Whenever you're in the vicinity of Salem, Oregon, you're not far from this park, which features many dramatic waterfalls, a couple of which are within quick walking distance of a trailhead. I stop there when I'm driving up highway 5, or when I'm heading from the coast towards Bend.
Layers of mineral-laden volcanic ash and clay create a wide palette of colors in the Painted Hills in central Oregon. I frequently set my sights on central Oregon when the coast is cloudy or rainy.
Given that our itinerary ended up getting reversed due to clouds on the Oregon Coast towards the beginning of the trip, that put us heading towards the coast around Independence Day.
We learned of Depoe Bay's July 3 disply as we sat in a coffee shop in Hood River, so we hopped in the car and made the trek.
That display over the rocky coast was great, but the following night at Seaside was a much bigger spectacle.
In addition to the official display at Seaside, people had brought a significant quantity of their own fireworks to shoot off on the spacious beach. We had purchased a pack of fountains in Montana knowing that Oregon didn't allow rockets and mortars, but we found that many people had purchased the disallowed varieties across the border in Washington.
One of our favorite things to do was to take long exposure shots while we "painted" with the 3' long sparklers we had brought. Fortuantely they lasted several minutes, so we could take several shots with each one!
We stayed on the beach until about 11:30pm, which was good since the traffic getting out of town was a challenge until well past midnight.
This turned out better than my shots here last Summer. I like the leading lines in the left foreground water (bubbles on the surface of the stream?).
Shot with 82mm circular polarizer. Adobe Lightroom adjustments: White Balance: Shade, slight bump in contrast (Canon 0EV RAW results are too low in contrast), Recovery (recover highlight detail), Punch (further detail recovery and contrast bump). See "more properties" in right column of the photo's page on Flickr for exposure detail (click on the photo).
Regarding using "shade" for the white balance "correction" It looks more like what we'd perceive (the waterfall as white), but less like as it actually was and the camera recorded (with a blue tone to the light). Let the debate on what "reality" really is ensue...
It looks like my new 1.5 TB disk drive may be damaged beyond repair. It was the primary storage for images form my most recent trips, and on the road I rarely have access to three power plugs for several hours to perform the backups that I should have been performing, so I may have lost months of work, including the first 9 days of my current trip to national parks with my kids.
I was just about to back it up...
I'll try a data recover service when I determine which ones are most likely to be able to work on physically damaged drives, but the drive was dropped, so it's most likely damaged beyond repair.
I'll only know the extent of the loss when I swing back by Northern California and see what data I have on my next most recent backup drive (I have another 1TB with me, but it contains mostly older files up to 2007).
Don't assume that you can back up your files tomorrow or on your next stop in a trip. They could be lost if you don't duplicate them immediately.
I recently had one of my photos receive over 2000 views due to being recommended to others on the site StumbleUpon.com. Then I saw this photo get a few hundred hits per day from there over the past few days.
Well, the momentum for this photo has just gone through the roof and this photo has received nearly 36,000 views!
It's encouraging to see people enjoy my photos. Welcome, Stumblers, and don't forget to check out my other favorite photos on Flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeffreysullivan/sets/72157603822583160/
When we arrived at Logan Pass in Glacier National Park, a couple of large Bighorn sheep were in the parking lot. I layed down on the ground with a 70-200mm lens to take the parking lot and spectators out of the composition.
Bannock is smaller than California's best ghost town Bodie, but a huge plus is that they allow you to go into the buildings. It's also open 8am-9pm, so as long as you don't visit in late June, you should be able to catch a sunset there.
Be forewarned though, the mosquitos are ferocious!
This is a teepee that you can rent for $25/night. This composition jumped out at me as I spotted the setting crescent moon from an adjacent campsite at Bannock State Park.
California is talking about closing 80% of its state parks and raising entry fees to $15, to address politicians' mismanagement and poor planning. In contrast, I'm traveling in Montana this week, and they have no budget deficit, no parks are closing, and state parks are FREE to Montana Residents. Montana also has no sales tax, while many California residents are now paying over 10%. Montana also obviously doesn't have as ridiculous a gas tax as California: gasoline is about $2.59, vs. $2.98 in the Sacramento area (without the Bay Area's add-on) or so when I left California two weeks ago. California's property tax is also among the highest burden per household in the nation, even comparing the percentage of home value tax rate to other states, but the burden is especially high when you consider the sky-high (and now unrealistically high) California property values that the taxes are based on.Forest fires in Yellowstone break up the lodgepole pine monoculture and open up land for other plants and animals.
Bighorn sheep feeding above a cliff of columnar basalt in Yellowstone National Park.
We spent last night at ghost town of Bannock, MT, and didn't see single ghost!
This morning we dug for quartz crystals at Crystal Park, and now we're in Missoula, on our way towards Glacier National Park!
Evening is a great time to walk the geyser basins. If you catch an eruption and place the sun at your back, you can catch a rainbow in the spray!
This is Beehive Geyser, one of the more intermittent geysers in the Old Faithful Geyser Basin, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming.
Sorry I've been offline so much this week... Yellowstone was established as a national park on March 1, 1872, but it seems no more likely to get Internet service now than was did then!
Hopefully a new vendor will replace Xanterra's vice-grip on 1900s-era concessions and services in the park will end some day, or perhaps the new head of the Department of Interior, Ken Salazar, will bring the parks into the 21st century? If so, better late than never!
Sometimes you're good, and sometimes you're just plain lucky. Most of the time I'd rather be lucky than good! I found this rainbow shortly after sunrise at Schwabacher's Landing.
We spent several stormy days in Grand Teton National Park, discovering that the tent we used for years in California is not exactly waterproof! Who knew that it could rain during camping season?
Light Painting (and HDR) highlighting ice crystals near the mouth of Lava River Cave in Newberry National Volcanic Monument near Bend , Oregon.
Unfortunately I dropped one of the colored filters that came with my Maglight, so my options for more shots like this are greatly reduced on this trip!
After waking up at Harris Beach on the Oregon Coast, spending a gray morning at the Battery Point Lighthouse in Crescent City, California then exploring the Stout Grove in Redwood National Park, we made our way to Crater Lake. We arrived just in time to catch sunset over these interesting snow melt channels.
The light over Crater Lake wasn't great in the right directions by the time we reached it, but the next morning we had a blast exploring Lava River Cave in Newberry National Volcanic Monument near near the town of Bend.
It turns out that this is a great time to visit Redwood National Park. It's a little late for the rhododendrons, but the ferns are bright green with new growth. This tree is in the Stout Grove, which is jointly managed with the State of California as part of Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park.
A funny stop on the way to Yellowstone from California, but the forecast of partly cloudy skies on the coast told me to go this way to catch the light.
We caught sunset at Harris Beach just North of Brookings, Oregon, but the woke to solid gray skies, so we headed back South to Redwood National Park, and turned towards Crater Lake National Park and the Bend area.
"Toto, I don't think we're in the Sierra Nevada any more."
We're off... on the way to Yellowstone... by way of the Pacific Ocean of course!
Saw a sign to the falls on Interstate 5, and made the short hike!
We caught sunset at Harris Beach in Oregon last night, but the coast is gray so we're heading to Redwood National Park, then most likely towards Crater Lake.
Sunrise at Convict Lake. I'll be back shortly to add more shots from this productive day.
Attendees were convergin on the Eastern Sierra from Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, New Jersey and Texas, but our day started a 4am with one more scouting trip to the june Lakes Loop.
The last full day before the workshop I scouted multiple locations on the South shore of Mono Lake, the Tioga Pass area, then Mono Lake's North shore.
Mono Lake had some muddier than usual spots due to recent rains, but some flowers were starting to appear, and birds were present in increasing numbers.
We found some flowers in some of the side canyons, then Pat Neeley headed down to Manzanar with his wife while Bill Wight and I headed out to Bodie.
Bodie had nice clouds and light, but we moved through quickly to get back and meet the fourth instructor, Kevin McNeal, back at the Mammoth Mountain Inn. 
We all went up to shoot at the nearby Minaret View , but the clouds didn't break much to give us a proper show.
After leaving Minden I stayed in the Bridgeport area, which I figured was more or less the North end of our range of the workshop, since we'd be based out of Mammoth Lakes.
I started by catching sunrise on the Sawtooth Range reflected in Bridgeport Reservoir. I heard some dogs barking and people talking in a nearby lakeside RV park and marina. As I was turning to catch sun rays in the clouds overhead, I turned to look right in the face of a large black bear that was running directly at me at a full run. He saw me about the same time as I saw him, and he took a sharp right hand turn to run off the road and towards the hills.
I moved on to other nearby lakes, where I really liked the refelctions, but they'd be a stretch to reach for a 5:15am twilight from Mammoth.
I explored some side roads and found some patches of lupine, iris, and a hot spring.
A short time before sunset I looked out of the Starbucks in Minden, Nevada, where I was catching up on photo editing and email, and I noticed some great light coming through the storm clouds outside. I packed up and went across the street to get some gas. Soon a rainbow appeared, then as I drove to find a good angle to catch it, its double.
After getting a couple of slid shots from this angle, I decided to move and see if I could get a different compostion with more foreground interest.
The attention soon shifted however to the oncoming sunset, which streamed through gaps in the clouds in shades of orange, magenta, purple and blue light. What a great way to start the trip!
I headed out late to squeeze in a few more scouting days before my upcoming Mountain Light Workshops trip, so I stopped a couple of hours down the road in Hope Valley. After a couple of mediocre stops I found this large, steaming vernal pool with a moderately large rock in it for foreground interest.
Moving to a different side of the pond I was able to catch the rock with different mountains as a backdrop.
A vertical orientation provided yet another interesting compositional variation.
I've had this image for nearly 3 years but never produced an edit that was good enough to show anyone. The original RAW file was pretty low in contrast straight out of the camera, and the gray on gray color tones didn't enable the funnels to stand out well enough. The standard dodge feature in Photoshop was an awkward tool to try to use accurately.
My first epiphany upon rediscovering this shot this week was to try the Automate -> Singel File Conversion feature in Photomatix 3.1 (HDR) software. That allows you to perform tone mapping (detail and contrast enhancement) on a single file.
The second productive technique was to bring the output result from Photomatix into Adobe Lightroom 2.3. In addition to an overall contrast boost, there's a preset called "Punch"(in the Library features) that among other things seems to increase local contrast. It may increase middle grays, as opposed to operating strongly on the lightest and darkest areas, but whatever it does, it works. I also used the adjustment brush (in the Develop section) to select the funnel clouds and increase contrast. The adjustment brush tries to identify, help you select, and operate on the content you're trying to modify, so it can be more efficient and effective than a simple dodge or burn.
Lightroom also lets you adjust the radius of the tools you're using simply by rolling your mouse wheel, and its dust spot removal tool lets you see where it's selecting replacement data and pick new data to substitute, making dust spot removal much more flexible, effective, and faster. You can even copy your dust spot removal steps to other photos, since the other photos probably have the same defects (you can go back and modify ones that don't work well due to different underlying image data).
Overall, image editing tools have gotten more powerful, flexible, easy and efficient to use, and more effective.
Coming soon to newsstands... my interview in Photographer Magazine.
No, you can't read it!
Well, probably not.
It's the Ukraine edition! If anyone knows a good Web site translation tool, I'd like to read it myself! The interview article hasn't been posted to Photographer Magazine yet, but I'll publish a link when it comes out.
Exposures of .8, 2 and 5 seconds were combined in Photomatix HDR software to get this result. The longest exposure contributed the detail in the moss and rocks. The middle exposure contributed a lot of the water detail. One advantage of merging in shorter exposures (such as the shortest one) is that you can get a bit of the spray to keep the result from abstracting too much.
You may not have ever thought about it, but the sunlight reflecting off of the full moon is actually bright enough to create rainbows at night! This phenomenon is easiest to see in the mist of waterfalls, when the angle between the moon's light and your position is just right.
Fortunately if you'd like to know when they're most likely to be visible in Yosemite Valley, Don Olson of the Department of Physics at Texas State University has made it easy for you, publishing predictions for Upper Yosemite Fall and Lower Yosemite Fall.
Lower Yosemite Fall from Cook's Meadow.
Moonbow reflected in a vernal pool in Cook's Meadow.
From the short hiking path to the base of Lower Yosemite Fall.
The dogwood are in full boom in Yosemite Valley, with no new buds apparent. The trees have most of their leaves showing, which can obscure the flowers somewhat (for photography it's best to catch them a little on the early side).
Up at higher elevations the dogwoods are just starting to bloom, with a few early ones showing up in the 5000 to 6000 foot elevations as you leave the Valley South through the Wawona Tunnel and on both sides of Crane Flat. I'd give those areas another week or so.
The redbud trees are also blooming. For this shot I chose somewhat of a reverse composition, where the framing element is the subject, and what normally would be a strong subject (Lower Yosemite Falls) is a background element to show context.
Yosemite National Park's Glacier Point road is open, so I headed up to Sentinel Dome for sunset. Tioga Pass is targeted to open Friday, May 22. 
Not the best of my photos, but I thought it was a cool thing to see, so I'm sharing it anyway.Once or twice a year I head up to Mendocino to go diving for Abalone, and I also occasionally reach the California Coast further North on trips to and from the Oregon Coast.
Van Damme State Park just south of Mendocino has a fern canyon a couple of miles hike from the campground. The cove there can be good for sunset or sunrise if there are clouds in the sky, and you can get a reflection of any sky color in the creek lagoon.
Russian Gulch just North of Mendocino has a nice view of a bridge past a cove and tree-topped sea stack. You'll see some wildflowers on hikes in either Van Damme or Russian Gulch State Parks. There's also a small lighthouse just North of Russian Gulch (it requires a 1/2 mile walk to reach). There's also a botanical garden in the area (Fort Bragg I believe).
There's an old railroad trestle just North of Fort Bragg that can have nice backlighting just before sunset. You may enjoy shooting around Noyo Harbor in Fort Bragg as well.
Point Arena is about 45 minutes South, and it has the tallest lighthouse ont he West Coast, which you can capture in good compositions from half a dozen directions.
About halfway from Mendocino to Point Arena is Greenwood Beach, where the sun will set near offshore rocks.
Three miles or so further south are Schooner Gulch and Bowling Ball Beach (visit Bowling Ball at low tide to see the round rock formations). Osprey are often diving for surf perch off of Bowling Ball (I watched up to 9 or 10 of them fishing at once).
If you drive up Highway 1 you can stop at Kruse Rhododendron State Park . The flowers peak in May, but may still be around by June. You can catch some fern and redwood shots there anyway.
You'll see some interesting cliff and surf views just North of Satl Point State Park.
The Sea Ranch area has a tiny church with bizarre architecture just East of Hwy 1.
Further South, the town of Bodega Bay has a large white church that Ansel Adams took a well known shot of.
Whether you drive to the coast from Santa Rosa to Bodega Bay or Jenner, or via the Anderson Valley, you will drive past vineyards and wineries that could provide photographic opportunities, especially if you call ahead and identify one that will give you a cellar tour.
Driving down the Russian River towards Jenner there's a unique golf course set in old growth redwoods. Just past the town of Jenner near the mouth of the Russian River are a lot of sea lions and elephant seals waiting for steelhead and salmon to snack on.
If you want to do something a little different, there's a dive shop in Fort Bragg that can rent you everything you need to dive or snorkel. Call ahead to see if they rent underwater housings that will fit your camera. The cove at Van Damme has abalone, nudibranchs, etc., but the kelp may be getting pretty thick by early June, and the somewhat warmer water in the cove a bit clouded with algae (Russian Gulch may be a better dive spot then, or you can get a recommendation from the shop). Check for particularly low tides during your visit and you may be able to catch some nice shots in tide pools.
There have been great clouds in the Mono Basin over the past couple of days. Now that the lake is warming, there's also a lot of algae growing, but the brine shrimp and alkali fly larvae aren't present in large enough numbers to keep up with it, so the water is a very interesting emerald color.
My day started near Mammoth Lakes in the Owens Valley. I was exploring some salt falts and enjoying the sunrise color on the Sierra Nevada.
An area of dried, cracked mud provided nice foreground detail for some vertical images.
At this point I had been working straight for minutes, so I decided that I needed a break, which I took in a nearby hot spring (it's a tough job, but someone has to do it).
While the morning air remained still, I stopped by some nearby vernal pools to see if I could catch a reflection of the Sierras. At one of the bigger ones was lined with a reddish algae, which contrasted particularly well with the blue sky and white clouds and snow-capped mountains.
Later in the morning I met landscape photographer Bill Wight to share a few of my "secret spots" in the Eastern Sierra with him, and to try to scout out a few new ones for the landscape photography workshop we'll be leading here June 3-6. Many sagebrush stripes and undercarriage drags later (my minivan doesn't have the clearance of his pickup truck, but that rarely stops me from trying), we had made our way up to Mono Lake and explored several of the less visited and lesser known sites. 
First we focused on the exotic "sand tufa" limestone formations which form as calcium-laden water runs through sand.
The sand tufa structures look like intricate and delicate sand castles rising as much as 3 feet out of the ground, up to several feet across.
By this point clouds were building in the sky, so I suggested an area which would provide many opportunities to catch reflections. I experimented with my circular polarizer, using it on some shots to maximize water color and minimize reflections, then rotating it to still help with cloud contrast and definition with minimal interference on cloud reflections (as shown here).
Some of the reflections were found in side pools featuring salt-crusted, cracked mud... a great foreground!
The wind was still up as susnet approached, so I selected a site that would be fairly protected by the wind but still have a decent view of any remaining clouds to the East that might catch color as the sun set. The color show to the East wasn't as intense as I had hoped, but we had completed a long productive day of exploration and photography, so I couldn't complain.
Help people find my photos!
Recently I had the opportunity to take a few runs with pro freeskier Kevin Wherritt at Alpine Meadows Ski Resort. I only wish that I still had the knees for these kinds of antics myself!
Check it out!
http://adventure.nationalgeographic.com/2009/01/daily-catch/adventure-photography
My photo of Horsetail Falls backlit at sunset appears 11 photos earlier in their lineup!
It isn't often that you get to see the best of the best compete. Today I skied at Squaw Valley USA ski resort and was treated to the U.S. Freestyle Championships mogul competition.
Under the Red Dog lift on a steep expert slope the best U.S. freestyle skiers competed to determine a new national champion. Speed, style, and trick performed off of two large jumps would determine the winner. I parked myself near the jumps to enjoy the acrobatics.
...engine compartment!!
I was driving my son to soccer tryouts yesterday on a highly curvy section of freeway at about 60MPH when I suddenly lost my power steering. I could still turn the wheel, so I figured that the power steering unit had failed, but I decided to try wrestle the steering wheel and make it to the next exit.
Next a warning light came on, informing me that the battery was not charging. So apparently I had lost a belt running to both the alternator and the power steering unit, but I should still be able to make it to the exit.
Then another warning flashed that informed me that the car was overheating. I glanced at the temperature guage, and it was in the red rapidly rising until it was pegged on high. So the belt went to the water pump as well. Time to pull over.
I found a spot with as much room as possible to get away from the trucks flying by, and opened the hood.
I jumped back, startled, as I found a medium-sized rabbit sitting on top of the valve cover, looking back at me. Apparently he had climbed up in the engine compartment to get warm the night before, then later while I was driving, somehow knocked the belt off that ran many of the engine accessories. I started laughing hysterically, closed the hood, and ran back to the car to get my son so I could show him the cause of the engine failure.
We had a good laugh, and the rabbit ran off (having transported himself to far greener pastures than the snowy elevation where he climbed aboard).
We were able to limp the van toa Chevy dealer ship by repeating the process of allowing it to cool down and driving it until it overheated. For or five cycles like that and one new and much less furry belt later, we were back on our way to soccer.
Amazingly the rabbit seemed to be fine. Clearly he was very, very lucky. Perhaps having four rabbits feet gave him some luck after all?
Mono Lake comes through yet again with a stunning sunset. It's hard to go wrong here!
I've always loved the BLM campground "The Pit" in Bishop. Well, it is a pit, literally, but it's up on a bluff with panoramic views, so the light at dawn is spectacular. For photography it sucks due to some power lines conveniently placed between the campground and the Sierras, but that doesn't stop your brain from catching a nice buzz from the dazzling alpenglow beaming off of the snowy peaks looming just to the West. (I'll post more pics shortly...)
Finding myself so disoriented that I didn't know what day it was, I had visited the Grand Canyon a day early, and was returning to California at such a pace that I was going to get back a day faster than expected... TWO days early!
So I would miss this full moon rise over the Grand Canyon, but I had the opportunity to catch it somewhere around the Southern end of the Sierra Nevada. Since the Owens Valley is 9-10,000 feet deep, I knew I'd have to drive up on the mountains to the East to get a low enough horizon to catch the Full moon with some color as the sun was setting to the West. The sparse Joshua tree forest near the entrance to Death Valley National Park seemed like a good bet.
This was taken in Tucson Mountain Park, adjacent to Saguaro National Park on the outskirts of Tucson, Arizona.
There was a group of people having a memorial service on the hill behind me. At this point they were engaged in an impressive rendition of "Amazing Grace".
Have you ever wanted to take a photo of a nebula? I stopped yesterday at the Kitts Peak Observatory and discovered that they allow photographers to rent their telescope for an entire night. www.noao.edu/outreach/aop/
You can take amazing photographs of many remote features of the universe: www.noao.edu/outreach/aop/mainimages.html
Rental is $525 for an entire night for two photographers plus "room and board' for $75-90 more each, although you may not sleep. You can use their Santa Barbara Instruments ST-6303E CCD camera, but it is only 3072 x 2048 resolution. These 6MP CCD cameras normally need to take exposures using red, green, and blue filters then color and combine the monochrome results later to get color images. You can use your own digital camera, but film cameras can cature images in one exposure without the filters, so that might allow more efficient use of the telescope time: www.noao.edu/outreach/aop/filmprep.html
I wonder how any of those guidelines might change using the newest Canon and Nikon full frame DSLRs shooting at ISO 1600, 3200, or 6400.
One disadvantage is that it takes some time to calibrate the telescope to each DSLR, so it is may be best to use one DSLR for the night (or for two photographers to each take 1/2 of the night): www.noao.edu/outreach/aop/visprep.html
Organ Pipe National Monument in Arizona experienced decent rain this year, but they had freezing temperatures followed by a week of 90+ degree days. The wildflowers don't do well with wild temperature swings, so this year the flowers are scattered or found in small pockets rather than carpeting the desert floor.
When the light gets boring... kill some time with an "I was here" shot! At least get in the shade and use fill flash...
A ton of people were enjoying field of sunflowers in the town of Borrego Springs, but apparently it wasn't as intense as last year. As one visitor described to her friend over the phone "the Chamber of Commerce must have written the wildflower report on the State Park Web site"!
The hills in the park should get a lot more colorful in a week or two when the brittlebrush gets going.
The sun was rising to "boring' clear skies, so o looked for interesting rocks and shadows to focus on.
I'm off on tthe road again! My first stop this time was Antelope State Poppy Reserve in Lancaster, California. There are very few blooms now, the peak is 4-6 weeks away, but it was nice to break up the drive with a photography stop.
Next stop: Joshua Tree National Park.
National Geographic selected this photo of Horsetail Falls in Yosemite to display as their Photo of the Day on their Adventure Web site:
http://adventure.nationalgeographic.com/2009/01/daily-catch/adventure-photography
It's also available on their front page in their "Top Stories" (#2):
http://adventure.nationalgeographic.com/
Woo hoo!
This photo has been selected by a prominent publisher for their 2011 weather calendar. I'll let you know when it comes out!
I currently have two photos in the California State Parks Foundation 2009 calendar:
flickr.com/photos/jeffreysullivan/2427336103/
flickr.com/photos/jeffreysullivan/2197562027/
Aftger popping into Starbucks in Coursegold for some Internet time, I continued on to Yosemite Valley just in time for sunset.
This is when the sunset light should have been striking Horsetail Falls as it spilled off or El Capitan, but the waterfall didn't seem to be flowing, and the light didn't reach that spot anyway. The sunset light selectively falling on Horsetail Falls is a rare annual event, so unless the weather forecast for this weekend clears up enough for me to make the trek to check it out, it looks like next Winter may be my next opportunity to catch this incredible natural light show.
After a luck break with the weather at the Grand Canyon the evening before, I decided to see if I could get lucky again at Joshua Tree National Park. Obviously, I was not disappointed.
You have to be careful when shooting under these conditions. People often discover the arms from these cacti hitching a ride on their clothes, resulting in the name "Jumping Cholla". It's almost as if they jump up onto you!
