07.24:
Ice Lake - Nikon D300, Nikon 35mm f/2 @ f/8, 1/80 sec., ISO 200
Flowers - Nikon D300, Tokina 11-16mm, f/14, 1/50 sec., ISO 200
Sweet Water - Nikon D300, Tokina 11-16mm, f/13, 8 secs., ISO 100
Columbines - Nikon D300, Nikon 35mm f/2 @ f/2.8, 1/1600 sec., ISO 100
Late Sun - Nikon D300, Nikon 35mm f/2 @ f/11, 1/25 sec., ISO 100
Ice Lake Minor - Nikon D300, Tokina 11-16mm, f/8, 1/80 sec., ISO 200
I went on a backpacking trip with my brother last weekend to Ice Lake basin near Silverton, Colorado. It is a phenomenally gorgeous area of the San Juan mountains. I believe we hit the peak of the wildflower season perfectly because the hills were virtually carpeted with flowers. Though the trail was busy during the day, I’m sure it wasn’t as busy as Yankee Boy or American Basin which are the well known photography destinations this time of year. I highly recommend Ice Lake Basin for anyone up for a high altitude hike. The blue color of the water at Ice Lake is truly mind blowing. It’s as blue, if not more so, than anything in the Caribbean or Mediterranean.
This trip was the my first opportunity to use my new Gitzo GT1541T carbon fiber tripod, which I invested in specifically for backpacking and overseas travel. It weighs less than 3 lbs and folds up to 16 inches long but can still hold the weight of my DSLR. I’ll be posting a review of my experiences with it here shortly.
06.28:
Tonight's Sunset - Nikon D300, Nikon 18-200mm, f/6.3, 1/60 sec., ISO 200
03.07:
Nymph Lake - Nikon D300, Tokina 11-16mm, f/16, 1/200 sec., ISO 200
I went snow shoeing this Saturday with my friend Zach in Rocky Mountain National Park. We had been planning the trip for a few weeks but I didn’t expect the conditions to be so perfect. On Friday, there was a significant snow storm which dumped tons of new snow on the park. I think the accumulation far exceeded the forecasts. The storm moved out quickly and by the time Zach and I got to the Bear Lake trailhead at 6:15 am on Saturday, there were beautiful clear skies. Everything was coated in fresh snow. We didn’t make it up to Dream Lake by sunrise because highway 34 is closed just east of Estes Park while they replace a bridge. With the detour taking extra time, we would’ve had to get up 2:30 AM to make it for the 6:30 sunrise. Ouch. But it didn’t matter anyway because there was so much blowing snow off the peaks before the sun came up, we wouldn’t have been able to see anything. Here are two images I took along our hike. Winter looks so nice in toned black and white!
Dream Lake Ice - Nikon D300, Nikon 18-200mm, f/16, 1/25, ISO 200
The Ice at Dream Lake (above) was beautiful with all kinds of interesting bubbles, cracks, and ripples. Zach and felt very comfortable walking on it as it appeared to be at least a foot thick.
01.03:
Ke'e Beach, Kaua'i - Nikon D300, Tokina 11-16mm, Singh-Ray Color Combo & 3 stop grad ND, f/16, 1/6 sec. ISO 200
I’m a perfectionist when it comes to image quality. Like most photographers, I love getting the sharpest, smoothest images with the highest resolution and dynamic range that I possibly can. Recently though, I’ve started wondering if the whole photography industry might be a little too caught up with digital image quality. As a little Christmas present to myself this year, I picked up a nice coffee table book of Galen Rowell’s photography. I am surprised at what I see in his images. There is graininess, motion blur and focus errors in a surprising number of his photos. It’s not isolated to Galen’s work either. The same flaws are present in a National Geographic retrospective book that I looked at with photos from dozens of different photographers. Here’s the question I have to ask myself. Do these technical image quality flaws subtract from the awesomeness of the work in those books? Absolutely not.
I’m guessing that the vast majority of people who enjoy Galen Rowell or National Geographic don’t even notice those technical errors, so long as they are not photographers themselves. I think they are more impressed with the subject matter, lighting and composition of a photograph. This is a huge relief for me. There are countless wonderful images that I have grievingly cast into digital purgatory because they have a slight technical flaw. I have been taught how to look for these flaws by the countless camera review websites and photography blogs out there. People on these sites routinely discuss the sharpness of their photo prints when viewed under a loupe. Really? A loupe? When you have a gallery show, do you hand out loupes to all the visitors? The camera manufacturers love this because the inevitable conclusion to all our problems is always to buy more expensive gear. Are the corners of your images a little soft? Well then you need a “pro” lens. Are you making prints of your photos? Certainly nothing less than the highest resolution digital camera available will suffice. What’s interesting is that the personal work of most of the camera reviewers out there is artistically mediocre at best. But darn it, their images are “tack sharp.”
There are extremes in every debate. The infamous Ken Rockwell would try to convince us that he’d give up his digital SLRs and just shoot with the camera on an iPhone, but he’s too cheap to actually buy one. Gimme a break. Of course your camera matters and you should do everything you can to avoid blur, focus on the right spot and expose correctly. But seeing what Galen Rowell and the folks at Nat Geo accepted as good enough gives me a new perspective on how to judge acceptable vs. unacceptable quality in my own images. I can only hope to be as adventurous and creatively brilliant as the photographers on my coffee table, but it’s nice to know that technical perfection takes a back seat to more important aesthetic considerations.
12.27:
In looking back on the 2009, I realize that I’ve been extremely fortunate to travel to so many different locations around the globe. This year alone I took over 6400 photos in Tanzania, Hawaii, Utah, Oregon, Washington, and Colorado. I would be thankful for an itinerary like that any year, but the economic turmoil of 2009 has given me a new level of appreciation for a stable job at a great company and the ability to get out and see the world.
Here are some images that I’ve never shown from each of the locations I’ve traveled to this year. Most of these got lost in the digital shuffle of thousands of images on my hard drives or ended up on the cutting room floor because there were better images I wanted to share. In any case, I’m glad I’ve rediscovered them as they help keep the great memories of this year fresh in my mind.
Kalalau Valley, Kaua'i - Nikon D300, Tokina 11-16mm, Singh-Ray Color Combo & grad ND, f/16, 1/6 sec., ISO 200
A Storm Approaches, Utah - Nikon D40 (converted for infrared), Nikon 18-200, f/16, 1/125 sec., ISO 720
Multnomah Falls, Oregon - Nikon D300, Tokina 11-16mm, f/18, 1/6 sec., ISO 200
Aspens, Rocky Mountain National Park - Nikon D300, Tokina 11-16mm, Singh-Ray Color Combo, f/16, 1/10 sec., ISO 200
Wildebeest Fighting - Nikon D300, Nikon 200-400 f/4 VR, Nikon TC-14E, f/8, 1/500 sec., ISO 200
11.12:
Ke'e Beach Trees - Nikon D300, Tokina 11-16mm, Singh-Ray Color Combo, f/16, 1.3sec, ISO 200
While I was waiting for the sun to go down at Ke’e Beach on Kaua’i, I snapped this before I had to hustle into position to get the sunset. Nothing spectacular, but I couldn’t resist the evening light on the interesting trees. It’s amazing I didn’t get any chickens in this shot because they were everywhere. Apparently, the last hurricane to hit Kaua’i (’Iniki in 1992), freed all the chickens from their pens, and now they live wild all over the island.
10.29:
Ho'opi'i Falls, Kaua'i - Nikon D300, Tokina 11-16mm, Singh-Ray Vari-N-Duo, Singh-Ray 2-stop GND, f/18, 1/3 sec. ISO 200
It’s snowing like crazy in Colorado right now, so I thought I’d post a Hawaii image. This is Ho’opi’i Falls on Kaua’i…or is it? There is debate as to whether these falls go by that name, or the next falls up-stream. In either case, it’s a beautiful hike to get in there. This location claimed the life of my brother’s Manfrotto tripod and almost took his D700 with 24-70mm lens too!
10.07:
Rocky Mountain National Park - Nikon D300, Tokina 11-16mm, Singh-Ray Gold-N-Blue Polarizer, Singh-Ray 3-stop GND, f/16, 2.5 sec.
09.20:
Nikon D300, Tokina 11-16mm, Singh-Ray Vari-N-Duo, Singh-Ray 3-stop Reverse GND, f/16, 30 sec., ISO 200
Imagine for a moment if you were to go on a photographic expedition to Hawaii. The scene that probably unfolds in your head is a very pleasant one… you casually setting up your tripod on the beach with a warm tropical breeze at your back. It’s hard to imagine worrying about anything more than maybe getting a sunburn or missing first light because you had too many Mai Tais the night before.
You can probably guess by the title of this post that my brother and I had a somewhat different experience when we recently spent 5 days on Kauai and 3 days on the Big Island taking photos. In reality, it was a humbling experience because we had greatly underestimated the extreme nature of the Hawaiian landscape. Like any place, it has it’s dangers and those dangers often become worse when you’re setting up sensitive photo gear in precarious places to get the shot of your dreams.
Our overall experience on this trip is perfectly illustrated by our very first morning photographing the sunrise from the Mokolea Lava Pools on the eastern shore of Kauai. We had scoped out the location the previous evening and figured out that we would have to drive to a small beach about a mile away and hike in. With our 30 pound packs of camera gear, we hiked across the sand in the dark until we came to a large river that separated us from the lava pools. No problem. We found the narrowest part of the river and waded across, being careful not to fall because of the soft sand under our feet. After a little bush-whacking we made it to the lava bench and began looking for the famous maelstrom that fills with seawater when the waves hit it and then empties out like a toilet flushing as the waves recede. Immediately, we noticed the lava bench we were walking on was covered with algae making it extremely slippery. It took us several minutes to locate the lava formation (still in the dark at this point) and we proceeded to get inspired and find locations to set up our cameras.
Because landscape shots are often more interesting when there are extreme foreground elements to complement the middle and background, you have to use a wide angle lens and get very close to the ground. This was precisely my strategy for the Mokolea Lava Pools except that getting close to the ground meant getting close to the crashing waves on the lava bench…and when I mean crashing, I mean CRASHING. I literally got into the water with my camera and tripod, screwed on my brand new Singh-Ray Vari-N-Duo filter and started setting up my composition. I noticed the image in my viewfinder getting progressively hazier as I adjusted the tripod. Sea spray was the culprit. Knowing that salt water is the kiss of death for digital cameras, I quickly ran back onshore (being careful to not slip on the algae) to get my rain cover out of my pack so I could protect my camera while I waited for the sun. No sooner than I got back to my camera, a huge wave hit me, grabbed the rain cover and started to wash it out to sea. A quick poke with my tripod leg saved the rain cover, but now it was soaking wet…with sea water. It was useless to me now.
My Camera in Peril on the Mokolea Lava Bench
While dealing with that and trying to stretch my thin t-shirt over my camera to protect it, I didn’t even notice the storm that was brewing just off shore. With no warning whatsoever, it started pouring rain. It was like someone just turned a dial to “torrential” and flipped the switch to “ON”. My pack on shore with all my camera lenses was getting soaked. So were all my Singh-Ray filters that I had set out on a rock. But I was in triage mode…save the most expensive gear first which, of course, was the camera I was using. The rain turned off and on a few times and during the breaks, I would wipe off the lens and make a few exposures and then switch back to protecting the camera from more rain…though it got soaking wet anyway. I have a new appreciation for Nikon’s weather sealing!
Fortunately, the only equipment casualty of the morning was my brother’s GPS geo-tagging device which stopped working after a suspected dunk in the water. In all the chaos I did manage to come away with an image that I’m pretty excited about (see above). But just about every other worthwhile image from the trip had some similar adventure associated with it. It is fair to say that Hawaii is a very challenging environment for serious landscape photography. But I honestly had a great time and would do it all again in an instant.
On the hike back to the car, there were a few more instant-on hurricanes and I tripped and fell face-first on the rocks (damn algae). Welcome to Kauai!
07.19:
Dream Lake Reflection - Nikon D300, 18-200mm, Singh-Ray Color Combo, f/16, 2 sec, ISO 200
I got up at 2:30 AM yesterday, drove up to Rocky Mountain National Park and met my brother at the Bear Lake trailhead. We hiked up to Dream Lake in the dark and proceeded to find a good location to capture the sunrise on Hallet Peak. The traditional vantage point from which Dream Lake is photographed had so many photographers packed into it that it looked like a presidential press corps. I was looking, however, for as much of an untraditional way to capture Dream Lake as I could find. I saw this very artsy looking log along the shore and decided it looked great with the reflection behind it.
Early morning up in RMNP is a beautiful experience. It’s painful to get yourself up for it, but I highly recommend hiking up there for dawn, whether you’re a photographer or not. After I was done taking pictures, I thoroughly enjoyed just sitting on the shore of the lake and observing the start of a new day (while swatting mosquitos, of course).
