I felt at home in the mountains in Georgia, watching the clouds play with snow-capped peaks, admiring massive glaciers carving endless valleys, and exploring tiny villages in the alpine environment. While mountains might be everywhere, it felt special here. A bit more rugged, unexplored, and hard-to-reach, but all the more beautiful.
Here are some of the scenes I captured in the Caucasus mountains of Georgia.
Caucasus
Georgia
The Eastern Sierras is not just a desert landscape with dry granite peaks, but is a land of glistening lakes and towering mountains where mountain weather comes alive. The first one captures the reflection of the rainbow after a late afternoon thunderstorm, while the next frames the clear reflections of the mountain landscape typical of the Eastern Sierras.
Inyo National Forest
CA USA
In an alpine landscape, I normally strive to shoot reflections of the mountains catching the first light of the day. But sometimes, it pays to look in the opposite direction as well.
These were taken minutes apart at the same lake in the pre-dawn light.
Inyo National Forest
CA USA
As I was driving around the afternoon after a drifting thunderstorm, I found many of the classic pastoral scenes inspired by this region, such as the rolling green hills anchored by a lone cypress or a farmstead, of red barns framing green fields of wheat, of puffy white clouds marching endlessly into the horizon.
Here is one such scene from the byways that crisscross the Palouse region.
Palouse
WA USA
Having spent most of my life in places surrounded by mountains, the thought of seeing vast open spaces, or in common parlance, 'big sky country' was limited to my visits to National Parks along the eastern edge of the Rockies and the long drives across in the Great Plains. I remember my first glimpse of such a sky while hiking up to a mountain vista in Glacier National Park and looking east into the vast undulating hills of Montana. I remember seeing the land and sky stretch endlessly to the blurred horizon. The great machinations of industrial agriculture, barns, silos, harvesters and tractors were but mere dots on this landscape, where even mile long grain trains seemed like tiny caterpillars crawling across the earth.
Theodore Roosevelt National Park was another place where I got to experience this big sky country. And on that fateful day, the sky was made even more dramatic by the appearance of a chain of nascent cumulonimbus clouds stretching across the badlands and the great plains beyond. I tried to capture the light falling on the precipitation from the middle of these thunderstorm cells as they resembled mushrooms marching across the parklands.
Theodore Roosevelt National Park
ND USA
From the distance, it just appeared as a mass of white in a scorched desert environment. Plants seem to have shied away from this natural bowl between two mountain ranges where this mass lay. And as I got closer, the discernible shape of dunes emerged out of this mass of white.
White Sands was a surreal place, where the pure white gypsum sand place tricks with your mind: it looked like snow, behaved like sand, and flowed like salt, and yet, it had all the characteristics of a regular sand dune. And when the winds picked up and whipped into a frenzy, the dust storm of white sand was like nothing else.
I am excited to be returning back to this amazing place. And while it was a National Monument then, it has since been upgraded to a National Park status. Hopefully that brings more attention to this unique corner of New Mexico
White Sands National Park
NM USA
The summer of 2015 was special for me in many ways; the foremost significance was doing one of my longest, and last, backpacks in the Sierra Nevada. I covered 55 miles over a week, hiking solo from one high alpine lake to another in a long circuit that traversed three mountain passes and cut through the famed Evolution and Dusy basin. It was an arduous trek, made even more challenging by the fact that I was all alone (most of the other hikers were PCT through hikers heading in the opposite direction.
Looking back at the photos I took made me realize what a stark contrast the rocky high-alpine climate of the Sierra Nevada was to the lush greenery of the Pacific Northwest. Rugged barren peaks with scant vegetation arose majestically from dark blue alpine lakes, with the moon a lonely dot in the heavily polarized sky. I hope these monotones capture the ethereal beauty of these craggy landscapes.
Kings Canyon National Park
CA USA
I had never expected a country filled with beautiful scenery, with windswept mountains alternating with blissfulyl green hills, with rugged coastlines interspersed by petite towns, to be also so culturally rich and full of character and passion. It was a study in contrast going from the capital city of Dublin, where tradition and modernity wove a tangled web of commerce and industry, to the pastoral countryside replete with old castles, charming town centers, delightful bed-and-breakfasts, and the ever-ubiquitous Irish pubs with lively folk music.
It wasn't a country that wowed me with grand spectacle the likes of Iceland and Chile, but it was the hidden charm of the little things that I got to discover exploring around. I wish I could return there under better conditions. Meanwhile, here is a sampling from the heart of the isles
Ireland
The long halcyon days of summer have begun. And that means it is time for a trip to the eastern half of the state to once again to experience the beauty the Palouse region has to offer: rolling hilly terrain with a velvety carpet of freshly sprouted wheat and soybean, rustic farmhouses in a bucolic countryside with colorful barns peppered amidst the pastoral landscape. It also means shooting during the longest days of the year, with 4 am wakeups for photographing this divine landscape bathed in morning light, and staying awake till 10pm for capturing the last of the golden light. And driving around in dusty farmroads to find that one unique perspective of the Palouse.
So who wants to join me on this magical, albeit tiring, journey in June?
Palouse
WA USA
The journey from the highest point in Death Valley to its lowest point spans ~11,300ft or ~3,450m. That journey takes one from the freezing snow-capped peak of the Panamint range to through rocky canyons down through the alluvial fans onto the lowest point in the lower 48 states - 250ft below sea level. And being able to witness this gradual transition of altitude, terrain, and climate, in one single glance is not possible anywhere else except at Dante's View in Death Valley National Park
I had arrived at the 5,500ft summit of Dante's view at sunrise, hoping to witness the first light on the mighty spine of the Panamint range. And after a colorful sunrise, pockets of warm light began to shine on the dynamic terrain of the Badwater basin and the stunning landscape all around. This was one such view capturing a well-lit alluvial fan that drained the Panamint range behind a hardy shrub that survives the harsh climate of Death Valley.
Death Valley National Park
CA USA
