Milky Way over Jenny Lake Grand Teton National Park, Moose, Wyoming In 2014 I left my job of 9 years to start my dream job at SmugMug. Getting to work on a photography product that I'm extremely passionate about, for a company that knows how to treat its employees well, has been nothing short of "amazing". Every year SmugMug takes all of its employees and their families on a company retreat. My favorite part of the trip is the chance to get to know my coworkers better ... or get to know employees that I don't know at all. This year we were in Jackson Hole, Wyoming and it was a perfect chance to do a *lot* of photography! As one of the more serious landscape photographers in the company, I planned a few photo outings for anyone at the company to join. One of the first nights I took about 20 coworkers (and a few family members) to Jenny Lake to photograph the Milky Way. A few people had never seen seen the Milky Way with their bare eyes, so it was pretty fun to see their eyes light up when they looked into the southern sky and saw it sitting there. We photographed the Milky Way for a few hours and it was a lot of fun to play "workshop leader". I setup my camera to do a time-lapse, which meant I could run around making sure everyone else was getting the photos they wanted. Some people had never even taken a photo at night, and others had never even used a tripod before! The most amazing thing was seeing how each person had a different eye for the scene; I don't think anyone had the same exact photo, despite the fact that we were packed on a beach like sardines. Here the Milky Way reflects off Jenny Lake, as the Milky Way looms over Teewinot Mountain. Nikon D800 w/Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8: 15mm, f/2.8, 20 sec, ISO 3200
Sunrise at the Mesquite Sand Dunes Death Valley National Park, California The last time I visited the Mesquite Sand Dunes in Death Valley National Park things were a bit of a disaster. Willie loves to arrive early to things, which is usually great. It gives us time to get settled, scout out an area, find the best views and make sure we don’t screw anything up. That’s normally fine ... except when it’s 85°F with absolutely no shade and sunset isn’t for 4 more hours. After getting little sleep the night before, Willie woke me up from my nap to demand we head out to the sand dunes. We spent hours trying to hide from the sun after realizing we had gotten out there way too early. Determined not to make the same mistake again, we got a few tips from David on where to head once at the sand dunes. We had left his house in Las Vegas at 3am and made the trek over to Death Valley in time for sunrise and we lugged our massive “Bazooka” telephoto lenses out with us. We arrived early but not too early! Although David pointed us in a general direction, we still struggled to find compositions. Both of us ran around trying to find the shapes and patterns we had seen others find. Willie stayed in a small area while I explored further. At one point I found this view, setup, and fired a few quick photos before running off to try a different view. It wasn’t until I got home that I realized I had found a spot with these beautiful rolling sand dunes! Nikon D800 w/Sigma 150-600mm f/2.8: 165mm, f/11, 1.0 sec, ISO 100
Sunrise over Balsamroot Flowers Rowena Crest, Oregon Portland, Oregon would be my top choice I had to move to a different city in the US. I’ve visited a number of times for both fun and photography and the beauty in the Columbia River Gorge just blows me away. Most of my photography trips have been waterfall centric and I was excited to return with Willie to spend most of our time photographing wildflowers. The entire west coast had an extremely dry winter and we knew we had to arrive early in the season to catch the flowers. Unfortunately, the dry winter combined with windy days caused most of the blooming wildflowers to lose their beauty before we even arrived. While the lupines, with their short petals were OK, the beautiful yellow Balsamroot’s were mostly withered and falling apart. Willie and I spent a long time scouting this wildflower field at Rowena Crest for signs of a few patches of beautiful flowers. At one point Willie went off to my right and spotted our first patch of beautiful flowers. I spent the next 30 minutes searching and searching but only came across dying flowers. Almost defeated, I returned to Willie, where he pointed out this patch of 2 healthy flowers. This is one of those instances where it was great to have a shooting partner to keep my head up high and help the morning end with a smile on both our faces! Nikon D800 w/Nikkor 17-35mm f/2.8: 22mm, f/5, 1/800 sec, ISO 640 Several photo focus blend
