Ghost Town #2

Old Building, Pioneertown

Pioneertown was built by western actors Gene Autry and Roy Rodgers in the 1940's as a movie set outside the desert town of Yucca Valley, near Joshua Tree.  Now mostly abandoned, it's a fun place to stop and look around for some interesting photos.  There is a popular motel next door as well as Pappy & Harriet's roadhouse, with good food and often world-class musical acts play there.

Desert Survivor

Borrego Palm Canyon, California

Somehow this little cottonwood survives in the harsh Borrego Desert environment, growing by the little stream that flows down from the mountains, through the oasis of Palm Canyon.

Ghost Town #1

Model Seven; Jerome, Arizona

More on "Phoneography"

I drove out to Joshua Tree last weekend, specifically to reshoot this scene that I had made some quick studies of last year. I've been waiting for the right day, weather-wise, combined with the free time, but it never seemed to work out so I finally decided to just get in the car and go, win or lose. Didn't have high hopes when I left.. you can usually control the time of day, but not the sky, and that was crucial to my vision of the shot.  The sky was way too clear and blue when I left, but by the time I arrived, these perfect high, thin clouds had thankfully appeared and not only did I get the shot I had in mind, but a few other good ones, as well, over the course of the afternoon.

This stands as another example of "phoneography".. shot and processed entirely on my phone's cam, (which explains the blow-out in the clouds, but that is from the uber-contrast of the processing, not the original exposure). All I did on the computer was down-size it for posting here.

This is likely not my ultimate, finished version; I'll go with the more conventional version in this particular case because I want to print it, but while I had my regular Nikon setup on the tripod, I simply pulled my iPhone out of my pocket and shot hand-held from the same vantage point. I kind of like this over-the-top interpretation, though. It's a great way to change up your process, experiment and most of all have fun, as opposed to always doing it the technically "correct" way. 

Check out the kid sitting on top of the rock:)

New Tools and New Ways of Seeing

I love wide format for landscapes.  Not necessarily just super-wide panoramas, although those can be fun. Since I don't have a real panoramic-format camera (there are some), the two normal techniques I use are a 6 x12 roll film back that fits on my 4x5 field cam, or the usual digital method of shooting multiple overlapping frames from a tripod and stitching them together later.  Make that I "didn't" have a real panoramic camera, because the iPhone's new pano capture feature is the real deal. Considering that you not only don't need a tripod, but you are shooting hand held with the camera in motion, the results can be pretty remarkable.
It's all instantly and seamlessly patched together... and best of all, you're actually shooting in vertical format, which flips the full 3264 pixel WIDTH of the camera over to the VERTICAL... and then you can extend the horizontal as far as you want. ( I kind of have trouble twisting my body enough to fill the entire possible frame:)  You don't need to utilize the entire possible width of the panorama.. you can stop anywhere that looks good and end up with a file resolution that rivals many dslr's. This one, before I cropped some of it off, came out to over 30" wide at 300 dpi! That's some printable stuff, folks.. and the grainy, soft, low dynamic range pics that you would have expected, even a couple years ago, are history due to advances in the technology.
I'll have some more to say about how much I have been using my phone cam in place of a standard dslr recently, and why.

Strawberry Creek Gorge

A.K.A. locally as "The Grotto".
This is one of those "right in my back yard, but missed it" locations.  Strawberry Creek emerges out of the ground high up on Mt. San Jacinto and then winds its way down gently all through the village of Idyllwild. I know the area pretty well by now, but there is one section of town that I haven't explored, because it is occupied by the large campus of Idyllwild Arts prep school ( a well known private high school that teaches performing arts, music and visual art at a very high level to talented kids from all over the world).
As it turns out, right behind the school property is where the creek exits town on its way down to the flatlands far below, and also where it enters a large, deep and steep gorge.  Quite impressive... and the perfect place to spend hours enjoying the stream and the granite formations that have been carved into smooth, sweeping shapes over thousands of years by the flowing water.  
Right now, in the midst of the dry season, the stream is barely trickling through here, but there are still some small pools of cool water to be seen and the lack of flow makes it easier and safer to wander around, I'm sure.  Don't know how I just now found about this.. apparently it's well known by the long-time locals and, of course, the students at the school. It's supposed to be off-limits to them because of the danger, but what kid could resist, when it's right there, right?
I recently took one exploratory hike just to find it, and then the other day, went back to spend an hour or two doing some quick abstract studies.  What a great location... hundreds of potential subjects all in a contained area... and if you go at the right time, you won't be bothered by anybody.  This image and a few to come, were done in the mid-day summer sun, so not really ideal conditions... but by thinking in monochrome, which adds to the abstraction, I can usually make a few shots work.

Gnarls Barkley

A closeup view showing the gnarly, abstract growth pattern of the Engelmann Oaks growing all over thousands of acres at Santa Rosa Plateau Ecological Reserve. This species is now found only in far southwest California; this area near Murrieta and one other east of San Diego are the only two remaining large stands.
The colors around here are rather bland in the summer but can be really nice in the fall, especially in the right weather.  In this particular view, I wanted to concentrate on the complicated texture of the limbs, so I felt that monochrome would be the best approach.

Backtracking

A few posts back, I wrote about this incredible old manzanita that I came across while hiking several months ago; at the time, I just took a few quick, hand held shots of it in the existing harsh light and then noted the location so that I could go back and do it properly under better conditions.  So, here is the result of my recent return.. I think everyone would agree that it is quite an improvement when done under the softer light of a partly cloudy day and with more thought given to how to handle the subject..
Nature can be notoriously uncooperative, often it seems especially so when you take time to travel hundreds of miles just to photograph a spot and don't have the luxury of simply going back anytime… that's when you really have to be flexible and try to adapt to the existing conditions, whatever they may be.  In that situation, I've been lucky at times and frustrated at others.. but always try to consider it part of the fun and the challenge. Since this one was local, I was able to go back at an opportune time and work as long as I wanted, so I now have several print-worthy shots in the can, and I think I will cross this one off my "to do" list:)

Exploring the Angles

A free afternoon a couple of weekends ago gave me the chance to head out to the desert and scout up some new scenes. I spent probably close to an hour trying different angles all around this really interesting formation.. just hand-held snapping, since it was mid afternoon and the sky was totally uninteresting.. but this little puff of cloud did finally show up to add a touch of contrast among the solid blue. Evening light and an interesting sky would make for a pretty worthy scene. I moved on to another location later to shoot some film in the better light, but haven't even processed it yet so I'll have to wait to see if anything else interesting shows up.

Sol Duc Falls

Getting back to the Olympic Peninsula for a few more:
This is one of the best known falls in the area.  I was kind of disappointed with the light after hiking up here... even though the forest cover was quite heavy, the blue sky and bright sun were enough to spoil the colors for me at the time we were here.. ideally, it would be a more typical rainy, wet and foggy day which would create the proper atmosphere and color.. but you have to deal with it when you only have one chance.  So, in this case, a monochrome approach to the scene still shows off the falls and the textures of the forest while eliminating the harsh mid-day colors. If you check the expanded view carefully, you can just make out a guy standing on the bridge, for a sense of scale. The water splits into 3 streams as you can see, then flows down through the gorge under the bridge. Amazing that they are flowing this fast, even in the "dry" season.
Although you hardly see it anymore, scenery like this in beautiful, rich black and white (by Paul Caponigro) were exactly what got me interested in photography in the first place, more than 35 years ago....

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.