Stormy Sunrise over Badwater Salt Flats Death Valley National Park, California Interestingly, the tallest point in the United States and the lowest point are separated by only 85 miles. Mt Whitney peaks at over 14,500 feet but further to the south, the Badwater Basin sits at 282 feet below sea level. I spent a lot of time at Badwater on my first visit to Death Valley National Park, but I had never seen a beautiful sunrise or sunset there. Willie and I spent a long weekend exploring the park and finding scenes we’d been hunting. David Thompson played an excellent tour guide for us and the trip turned out to be one of the best photography trips we’ve had: mostly because Mama Nature played nice! On our last morning here we kept particularly attention to a patch of clouds that were rolling in and made our way to a specific section of Badwater Basin. We couldn’t have asked for a better sky. The clouds were full of texture and color when the sun did rise and hit it. Hexagonal honeycomb shaped salt rose out of the ground thanks to a nice wet winter the previous year. Nikon D800 w/Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8: 14mm, f/13, 1/15 sec, ISO 100
Sunset over Kirkjufellfoss and Kirkjufell Mountain Grundarfjörður, Iceland I spent almost 2 weeks in Iceland with 6 friends: 5 of whom were not photographers. This meant that rather than following the weather like I would have preferred, we followed our itinerary instead. Mama Nature had the perfect chance to attach a rope between our RV and the rain clouds and boy did she take advantage. It wasn’t until 9 days into our trip that I finally saw the sun. The first 8 days were filled with rain, fog, more rain, more fog, and grey grey sky. Fortunately the last 2 nights ended quite spectacularly. There’s a few places in Iceland that photographers love and Kirkjufell Mountain is one of them. Of course it was high on my list of places to visit and we saved it for almost last. We arrived at Grundarfjörður, the town next to the mountain, parked the RV in their marina and made dinner. Dinner seemed to last for hours. Every few minutes I would get up, look at where the sun is, and say “guys, can we hurry up?!” Of course the non-photographers responded with “relax, it’ll be fine!” Finally I jumped into the drivers seat, told everyone to hold on, and drove us over to the spot. Surprisingly, this view is right off the road (you can, in fact, see the road at the bottom of the mountain) and offers countless compositions. As we arrived though, the clouds started to thin out and it forced our compositions to move to the left, towards the 3-pronged waterfall and the bridge. Fortunately the sky lit up beautifully long enough for us to snap a few photos. About 20 minutes after this photo was taken, a marine layer moved in, the clouds disappeared, and the beautiful sunset was gone. Thanks, Mama Nature, for a yummy bit of dessert! I loved the way the mountain looks like a witches hat while the waterfall and river brew below it. Nikon D800 w/Nikkor 17-35mm f/2.8 ED-IF AF-S: 17mm, f/9, 1/6 sec, ISO 100
Sunrise over the Mars Research Station Hanksville, Utah While exploring Southern Utah, outside of Hanksville, there's an area known as the “Mars Desert Research Station” because it has one of the 4 planned simulated Mars surface exploration habitats. It definitely looks a bit like Mars, and I can tell why they named it that and setup shop here. After a windy night, we woke up to David pulling into town with his camera and a client in tow. We all setup and snapped photos for an hour or two, watching as the light changed over the course of the sunrise. During the morning this area is bathed in interesting light. It changes super quickly to boot! As the sun rises it casts a blue-purple glow to the entire scene. Then as the sun peaks over the horizon everything becomes orange, red, shadows creep in, and the landscape completely changes. I enjoyed the purple-blue moment but was ultimate drawn to the shadows that came out just as the sun peaked over the horizon, mixing the purple-blue with some oranges. Nikon D800 w/Nikkor 80-200mm f2/.8: 100mm, f/13, 1/15 sec, ISO 100
