Coastal Old-Growth Forest

This week marks 5 months that I've been on the road. Time flies! With spring fast approaching, the intensity of the trip - and shooting - is increasing. The last couple of days in particular have been exhausting, with far too much driving. I just returned to southern Cali to drop off some camera gear for service at Canon. It was hard to leave northern Calironia and Oregon, my time up there was far too short. Photographing in the coastal old-growth redwood forests of northern Cali was a dream for me..... few places have left me in such awe. The mornings I spent wandering those forests were spiritual experiences.

I'm way behind in editing and processing all the photos, but I wanted to make a quick blog post with some photos I sent to my family. It's difficult to convey the immense size of trees in the redwood forests, so I jumped into many of the photos for scale.

Will post some more photos when I get caught up on sleep and work!

All photos taken with EOS 1DsIII; 17-40mm or 24-70mm lenses and Singh-Ray LB warming polarizer

Pacific Coast

The last few days I've been on the Pacific Coast in northern California and Oregon. The weather has been pretty wild - rain and high winds. Photographing shoreline scenes has been a challenge because of the blowing salt spray (it's all over my gear). The winds have been so strong, there were a few times I thought my camera/tripod was going to blow over!

Although I haven't been able to photograph much due to the weather, I've enjoyed exploring this area for my first time. This is an incredibly scenic stretch of coast with rocky outcrops, lighthouses and quaint seaside towns each with myriad restaurants that claim to serve 'world-famous' clam chowder.

For the next few days, I'll continue shooting seascapes (assuming the weather improves). And I'm especially looking forward to exploring some of the stands of huge, coastal old-growth trees.

Here are a few of my favorite images from the coast this week, all taken in northern California just before the bad weather rolled in.

Photo 1: Rugged coastal scenery in northern California.
EOS 1DsIII; 70-200/2.8; Singh-Ray LB warming polarizer & 3 stop soft edge ND grad
Exposure: ISO 200; 1/25 second at f/16


Photo 2: Pacific sunset near Redwood National Park
EOS 1DsIII; 24-70/2.8; Singh-Ray LB colorcombo polarizer & 3 stop hard edge ND grad
Exposure: ISO 320; 5 seconds at f/16

Photo 2: Pacific sunset near Redwood National Park
EOS 1DsIII; 24-70/2.8; Singh-Ray LB colorcombo polarizer & 3 stop hard edge ND grad
Exposure: ISO 400; 25 seconds at f/16

Elephant Seal & Star Trails

Hi all, here's a very quick post because I'm in Death Valley with very limited internet access.

There are two approaches I usually take in photography: 1) cowboy style "yeehaw, there's something cool to photograph" and 2) planned images. The two below photos are the result of planning.

Photo 1) After about a week photographing elephant seals, I came up with the idea for this photo. The hardest part was finding a location where I could get down low with the seals, and of course doing it safely (the bull seals weight thousands of pounds)! EOS 1DsIII; 24-70/2.8 lens; Singh-Ray warming polarizer and 3 stop hard-edge ND grad; 580 EXII flash


Photo 2: I scouted this location to shoot star trails in the Jumbo Rocks campground in Joshua Tree National Park a couple of nights ago. During the day I planned the composition and figured out the focusing distance. When I went back to make the shot at night, it was easy to set up the gear and trip the shutter before going back to my van for a glass of wine! [As a side note, Jumbo Rocks is one of the best campgrounds I've ever been to.]
EOS 1DsIII; 24-70/2.8 lens; 1 hour exposure at f/5; foreground rocks subtly light-painted with a dim flashlight; Canon multi-function remote shutter release

Point Lobos State Reserve

It finally stopped raining after several very wet days here on the coast. It wasn't a pleasant drizzle that you can keep shooting in and end up with rich, moody photos. It was windy, with driving rain... impossible to keep the front of my lens dry. So I drank coffee, read and edited photos to wait out the weather.

With great weather conditions back, I spent yesterday at Point Lobos State Reserve near Carmel. My photo targets at Point Lobos were harbor seals and seascapes, both of which were obliging.

Photo 1: Harbor Seal

EOS 1DsIII; 500IS + 1.4x TC; 580EX flash + Better Beamer (for fill flash); Singh-Ray LB polarizer (drop in). There was no way to move to the other side of the backlit seal, so this was a classic situation for use of fill flash. Without it there was basically no shot.

Photo 2: Weston Beach sunset

EOS 1DsIII; 17-40mm; Singh-Ray Colorcombo polarizer & stacked 2 & 3 stop hard edge ND grads (4x6" size, handheld in front of the lens); mirror lock up & cable release; ISo 200; 5s @ f16

This beach is named after pioneer photographer, Edward Weston.

Photo 3: Kelp stems at sunset - Weston Beach (horizontal)

EOS 1DsIII; 17-40mm; Singh-Ray Colorcombo polarizer & stacked 2 & 3 stop hard edge ND grads (4x6" size, handheld in front of the lens); mirror lock up & cable release; ISo 400; 25s @ f18

Photo 4: Kelp stems at sunset - Weston Beach (vertical)

Whenever possible, I shoot both horizontal and vertical compositions to have variety for publishing. I think the vertical is a stronger image. What do you think?

Joshua Tree National Park

Hi all, I've been in Joshua Tree National Park the last couple days. This is a superb park for landscape photography.... the combination of interesting boulder piles and gnarly joshua trees is awesome. The weather has been very tough to photograph in..... extremely windy and cold with bouts of overcast skies. Nevertheless I've worked hard to get a few good images.
And for all my friends back up north, envious that I am in a warmer climate, it's been cold here the past couple days. I froze my butt off camping the last two nights and woke up to heavy snowfall this morning (will post a photo of the snow later)! Tonight I'm staying in a park with electical hookups so I can run my heater.

I'm now en route to try to see (and hopefully photograph) a Lewis' Woodpecker in the San Bernardino Mountains. This is a bird I've been wanting to find for a long time.

A quick post-script.... it's snowing like mad! The park where the woodpecker was seen is closed due to the weather.... damn! Crossing my fingers that it opens back up tomorrow.

Photo 1: Me and the van in Joshua Tree.


Photo 2: Backlit Teddy Bear Cholla
This species of cactus is evil..... they almost jump at you. And once you've gotten stuck, it's a pain to get the spines out.... I still have several stuck in my hand from when I shot this photo.
1DSIII; 17-40; Singh-Ray LB warming polarizer & 2 stop hard edge ND grad


Photo 3: Jumbo Rocks campground at dusk
1DSIII; 17-40; Singh-Ray Gold-n-Blue polarizer
The sky was fairly blah, but I salvaged the photo with the Gold-n-Blue polarizer.


Photo 4: Moonglare through Joshua Tree
I shot this well after sunset will the nearly full moon rising.
1DSIII; 17-40; Singh-Ray 2 stop hard edge ND grad
Light-painted the foreground plants slightly with a flashlight.