Earlier this year I had quite the late night adventure driving the Big Sur coastline and photographing the stars on a moonless night. I had some time to enjoy the vastness of the night sky as I was shooting a time-lapse. While laying there in the dark, the combination of hearing crashing waves and watching the stars provided an interesting juxtaposition. Visually I could get lost scanning the stars, but the ocean se
Having just returned from central California where the grass has turned golden brown, I thought it might be nice to take a moment to go back in time a few months and revisit the views while it was green. Pictured in late afternoon light are the rolling hills near Morro Bay, California. If you look carefully you can make out the view of the monstrous Morrow Rock, a 581-foot volcanic plug, in the distance. As always
One of the most amazing sights often overlooked on dark nights is the Milky Way. Tired, road weary and focusing on the road ahead its easy for travelers to miss out on the the scene above them at night. On a recent trip to Yosemite National Park I made a conscious effort to stop the car every so often when driving to survey the night sky above me. It wasn’t an easy thing to do due to a good amount of sleep de
One of the many things I love about Yosemite National Park is that it’s equally photogenic at night as it is during the day. During my last visit I focused on astro-landscapes, but Mother Nature had other things in mind with a lot of clouds. Fortunately for me the heaviest clouds cleared just in time for me to take this photo and several others. My location of choice was Glacier Point as the increased altitude
30 minutes of amazing transformation is all it took to change a drab gray stormy view of Yosemite’s Half Dome and Nevada Falls into a dynamic fiery rainbow filled scene. Literally in the 11th hour after a full day of foggy and overcast weather I witnessed a sunset like I’ve never seen anywhere in all my travels. As if scripted, storm clouds rose above Yosemite Valley and were illuminated by a thin pipe
A visit to the Monterey coastline just south of San Francisco, California never fails to inspire. Recently I decided to use this location to test some camera bodies (Hasselblad H5D, Nikon D800 and Canon 5D Mark III) and squeezed in a little extra time to try out a new Singh-Ray Mor-Slo 10-stop filter. While I didn’t have time to stack filters and experiment further I was very happy with the outcome. Gear aside
This weekend I went out with some new gear to test, namely the Hasselblad H5D medium format DSLR and Hasselblad 300mm f/4.5 lens via BorrowLenses.com. The location of choice was Asilomar State Beach. The H5D has roughly twice the resolution as my Canon 5D Mark II with a whopping 40 megapixels per image. I had been curious to find out if Hasselblad’s reputation was hype or not. To cut to the chase I’ll te