The jagged peaks of the Vancouver Island Range and the North Cascades for spiky silhouettes on what proved to be exceptional clear sunsets and sunrises from the Olympics.
Olympic National Forest
WA USA
Light in the Dark
This lighthouse was commissioned over a 130 years ago to help ships navigate the narrow channels of the Puget sound. Its remarkable that the the original structure still remains today, and still serves as an active aid for traversing the canals of Elliot Bay. And it serves as a great subject for sunset photography in urban Seattle
Seattle
WA USA
Alone at Sea
During a spring hike a few years ago, I was blessed with remarkable conditions over the Puget sound. I specifically sought this location in an urban park so that I could capture the beautiful silhouette of the Olympic range. A lone sailboat happened to be at the right place to frame this scene.
Seattle
WA USA
Crack in the Earth
Crack in the Earth
While walking through a narrow slot canyon in one of Texas's two National Parks, I came across this scene featuring a desert tree reaching up to the sky from the sheer walls of this canyon in Guadalupe Mountain National Park. I remember commenting to my travel partner that this composition reminded me of similar iconic silhouettes captured in other canyons. I tried to recreate such a composition from my memory using this tree as the foreground.
Does this work? Thoughts?
Guadalupe Mountains National Park
TX USA
The Lonely Tree
A twisted ash, a ragged fir,
A silver birch with leaves astir.
Men talk of forests broad and deep
Where summer-long the shadows sleep.
Though I love forests deep and wide,
The lone tree on the bare hillside,
The brave wind-bitten lonely tree
Is rooted in the heart of me —
A twisted ash, a ragged fir,
A silver birch with leaves astir.
- Wilfred Gibson
Theodore Roosevelt National Park
ND USA
Mornings in the Mountains
Every time I camp in the mountains, I look forward to the colorful sunsets and the dramatic sunrises. And when the conditions are right, I sometimes wake up to the classic Cascade sunrise where sunlight pours over the endless ranges of silhouetted mountain ranges. And in the next few hours, the pale orange sky and warm silhouettes slowly transform to a clear blue sky, where the rays stream between the gaps in the ridges and the valleys. Meadows that were in the shadows at dawn, slowly take on the lush mid-day green, and splashes of colors from vibrant fireweed and bright parsnips highlight the scene.
There are few places still in the North Cascades where this vision of a lush summer can still be experienced. I was glad to get experience one this summer season.
Mt Baker Snoqualmie National Forest
WA USA
A National Parks Journey - Haleakala National Park
My primary reasoning to choose Maui over the other islands of Hawaii for a winter trip to the tropical islands was Haleakala National Park. It was November of 2019 and I hadn't visited a single new National Park in that year. Covid was barely in the news at that time, and travel concerns seemed far on the horizon. Thus, when we were choosing the islands, we ended up settling on Maui. Due to the throngs that visit Hawaii during the month of December, our Last minute planning meant that we couldn't stay the hotels we desired. However, I was willing to sacrifice all that for a chance to stay within the crater of the National Park.
We snagged the walk-up permits by being first in line at the Park HQ - thankfully very few others had ideas of backpacking while in Hawaii. Hiking into the core of a volcanic crater and viewing the desolate moonscape of volcanic ash mingled with dry vegetation made for a memorable backpack. The icing on the cake was waking up in the middle of the night to watch the star-studded night sky that denizens of the main towns of Maui would hardly be able to experience. This alone makes the National Park a worthwhile visit for any traveler to Maui.
This particular scene is a silhouette of the various tourists posing against the setting sun at the rim of Haleakala.
Haleakala National Park
HI USA
Silhouetted by Sunlight
The spines of a fraser fir stands along the ridgeline of one of Clingmans dome, silhouetted by the hazy morning light. Once a large grove of firs atop the dome, they were decimated by the balsam woolly beetle with efforts to repopulate ending in failure, and led to a drastic change in the montane ecosystem of the dome. Other vegetation still survives, with lower slopes dominated by deciduous trees that shed color every fall, and whose change of color attracts tourists from all over.
Driving up from the lower valleys where the colors had just started to change, to the upper reaches where most trees were reduced to their skeletons, one can experience a wide range of biodiversity exhibited by the Appalachians. The landscape around continues to change, primarily by the human pressure from population centers and industries on either side of the divide. But the higher you get, the less visible those changes are.
Great Smoky Mountains National Park
NC USA
Sunrise with Company
Sunrises are perhaps the hardest and most unpredictable to photograph, and certainly the one decision where the tradeoffs are extremely hard to ascertain. Whenever I try to plan ahead for a sunrise shoot, I keep exploring different contingencies and evaluate how conditions can go wrong. But once I commit, I prefer not to turn back on that decision.
The only choice after that lays in the location and composition to shoot. And this represents another challenge if you have scouted the area before. Such was the case with trying to capture sunrise in the vicinity of the San Juan islands. Thankfully, this lighthouse formed the perfect foreground for the scene. Two of the innumerable bald eagles in the area settled atop the lighthouse, much to my delight, to be the icing on the cake that was this sunrise.
San Juan Islands
WA USA
Desert Silhouettes
After a mere 4 hours of sleep, I thought I was seeing things when the eastern horizon started glowing in a pale shade of orange. But I wasn't, and dawn in Joshua Tree National Park was shaping up to be very colorful. The small gap on the horizon meant that it wouldn't last too long, and as soon as I got a chance, I pulled over to capture a silhouette of the classic Joshua Tree landscape. The pale orange slowly changed to a deep shade of pink that framed the spiny shape of the desert cacti. The moment didn't last long, but for those few moments, the scene was sublime.
Life is full of such fleeting moments that you have got to seek out, else they don't wait for you. And this is never more truer than it is for a photographer, where you have to be at the right place at the right time. After all, the object of art is to make eternal the desperately fleeting moment.
Joshua Tree National Park
CA USA