Archive for the ‘National Park’ Category
Yosemite – In-between Seasons
December 19th, 2009 | Author: albert
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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Californian Ghost Town
September 7th, 2009 | Author: albert
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. . . .
Hidden Meadow
August 27th, 2009 | Author: albert
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.
Majestic Sequoias
August 24th, 2009 | Author: albert
My son and I spent a long weekend camping and hiking in the Sequoia National Park in California. It was the first time I had ever been there despite living only 4 hours drive from there. For some reason, I always ended up in Yosemite and not going the extra 100 miles or so to this awesome place.
The park, as the name suggests, is home to a large number of Sequoias. Sequoias are a red wood (a pine tree family member) and grow to enormous proportions. The coastal redwoods, that grow near Mendocino are taller than the Sequoias, but not as thick around the trunk. The Sequoias are huge and majestic. The national park is home to a tree called The General Sherman, allegedly the largest tree in the world, by volume. In other words, there are a few trees taller and there are trees that are thicker, but this is the tallest “thick” tree. It was indeed huge. Apparently, when these trees were first seen in the mid-1800s, nobody back east believed the reports, calling them a hoax. The trees are indeed absolutely huge and their color is distinctly different from the other pines in the forest. They are much redder as seen below.
This is an HDR comprised of 3 shots two stops apart. The HDR process does a marvelous job of accentuating the colors and the textures of these magnificent trees. I’ll be sure to post more soon.
Kiva
May 31st, 2009 | Author: albert
I have always been fascinated by ancient cultures and the Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado is a great place to visit in order to satisfy that interest. In fact, it is one of my favorite parks, because it offers the historic aspect as well as the beauty of Mother Nature.
The park protects over 4,000 known archeological sites, including an amazing 600 cliff dwellings or Pueblos.
The park offers a spectacular look into the lives of the Ancestral Pueblo people who made it their home for over 700 years, from A.D. 600 to A.D. 1300.
This picture is of a Kiva, a round meeting room you enter from the ceiling. I did not have a tripod and used a ledge to support the camera. I love how the light shines down through the opening, illuminating the ladder and parts of the interior.
Mesa Verde is Spanish for green table.
Hell’s Half Acre
May 5th, 2009 | Author: albert
Hell’s Half Acre, that’s the name Rudyard Kipling gave to the Midway Geyser Basin when he visited Yellowstone in 1889. Midway has two of the largest (and most colorful) hot springs in the world: Grand Prismatic Spring and Excelsior Geyser, seen in the picture below.
Excelsior Geyser erupted some 300 feet high before the 1900s and was then the largest geyser in the world. It is now dormant and considered a hot spring, discharging more than 4000 gallons of boiling water per minute. The water is 199F (93C)!
You need to walk past this spring to get to the Grand Prismatic, which is perhaps more popular with tourists today. As a result many people hurry by and don’t pay too much attention to this beautiful and colorful spring. The water has this amazing, intense blue color as you can see here. Various vents boil and churn up the water covering it, almost perpetually, in a blanket of steam.
Color in Joshua Tree National Park
April 30th, 2009 | Author: albert
While the blooming of wild flowers had peaked, there were still lots of flowering plants throughout Joshua Tree National Park. This rock protected the flowering shrubs from wind and, well, I guess it doesn’t rain much in the desert.
