I am still recovering after one of the most crazy and unpredictable photography trips that I have been on thus far. Eric Gail, David Columbo and I had been planning on a blitz style, four day trip out to Utah and Arizona for a couple of months, and the original plan was to drive out to Escalante and then hike down into Coyote Gulch to catch some fall color around the waterfalls and some shots of the Jacob Hamblin Arch. Having rented a 4x4 SUV specifically for this purpose, we would then make a beeline South and make the perilous drive out to the Toroweap Overlook on the rim of the Grand Canyon to catch a sunrise on Oct 30.
Well...David got sick and had to bail, our 4x4 SUV turned out to be a weenie Ford Exploder with a total front end clearance of 4 inches, and Eric's foot fell off. Or at least he WANTED it to fall off as he had some sort of horrible bone spur and could barely put any weight on it. On top of that, the clouds moved in when we arrived and we were looking at a possibility of thunderstorms on the following Friday which meant no trip to the gulch unless we wanted to deal with flash floods. And Toroweap was out due to our weenie SUV.
Fast forward two days later after we bailed on Coyote Gulch, shot Capitol Reef, got lost on the way to Canyonlands, went to Monument Valley instead, and finally raced back up to Arches where we spent our last sunset and sunrise shooting like mad before heading home.
This particular shot is from a last ditch effort to grab some night shots despite the clouds that had moved in blocking our view of the stars. I had just given up hope when I glanced up and saw that some weak starlight was beginning to make it's way through. Eric and our new friend Scott Wakefield charged up the trail only to find that the whole area had been taken over by someone working on a time lapse. After some key negotiating skills by Eric, the other photographer agreed to let us place some low level LED panels in the foreground and the result is what you see above. Eric has been experimenting quite a bit lately with a technique used by Royce Bair which involves the use of low light sources rather than the typical light painting with a flashlight that many photographers use.. The above shot was lit by three LED panels. If you were standing in front shooting, you would barely notice the dim glow on the arches, but after a 20-30 second exposure, the arches show up nicely against the stars in the background.
I took this shot with the Rokinon 12mm 2.8 fisheye after Scott and I crawled up into the cavern about 20-30 feet from where the rest of the ever growing group of photographers was stationed back at the bottom. Settings were ISO 2500, for 20 seconds at 2.8.
Even though our final itinerary looked very different from what it was when we set off at 12:30 AM on October 27, I had an amazing time visiting several locations for the first time. It might take a full twelve hours of driving to get back there again, but I can’t wait for the next trip.
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Tags: Arches National Park Double Arch Night Photography Nightscape Stars Rokinon 12mm 2.8 fisheye Nikon D810
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This shot capped off a week of crazy shooting on a recent photography jaunt with Eric Gail between Zion and Bryce. Eric is an accomplished landscape photographer who had been spending an inordinate amount of time shooting the Milky Way lately, and after his shots caught my eye, I approached him to see if he wanted to head out together as he lives about 40 miles away in the Inland Empire. Eric agreed and I have spent the last couple of weeks bugging him for information on both the Milky Way and for spots throughout the Southwest that I needed to add to my growing bucket list. The man is also a guru when it comes to using Google Earth and a number of other scouting apps and was very generous with his time, so huge kudos to Eric for helping me out.
On our first night, we set up camp in Zion hoping for good Milky Way conditions but we were nailed by a pretty intense thunderstorm which brought branches crashing down around our campsite. On the following night, we camped up at Bryce but were again shut out by thunderstorms and clouds. The above shot was taken on the following Saturday evening in a last ditch effort to grab more Milky Way shooting before the moon returned killing off our opportunities for another month. As I set off for Zion at 4 AM, the forecast was for clear skies, but of course, by the time I arrived, clouds were already beginning to billow up again from the South.
Although I got shut out again for the Milky Way from this location, it turned out to be one of my most memorable nights of landscape shooting thus far. Starting down near the junction bridge, I managed to climb up and out onto this particular outcropping of rock, which pushed me pretty far out of my comfort zone. While I was inching my way out there, the wind picked up and lighting began flashing around me, lighting up the spectacular peaks across the canyon. As Eric took off to find his Bonzai tree on the other side of the tunnel, I was suddenly sitting alone with that spectacular view before me. I took several images from up there, but this was one of my favorites. The peaks are lit by a combination of a 20% moon, which was setting in the West, some light pollution from nearby Springdale, and lightning. I paid for this particular spot by getting gouged by some creepy venomous desert spiky plant while I was scouting (which left a nice baseball sized welt on my leg) and by getting a handful of cactus needles as I slipped on my way down, but it is now one of my favorite spots and one that I plan on visiting again soon.
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Tags: Zion National Park Light Trails Night Clouds Utah
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Last Sunday and Monday were my first two completely free days I have had in quite some time. So after finishing my last Choral Concert for the year on Saturday, I set the alarm for 4 AM and set off for Zion National Park. I had never been there before, but had heard it was amazing, and Google showed it as being a 6 hour drive from my house, roughly the same amount of time it takes for me to get to Yosemite. So by 6 AM, I was already through the Cajon pass and on my way to Zion.
Many hard lessons were learned on this trip, and I hope to go into detail on my blog later regarding how no one should ever, under any circumstances, head to a popular national park on Memorial Day weekend and then try to get back home on the last day of the weekend on the one highway leading back to LA from Vegas...(nine hours of traffic!), but let me skip ahead to the part where I drove through Zion without stopping due to the insane crowds and lousy sky and headed straight on to Bryce in hopes of tracking down a thunderstorm.
Bryce was amazing, but the canyon is on the Eastern side of the ridge which wasn't what I need for my sunset shot and I knew that I might still be able to get back to Zion for either a sunset or a blue hour shot from the Canyon Overlook. At this point I should probably mention that I usually spend quite a bit of time scouting locations online before I head out, but in this case, it was such a last minute decision that all I had to go on was that Zion was off of the 15 and Bryce was a bit East of Zion. It was small wonder, then, that I drove right by the Canyon Overlook trail head twice, completely missing the blue hour shot with light trails that I was hoping to get. When I finally tracked down the trailhead, it was already past 9 PM and I knew that it was now much darker than I had planned on. Undeterred, I headed up the trail in the dark with my headlamp.
After a semi-sketchy hike in the dark, I climbed over one last large boulder and found myself looking out over the valley. The view was absolutely stunning, and since I was all by myself up there, I just took a few moments to soak it in. It took a while for my eyes to adjust once I flipped off the headlamp and the stars were gleaming brightly in the warm breeze and you could barely hear the cars down below as they zig-zagged across the valley floor like pachinko machine balls made of light.
This shot is a combination of a 90 second exposure for the valley and light trails, and 30 second exposure for the sky. (Going longer than 30 seconds with the 14-24 would blur the stars.) The glow off of the clouds above seemed to be coming from Hurricane and the surrounding towns.
The rest of the trip was a blur between shooting the Milky Way and getting a couple of hours of sleep before heading back to Bryce for the Sunrise before the long odyssey of trying to get back home on the 15. I'm hoping to spend MUCH more time there on my next trip, which will hopefully be during the off season... on a weekday...in the snow. Never again on Memorial Day weekend!
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Thank you so much for your views and comments! If you have specific questions please be sure to send me a message via flickr mail, or feel free to contact me via one of the following:
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Tags: Zion National Park Zion Canyon Overlook Light Trails Stars Glow Night Evening
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I don't suppose anything can really prepare you for your first sunrise in Arches National Park. Like most landscape photographers, I had seen dozens of photos before I arrived, but I was still hesitant to give up on Toroweap after it looked like our weenie SUV officially wouldn't make it out there. So when Eric Gail suggested making the trip up to Arches a couple of weeks ago, inwardly I was thinking "Well...it's not exactly the Grand Canyon, is it?"
So in case you are wondering, the answer is yes,,,and no. It is JUST as mind blowing as the Grand Canyon, but in completely different ways. But it was only after I arrived at the park that I truly understood this. Eric and I hadn't planned on sunrise here at all that weekend, and because of this, we hadn't thoroughly scouted out the area before arriving. At 1 AM, we finally asked our new friend Scott Wakefield (who had been shooting up in Arches for several years) where the good sunrise spots were. We knew that Delicate Arch would be crowded and we also knew that Eric probably wouldn't be able to make it out there given the condition of his foot. Scott's next suggestion was to shoot the Windows. Eric was pretty much thumbs down on this as we had just shot the sunset from this location, but Scott and I ganged up on him and he finally relented.
So after just a few of hours of sleep back at the campground, we woke up at 5 AM and hurriedly drove back across the park to the Windows. I hit the ground running as I already had my spot picked out and wanted to beat the crowd. It looked like we had a decent sky to work with and both Eric and I shot like crazy before all of the pink was gone from the sky that morning.
We were feeling pretty satisfied with out shots....and then the sun came out from behind the clouds. You could hear a collective gasp from all of the photographers who by now had gathered around the North Window and then it was nothing but clicking shutters. It was one of those mornings where you could clearly hear the angels singing.
After a while, the sun went back behind the clouds and most of the photographers began heading off for a well earned breakfast. Eric and I began to make our way back to the car when suddenly the sun broke through the clouds again. I wheeled around and quickly took this shot before the sun disappeared. This was definitely one of those moments where the Rokinon 12 mm really came in handy as it pulled both the arch and some of the foreground into the shot.
Lastly...10 points if you can find the lone figure on the right side enjoying the view from her fantastic vantage point. It truly was an incredible morning, and as I mentioned in one of my earlier posts, Arches is like crack for landscape photographers. I can't wait to head back there for my next fix.
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Tags: Arches National Park Sunrise Windows Arch Arches Nikon D810 Rokinon 12mm 2.8
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When I made my first trip to Zion back in May of 2016, I knew I wanted to shoot the Milky Way while I was there. After scouting around extensively for ideas, it seemed that the only Milky Way shots I could find were taken from the bridge overlooking the Virgin River and the Watchman facing South. After setting my alarm, I took a quick nap and when I work up, I was surprised to find that the entire arch of the Milky Way was spanning the valley facing East. I took the Watchman shot but promised myself that I would try to find a way to shoot the Milky Way over the entire valley at some point in the future. When I got home, I scouted for more shots and eventually found a photo by Michael Shainblum on 500px which featured an amazing view of the entire valley at sunrise, it suddenly dawned on my that this could make a great Milky Way location as it was facing East over where I had been parked on the road below.
I made my next trip to Zion in August of 2016 and met up with Eric Gail. Together we climbed above the valley on the North side and eventually found the spot Shainblum had shot from. Later that night, I climbed up and tried my shot. It turned out to be way too cloudy for the Milky Way, but I did take a couple shots of the light trails from cars entering the valley and then had to head home. And that was it for 2016. While you can still shoot the Milky Way during the Winter in the early morning hours, the full arch and the galactic core don't make a reappearance until April and May of the following year.
Fast forward to last Friday night. After waiting several months to give it another try, Eric and I set off again with hopes of getting the shot. We knew we would be looking at a late night as the galactic core wouldn't make it above the South range until after 3 AM. Everything was going very well...until my Nikon D810 died on me right as the Milky Way was moving into position. I had brought a second camera body just in case, but it was back in the car.
Scrambling down from my perch, I managed to not die while racing back down the mountainside, grabbing the D750 and scrambling back up in the dark. I was just starting to feel hopeful again when I realized that I no longer had the right remote for the camera. Having been limited to 30 second exposures on earlier trips, I knew that I would be dealing with way too much noise if I pushed the ISO high enough to get detail about of the very dark valley floor. Since I was out of options at this point, I ended up taking several 2 and 3 minute exposures by setting the camera to bulb mode and simply holding my finger down very carefully on the shutter release button. It was probably around 3:30 AM by the time I headed back down to join Eric who was already shooting the Milky Way in the valley below.
All of this to say that after 8 months of waiting, I finally got the shot. I layered in several exposures here to include the light trail from the cars below, the detail in the canyon and the shorter 25-30 second exposures for the Milky Way. Light was already creeping into the sky as we headed off to the Alabama Hills.
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Tags: Zion National Park Milky Way Zion Astrophotography Night Skies Nikon D750 Rokinon 12mm 2.8 Fisheye Trump
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