Landscape, Nature and Travel Photography

Another photo, albeit an abstract, from the Wave in the Paria Canyon-Vermilion Cliffs Wilderness Area.

This evening I had the opportunity to attend the Rowell Award Ceremony in downtown San Francisco. I found out about this event shortly after my return from a recent trip to the Wave in the Paria Canyon-Vermilion Cliffs Wilderness Area. On the way back home I had the opportunity to visit Galen Rowell’s Mountain Light Gallery in Bishop, California. I wrote about the experience in a blog entry titled Point of Reflection. Viewing Galen’s large prints and learning more about him piqued my interest in anything Galen so it seemed serendipitous to learn of this event and its timing.

The ceremony as you might expect was dominated by the memory of the late and great Galen Rowell and his wife Barbara Rowell. The evening was well balanced as a whole including the award ceremony and a lecture given by Tom Brokaw titled “Deleting the Virtual World”. The award ceremony lasted all of 10-15 minutes and included a speech by this year’s winner Beth Wald. Read more… »

On November 15th I had the opportunity to visit the Wave in the Paria Canyon-Vermilion Cliffs Wilderness Area with a couple of new friends. Although access to this area is tightly controlled it is a frequently photographed area and I was initially reluctant to travel out for the later reason. In retrospect I’m glad I made it out, even though my camera and lens took a hard fall on the rocks and are now on vacation at the Canon service center. Below is an image from my trip. I’ll be posting more in the near future as I work my way through evaluating/processing the images taken.

So this morning I was reading the LA Times while visiting relatives this Thanksgiving weekend. To my amazement there was an article about declining visitor traffic to National Parks (Camp? Outside? Um, no thanks).

I have to admit I was torn on this. My initial reaction was “good” since I’ve seen so many areas over used and abused as of late, but on the other hand my reaction was of horror knowing that National Parks wouldn’t be able to keep going with out revenue from increasing traffic & resulting admission fees since the Bush administration has reduced funding over the past 6 years. All politics aside what amazed me even more is how interest in US National Parks is decreasing.

The question of how to raise awareness and interest to National Parks seems like an obvious one to me… Read more… »

For those subscribing to the CalPhoto mail group here are a few recent photos (see the end of this post) of the Mount Whitney Portal Waterfall taken this past Friday, November 18, 2006 (edited - fixed the date).

I remember seeing this waterfall about 6 or 7 years ago in late August and it wasn’t nearly as beautiful as it is in November. The ice and increased water flow make for a much more dramatic scene.

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I just got back from a week in the field and today on my return home I stopped in to Galen Rowell’s Mountain Light Gallery in Bishop, California. I’ve always driven by at night on my way to my next shoot and today was the first time I actually could stop in.

I think its fair to say many photographers have been influenced by Ansel Adams, Galen Rowell and others, but today in viewing Galen’s images I felt photography.  I’ve never consciously thought about Galen’s influence on my interest in photography, but today it became clear how much he has. Several images I matched title to image with out looking, recognized too many images to count that were published in Outdoor Photographer or National Geographic and well just found myself sucked in to the images as I looked at them.

Sure being out in the field and being in the mode of looking for scenes to photograph had me in a particular mindset when visiting the gallery, but I realized something.
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Last week it was reported that mariners in the south Pacific came across a new island near Tonga. I was extremely fascinated by the brief CNN article I had read and later in the week a friend pointed me to a blog with the photos taken by the sailors (Stone Sea and Volcano) that found the new volcanic island. Very cool and very different. The idea of “pumice rafts” that extend for miles blew my mind. I’d never have thought that volcanic rock would float… but in retrospect I can see how if filled with gas.

The latest… NASA has posted images from space of the island emerging from the Pacific.

Today I’ve released th first episode of “EXIF and Beyond”, an enhanced podcast with a behind the camera perspective. My hope is that on some of my photo assignments I’ll be able to share a little of my thinking, approach, technique and/or background to a particular photograph. As I like to say… speak to the fore-thought, after-thought and everything in between of a photograph.

Click here to download EXIF and Beyond: Icer Air 2006 and/or check iTunes in the very near future. Check back often as I hope to have updates on a fairly regular basis.

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