Painted WoodRedwood Trees Muir Woods, Marin Headlands, California Being in the mood to hang out with the trees and see some beautiful things, Willie, Alan, Sammi and I woke up early one Saturday morning and drove up to Muir Woods. The intent was to shoot the Redwood trees shrouded in fog and then stop in at the Muir Woods Trading Co Cafe for one of their famous Grilled Cheese sandwiches. Everything started off great and then fell completely apart. As we drove to Muir Woods the fog level looked perfect. There was a ton of fog on the coast and it looked low enough to seep into Muir Woods. After navigating the windy roads and making sure Willie's breakfast stayed in his stomach we arrived at Muir Woods early enough to have no problem finding parking. In fact, it was still so early that the rangers hadn't arrived to change the "Entrance Fee: FREE!" sign to "Entrance Fee: $7"! Lucky us. We decided to hike up so we could get back to the higher elevation fog. We hiked up. No fog. We kept hiking. Still no fog. On we went. FOG! Oh wait, no Redwood trees. Walk some more. Hey look, Redwood grove! Oh right, no fog. We took some photos of trees and moved on. Sammi's not a photographer and she brought a book with her and read while we shot. At one point as we started to leave a patch of trees she said "did you guys look behind you?" Of course we hadn't. That's when we saw all the trees had lined up beautifully. With no fog we decided to go a bit abstract and try some "camera painting." Using a long shutter and keeping our tripod bullheads loose, we panned the camera up as the shutter stayed open for 1-2 seconds. Thus the effect you see here! Nikon D800 w/Nikkor 80-200mm f/2.8 AF-D: 185mm, f/10, 1.6 seconds, ISO 400
Sunrise over Tunnel Mtn Road Banff National Park, Canada Going into every photo trip I have high hopes that I'll come home with a number of portfolio worthy photos. Sometimes I come home disappointed, sometimes my expectations are met, and other times I'm completely blown away by the number of gorgeous photos. Our trip to Banff in November 2015 was certainly the latter. Not only did we get the big mountain scenes I was hoping for, but there were a number of beautiful intimate scenes. Willie and I didn't expect our last morning to have much photography potential but we dragged ourselves out of bed anyways and decided to head towards Lake Minnewanka. Along the drive we looked up at the sky, saw it glowing with a pre-burn, got super excited, and diverted to the closer Tunnel Mountain Road and view of Mt. Rundle. We witnessed an absolutely beautiful sunrise. As the sun came up, a layer of fog developed and caught the warm sunrise light. I loved how it transformed this entire area of snow covered trees into those golden orange scene. I had to throw on the telephoto lens and capture all the light that just warmed my heart. Nikon D800 w/Nikkor 80-200 f/2.8: 185mm, f/11, 1/5 sec, ISO 100
Milky Way over Telluride San Juan National Forest, Colorado This fall I spent a week exploring Colorado with my coworker Ana. We started in Denver, drove to Breckenridge (met up with Nick Selway), had our car break down in Crested Butte, and eventually made our way to the San Juan mountains before flying back home. The majority of the trip was spent near the San Juans and we had clear skies every single day. Clear skies are great -- except when you want to photograph grand vistas and need clouds in the sky to make something interesting. I spent most of the time making the best of the light and photographed intimate scenes. There was one reason for shooting grand scenes though -- Milky Way photos. On a clear night, face south and the Milky Way will rise over the mountains. As much as I hated having to lose a day on the trip for our broken-down car, there were some positives: our replacement vehicle was a beast of a Ford Expedition that handled the rough terrain of Last Dollar Road like a champ. The extra clearance proved handy multiple times. Towards the end of the road, as we neared Telluride, we came across this viewpoint of the San Juan mountains with a beautiful patch of aspen trees changing color in front of them. We waited for the sun to sink well below the horizon and for the Milky Way to come out, snapped some photos, and then raced back to the hotel to get some dinner before everything closed down. D850 w/Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8: Foreground: 60mm, f/9, 0.6 sec, ISO 640 Sky: 24mm, f/2.8, 15sec, ISO 6400
