I took this photo of Thunder Creek Falls a year ago during a drive over Haast Pass, going from Wanaka to Fox Glacier, on the South Island of New Zealand. This impressive 28m waterfall is only about a 5 minute walk from the road through the rain forest. You can read some more about this portion of my trip here.
Here’s another one “from the vault”. This was taken back in November 2005 when Scott Bacon and I went for a pre-dawn hike up to Niwot Ridge in Indian Peaks above Boulder, Colorado. It was only the second time I had shot my 4×5 field camera, and the first decent photo I ever made with it. I was shooting with a 90mm Nikkor lens that Richie Voninski was kind enough to lend me.
I remember back then when I was just starting out with large format, I had all the pieces of my gear wrapped in socks and stuffed in different little bags throughout my backpack, and keeping track of it all was quite a challenge with numb fingers up on this cold windy ridge, trying to get it together before the sunrise alpenglow light faded away. In fact as I figured out soon enough, one of the biggest boosts for my large format photography performance was to get a camera case that could fit and organize all the different gear into one convenient and quickly accessible case.
Anyhow, when I got the film back from that morning, I was also introduced to one of the joys of 4×5 film, when most of my transparencies had big light-leak streaks going through the frame. (A warped Kodak Readyload holder was to blame). This was one of the ok shots, but you can still see faint traces of the light leakage at the bottom. So that was a good lesson to try to never let direct sunlight hit the camera while film is exposed.
Every so often, when searching for stock imagery requests or just passing time, I go through my old photo archives and find a photo that I passed over before. Instead of just leaving those old photos to “collect dust” on the hard drive, I’ll post some of them here on my blog, in a new category called “From the Vault“. The photos I’ll post will be ones taken in the same month as I post them (but different years).
This shot here is from Laguna de los Tres, one of the beautiful high lakes in Parque Nacional los Glaciares in Argentina. Above the lake towers El Chaltén (aka Monte Fitz Roy) and its lower neighbor Cerro Poincenot. I took this photo with my 4×5 camera in November 2008 during a one month photo trip in Patagonia. I used a polarizer to bring out the turquoise color of the lake under the midday sunlight.
This was my last shot from a very productive morning. I had woken up early and hiked up to this lake in the darkness and dawn light, arriving just in time to capture my favorite photo of the trip, of the sunrise alpenglow on Fitz Roy. From the lake I then climbed up the knife ridge of Cerro Madsen, to its summit which provided an in-your-face view of the peaks and glaciers of the Fitz Roy massif. This was one of the most fun and awe-inspiring summit scrambles I’ve done to date, all the more so since I was only going on my own surveillance of the route and was unsure if it would even be doable in the first place. Anyhow, by the time I returned back down to the lake in the late morning, the first groups of hikers were just starting to arrive.
Here’s a sweet video by Andrew Stokes-Rees showing some awesome wintery mountains in Morocco.
Thanks to kQ (and SummitPost) for the tip.
Tomorrow morning I take off to Norway for six weeks! I have no itinerary but my rough plan is to head north from Oslo, traveling mostly up the coastline checking out the mountains, fjords, and towns along the way. My main destination is the Lofoten Islands, a series of rugged islands with little fishing villages surrounded by towering peaks that soar straight up out of the ocean like symmetrical granite pyramids.
I am renting a car for the entire six weeks. This is kind of an idiotic thing to do in a country that has one of the most advanced public train networks in the world; however, having a car will enable me to haul around all my large format camera gear and all my camping gear.
While I’m there I plan on updating this blog with my latest adventures and stories, so be sure to check back often to see what I’m up to! In the meantime, check out all this great Norwegian (and Swedish) music, below the fold:
HA! As always, well stated by What the Duck.
This video has me pumped. Not because I would ever do this sort of thing, but because of the incredible Norwegian scenery these guys are jumping off of. As some of you may know, I am traveling to Norway this summer for six weeks! I actually bought my plane tickets way back in January, which was probably too early since I’ve been fairly obsessed about it since. I can’t wait.
I have no other news. This spring has been a big disappointment here in the San Juans; the dust storms of last month have destroyed the snowpack. Not only is the snowboarding season finished two months too early, but the snow looks so ugly that I don’t even want to do any photography in the mountains. The upside is that I’ve gotten LOTS of work done!
In about a week I’m headed up to the Tetons for a week of riding big lines there, where the snow is [hopefully] untouched by the desert dust.
Every so often, I have vivid dreams about photographing an amazing landscape bathed in fantastic light. The dreams are often very thorough, including the events preceding the shoot, scouting the location, the actual photography with the camera itself, and the sometimes the stoke of successfully capturing the moment. In the more frustrating dreams, I’m confused and fumble with my gear, or I’ve forgotten some crucial equipment, or I’m too late for the light, rushing around trying to find my spot and missing the moment. Those are actually the forgiving dreams. The worst are the successful shoots, because I always wake up extremely disappointed that it was a dream and all my photos have vanished.
Last spring I wrote a post about the snowpack dust pollution that is becoming so common every year in Colorado. As far as I can tell, it’s getting worse and worse. In the last few weeks, we’ve had a good set of storms coming through, bringing much welcome snow to the mountains. Unfortunately, along with the snow has come wave after wave of dust.
Today I noticed an eerie orangish glow from outside, and looking out the window I saw what could easily be mistaken for wildfire smoke. Brown dust-filled clouds are currently streaming in over the mountains. I have never seen anything like this before. It is utterly disgusting. The photo above was taken around 4pm today; the brown color is the color of the clouds – not sunset, not smoke, just clouds full of dirt.
Yet again we can kiss goodbye any chance of a prolonged spring skiing season, as the dust will surely wreak havoc on the late-season sun-baked snowpack.
Yesterday was a blizzard most of the day in Ouray, so today my friend Paul and I headed out for a morning powder lap. Today was a beautiful calm bluebird day, and the powder was oh so delightful.
Skier: Paul McElrea.
Lots of fun hits and features in this long gully. Here’s a helmet cam of my ride:
Click here to watch the Quicktime video.
