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
Reflection Lake at Sunrise, Spring Mt. Rainier National Park, Washington As photographers we go through certain trends within our photography. My current interest area is photographing flowers in the foreground of my scenes. I’ve always wanted to visit Mt. Rainier National Park just because the volcano looks epic, but also because it has beautiful wildflower blooms. Willie and I visited in August of 2016, hoping for carpets of flowers caused by a very wet winter. Unfortunately we only found patches of flowers. We arrived at Mt. Rainier at night, setup camp, and went to bed. When we woke the entire scene was covered in fog. We drove to Reflection Lake but we were surrounded by so much fog we could barely tell where our feet were, let alone which way Rainier was. We left and hiked up Rainier instead. The next morning was a different story though and we were glad we were one of the first people to arrive at Reflection Lake. The lack of wildflower blooms meant that there were only a small handful of flowers next to the lake. Willie immediately plopped his camera down next to this patch of Indian Paintbrush and wouldn’t budge. Off I had to go, trying to find some other flowers. Eventually we traded spots and I was able to get in and snap this photo. I loved how the red Paintbrush contrasted with the purple flowers next to it, while the sun touched the trees and Rainier in the background. Nikon D800 w/Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8: 14mm, f/14, 1/6 sec, ISO 200
Lava Entering Pacific Ocean Kalapana, Big Island, Hawaii When I first visited the Big Island to see the lava spewing into the ocean I was in for a real treat! I watched lava pour beautifully into the ocean for almost an hour. Despite having to wait a few seconds for the wind to blow the steam away from the scene, I came home with a ton of amazing photos. However, one thing I didn't witness were the lava bombs! The lava bombs occur when the pressure from the lava tube builds up so much that the lava explodes to the surface. Using a long shutter length you can capture the explosion as if it's silky and on a string. One our second day on the Big Island we got to the lava flow early and just as the sun began to come up, the tube began to explode! For almost 15 minutes we watched this lava bomb go off over and over. We snapped away, hoping we got all the settings right in our cameras and sure enough, I did! Nikon D800 w/Sigma 150-600mm: 150mm, f/6.3, 2.0 sec, ISO 500
