabashed. I can work or think, act or recline at my whim, and nothing stands between me and the Wild."

-Everett Ruess

In November of 1934, a young 20 year old man named Everett Ruess, traveling alone except for two burros and some basic gear, as he had been for much of the previous four years, set out down the Hole in the Rock trail from the town of Escalante, in south central Utah, intending to explore further south towards the Colorado River. He was never seen again after that day... and the mystery of his disappearance became a legendary mystery that remained unsolved for nearly 75 years. What catches the imagination is that he was an extremely talented artist, writer, poet and experienced explorer even at his young age.

Ruess's family lived in Los Angeles and after graduating school, he left normal life behind to wander up the California coast, into Yosemite and the Sierras, sketching and photographing the natural wonders along the way and keeping a detailed record of his thoughts and travels, mostly in the form of letters back home to his family. He explored Yosemite, Sequoia N.P. and the High Sierras in 1930 and '33; Arizona, Utah and Colorado in 1931, '32 & '34. Those letters were compiled into a book called "A Vagabond for Beauty" and form a journal of insights and experiences from some of the most desolate and beautiful areas one could ever hope to see. I have added the book to my Amazon sidebar.. you can click on it to read some sample pages (don't worry, it doesn't cost anything to just look!)

He was one hell of an accomplished writer for his age and was fearless about introducing himself to some of the most established artists of the day. One early trip took him to Carmel, CA where he describes seeking out Edward Weston at his house there... exploring the Point Lobos area and doing artwork with Weston's sons, Bret and Cole and sleeping in their garage. He later stayed with renowned western painter Maynard Dixon and his then wife, photographer Dorothea Lang (who took some of the best pictures of him), as well as photographer Ansel Adams.

He made drawings for reference, then back home in Los Angeles would work them up as linoleum block prints, very simple and graphic, which he could in turn trade for necessities on future travels. There is a site devoted to his artwork and writings here. Probably he was far from reaching his full potential as an artist and who knows how good he might have become had he lived past 20 years.

Some of you who saw the movie "Into the Wild" may think Ruess's story sounds kind of familiar; there is indeed an eerie similarity between Everett's life and that of Chris McCandless decades later, in fact Jon Krakauer devoted a whole section of his book to Ruess for that reason, although it was not covered in the movie. It seems they both wanted to leave their old selves behind: McCandless traveled under the name "Alexander Supertramp" and Ruess is known to have carved "Nemo" ("nobody" in Latin) at some of the places he camped in the desert.

Now, the last chapter of his story is complete. Researchers at the University of Colorado have used DNA from some bones discovered recently, 60 miles from Escalante, to verify that the mystery of Everett's vanishing is pretty much solved. As has been proven many times, events rarely happen a vacuum... so in the early 1970's, a Navajo man named Aneth Nez was told by a tribal medicine man to unburden himself of a secret that he had carried since his youth, when he sat up on a ridge one day and witnessed some Ute Indian boys chase down and murder a young white man to steal his belongings. Not wishing the body to be left exposed and alone, Nez went down and buried it in some nearby rocks. He told the story to his granddaughter and she in turn just last year relayed it her younger brother, who made it his personal mission to search the area his grandfather had described, at last finding bones and some other artifacts along with his grandfather's saddle, which had been left at the scene because it was covered in blood. This part of the tale is written up with great detail this month in "National Geographic Adventure" magazine and you can read part of it for free on their website. There was also a documentary film made in 2000, numerous magazine articles have speculated about Everett's fate, musician Dave Alvin of the Blasters and others have written songs about him and there is in recent years an annual art festival bearing his name in Escalante.

I guess my fascination with all this lies in the overlap of names and places from this tale with many of the same ones that have been influential to me personally. You could say Weston and Adams are two of my idols and I can only imagine how great it would have been to meet them at a young age... and I have been awed to experience even briefly some of the places that Ruess was so devoted to, especially the Grand Staircase region of Utah where he ultimately ended up staying forever, as he would have wished anyway, I'm sure.

"I have not tired of the wilderness; rather I enjoy its beauty and the vagrant life I lead, more keenly all the time. I prefer the saddle to the streetcar and star-sprinkled sky to a roof, the obscure and difficult trail, leading into the unknown to any paved highway, and the deep peace of the wild to the discontent bred by cities."

... as to when I revisit civilization, it will not be soon. I have not tired of the wilderness... It is enough that I am surrounded with beauty... This had been a full, rich year. I have left no strange or delightful thing undone I wanted to do.

- from the last letter Ruess sent to his brother, dated November 11, 1934.

Oh yeah,... my two pieces (both are linked to larger versions for this post): for the color one, I caught the early light of a winter morning on some bare cottonwood trees along the Virgin River in Zion Canyon. The monochrome image is of Metate Arch in the Devil's Garden, found about 20 miles down Hole in the Rock road, south of Escalante, and very likely a spot that Reuss passed on his last fateful journey.

Red Canyon in Monochrome

Wikipedia lists more that 70 canyons in the U.S. named "Red Canyon", not surprisingly most of them in the southwest, but this particular one is located on the road to Bryce Canyon, and is only about 9 miles to the west of the national park entrance. Many people don't bother to stop here; the landscape is extraordinary enough to produce "oohs" and "ahhs" but probably that makes everyone anxious to get to Bryce, so they whiz on through.  It's worth stopping for more that a quick roadside snapshot, however.. it's got some lonely trails to hike and fantastic scenery if you turn off the main road for a bit, plus it's totally uncrowded. There's no entry fee and it's open to mountain bikes, horses, ATVs, camping... you can pretty much do whatever you want.

The famous outlaw Butch Cassidy grew up near here and is said to have used it as a hideout on occasion... you can see why. If you were familiar enough with this area I don't think anyone could ever find you.

I made this shot in bright mid-day sun, so the deep blue sky and the bright red/orange rocks exposed through a polarizer produce a kind of infrared effect when processed in monochrome. 

Be sure to visit Aileni's Monochrome Maniacs index every Monday for a weekly list of B&W submissions from around the blogosphere.

Nature's Own Sculpture-SkyWatch Friday No. 41

This is one of those rare (for me, at least) examples of an image where I actually had a concept in mind well before trying to execute it.

I've been driving past this unique rock several times a month for years; it's right beside the road we have to travel between San Diego and our place in the mountains about a hundred miles to the northeast. I've always known that I was going to stop one day and do something with this, but it was just a matter of being there at the right time and having my gear with me also.  It lies in a high-desert transitional zone, so the sky here is usually clear blue unless there is some kind of storm in the area, but for once the weather gods were kind enough to leave these perfect high, thin cirrus clouds in just the perfect location to serve as a backdrop.. all around to the left, right and behind me was nothing but clear blue!  

As far as I know, this is basically natural, except for where some genius decided to paint a ring around the eye and possibly someone has chipped away a few strategic spots to emphasize the obvious, but that doesn't bother me too much. I wouldn't be surprised if there is some legend to this rock among the locals-I believe it lies on a bit of Native American reservation land-but if there is, I do not know it. I made 5 or 6 different compositions and don't know yet which will ultimately be my favorite, but for now this one will do.

Since the sky is an equal subject here, I am participating in SkyWatch Friday this week. Visit their page to see many other weekly entries... it's a hugely popular site.

The Oldest Living Things

Imagine the world 500 years ago, 1,000 years ago, 2000 years ago.. How much of human history has passed in that amount of time? These trees, the ancient Bristlecone Pines, have lived here in the cold, dry White Mountains, east California's Sierras, for all of that and much more. Some were alive when the pyramids were built and were already mature trees when Jesus was born.
Growing between 10,000 & 11,000 ft. elevation on rocky dolomite (limestone) slopes that resemble the surface of the moon, these ancient patriarchs cling to life in this arid, hostile climate. Off to the west, the Sierra mountains squeeze most of the moisture from clouds coming in off of the Pacific and little rain is left to fall after they cross the valley and reach this range to the east, close to Nevada. Not much else can grow here, giving the Bristlecones, which have adapted to the climate and soil, the head start they need to survive.
Many of these trees are 2000-3000 yrs. old, calculated by both ring-counting and carbon dating - and the oldest tree, nicknamed "Methuselah", is determined to be 4,750 years old; it's exact location is kept secret, to ensure protection from vandals. The trees that live in the "better" locations grow fatter and taller and thus have shorter lives. The stunted ones living alone in the harshest conditions are well adapted and live the longest. Their wood is dense and impervious to disease, insects and rot and they only need a tiny amount of bark to live.. in fact letting parts of the tree die off is part of their survival strategy.
My wife and I spent an afternoon wandering among and photographing these beauties last year. Several trails wind through this grove (which is the "lower" one at 10K ft.) and for the whole afternoon while hiking, we didn't see another person.. just these ancient sentinels standing quietly as they have for centuries, facing the crest of the Sierras off to the west.
This is my first time to participate in Monochrome Monday... you can see an index of other participants by clicking on the link. You can also click on the smaller, first image to get a more detailed view.

"The Sentinels" - Eastern Sierra

Duke, The Art Car

From my "Lost & Found" files: 

Walking down the road after breakfast with a new camera in hand (luckily) I happened upon this artistic oddity of a vehicle circa 2003 in the little mountain village of Idyllwild, CA where we have a home. It pretty much stopped me dead in my tracks because it's not what you would expect to see parked in a small rustic community high in the forest, under the pines and cedars.  "Duke" is basically a mobile, living sculpture created and owned by writer/artist Rick McKinney (you can see the whole car and more about him here). Every square inch is covered with various antiques, junk, jewelry, you name it. Don't know how he keeps it all together.. lots of glue, I guess. Anyway, I was delighted to have such a great subject right at hand to give my new camera a workout and ended up shooting a whole bunch of odd, interesting still life images. This is not my normal genre of work these days, but this one was so unique that I wanted to revive it. 

"The Art Car"-California, 2003

Decisions, decisions. Color or Black & White?

Reading another photo blog yesterday inspired this post.  Back in the film days, I used to shoot only black and white because I have always liked to do my own printing and I just didn't have the equipment or knowhow in those days to print color.  These days, of course, that's all changed and it's just as easy to print in color as in B&W.  In fact, you could make the argument that printing nice B&Ws digitally is actually more tricky than color; getting nice deep blacks and neutral grays requires some real care and an intimate knowledge of your printing process. I replied to that other person's entry that if I am going to present an image in color, it is because the color is truly adding something important, not just because I happened to capture it in color. Many times taking the color out is actually a huge improvement. I think most would agree that the original image seen here (pretty much untouched, right out of the camera) is nothing special, but I liked the pose of the egret and the reflections in the water; so I decided to work it up as a monochrome, getting rid of the awful green water and the drab colors and turning it into a pretty effective image by concentrating on the mirrored reflections, then playing with the curves and contrast adjustments until I got the desired effect.

My first influences in photography were some of the greats who never touched color, so I still have a strong attraction for beautiful monochrome even though I have kind of moved away from it in my own work. Check out Lenswork Magazine to see some really nice contemporary B&W work.