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Archive for the ‘Travel’ Category

Sadly, Mono Lake Tufa State Natural Reserve is one of the 70 California State parks that will close due to budget cuts. This will happen next year in July. So Linda and and I decided to go and shoot at Mono Lake over the Labor Day weekend and make sure we got shots of this awesome place.

We visited several times and, while nice, there were no clouds and the light was very “blah”. We decided to have one more attempt, on the day we had to leave, and got up at 5am. To our delight the sky was filled with clouds and the whole feel of the place was just amazing. We could not stop shooting!

So here is a shot taken at the South Tufas. It’s an HDR made from 3 shots, two stops apart.

While I am unsure how one closes a lake, it will be sad to see this state park be closed. As you can see, you can walk right up to many of these tufas and I hate to think of them being damaged by vandals. The South Tufas are up to 1000 years old so not something that will “grow back” quickly.

So, if you are a photographer or just someone who wants to see this place, go before July 2012.

I can highly recommend it.

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We visited the White Mountains in California today, where you can find the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest. These Bristlecones are the oldest living things in the world and there is one tree that is an alleged 4750 years old!

The tree here is not quite that old and you can see it has struggled. I found this tree up at 11,000 (!) feet elevation after a 12 mile drive on a dirt track. I needed to go into 4-wheel drive mode to navigate the steep trails, quite exhilarating and not something I had done for a long time. To my delight, Linda thought it was just fantastic, never having done this before.

Our drive was rewarded with some of the most spectacular scenic views ever. It is so beautiful up there. I was not kidding on the elevation. The visitor’s center is at 10,500 feet and is where most visitors stop. There is another grove about 12 miles further on and only accessible via that dirt road. It took about 45 minutes to get there.

This tree was still alive even if part of it had died. It clearly struggles to survive in this challenging environment, but very beautiful.

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Tuscany was beautiful. No surprises really as this Italian region is well known for its photographic opportunities. It was still a delightful surprise to actually be there and drive through the countryside with no real plan or pre-defined destination.

Linda and I stayed at Cortona, a small town nestled on a hill. All the buildings have the typical red roofs you see all over the region. If the name Cortona sounds familiar, it is. It was featured in the film “Under the Tuscan Sun” and is what caused us look it up and stay there. I’ll post some pictures of that place in a future port.

This shot was taken nearby though and was just a typical scene from the road as we drove around in what was probably the smallest car we’d ever been in.

No HDR here, just a single shot processed in Lightroom.

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This was a weekend of reflection and I went through some photos taken during various trips. This was taken at dusk, from the second tier of the Eiffel Tower, taken last year in spring when Linda and I visited Holland and Paris. I like this picture as it is not a shot I would have taken had I been alone. I admit I do not do heights very well at all, but Linda convinced me to go up. While I was petrified, the views are magnificent in the end, I was pleased I went.

This is a view looking towards the North West. That cluster of tall buildings is the main business sector of Paris, called La Defense and is the largest purpose-built business district in Europe. Those gardens are the Jardins du Trocadero and that big structure that curves around the gardens is the Palais de Chaillot. It stands on a hill that used to be the site of a small village. The East and West wings of the structure now house several museums: The Naval Museum, The Museum of Man, the Museum of Architecture and the Museum of French Monuments, none of which we got to see.

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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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This beautiful little chapel is the oldest structure in Yosemite Valley and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It is a representative example of the way early chapels in the Sierra Nevada mountains were constructed.

The chapel is 130 years old and the first services were held there on June 7, 1879.

From a photographer’s point of view, it is a wonderful subject, all year round. This shot was taken in early winter, before any snow, but well after all the fall color. The large tree you see on the right, with the yellowish leaves, turns a bright yellow in fall and makes for some fantastic contrast against the red chapel. Unfortunately, I have not been able to synchronize my trips to Yosemite to coincide with that. Some day I will of course.

I always find it fascinating to learn a bit more about the history behind these old landmarks. It was interesting to learn therefore, that originally this chapel was surrounded by the original village, a cluster of buildings, including a canvas-roofed hotel and by 1900, offices, houses, shops, hotels, photography studios, saloons, and stables lined the wagon road leading to Sentinel Bridge.

Park managers gradually relocated the village to the other side of the river, where Yosemite Village is now. The chapel remained here and now stands all alone among the trees. There are still services held there every week.

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I can’t image there are many things that can be more beautiful than a landscape after freshly fallen snow.

This is a location near South Lake Tahoe. Getting to this location was by pure accident, as we had no idea this even existed. Let me explain.

First of all, it was by on a whim, and by pure chance, that we decided to turn off Interstate 50, a highway that runs along the Southern shores of Lake Tahoe. We had picked a small road that lead us into an area with some vacation homes nestled in a forested area covered in freshly fallen snow. After parking the car and wondering off among the trees, we heard, rather than saw, water rushing. Following the sound, we stumbled upon this scene of almost unimaginable beauty. Furthermore, someone had been there with a snow mobile and had created a track of compressed snow. This allowed us to actually walk up to the creek as the compressed snow prevented us from sinking into the fresh stuff which was at least 2 feet deep.

Needless to say we had a ball wondering around this area and capturing the beauty of it all from every angle possible.

If you have even been in a forest after a snow storm you know how quiet it can be. The snow acts as a thick blanket and absorbs sound, making the surroundings even more magical due to the silence. It’s just you and nature and humbles you in the majesty of it all.

It was one of these days when everything turned out right. We picked the right road to turn off, did the right thing by checking out the sound of rushing water and by luck, someone had created a trail for us to walk on. Yes, it was a good day.

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It’s been a long time since I posted here. All thanks to me moving house. Some advice, and trust me on this, if you ever move house, make sure you do not do that around the Christmas holidays! Anyway, I am now fully moved in and while there is still a lot to do, I have found some time to go process some pictures from various photo shoots.

This is the famous Cathedral Rock, taken from the valley floor. I walked into this meadow to get that fallen tree in the foreground. Hope you like it.

Last year (sounds strange to say that, the new year is barely a week old) Linda and I visited Yosemite several times. This picture was taken in October, when we went to see if we could catch some fall color. Turns out there was not a lot of it to be found at that time, but that didn’t bother us one bit. Yosemite is so beautiful, there is always something nice to shoot, regardless of time of year or weather. As you can see we had fabulous skies and two days of great shooting.

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Staying with the Dutch theme, today’s post is a canal in Amsterdam and some experimental treatment. Hope you like it.

I can’t remember which canal this was, but I’m guessing the Herengracht, or “Lord’s canal” in English. The Herengracht is one of the three inner-most canals in Amsterdam’s semi-circular ring of canals. This one, the Herengracht is the first of the three in the city center and was named after the “Heren Regeerders” who governed the city in the 16th century.

Amsterdam has been called “The Venice of the North” for it has more than 80 miles of canals, about 90 islands and no less than 1500 bridges! The whole area made up of the 3 canals and the district called the Jordaan has been put on the UNESCO World Heritage List. UNESCO of course stands for “United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization” and identifies places of special cultural or physical significance and importance to the common heritage of humanity. As of 2010, 911 sites are listed.

To give you an idea of the sites listed, Wikipedia mentions the Pyramids of Giza, Venice, the Acropolis of Athens, Chichen Itza in Yucatan, Mexico and the Statue of Liberty.

This picture turned out more like an etch than a photograph. This was created first as an HDR and then I used my Aged Photo preset to tone it and finished up by tweaking some sliders in Lightroom to get this result.

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In keeping with the theme of the previous post, here is another row of Dutch houses. These are actually new, but built in the traditional Dutch style – as you can see from the gabled roofs.. These houses can be found in Volendam, an old fishing town north of Amsterdam. It is a great place to visit to get a feel for what life must have been like when fishermen made a living from the Zuiderzee (southern sea), as it was known in the past.

The Zuiderzee was a shallow bay of the North Sea. I say “was” as it was closed off from the sea by a major causeway built between 1927 and 1933. This body of water is now called the Ijsselmeer (Ijssel lake) and is now fresh water as the water from the Ijssel river drains into it (it is pronounced eye-sel).

You can imagine that this must have had a huge impact on the local fishing industry. Many of these towns (like Volendam) still have some fishing activity, but not like it used to be. And the fishing that is done is done out in the North Sea and boats have to go though shipping locks in the causeway.

Volendam is now a heavy “tourist trap” of course, but still has a lot of charm. Locals walk around in old traditional dress and you can buy Dutch “treats” such as smoked eel and herring.

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