DC Morning

So I've been TDY in the Washington DC area for the past month and a half and finally got the chance to take off a morning to take a look at DC through the camera.  Getting up at 0500 is not fun, but you beat the tourists, get great lighting, and are able to catch a lot of the sites without any distractors between you and the lens.

When you Epically Fail at Planning

So, my hiking buddies and I decided to hike in Chiricahua National Monument to close out our last weekend in south-east Arizona.  Normally, I over-plan and over-pack, but after destroying my body with two consecutive weekends of over-16 mile hikes with at least 3,500 feet elevation change, I deliberately played it chill this time… too chill.  I forgot my camera and realized it a good fifteen miles into our 100 mile drive taking us east on I-10 and about 45 minutes south of Wilcox, AZ (so in the middle of nowhere southeastern Arizona, you would never get to Chiricahua unless you knew where to find it in the first place).

Great.  Epic Fail.  The one time I wanted to concentrate on photography and not on my crazy acts of physical and manly prowess.  So, I was stuck with taking photos with my iPhone.  Now, granted, the iPhone is a marvelous camera… for a phone.  But it was no replacement especially in the horrible back-lighting in which most of the rocks were situated that Saturday afternoon.  I really needed good exposure control so I didn’t silhouette all my subjects.

Anyway, I had a few successes… not great by any stretch of the imagination but stuff I can remember for years later of a truly gorgeous place.  Chiricahua is a magnificent bowl (think of a giant volcano crater about ten miles across and one thousand feet of gentle slopes, filled with the most awesome rock formations outside of Utah.  It was commonplace to find massive 100-ton plus boulders perched precariously atop one square-foot of a rock pillars.

So, we took it easy and only hiked a little over 8 miles… and had some fun bouldering.

Adventure Photography

The Colorado River in the Grand Canyon

When doing adventure photography, unless you are freelancing for a particular project and have to deliver results, concentrate on your adventure just as much, if not more, than your photography.  You are doing it to have a good time and get some great pictures in the process.  Getting wrapped around the handle in getting the perfect shots will leave you only exhausted and frustrated.

trudging back up to the top

Even before I got into photography, I would devour the awesome photography contained in magazines like National Geographic.  I grew up hiking and camping in California (Yosemite in particular, where I hiked Half Dome, 16 mi round trip, 4,000 vertical feet as a twelve-year old).  But it’s only recently where the bug for extreme adventuring bit me again, coinciding perfectly with my renewed interest in photography.  So, I recently had a free, four-day weekend and I convinced two of my buddies to go spend an incredibly awesome and bromantic time camping on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon… in the winter.

Staving off the Cold

Braving 14 degree nights and one morning snow-storm, we took the place down in less than 48 hours.  In planning the trip (I used the National Park Service web site which is a fabulous resource for planning!), I wanted to schedule at least one amazing hike down into the Canyon.  I chose the Bright Angel trail due to its popularity.

The Grand Canyon from the Bright Angel Trailhead

My main desire in going out was to take breath-taking photographs of the canyon, but I also wanted to just do something plain manly and prove my toughness, so our hike devolved into a brutal trek to the very bottom of the canyon, with no plans on spending the night.  Treating each warning sign as a challenge (of which there had to be at least five) imploring us to not go to the bottom and back in one day, or we would die; we made it all 8.2 miles and 4,460 feet down to the Colorado River in under 3 hours.

The Colorado River 8.2 miles, and 4,460 vertical feet from the top

That was the easy part.  I managed to get some pretty amazing (in my opinion) photos on the way down.  That all went out the window as we made our way back up.  We had about five hours of daylight to make it to the top again, but with testosterone and ego coursing through our veins, we blazed a trail back up the first four miles and 1,500 feet faster than we went down.  Finally, we were left with the major task of climbing the remaining four miles and almost 3,000 feet straight up the switchbacks snaking along the South Rim face.  Upon hitting the snow line with three miles still to go, my legs started cramping due to dehydration and my ridiculously high metabolism.  Popping a few granola bars helped, but those last three miles were the toughest of my life.  Photography was right out.

Almost there

Concentrating on simply one foot in front of he other, we managed to trudge our way through the packed snow, past the tourists, dipping their heads underneath the Rim to see what the place was all about; risking damage to their Marc Ecko and Tommy Hilfiger ‘adventure’ sports-wear.  We wondered if we would see the idiot twenty-somethings we nicknamed Lugz and Uggs (on their chosen footwear) who made fun of our chosen wardrobe on the way down.  Sorry, there’s a reason why the pros use Merrils, Columbia, North Face, and Mountain Hardwear.

So, we reached the top.  I am happy with the results photographically.  Of course, there could have been other great photos along the way had I been more deliberate in my photography.  But I used the confidence I had with my eye for good opportunities and confidence in my equipment (only a Nikon D80 with stock 17-105DX 3.5-5.6 lens) to snap shots as they occurred to me.

This left me with a slew of pretty good shots from the top, all the way to the bottom, a chance to triple-punch my man-card with some friends, once-in-a-lifetime memories and sense of accomplishment, and calves that feel like they were beat with baseball bats by Verne Troyer.  Now, time to elevate my legs and descend back into my coma.

30-second exposure with a commercial airliner creating the meteor effect

The Right Time. The Right Place

Two critical factors separate forgettable photographs from unforgettable ones:  timing and location.  This is one lesson others have taught me about landscapes and nature photography.  Beginners wonder why they can never recreate great photographs when they are on the trail around prominent, photogenic landscape features; and my friends wonder why I have to wake up at five in the morning or overnight it somewhere with my camera.

A general rule of thumb is to position yourself in a breathtaking location, and wait until the hours of sunrise and/or sunset.  Light is generally more pleasing to the eye during these 'golden hours.'  And, in most locations (especially in the desert) those hours mean shifts in temperature and usually small cloud formations.  Nothing is quite as dull as a hazy, bright sunny sky with nothing to look at.

Just this weekend, I hiked up into the Huachuca Mountains in southeast Arizona, near the Mexican border.  I caught the standard, and pleasing (and usually totally predictable in the desert) sunset over the Patagonia Mountains some fifty miles west of me across the San Rafael Valley, a beautiful, completely desolate wilderness in the high desert.

What I was aiming for was to catch the standard, beautiful Southwest U.S. sunrise, but my timing was off.  Being the high desert in winter-time, I suffered through fog with gale-force winds ripping across the small saddle I camped out in.  Not to mention the over 8,000 foot elevation gave me mild hypoxia and made it very difficult to get a fire going.  So, after a night of struggling to stay warm, I stepped out of the tent into a blanket of fog... morning sunrise ruined.  I trudged back down to the trail head when I stepped below the cloud layers.

 Like I said, timing, and location.

Hiatus

Unfortunately, duty calls, and I will be unavailable starting tomorrow, October 24 until around Christmas time.  I have several schools I have to attend and will be unavailable during that time.  However, if you do wish to schedule something with me around Christmas, I will be able to.  I just do not have the exact dates available.

Thanks!

Photo Shoot During Break in the Storm

It's one of the oldest clichés around: You have to play the cards you are dealt. It’s also an uncompromising truth … especially for the photographer. Such was the case this past Monday with Dawn, Kelly, and daughters. Dawn had set up this shoot, working around various schedules with her family and myself. We had come to decide on Monday, possibly the only day we’d be able to fit it in with the hectic schedules we all had. Well, God, in His inscrutable wisdom, decided to park a tropical depression over northern Florida and send rain-band after rain-band our way that Columbus Day weekend.

Not wanting to waste the opportunity and following the advice of many photographers who have had tremendous photos come from, not despite, horrendous weather, I kept an eye on the radar and decided to push through.

Thankfully, no rain spoiled our day. The wind, on the other hand was nearly catastrophic. Wind played havoc with my subjects’ hair, even surprising me by ending up blurred on some shots due to the low light (necessitating slower shutter speed). Wind also destroyed my ability to use flash lighting during this cloudy day. I had a shoot-through umbrella positioned camera-left on my first site. After a few frames to nail the flash stop setting, a wind gust took my stand, flash, and umbrella parasailing across Forsythe Park. In the melee, my radio sync receiver was broken and with no back-up, my ability to use flash was gone.
Despite these challenges, I managed to use natural light to get enough decent shots to satisfy.

This shoot taught me some valuable lessons:

1. Always treat every challenge as an opportunity.

2. Savannah, especially Forsyth Park, is so much more photogenic when overcast, than when subjected to harsh sunlight.

3. When dealing with low-light, don’t forget to change your ISO to a higher setting to avoid blurry movement.

4. Never use Aperture-Priority mode with moving subjects!!! Made that mistake when shooting the family walking through the park (through various levels of shade). The A-Priority mode submarined my shutter speed and ruined many shots because of blurred movement.

5. Be grateful for Photoshop and a modicum of post-processing ability.

Special Offer to Ferguson Ave. Baptist Church

Brothers and sisters from FAB. Welcome to my humble little site.

Now through October 21, I am offering a complimentary 2-hour photo session for you and your family. It's first-come, first-served basis. For details, please see the "FAB Church Offer" page listed on the top right.