Sky Watch: Arizona Evening

I've pretty much finished going through and editing down my catalog, selecting and annotating images, to get it all organized and presentable for my rebuilt website.  It's finally up and running here at: www.AspectStudioPhotography.net.  The nice thing about it (and the main reason for the rebuild) is the integrated shopping cart and ordering system, which works really smoothly and easily on the front end (what visitors see) AND the back end, where I can manage and update everything so easily behind the scenes.
I looked around for quite a long time to find a hosting service that met my needs for professional quality design; easy to manage, self-fulfilled e-commerce (I do all my own printing); and slick, Flash-free presentation. PhotoShelter was the only one I found that has it all... short of a prohibitively expensive scratch-built site. I think it has a really clean, organized and interactive presentation that invites exploration and that's what I wanted.  Looking ahead, I will continue to add, subtract and reorganize, I'm sure... but I think it's pretty presentable from this point. Please check it out if you get a few minutes.
Since I've been spending so much time going through my archives and adjusting past work, this week's Sky Watch was actually done a couple of years back, at Monument Valley in NE Arizona. Only at sunrise and sunset do you get these beautiful deep desert colors of blue, purple and salmon. This is one of the iconic "Mitten" formations, seen in the setting sun's low angle light. Check out the Sky Watch page every weekend for interesting skies from all around the world.

SkyWatch: "Winter's Swell"

I guess I tend to have a one-track mind... I'm still working at sorting and editing my entire catalog and therefore just haven't had much energy for writing on the blog or visiting around. It's good though that I am reworking a lot of old stuff with a fresh eye and eliminating a bunch of images that never were quite right.  I haven't been out to shoot at all for several weeks, partly because of this and partly because we've been getting a lot of snow on the mountain and it's been a chore just to stay mobile.
This one was made last winter while we were still living at the coast.  I spent an afternoon pretty much just sitting on some rocks and shooting the huge waves of a winter swell. The light got really strange and interesting reflecting off the water towards the end of the day, producing this nicely abstract effect of the water and sky blending together. I've caught this blue and gold effect several times and I really like it. The power and dynamics of the ocean are fascinating to watch when it's this active, but hard to capture just at the right moment... really just have to shoot a lot and hope for the best:)
Visit the Sky Watch home page every week for great skies and nature images from all over the world.

SkyWatch: Desert Light

I've been struggling to clear out from last weekend's huge snow storm all week, so today I felt like a little break from the winter stuff....
This one goes back to January and is the result of one of those "holy crap!" moments when some magic light just happens and the whole situation changes instantly.  After working all afternoon on a rather cloudy and overcast day, I made the mistake of packing up my gear for the ride home and was actually heading out of the park (yes, this is Joshua Tree N.P.), when the sun broke through a small crack in the clouds just at the horizon, casting a spell over the whole area. I could tell it was only going to last a matter of minutes, if that, and I wasn't really in an ideal spot subject-wise, but I decided that something was better than nothing so I pulled over, set up as fast as I could and managed to frame a few quick shots before it went dull for good. If I had a digital camera on the seat beside me as I might normally, it would have been easy.. but as I was shooting film, I had to unpack, set up the tripod, compose something, spot meter the scene and shoot, all in probably less than 2 minutes... pretty happy that I got something decent out of that situation:) It was definitely my pleasant surprise of the day.

Check out the SkyWatch homepage every weekend for more great sky images from all around the world.

Sky Watch: Shocking Yellow

An especially vivid horizon on this evening back in mid-December.  I've been trying to explore the numerous forest service roads that wander for miles through the back country around town, most of which I have never been on at all, looking for new and photogenic locations. They are mostly pretty rough even in the dry season, but now after the snow and rain I will have to give it up until spring. I was mainly admiring the granite boulder formations in this particular spot, but as it got late and the sun lit up the clouds on the western horizon, I was fortunate to catch several minutes of spectacular color.
The little speck of reflection in the distance that looks like a puddle, is actually a large reservoir (4.5 miles long by 2 miles wide), 50 miles distant. I'm also nearly 5000' above it here, so we can see a LONG way from any open view point.

Check out the SkyWatch homepage every weekend for more great sky images from all around the world.

SkyWatch: Winter Wonderland and Clearing Storm

I very nearly made the mistake of going out for a walk the other day without any photo gear.. the weather had just barely let up after snowing all day and it was still gray and dark when I left the house. Luckily I relented and grabbed my SLR, because 10 minutes later, the local fog had lifted and I had a few minutes to capture some spectacular light on the dissipating clouds far below.

This was shot from a forestry road that runs around the town just below our house. Someone had amazingly driven their truck up the road earlier, providing me a couple of nice tracks through the deep snow to walk on, otherwise I probably wouldn't have bothered to hike to this spot.. one of the few nearby that offers a view out through the dense trees to the lower elevations. That's the luck element, I guess.. I have gone out many days looking specifically for light and clouds that look like this, and come up empty, then this day unexpectedly, it's right there and I just had to be ready.

That is actually not the sun you see shining THROUGH the cloud, but a bright reflection ON the cloud, as the sun in this scene was way off to the left and just a few minutes from setting... the resulting touch of orange/yellow against the soft blues is really important to the scene, don't you think? A painter would know that and simply add it in; for a photographer it's a more elusive thing, but that's the fun and the challenge of landscape photography.

Check out the SkyWatch homepage every weekend for more great sky images from all around the world.

Skywatch: Monolith Meets Juniper, or The Photographer as a Detective

I was searching for this spot in Joshua Tree for at least the past two years.  I had seen some snaps of it here and there on the web, but no one ever said exactly where it was... and I even asked every park ranger I could find if they knew about it, but no one had a clue!  Back in October when I shot this, I tracked down a geo-tagged picture on Google Earth locating it in what seemed an unlikely area, but it was the best lead that I could find... and when I got there,  there was indeed a trail in the spot indicated, so I gave it a try, hiking a mile out into the middle of nowhere hoping the coordinates were accurate. When it became apparent that it wasn't going to be where it was supposed to be, I was seriously bummed, but determined to get some good work in anyway, since it was just a perfect, soft-light type day for photographing out here.

Later on, while driving through a well known campground to a good spot that I was already familiar with, a distinct shape somehow caught the corner of my eye (and I've driven past the same exact spot many times), up on some rocks above an unoccupied camping spot.  I thought it was pretty unlikely to be here in such a heavily used area, but I did stop and park just to check it out.  Hoorah!.. there it was:)  The standing rock is totally invisible from the road, but I had luckily caught just enough of the tree to make me stop and investigate.

Of course, totally the wrong light at that time, so I went down the road to work for a few hours, knowing that right before sunset was going to be perfect for this scene.  I got so busy over there though, that I ended up having to pack up in a hurry and rush back here to catch the good light, which lasted (as it likes to do) only a few minutes.  Only film gear on hand this day, so I had to fumble as quickly as possible to get a roll into a back and find the right lens/angle (actually kind of hard if you could see the whole situation with bushes and rocks in the way), but managed to get off a whole roll of 20 shots over a period of about 15 minutes.  This is a very wide angle view.. the monolith rock is quite a bit bigger that it appears here due to the wide-angle lens.  I also caught another completely different version, shot in the twilight after sunset that I like a lot, too.

All in all a very satisfactory day, since some shots from earlier also turned out quite nicely.  I'm planning to head back out here again this coming weekend,... we are in another unsettled weather pattern right now, and stormy skies are ideal for shooting in JT.

Tech note: Shot with a Mamiya 6x7 medium format, on Fuji Velvia 100. No filters, (no time:).

Check out the SkyWatch homepage every weekend for more great sky images from all around the world.

Skywatch-Snowy Peaks

Yes folks, this view is less than one mile from my house.. of course it's not always quite so dramatic as this, which I caught right after a winter storm. (Please click for the detailed view).  This is a section of Tahquiz Peak, one of the lesser peaks on Mt. San Jacinto where we live.  The large, tooth-shaped outcropping in the foreground is known as Lily Rock... it has a 1000' sheer face (on what would be the left side of this view) and is known as one of the best rock climbs in the west. Just a few weeks ago, some climbers had to be rescued from near the top after getting caught in a sudden nasty turn of the weather... they were very lucky that highly skilled people were available and willing to save their butts.  If any of you are into rock climbing, you can read some more about it here.
The main part of Idyllwild sits in a kind of valley out of view at the bottom of this shot... we live about 4 miles past the main village and 1000' higher up in a separate little settlement... and most every day get to drive past several spots where you can see across the valley to these peaks.  Looking in the other direction, we can see almost to the ocean on a clear day.
Check out the SkyWatch homepage every weekend for more great sky images from all around the world.

SkyWatch: Rain, but No Rainbow

Rain showers falling off to the east of Bryce Canyon, as seen from Rainbow Point, the southern-most and highest elevation stop on the road. The sun wasn't right to produce the namesake rainbow, I guess. This is a more colorful view of the canyon than in my last few posts from  here.... rain on the red rock just brings out those beautiful deep hues and an active sky is always key for me:)  Large view enabled for this one.. enjoy!
Check out the SkyWatch homepage every weekend for more interesting sky images from around the world.

SkyWatch: Head's in the Clouds

No kidding.. we WERE in the clouds all last week.  Nothing but fog, rain and cold every day, until Sunday when it started to clear up a bit.  Right after a storm is usually a great time for beautiful skies, so I was heading out to Joshua Tree for an afternoon of shooting among the rocks.  On the way down our mountain (Mt. San Jacinito) I had to hit the brakes and grab a quick panorama of this scene, looking across to the 11,500ft. (3505m) Mt. San Gorgonio sitting there quite contentedly, with it's peak clear and above the clouds.  Click the image for a bigger view on this one~!
For those of you not familiar with southern California, the I-10 freeway that heads directly from LA to Palm Springs, Phoenix and beyond is running directly below that low-level cloud layer... Palm Springs is just about 15 miles to the right.  The area you see in the foreground shows the foothills of Mt. San Jacinito and was devastated by a major fire in 2006.  Looks kind of recovered now from this far away, but up close you can still see evidence of the recent burning.  It was started by a nut job arsonist down near the freeway during a Santa Ana (powerful, hot, easterly winds that we tend to get in the Fall) wind event, with the intention of burning up the whole mountain, I suppose, but luckily it never got up into the forest where we live.. had that happened it would have been even worse that it was. 35 homes and 20 or so other buildings were destroyed and five firefighters were killed when they were suddenly overrun by the flames while defending some houses in the area that you can see in this shot. The guy who started it was convicted of arson and murder last year and sentenced to death.
Visit the SkyWatch site every weekend for beautiful sky shots from all around the world.
More fall colors from Utah coming up next...

Sky Watch: Clouds with Virga Over the Canyon

I'll be regaling you all with countless, serene scenes of Fall color from Utah soon enough, but I thought I'd tease you with some black and white in the meantime.  This one just looks more foreboding in monochrome:)   I'm really disappointed if I travel somewhere to shoot and see nothing but blue skies... in this case the forecast held true and we had lots of interesting weather to go with the beautiful colors.  (No snow like I experienced a couple of years ago during the same weekend, though.)  This thunderstorm started as a little puff of cloud in the mid-morning and grew very rapidly as we were making our way down Bryce Canyon from point to point (my wife had never been here), finally dumping rain... and cooling the temperature from comfortable in a tee shirt to cool in a jacket, in a matter of a few minutes. It was pretty much like this every day, so a couple of times during the trip we had to give up or hurry up due to thunder and lightning, but overall it was very worth it for scenes like this and the temperature was quite pleasant the whole time.

Visit the SkyWatch home page each Friday for more great sky pics from all around the world.

Back to Work... (soon)

I know, I know, it's been quite a while since my last post. Moving is an all-consuming thing, but finally we are resettled and getting organized again.  Hopefully I can get back to doing some creative work in the next few weeks, although I still have lots of work to do around our new house.  Looking ahead, a big plus of living here, besides how beautiful it is, is going to be that I am now 2 hours closer to my favorite shooting locations in Arizona, Utah and the Sierras.  We're real close.. less that 1 hour.. from Joshua Tree N.P. too, which is going to be great.  Although I've been coming to the mountains where we now live for many years, I've had very little chance to get many good images locally, due to not being here all that much...  but now that we are full time I expect that I can get some interesting results.
My Skywatch scene for today is from last year's trip to Monument Valley in NE Arizona.   Another one of those that I almost passed up because I was dog tired and on my way back to the car to call it a day, but just had to set up one more time to get this gorgeous sky over the red-rock butte.  Never put your camera back in the bag until you're actually at home and it's pitch black dark outside:)
You can view more beautiful skies from all over the world each week here at the SkyWatch home page.  

At the root of creativity is an impulse to understand, to make sense of random and often unrelated details. For me, photography provides an intersection of time, space, light, and emotional stance. One needs to be still enough, observant enough, and aware enough to recognize the life of the materials, to be able to 'hear through the eyes. - Paul Caponigro

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.  

California Sky Watchin' - Rocky Shore and Pastel Clouds

I rarely come away empty handed when I head over to this spot late in the day.. almost every evening it's somewhere between simply beautiful and mind-blowing, especially in winter, so I try to take advantage at this time of year.
If I painted this sky, I'd probably want to start over because it almost doesn't look real, but here you go. No HDR or exposure combination necessary here, either.  This is a straightforward shot except for some very basic adjustments. (I do love the graduated filter process that was added to Camera RAW in CS4.. what a great tool and no more messing around with grad filters in the field for me.)
It was still spitting rain after a storm this day, so the rocks were even more slippery than normal.. those dark and mossy areas that you can see are like walking on pure grease or wet ice.. especially dangerous as it gets dark and if your concentration is not on your feet.  But, so far, so good for me.. only a few near-disaster pratfalls that I managed to recover from.  My wife wasn't so lucky a few months ago.. one afternoon we were just walking here enjoying the day and the waves, when she slipped and split her forearm open; we then spent the next half day at the emergency room waiting for her to get seven stitches.. luckily it wasn't bleeding at all while we were waiting. It turned out to be a very expensive afternoon stroll, however. 
Check out more great skies from all around the world each week at the SkyWatch home page.

Some Magical Light

This little tree resides in the community park near my house, where I walk most days near sunset after hard hours at the computer. Normally, this would be nothing to even turn my head for, but one day a few weeks ago, for a few fleeting moments as I was walking by, this beautiful light from the setting sun illuminated the tree against the colorful, wintery sky. This also was caught with my phone.. I truly regret I didn't have a "real" camera with me.. but hey, I think this is a lot better than nothing, even though it will be forever relegated to greeting card size prints.

Funny how it works.. sometimes you can travel a long distance, wait for hours for something to happen and then maybe it does, maybe it doesn't; other times you're just walking by and see something really incredible.. how often have YOU been in that situation and wanted to kick yourself for being unprepared?

Check out other beautiful skies from around the world or post your own at the SkyWatch home page.

A Roiling Sea

Southern California is being pummeled this week with wind, huge waves, torrential rain... and snow in the mountains. As it starts to clear for the weekend I will of course hope to find some great photographic opportunities:) It's almost always interesting during that transitional, post-storm period and I've been wanting for some time to get at some fresh snow for a change of subject, so a trip up to the mountains is probably in order for the weekend (if I can get there). 15-20 ft. waves at the shore will be around for a few more days, too... can't go wrong with that. Some of the local piers are closed for safety because the waves are actually breaking over them.

Meantime, another in my recent glut of winter-season seascapes for today's SkyWatch. Check out other beautiful skies from around the world or post your own at the SkyWatch home page.

Fire in the Sky

A photographer's dream day.. what else can I say?

It's such an advantage to be really familiar with a place before you try to photograph it. Whenever I travel, I have to rely largely on luck and instinct to be there when the conditions are right... it can be a frustrating experience as many of you know well, especially if a lot of time and expense were involved in getting somewhere. Here at home, however, I can watch the weather and the sky every day and just know when it's going to be happening. Occasionally it's a bust, other times like this, it's way better than expected.

Virtually no processing on this (yet)... just a slight exposure tweak and a bit of levels in the sky.

Be sure to visit the SkyWatch home page for other awesome skies from around the world.

The Sun Sets on Another Year

Good Bye, '09... and thank you to all the various fellow artists, photographers and general outdoor lovers who stopped by to look in or leave comments in the past year. I have discovered many interesting people from all over the world and seen a lot of great work that I would otherwise never have experienced, if not for starting up this blog just over one year ago.

Sometimes when I sense a nice sunset and I have nothing else pressing to do, I drive over to the beach that is a few minutes from where we live, just to see what might happen. I usually don't bother to take my camera because I see this all the time (especially in the winter months) and there's no real "subject" per se, just the ocean and the sky in their simplicity. I did happen to have a camera a few days ago when I shot this exceptionally nice one, just for fun. It seemed like an appropriate fade out for my last post of the year. Here's hoping for good things to come in 2010.

Check out the fantastic scenes from SkyWatchers all over the world here, and see you all next year!

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

My Typical West Coast Evening

Very little chance this week to work on any new stuff (although I have much to go over and process from Death Valley), so back to my archives for this week's SkyWatch.

I don't produce as many seascapes as I probably should considering where I live, but whenever I have the inspiration and a prospect of some interesting weather, this is my "go to" spot, just a few minutes from home... no matter how many times I return here it always seems to look different. (I published a whole sequence from one afternoon at the same spot back in February, if any newer readers are interested and haven't seen these yet.)

Enjoy beautiful sky-oriented scenes from all over the world every Friday at the SkyWatch home page.

Photographers deal in things which are continually vanishing and when they have vanished there is no contrivance on earth which can make them come back again.

- Henri Cartier-Bresson

Waiting for the Sun (part deux)

So, here is the other half of last week's post. This shot is taken from exactly the same tripod position at the Grand Canyon as my previous one, just 180° opposite. It was obvious that the sun was going to peek through the clouds down at the horizon for just a minute or two.. the question was, if it was going to be too low by that time to light the canyon walls, which is what I was hoping for. If that had not happened as it ultimately did, it would have been a bit of a disappointment since the lighting from the overcast sky was pretty flat and unspectacular. I was reasonably sure about the colorful sky in the other direction, so I had my bets at least partially covered. Must have looked kind of odd swinging back and forth like a madman working both compositions for 2-3 minutes, but by this time there was no one else around, so who cares? The light catching the little tree in the foreground was an unexpected bonus.

As usual, stop by at the SkyWatch home page to see great sky shots from around the world.

In photography there is a reality so subtle that it becomes more real than reality.

- Alfred Stieglitz