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Surprise! Waterfalls at Emerald Pools Zion National Park, Utah Willie, Yan, and I planned on spending 2 days in Zion and then heading to Escalante to find our way to Zebra Canyon. Mama Nature had different plans for us. While hiking The Subway, the previous day, clouds had begun to roll in as we hiked. By the time we were back at our hotel for the night the clouds had gotten thick and rain started to come down. In the morning we woke up to a pretty heavy rain. Zebra Canyon was no longer an option due to flash flood potential. Not knowing what to do we decided to just roam around the park and see if we could find any fall colors that would be evenly lit with the clouds overhead. That's when we noticed waterfalls all over the park! Normally the waterfalls in Zion are a spring occurrence but with the temperature warm enough to be rain and not snow we were in for a treat! After photographing a waterfall near the Temple of Sinawava we decided to see if the waterfalls above Emerald Pools were going. Sure enough, they were raging! The 3 of us practically raced the mile to the pools and couldn't wait to take some shots. A trail leads behind the waterfalls and we carefully, lest we slip and fall, made our way to the other side of the falls. I wish a couple more of the trees still had their yellow leaves but I really liked how the water came pouring over these cliffs. I included the 2 by-standers in the right of this photo to give you a sense of scale. Nikon D800 w/Nikkor 17-35mm f/2.8 ED-IF AF-S: 17mm, f/14, 0.8 sec, ISO 125
I'm in the middle ... above Vernal Falls in Yosemite National Park. The 3 of us organized a trip for 25 summer interns to camp / hike in Yosemite!
Drenched Cascade Falls Yosemite National Park, CA Last year Willie, Will, and I got our first great moonbow photo while on top of the Upper Yosemite Falls trail. Thanks to some professors in Texas just about anyone can find out when the moon bows in Yosemite will occur. Trying to avoid the hoards of crowds at the Sentinal Bridge parking lot we decided to try to find a more unique moonbow and something different from last year. Willie and I had seen a number of timescape videos, most notably Steve Bumgardner's official video for the Yosemite Conservancy, in which moonbows were photographed at Cascade Falls. We knew we had to try this! I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to get to the proper location to shoot a moonbow at Cascade Falls. You need to get high enough and east enough to get around a jut in the rocks (you can see it here, where the water flows over, blocking the top of the falls) to get the proper angle to see the top of the falls, which has a really nice "S" curve to it. I used Google Earth and a number of other peoples images to get a vague idea of what we had to do. We found out that Steve traveled up from the bottom (along highway CA-140) but I thought you might be able to drop in from the top. When I arrived at Yosemite on Saturday I quickly ruled out the top-down approach. I hopped in the car, drove down to the bottom, and started on up. After an hour of completely sweating, super steep climbing, and searching high and low, I gave up on finding "the perfect spot". It was just too dangerous and without proper climbing gear I couldn't see any way to get to the spot that Steve took his photo. Dropping down a bit we found a nice area that gave a beautiful view of the main falls. In the afternoon weather the area was dry and pretty easy to get to. When Willie, Will, and I returned at night we were in for a shock -- the winds had picked up and were spraying mist all over the spot! Not wanting to be drenched for 2 hours we moved back to a safe distance where we go stay both dry and warm. There was a super moon this evening (the largest moon of the year) and we had hoped that its brightness would put on a great moonbow show, but we didn't know when exactly it would start. Every so often I would head back out to the falls to double check on the moonbow. Finally around 9:10pm we saw a faint bow and raced back to get our gear. It was super slippery on the rocks to our spots and we took extra caution not to slip and die. By now it felt like it was raining and we knew we had to be quick to get our shots. Proper planning was key to this. I brought along a rain-shield for my camera to keep my camera dry and attached the hood to the lens helped reduce a small amount of water hitting the lens. I also brought along 5 micro-fiber cloths because I knew I'd be wiping the lens dry quite often and they would get wet fast. I had just enough time to wipe the lens clean and then take a shot before the lens was completely covered. I went through 3 micro-fiber cloths in the 35 minutes that we were out there. Once we finally returned to dry land we realized how *completely* soaked we all were. It wasn't until the sun came up the next day that I was able to fully dry all my equipment! This years moon bows were much more faint than last years. We could just make out a silvery bow with our eyes, compared to last years full blast of color. Additionally, it wasn't until I looked at the LCD later that I realized we caught a small hint of a DOUBLE MOONBOW! Nikon D700 w/Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8G ED AF-S: 42mm, f/4, 30 sec, ISO 640
Perfect Falls Lower Bridealveil Falls Yosemite National Park, CA For anyone who's followed my photos for a while this photo may be familiar. I took a very very similar shot about 2-3 years ago. 2 years ago I discovered (as did many others) that when the falls are barely trickling you can walk into the rocks and towards the granite rock face behind Bridalveil. When you get closer all of a sudden this gorgeous little waterfall opens up (I'll call it Lower Bridalveil Falls). I originally took this on a Nikon D40x, handheld, since i had decided to leave my camera/tripod in the car (oops!). I've been wanting to take a better (high quality) photo ever since. Willie, Will, and I only had about 40 minutes before we wanted to hit the road so we ran super fast to the start of the little river where I knew this waterfall would be. We had to slow down when we got to the rocks because they were REALLY slippery and it was fairly complicated making our way through the maze of rocks over to Lower Bridalveil. We got there, setup our tripods as best we could, clicked away, and then raced back. Unfortunately Willie slipped at one point and bumped his shin a bit. He could still walk but it was uncomfortable. I'm not sure I like my new photo better but it was taken with a better camera, with better glass, and with a tripod, so yea. Nikon D300s w/Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8G ED AF-S: 27mm, f/10, 0.4 sec, ISO 200, Tripod B+W F-Pro Circular Polarizer. Can't remember if I used ND Grad's
A couple years back I was in Yosemite when there wasn't much water and I was able to walk all the way into Bridalveil Falls, almost to the rock face behind the falls. Along the way I found an amazing little mini-falls that turned into one of my favorite photos. While preparing for this Yosemite trip I noticed that Yosemite falls still had water, although only a trickle. I figured that we might be able to get pretty close to Lower Yosemite Falls and it might also make for an interesting photo. Early Sunday morning we woke up and drove over to the lower falls. The water was just a trickle and we could walk along the rocks to get closer to Lower Yosemite Falls. Embarrassingly, along the rock-skipping journey I heard a giant "Rrrrrrriiiiiiiipppp" and looked down to see that my pants had split along my thigh! Luckily they held together long enough to take my photos and get back to my campsite to change. Anyways, I digress…. We were able to get surprisingly close to the rock face that hides behind Yosemite Falls and along the way I kept noticing that where Lower Yosemite Falls hits the rock and creates another falls was this gorgeous scene, which you see above. The further back I walked the better the scene got. The sun started to creep up the granite rock face so I through on the polarizer to block some of the glare off the rocks and used my ND grad's to darken the area that was starting to see the sun. Although I really liked this photo in color (see extra photo in the comments), I thought that a sepia version might make this more unique. I liked that it gave this an almost old time feel to the falls -- like an antique photo! In other news, my newly ordered (but slightly used) D700 arrives soon! I'm excited! Nikon D300s w/Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8G ED AF-S 42mm, f/16, 0.6 sec, ISO 160, Feisol Tripod B+W F-Pro Circular Polarizer, Hitech 0.9 ND Soft, and 0.6 ND Soft.
Going back into the archives and editing some older photos. I'm giving Nik Software's Silver Efex software a try and thought I'd find a couple water photos to make into B&W's. I liked how the B&W brought out the shape/texture of the water in this. Every year I head to Yosemite in May or a weekend of camping. Usually the weather is perfect: 80 degrees F, clear skies and very pleasant to hike in. Unfortunately in 2010 (and the again in 2011) the cold weather stuck around for extra long. In fact, in 2010 when I took this photo it was SNOWING on us … in May … in California! Although it was freezing out, the hike was actually pretty spectacular. On our way up to Nevada Falls (pictured here) there was TONS of water everywhere -- you'll notice there's all these little "extra" waterfalls that are gushing over the side of the cliff and the river was *movin*. The snow storm also made for some really neat cloud shapes. On the downside, I think my girlfriend froze and now refuses to join me on my trips to Yosemite in May. Oh well. Nikon D300s w/Nikkor 17-35mm f/2.8 ED-IF AF-S: 20mm, f/11, 1/125 sec, ISO 320, Handheld
Sand Falls Upper Antelope Canyon Page, Arizona I've seen many photos of Antelope Canyon and some of my friends include the "sand falls" in which sand is captured falling down off the rocks in slow motion to make it looks like a waterfall. I asked our guide if there were any of these while we were there and the last 2 spots we stopped were for sand-falls! Note that this is not a natural occurrence: our guide had to pick up sand and pour it on the rocks and the run out of the way for our photos. None-the-less, it creates a pretty impressive scene! Yes, there are tons of Antelope Canyon photos out here, but one more from me isn't going to hurt, right?! This shot is part of my Arizona Photovacation Series. On our trip we stopped at Horseshoe Bend, Antelope Canyon (Upper/Lower), the Grand Canyon, and Sedona. Nikon D700 w/Nikkor 17-35mm f/2.8 ED-IF AF-S: 22mm, f/11, 4 seconds, ISO 200, Feisol Tripod
One of my jobs at work is to run the Summer Intern Committee that puts on a program for the 70 or so interns this summer. Amongst the many events that we planned, we decided to take 25 interns to Yosemite for the weekend! We did not have work on Friday and we piled into cars and drove the 3.5 hours over to Yosemite. Once everyone arrived we grabbed lunch in Curry Village and then hiked up Vernal Falls. Due to the massive amount of water and the number of deaths on this trail (including 3 this week!) several of us didn't want to take the Mist Trail back down. Instead we took a trail that lead up for about 0.75 miles, met up with the John Muir trail and then headed back down to the base of the Valley. On the connector trail was this *gorgeous* view-point that I never knew existed! I love how this point has a high vantage -- you can see the entire falls and get a sense of the scale of how much water and how big this waterfall is! Nikon D300s w/Nikkor 17-35mm f/2.8 ED-IF AF-S: 20mm, f/11, 1/320 sec, ISO 250, Handheld
Double Moonbow Yosemite Falls Trail Yosemite National Park, CA My photo buddy, Willie, has been waiting for about a year to capture another moonbow over Yosemite Falls and this week turned out to be the moonbow week! We decided to take half a day off from work and left after lunch on Tuesday and drove up to Yosemite. We grabbed dinner, packed our gear and started hiking up the Upper Yosemite Falls Trail. It's a grueling 2 mile hike up 1,000 feet to the first "Yosemite Falls Lookout" and we got to the lookout with plenty of time to spare. Apparently we weren't the only ones to have this idea as there were several other photographers already there and several more arrived after us. About 30 seconds before I took out my tripod another photographer grabbed the spot I wanted! Doh! I ended up finding another spot, up on top of a small rock cliff that worked decently enough. I had some trees to contend with but got a decent enough composition without any trees. My spot was also much drier than where my friends were shooting from. The wind picked up at night and was blowing water from the falls all over us. I constantly had use my micro-fiber cloth to dry the front of my lens. The battery of my wireless shutter release also happened to die just as the moonbow was starting. Trying to hand hold on BULB mode didn't work so I had to limit my exposures to 30 seconds :( It turned out to work decently as my D300s performed nicely even at ISO 500 and even up to ISO 640. I didn't even notice there was a double rainbow in this until I got home! The moonbow was REALLY bright -- you could even start to see the color with the naked eye (which is usually impossible due to the structure of our eye failing to see color at night). Nikon D300s w/Nikkor 17-35mm f/2.8 ED-IF AF-S: 28mm, f/5, 30 sec, ISO 500, Tripod No HDR, no saturation increase, minor edits
Going back into the archives and editing some older photos. I'm giving Nik Software's Silver Efex software a try and thought I'd find a couple water photos to make into B&W's. I liked how the B&W brought out the shape/texture of the water in this.

Every year I head to Yosemite in May or a weekend of camping. Usually the weather is perfect: 80 degrees F, clear skies and very pleasant to hike in. Unfortunately in 2010 (and the again in 2011) the cold weather stuck around for extra long. In fact, in 2010 when I took this photo it was SNOWING on us … in May … in California! Although it was freezing out, the hike was actually pretty spectacular. On our way up to Nevada Falls (pictured here) there was TONS of water everywhere -- you'll notice there's all these little "extra" waterfalls that are gushing over the side of the cliff and the river was *movin*. The snow storm also made for some really neat cloud shapes. On the downside, I think my girlfriend froze and now refuses to join me on my trips to Yosemite in May. Oh well.

Nikon D300s w/Nikkor 17-35mm f/2.8 ED-IF AF-S:
20mm, f/11, 1/125 sec, ISO 320, Handheld
Going back into the archives and editing some older photos. I'm giving Nik Software's Silver Efex software a try and thought I'd find a couple water photos to make into B&W's. I liked how the B&W brought out the shape/texture of the water in this. Every year I head to Yosemite in May or a weekend of camping. Usually the weather is perfect: 80 degrees F, clear skies and very pleasant to hike in. Unfortunately in 2010 (and the again in 2011) the cold weather stuck around for extra long. In fact, in 2010 when I took this photo it was SNOWING on us … in May … in California! Although it was freezing out, the hike was actually pretty spectacular. On our way up to Nevada Falls (pictured here) there was TONS of water everywhere -- you'll notice there's all these little "extra" waterfalls that are gushing over the side of the cliff and the river was *movin*. The snow storm also made for some really neat cloud shapes. On the downside, I think my girlfriend froze and now refuses to join me on my trips to Yosemite in May. Oh well. Nikon D300s w/Nikkor 17-35mm f/2.8 ED-IF AF-S: 20mm, f/11, 1/125 sec, ISO 320, Handheld
Going back into the archives and editing some older photos. I'm giving Nik Software's Silver Efex software a try and thought I'd find a couple water photos to make into B&W's. I liked how the B&W brought out the shape/texture of the water in this.

Every year I head to Yosemite in May or a weekend of camping. Usually the weather is perfect: 80 degrees F, clear skies and very pleasant to hike in. Unfortunately in 2010 (and the again in 2011) the cold weather stuck around for extra long. In fact, in 2010 when I took this photo it was SNOWING on us … in May … in California! Although it was freezing out, the hike was actually pretty spectacular. On our way up to Nevada Falls (pictured here) there was TONS of water everywhere -- you'll notice there's all these little "extra" waterfalls that are gushing over the side of the cliff and the river was *movin*. The snow storm also made for some really neat cloud shapes. On the downside, I think my girlfriend froze and now refuses to join me on my trips to Yosemite in May. Oh well.

Nikon D300s w/Nikkor 17-35mm f/2.8 ED-IF AF-S:
20mm, f/11, 1/125 sec, ISO 320, Handheld
See photo in original gallery.
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