Summer is one of my favorite seasons to visit the eastern side of California when you can see dramatic weather like this summer storm in the Sierra Nevada. Your morning could be completely clear and by lunchtime the day may look like this. I just got back from a backpacking trip with my brothers to the Big Pine Lakes/Temple Crag part of the Inyo National Forest. It was an incredible trip even if it was a bit soggy and mosquito-filled. […]
Capital Reef may not get the attention it’s fellow ‘Big 5’ Utah parks (Zion, Bryce Canyon, Arches, and Canyonlands) but it’s still a sight to behold. It’s also off the beaten path in central Utah, so it’s not one of the places you go see while going somewhere else (though that’s what we did en-route to Goblin Valley). We also experienced some dramatic spring weather on our drive to the park getting sleet and rain while driving through the mountains […]
Factory Butte in Utah stands out from it’s neighboring landmarks (Capital Reef NP and Goblin Valley) because it doesn’t have that red-hued rock permeating the landscape. In fact it’s distinctive color palette, a gray landscape highlighted with a yellow that sometimes neared a sufur-yellow, made a lot of my photos from the area look unrealistic. They look like those vintage hand-painted photos from the early 20th century. These badlands are beautiful to explore but visitors need to be aware this […]
Goblin Valley State Park has such other-worldly features it was hard to take it all in and figure how I was going to photograph it. I can only think of two other places where I have had same sense of visual overload (one being White Pocket and the other being the coastal Redwoods). From those past experiences I learned not try and take it all in, or attempt to document it all photographically. Rather just focus on a couple key […]
I just returned from a trip through Utah where we saw many many incredible sights like the striking rock formation pictured above, the Fisher Towers, near Moab. This was high on my list of places to explore in Utah and it didn’t disappoint (though I could have done without all the annoying little bugs). We were fortunate enough to get an outstanding sunset view (one of the few we got on the trip) for about five minutes just as we […]
Death Valley National Park has been a long favorite place to visit for me. And one of my favorite moments on my trips is anticipating the sunrise. This particular shot is looking at the Panamint Mountains, which is western edge of the valley. Because of the sparse vegetation in Death Valley it’s a place where the colorful geological features can really stand out, and vary in look depending on the placement of the sun.
This week’s image is one my most popular photos I have taken, one of my personal favorites, and has even gotten some recognition on social media. So why am I revisiting this image? Well I thought I’d dig a little deeper and share some of the story of how this photo came to be in the first place, and how it relates to this week in a bittersweet way. Three years ago this month my wife Heidi and I applied […]
Enjoying the Beauties of Nature in the Wintry Cold Last year I got my first experience of Bryce Canyon National Park in the midst of a snow storm. It made for some striking images as the iconic hoodoos were highlighted and accentuated by the frequent dusting of snow as in this image. Winter visits to iconic parks like Bryce can give you a new facet to a familiar place. But experiencing the outdoors during the winter months also comes with […]
Looking Back On All The Lost Gems Rediscovered In 2017 It’s that time of year to reflect on the highlights and low-points of the past year. Every year at this time I pick out my favorite images from the year that was. I also like to look back at all the rediscovered images I found in the past year from my personal archives. I like to revisit old images from time-to-time to find hidden nuggets within the catalog of all […]
It has been six months since Heidi’s passing, a little more than one year since I went on leave from work to care for her, and two years from when we learned Heidi’s breast cancer had metastasized. There’s a part of me that feels like all those events were so long ago, and another part of me that still feels like this all happened just yesterday and I am still in the same bog I have been in for the […]