Emerald JewelsSunrise at Emerald Bay Lake Tahoe, California A couple weeks ago Willie asked me to reserve the weekend of March 30, 2012 for a photo-trip. About the same time, my roommate and a bunch of my friends decided to make that same weekend a Tahoe get-away/ski-trip weekend. I wanted to do both so I convinced Willie to join and we'd shoot Lake Tahoe. We had been monitoring the weather all week and it seemed like every 5 hours the report changed. A large storm was rolling in but nobody could decide when exactly it would hit. We knew we wanted to shoot Bonsai Rock (which I have previously photographed) and Emerald Bay. Planning this photo trip turned into a nightmare because we weren't sure what sunrises or sunsets would be good and we couldn't figure out if the roads would even be open. The road to Emerald Bay had been closed all week due to snow / avalanche control but finally opened as we drove up to Tahoe. Friday night we drove to Bonsai Rock and had a skunked sunset (but I did manage to get a photo that I was happy with thanks to the Lee Big Stopper, coming soon). Saturday morning we woke up at 5:15am (ouch), wiped the sand out of eyes and hit the road. I had done some research and found that Emerald Bay was not only really close to our cabin but also pretty easy to photograph. Just pull off on one of the turn-outs, find a spot that doesn't have trees, and shoot. We were the only ones on the road when we got to Emerald Bay and only a few cars passed us as we watched the sunrise. There were a LOT of clouds (as you can see) but we were lucky and an opening in the east allowed the sunrise to sneak through and light up the clouds. We were treated for a beautiful sunrise (finally Mama Nature played nice for us!). Thanks to a super massive wind that had blown in, Emerald Bay also had some neat wave action going on (which you can see in this photo). Willie used his new Singh-Ray Reverse ND Grad and was able to get a large dynamic range with very little clipping. My HiTech Reverse ND isn't as soft and was doing some ugly things to the hill on the left so I had to settle for 2 filters and some bracketing. This shot is a 2-exposure blend, although the underexposed photo was only used in the bright section on the right of the photo, above the mountains and below the clouds. Nikon D700 w/Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8G ED AF-S: 24mm, f/18, 10 sec, ISO 100 Lee Filter Holder + (0.9 + 0.3) HiTech Soft ND Grad's
Sunset on Yosemite Valley, from Tunnel View Yosemite National Park, California On the top of my photography bucket list has been to witness and photograph a snowy Yosemite. This year I've paid close attention to the snow in Yosemite and finally during my Christmas break I had my chance to see Yosemite covered in snow! A giant storm had just hit the Eastern Sierras and dumped about 10 feet of snow (in fact, Kirkwood received 7 feet in ONE DAY!). Willie, Alan, Sammi and I planned on arriving just as the storm cleared. Unfortunately by the time we rented a 4-wheel drive vehicle and made our way through chain control and into Yosemite most of the storm had gone. The radar showed more clouds coming and we held our breath that sunset would be nice. After visiting several stops around the Yosemite Valley and running into a couple other photographers that we knew we settled on returning to Tunnel View for sunset. Joined by a gazillion other photographers (or a "meat market" as Breezy would call it) we witnessed a beautiful sunset. Although the clouds did not light up with much color there was an absolutely beautiful stripe of color that appeared on El Capitan, as some clouds made enough room for the light to seep in. I combined 7 vertical images in Photoshop to create this 2x1 panorama of a snowy Yosemite. With snow on the trees and a pale, boring, blue color in the sky I knew that this photograph had to be done in black and white. I couldn't help but love the red color that was caste across El Capitan and decided to selectively bring this back in. Fog crept in as the sun began to set and creates a nice mystical mood to the photo. I printed this as a 24"x48" lustre print on Gatorboard and hung it in my office at my apartment! It looks great on the wall! Nikon D800 w/Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8G ED AF-S: 70mm, f/11, 1/4 sec, ISO 100 7 images stitched in Photoshop
Indian Paintbrush and Lupine at Twilight Mt. Rainier National Park, Washington There’s something incredibly peaceful about seeing a field of wildflowers in front of giant mountain ranges, so obviously I wanted to travel to see some of this. Willie and I arrived at Mt. Rainier National Park in August hoping to find carpets and carpets of wildflowers. We didn’t quite find them but we did find nice patches of flowers, like this one. We spent the better part of 2 days hunting around the Paradise Valley area of Mt. Rainier National Park and the lupine and Indian Paintbrush were the two most common flowers we found. In this particular field, we found a nice picture of the two plant types while the Tatoosh Range loomed in the background. We found this field high up on Mazama Ridge, a beautiful area of rolling hills and fields of flowers. It looked as if some of the Lupine was already dying and the Indian Paintbrush would only last a few more days. I snapped the photos of the flowers at sunset, surrounded by thousands of mosquitos (man, a face net would have been helpful!) and then snapped the sky some hours later once the sun had set and the bugs had gone to bed. While we didn’t get to see the massive number of flowers we had hoped for, the fields we did find were still absolutely gorgeous! Nikon D800 w/Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8: 22mm, f/13, 1/3 sec, ISO 100
