Silver Haired AncestorStartrails and Ancient Petrogylphs California After poor planning cancelled a trip to Utah, Willie and I decided to head down to Death Valley instead. We brought along my friend Zack and were pretty excited to explore and get some great photos. Unfortunately, one of us must have really upset Mamma Nature because we got skunked for pretty much every photo we tried to take. We left DV on Saturday morning and were off to find some ancient petroglyph formations that faced snow covered mountains. After finding the parking spot, going on a nasty little hike, and doing some bouldering we finally arrived at the petroglyphs. We weren't quite sure we'd be able to find it so we arrived reallllllly early (like at 1pm for a 5:45pm sunset). Sure enough, we found it almost immediately! What an amazing site! These petroglphys, which are about 5,000 years old and one of the only ones that face the sky, sit on top of a block of volcanic rock and dozens of petroglyphs are carved into the rock, perhaps by ancestors of the Paiute (or Shoshone-Paiute) people. It's about 15 or 20 feet tall, somewhat bowl shaped, and slightly steep, perhaps about a 40 degree slope (which made standing for photos difficult). We thought we'd be the only ones there but were quite wrong (that seemed to be the theme of the trip … just wrong about everything!). A group of locals joined us for a couple minutes and then left as another large family joined us and eventually left. For a while we had the place to ourselves and used the time to get our compositions perfect. Surprisingly, around 3pm another set of (professional) photographers showed up and we had to squeeze in so that all 5 of us could get photos. It was pretty amusing, with one guy pretty much dangling off the rock! With our tripods setup we waited for sunset. Mamma Nature had not been nice to us during the trip but the 2 other photographers had been lucky all week, getting great skies the entire time, and we hoped their luck would turn our fortunes. Unfortunately, Mamma hated us more than ever and brought in some awful big clouds that blocked the sky from lighting up and we went home empty handed. So much for sunset! After eating dinner we looked back at the skies and saw it had cleared up and thought "hey, lets go back and do star trails!" So off we go, with a whole lot of extra clothing, back up the nasty little hike and to the petroglphys. Willie brought some yellow tissue paper to diffuse a LED flashlight and we light painted the rock and then took a 30 minute exposure for the startrails. Willie manned the flashlight while I clicked off our shutters and tried to block the wind from shaking our cameras. It took a couple tries but we finally got the light painting thing down and then were able to move on to our 30 minute startrails. Yet again, Mamma Nature tried to stop us and rolled in a bunch of clouds just as we started the 30 minute exposure! It ended up creating a neat little effect, with the startrails being intermixed with clouds. I thought it made the startrails look like little silvery strands of hair! After the shot, we packed up and finally got to bed at about 12:30am. Being as crazy as we are, we woke up again at 5am, hiked back to petroglyphs for a 3rd time and tried for a nice sunrise (again, a failure). At least we got this shot and we had an amazing trip regardless! Nikon D700 w/Nikkor 17-35mm f/2.8 ED-IF AF-S: 17mm, f/7.1, 30 min, ISO 200
Surf's Up!The Wave Coyote Buttes, Arizona After spending 3 days in Zion it was time for another one of our most anticipated parts of the trip: a hike to The Wave! I had been here a year before but the weather conditions weren't ideal for photography here. Hoping that this trip would turn out better Willie, Yan, and I had been monitoring the weather rather closely and kept praying that the clouds and rain from the past couple days would finally leave and give us some blue skies. I think we checked the weather forecast perhaps every 20 minutes to see if we would be in luck! Several months earlier I had applied for and been lucky enough to get a permit for 4 of us to visit the Coyote Buttes North, which includes the Wave. This section of Pariah Vermillion Cliffs Wilderness is on the border between Utah and Arizona. As we hiked the several miles to The Wave we could see the clouds disappearing. We got really excited! It only took us 1.5 hours to reach The Wave and we got here just in time. We were the first to arrive after passing several other groups along the way. We had the entire place to ourselves for about 20 minutes before the others showed up. We also arrived just before the shadows started to creep in. Most people photograph this during the summer, when the sun is overhead and creates less shadow and our early arrival gave us a shadow-free window. A half hour later and the sun dropped huge black spots into the wave. I absolutely LOVE this place. Photographs make this area seem larger than it is, but it's actually quite small. Still, the sweeping lines, beautiful texture, and wind-swept sandstone rock make for an amazing scene. We didn't want to leave, and I'm sure you can see why! I tried a number of different angles but as always, the classic shot is always the best! Later on we found the "Second Wave", a "Brain", and some other interesting rock formations! Nikon D800 w/Nikkor 17-35mm f/2.8 ED-IF AF-S: 17mm, f/16, 1/100 sec, ISO 100 B+W Circular Polarizer
Surprise AwakeningSunrise over Dead Tree Glacier National Park, Montana I normally try not to get too excited for things in the future that have a high probability of changing but as Willie, Alan, and I checked the weather forecast for our upcoming trip to Glacier National Park I couldn't help but let the excitement build up. The weather looked perfect! Things didn't go quite as planned. We would watch beautiful clouds fizzle away right before our eyes, thunderstorms roll in, rain pour for hours and the fog get so thick you could barely see your feet. For a day and a half we sat around doing nothing because the weather was so bad. On the 3rd morning we woke up at 4am and saw a few stars peaking out. "Maybe the storm will break" we thought. Dragging ourselves out of bed we made our way into the park and started to get excited! It looked like the clouds might be thinning! You know what happened next, right? Mama Nature was right on queue and within a blink of an eye made those clouds disappear completely. At this point we felt pretty defeated - even almost to the point of anger. It's a good thing we're not quitters because just as quickly as the clouds disappeared they came back and positioned themselves perfectly in the mountains. They say the best photos come from patient photographers and in this case it's true. When the sun rose above the horizon it lit the entire scene in a beautiful orange glow. The word "dynamic" continuously came up whenever we talk about this scene. Everything came together perfectly: the glow in the branches, the S-curve in the river, and the illuminated mountains all made for the perfect scene to wake up to. And let me tell you -- we had quite the "wake your tuchas up" moment ... Earlier in the morning, I asked Willie and Alan: "What do we do if we see a bear while we're there?" Willie replied "it's too steep for a bear to be up there. We should be fine." I didn't really believe his answer but it was too early in the morning to argue. While snapping away I noticed something move in the background. "Oh hey, look… Bear" I thought to myself. About 2 seconds later I realized what I just said in my head: BEAR!!!!!!!! GRIZZLY BEAR! About 40 feet away! The first thing out of my mouth was "holy sh!t!". Willie and Alan looked at me like I was crazy. "BEAR!!!!" I scream as I run for the bear spray. Willie backed up. Alan picked up a rock. When the bear realized who we were it too freaked out and galloped off. My previous 2 photos had picked up the bear! Can you find the bear here? Nikon D800 w/Nikkor 17-35mm f/2.8 ED-IF AF-S: 17mm, f/16, 1/4 sec, ISO 100
