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Archive for the ‘National Park’ Category

This view of Yosemite was made famous by Ansel Adams. It remains today one the most spectacular views of the valley and you will find countless photographers there every single day, regardless of the weather. As the day comes to an end, you will often find a dozen tripods lined up with photographers waiting for some sunset magic to happen.

As they say, the golden hour is that special time of day when the light is softer and wonderful shots can be made. No guarantees of course, but you usually have much better images thanks to the light.

So here I am, waiting for dusk to fall, yes standing alongside many people with cameras. Most have a point and shoot or cell phone, but there are about ten tripod-wielding photographers who are clearly more dedicated. I have this theory that the quality (and price) of their tripod is a good indication of how serious they are about their photography. My reasoning is simple, I know people who will spend thousands on a fancy camera, because they have the money, but have little clue about serious photography. A tripod on the other hand is the non-glamorous part of of photography, so when you see someone with a nice carbon fiber tripod equipped with a quality ball head, you know this is someone who is serious about their work.

So, with that said, a quick look around and I see 7 or 8 carbon fiber tripods, all holding the usual Nikon or Canon gear. The Canon users have lenses with the famous red line, the Nikon users have the gold-colored markings on their lenses. One guy has a Lee Neutral Density Graduated filter in front of his lens, looks like a 3-stop soft-edge kind. A true landscape photographer! I like him already!

So we wait and wait . . . and are all somewhat disappointed. No magic tonight. No color in the sky! This shot you see here was taken relatively early and those clouds you see were all gone by the time the sun actually set, a wonderfully uninteresting sunset! Bummer, now I will have to come back again!

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Traveling from East to West on Hwy 120, from Lee Vining to Yosemite, you pass this lake. Stopping to see what kind of shots could be had, this great view presented itself. While little fall color was to be seen, the view was spectacular and this old tree trunk just begged to be included in the shot.

The textures and grain of the wood, the little yellow flowers, the lake with reflections and the mountain in the background were just too good an view to pass by.

Just goes to show that Yosemite and the high country can always be relied on to get great shots, even from the side of the road.

We ventured on to Yosemite after this and while Yosemite is always beautiful, we were too early for any fall color (which comes late in the park) and too early for snow. This show made my day however.

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I received several nice comments about a previous post of Cathedral Rock so thought I’d post this shot which was taken from the same spot, using the same log in the foreground.

El Capitan is of course one of THE dominant features in Yosemite. It is a favorite piece of rock for experienced rock climbers. Rising more than 3,000 feet above the Valley floor, it is the largest monolith of granite in the world. During the summer, you can spot climbers making their way up, but you need to look hard and have a pair of binoculars, the rock face is SO large and the climbers are SO small, it is hard to see them with the naked eye.

About the making of this shot:

> Camera: Canon 5d mark 2 – ISO 100
> Lens: EF 17-40mm f/4L USM @ 17 mm
> 3 bracketed shots, +/- 2 stops
> Initial clean up in Lightroom, exported each exposure as 16 bit TIFF
> Merged to HDR and Tonemapped in Oloneo then exported as 16 Bit TIFF
> Opened in Photoshop CS5 for some additional work including Topaz Adjust and Topaz DeNoise
> Saved as PSD
> Imported back into Lightroom and exported to Zenfolio, Flickr and Facebook

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Yoho National Park in British Colombia, Canada lies just West of the more famous Banff National Park. Emerald Lake is the largest of the lakes found in that area and, as you can see, is breathtakingly beautiful.

A friend and I had some time to spend there whilst on our way to Edmonton. We saw some awesome scenery.

In the summer months you can rent canoes here, but in the winter the lake is frozen solid and becomes a popular cross country ski destination.

This area is high on my list of places to return to. Not only to spend more time (we only had one day here), but I’d love to see it in other seasons as well. We chatted to the folk in the boathouse who told us that in fall, when the sun sets lower, many evenings put on a spectacular alpenglow display that sees the tips of the mountains light up in the most fantastic colors. Having seen this scenery, I can imagine what that must look like and makes me want to go back.

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Today’s post is also from Joshua Tree National Park, but this one actually has a Joshua Tree in it!

As you can see, Joshua Trees are strange looking things. It is a plant from the Yucca family and is also known by the name of Yucca Palm, Tree Yucca or Palm Tree Yucca. When you touch the tree, you will be surprised at how “solid” it feels. It is a very “dense” and heavy wood and you can tell when you touch it.

The tree seems to only grow in the Mohave Desert parts of the park, in the higher (northern) elevations.

The other thing that stands out in Joshua Tree National Park are the large number of rocks and boulders. This picture shows a typical cluster. Those rocky cluster make excellent rock-climbing areas and when my son and I were there we saw a large number of rock climbing groups throughout the park.

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At the end of the Salton View Road in Joshua Tree National Park is a lookout called Keys View. No it has nothing to do with the Florida Keys, they are clear across the country no where near here. In fact there is barely any water here as Joshua Tree National Park is desert. There are two types of desert actually: Mohave Desert in the northern, higher elevation part of the park and Colorado Desert, in the southern, lower elevation parts.

The only body of water in the neighborhood is the Salton Sea, which you can see in this pictures just beyond those mountains. Like Mono Lake, it has a high salinity level. The Salton Sea lies directly on the San Andreas Fault and, like Death Valley, lies below sea level.

Joshua Tree National Park is quite beautiful although hot. My son and I visited here to go do some hikes and take photos and went in May thinking we’d beat the real heat. Well no such luck, it turned out to be the hottest May in years and we got temperatures around 100F (37.8C). It is a dry heat which I find infinitely more bearable than humid heat, but one sure ends up drinking a lot of water!

This shot is my usual HDR shot with 3 bracketed shots and processed in Dynamic Photo HDR followed by some tweaking in Lightroom.

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Isn’t flowing water fascinating?

I remember as a kid, growing up in the Netherlands, I loved to go visit places like Scotland where creeks and “bubbling brooks” were a must see for me. I could waste away considerable time mesmerized by the flowing water.

Now, living in California, with a wealth of rivers and creeks, I still love visiting places like that. As a photographer, catching the sense of movement is an easily accomplished trick. By slowing down the shutter speed, the movement of water creates blur which gives us that “look”. Often, in forested areas or in deep canyons, this is really easily achieved as the amount of light will be less so selecting a slower shutter-speed will be not be hard. In bright sunlight though, it can be a bit more of a challenge simply because there is so much light, you cannot slow down the shutter enough to get the look without over exposing the shot.

This is where a grey filter can be indispensable as it simply darkens the scene without affecting the colors.

In the following two shots I was lucky enough to be get the look without the need of such a filter.

The first shot is of the Yuba River, just a few miles north of Nevada City in California. After spending a few hours exploring Nevada City, a photographer friend, Ken, and I were all hot and bothered (it was a 105 degree day, or 40 degrees Celsius) and decided to continue going North on the North Bloomfield Rd and see if we could find some relief near the Yuba River.

We got some great shots of the water rushing by, as you can see in this picture. There was a quite a lot of light, but by stopping down to f/22 I could slow the shutter to 1/8 of a second, just slow enough to get that feeling of “flow” in the water.

This second shot is of the Merced river. It was taken late in the day so light was already fading. The metering was 1/3 of a second at f/6.3 – a lot less light!

So which is the better shot?

Personally, I like both, but for different reasons. I believe the top picture conveys a sense of “speed” while the bottom pictures gives me sense of “volume”. Both work.

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Early December in Yosemite – color was well past it peak, but no snow yet. Clear skies, soft, even light, but cold. Those were the conditions we found in Yosemite. Disappointingly, Glacier Point road had been closed for the season, but we were determined to take advantage of all that Yosemite Valley could offer us.

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Spent the Labor Day long weekend among the Eastern slopes of the Sierra Nevada and visited places such as Bodie, a ghost town, Mono Lake with its tufas and the ancient Bristle-cone pine forest, home of the oldest living tree in the world.

All of these places are found along Hwy 395, which is the most spectacular road I have ever driven. The eastern side of the Sierras are much more spectacular then the Western side. The Western side of the Sierras slope up gradually from the San Joaquin valley, while high, the difference in elevation comes gradually. Not so on the Eastern side where the Sierras rise sharply. The result is spectacular.

I’ll be posting some pictures from this trip.

Here is one from Bodie, a famous mining town, once a bustling mining town in the middle of nowhere, now a ghost town. It is kept in “arrested decay” and is managed by the Sierra State Parks Foundation. Bodie was on the list of park to be closed if California legislators had not been able to agree on the budget. One of the reasons I wanted to get there, just in case. . . .

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Another HDR shot from the Sequoia National Park weekend. My son Rens and I were on a hike to check out Tharp’s Cabin. Tharp’s Cabin is a hollowed out log (a giant Sequoia of course) that was used as shelter and later converted into a cabin. It is named after Hale Tharp who has been acknowledged as the first non-native American to enter the Giant Forest.

The hike passed through a burnt out section of forest which was still smoldering. Our natural reaction was one of horror of course, but fires like that are essential for a healthy Sequoia forest so it was actually a good thing.

This meadow was close to the cabin and Tharp used to graze his herd of cattle here. Rens and I were wondering how he got his cattle here as the meadow is pretty far from anything and surrounded by forest. We never did get an answer to that.

This photo was taken with three exposures, 2 stops apart, and blended using Dynamic Photo HDR, saved as a FIFF, re-imported into Lightroom for a little bit of additional processing (mainly contrast) and output as a JPEG.

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