Vernal Pools at Santa Rosa Plateau Ecological Reserve, Riverside County, California

“Our experiences can be so much more peaceful if it weren’t for having to deal with our own kind sometimes.” – Mark Graf.

Particularly when you have overly-chatty park docents talking everyone’s ears off. There were a few birders and photographers at the Vernal Pools but it felt more like a ride line at Disneyland when every time a character (substitute with western meadowlark, mallard duck, etc…) walks by everyone screams and points. When everyone cleared out it though the experience was much better. Just me with the soothing sounds of water and chirping birds.

Don’t get me wrong. I love Disneyland, but not on the hiking trail!

See more of my Inland Empire pictures.

2010 Lake Elsinore Wildflowers

I was headed to the Santa Rosa Plateau Ecological Reserve yesterday afternoon so I stopped in Lake Elsinore briefly to see if there were any flowers. The hillsides look green from I-15 but not a lot of other color so I didn’t expect to see anything. Up close however, I saw a few patches of small flowers and a few scattered poppies. It wasn’t bad considering how little sunlight we have had in the past two months. (wildflowers need sun / warm weather) From the way things look, the wildflower season seems promising and would probably take off if we can get a week or two of warm, rain-free weather. Rare for Southern California, of course…

Red Tulips and White Picket Fence, Pella Historical Village, Pella, Iowa

Most photographers that shoot nature and travel probably have dreams of traveling the world to all sorts of exotic locations nine months of the year becoming the next Art Wolfe. I think Art Wolfe is an amazing photographer with an even more amazing work ethic but not everyone is cut out for that sort of lifestyle. It is a lonely road.

At the end of the day, I love shooting in crappy conditions and going on 2 – 3 week trips, but coming home to a normal life is the most romantic lifestyle I can imagine. It would be really nice to someday own a home with a white picket fence and have tulips growing in the yard with wife and maybe kids running around the yard.

See more of my Iowa pictures.

Mammoth Lakes Scenic Vista

I’ve had this and another unprocessed photo sitting on my computer for six months now because I haven’t been able to track down the name of this location. This scenic vista was taken from the waterfall bridge on the Mammoth Lakes Loop. I don’t recall the name of the bridge nor know what the valley below is called so I thought I would put the question out here on the photo blog in case any of you have spent some time in the Eastern Sierras.

Thanks!

See more of my Eastern Sierra pictures.

Owens Valley Sunflowers

Travel photography is not about F-stops, HDR or the size of camera-sensor pixels. Travel photography is about the experience. My first visit to the Eastern Sierra region was in the summer of 2004 when my friend and I took a three-day camping trip to Mono Lake / Bodie and Bishop. It was quite the trip, as we got the most amazing sunsets I had ever seen and the scenery certainly lived up to expectations. However it’s not the photography that I most remember about this trip. It was the camping experience itself.

On one of the days, we stayed at a campground just outside of Bishop. Soon after pulling in, we went to the trailer where the campground manager lived. Then out comes this curmudgeonly fellow with an eye patch. Ok. Rough life, who knows. So we follow him inside of the trailer to make payment when I immediately notice a large caged bird in the corner which normally wouldn’t look out of place but what caught my eye was that there was nothing below the bird to catch it’s poop so you can probably imagine where it goes from there. Let’s just say that it didn’t look nor smell like the trailer had been cleaned for some time… I had to fight myself from busting out laughing in his face for fear of being disrespectful but that image has long since stuck with me.

The night was even crazier as a large group of campground patrons next to our campsite didn’t seem to know the definition of curfew and kept their stereos and loud talking going until the late hours of the night despite repeated visits from the authorities. Some of the other patrons were ticked off as well but it didn’t deter those people. Since my friend and I had a sunrise shoot planned (the photo above) we made no attempt to keep quiet at the early hours and shined the high beams into a few tents for good measure. Those people had probably just gone to sleep not long before so neither of us felt any sense of guilt about it.

Though the camping experience was less than ideal, it is experiences like this during a trip that add to the experience. If everything were always fine and dandy then it would be a boring planet. If looking back at the trip six years later can bring a smile to my face then it was probably worth suffering through a night of hell for.

See more of my Eastern Sierra pictures.

Waterfowl, Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge, California

One of the most amazing places in California is not even located in a pretty location. However, during the winter months, the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge comes alive with hundreds of thousands of migrating Pacific Flyway birds. I visited on a December day five years ago to shoot some new slides for class and was blown away by how noisy it was with all the birds squawking. This is another place that I would like revisit with a digital camera to see how things would be different with another five years of experience under my belt.

See more of my Northern California pictures.

Chicago Board of Trade, Chicago, Illinois

Chicago is one of the more interesting cities in this country in my opinion. I’m really big into historical places and the Prohibition Era is really intriguing to me. This street scene looking toward the Chicago Board of Trade reminded me of the Kevin Costner / Sean Connery movie, The Untouchables. It was my favorite movie while growing up so when I saw this scene it immediately conjured up highly romanticized images in my mind of what Prohibition-Era Chicago might have been like minus all the mobster bloodshed on the sidewalk.

See more of my midwest pictures.

Mount Baldy Water Reflection in San Gabriel River, Los Angeles County, California

The nice thing about all this rain we have gotten in February is that we have water in the San Gabriel Valley. It’s been a few years since I’ve seen anything other than a dry river bed. This photo shoot was a bit more difficult than I had anticipated. There was a vantage point that I had photographed from in the past that I had intended to shoot from but it wasn’t available this time so I decided to try another angle but it required wading out into the San Gabriel River. I took off my shoes and went into the river about knee deep. By this point I’m thinking that I could probably make it out to the middle of the river to get my photo. That was before I felt a big drop-off to my right where I tried to stick my tripod so I decided it wasn’t worth it…

Soaking wet and dirty, I went back up to the trail and decided to explore further upstream where I had never been. I lucked out and found a similar scene that didn’t require getting into the water. Not that I’m complaining since that is the fun part about landscape photography; having a connection with the natural world.

See more of my San Gabriel Valley photos.

Bridalveil Fall Double Rainbow, Yosemite National Park, California

Excuse the lack of blog posts lately as I have been tied up with optimizing the photos in my web galleries for faster load times. Some of the web galleries get bogged down because I was lazy when I created my site by not creating small thumbnails and just used a one-size-fits-all solution. Anyway…

I took this photo in the spring of 2002. To date, it has been my only visit to Yosemite Valley during the spring season. In my opinion it is the most beautiful season to visit the valley but one of the least fun due to the crowds. Don’t get me wrong though. I definitely would like to re-visit again during this time of year.

Seeing the double rainbow under Bridal Veil Fall was one of the highlights on this trip. It’s something I’ve always remembered and would like to photograph again. One thing photographers should keep in mind though is to be prepared to get wet. I had a difficult time keeping my lens dry enough to shoot photos and went through every piece of linen I had on me to dry off the lens.

Jimmy Chin’s lecture was really entertaining because he had a great sense of humor without taking himself too seriously. He told some crazy stories such as skiing from the summit of Mount Everest and talked about how he waited in the lobby of Mountain Light Gallery for five consecutive days early in his career just so he could get some time to speak with Galen Rowell to pick his brain about traveling to Pakistan. Chin’s photography was amazing as well.

My favorite part was when he talked about disappointing his traditional Chinese parents early on by moving into his car to become a rock climber and ski bum in Yosemite for a year after graduating from college. His one year break turned into seven in the car! Later on he told this funny story about one of his climbing expeditions in the Himalayan war zone between India and Pakistan. In order to get there I think they had to get special permission from the Pakistani president. The expedition was to be one of the first to be streamed live via the internet. At one point, he said he had cut his face open but didn’t think it was too big of a deal until his friends wanted to post a close up of his face on the broadcast. He was worried about what his mom might think. Sure enough, several days later the military showed up at the base of the peak to scream at them via megaphone to ask if they were okay because his mother had apparently gotten through to the Pakistani president and made him send people out to go check to see if her son was okay! Once he attained success in his profession though it seemed like he finally got his mom’s approval.

Here is the Jimmy Chin Photography website.

Michael, you missed out dude!

Canada Place Convention Centre with Living Roof of Grass, Vancouver, BC

A bit of shameless self-promotion but this photo of Canada Place is currently on display at the Vancouver Winter Olympics. I think it is probably displayed at Canada Place since it is the main press center for the Olympic Games. Lindsey Vonn probably doesn’t have time to read photo blogs but it would also be awesome to get her autograph on it.

Anyway, one of my cousins works in the building across the street from the Convention Centre (the one casting the shadow) and we went up onto the office balcony one afternoon and got some amazing views of Vancouver though it wasn’t really great conditions for photography that day. I thought the roof top was quite interesting with the grass.

See more of my Vancouver pictures.

Green Heron Ruffling Feathers

I’ve had luck in the past with birds at the Fullerton Arboretum so I took the gargantuan 500mm lens out for another test run. A quick run through of the ponds revealed nothing more than common ducks and American coots until I was about to leave when two green herons flew from out of nowhere with one landing on the opposite shore. I walked over there and used the plants as a blind so I could sit close by and observe without disturbing the bird. I put on the 1.4x teleconverter on the lens and photographed through the openings in the plants and got clear looks at the bird as a result. The green heron is pretty small so it took 1120mm worth of focal length to get these tight portraits even though I was no more than 15 feet away.

Since the green heron is a long-legged wader bird, which are slow and deliberate in their movements, it was much more fun to photograph with the bulky lens than trying to chase wood ducks around a lagoon. I had never seen a green heron before so it was exciting to be able to photograph it this sort of environment.

See more of my bird pictures.

Mandarin Duck

I had only seen one mandarin duck before but didn’t get a picture of it so this has been on my trophy photo list for a while now. I didn’t expect to see one on Saturday but I caught a fleeting glimpse of it from afar when the ladies near me asked what I was looking for. “I think I saw an orange duck but it left before I could get a good look.” “That was a mandarin duck.” “Nice! That is what I thought it was.” So I walked around both sides of the lagoon multiple times (with a 500mm f4 lens + tripod) but didn’t see it until more than an hour later on the opposite shoreline. Eventually it came over to my side and in fact, too close on a several photos but I did manage a few clear pictures of the mandarin duck. It is the prettiest bird I have ever seen by far.

Mandarin Duck Portrait

See more of my bird pictures.

Wood Duck

In preparation for my upcoming travel, I rented a Canon 500 f4 lens to see what it would be like to lug that monster around. I took it to the Los Angeles County Arboretum and headed straight to the lagoon where I knew there would be some colorful wood ducks. I found it cumbersome to shoot with. Now I have been doing 3 – 4x / week weight training since August but there is no way in heck you can shoot this comfortably hand-held. Shooting on my standard ball-head was okay. I was kind of scared to loosen the ball for fear of smashing the lens against my mouth but I managed okay though I probably missed more photos than I got. The image stabilizer was really good though. I didn’t lose a single image due to camera shake no matter how sloppy the technique. Overall, I think I would have more fun shooting with the 400mm f5.6 because it would give me more mobility and also reduce the need for a chiropractor.

See more of my bird pictures.

San Francisco Seal Rocks

I took this photo not long after moving to San Francisco in 2002, which was also the year that I started to take photography seriously. Digital photography wasn’t that advanced back then so I was primarily shooting with Fuji Velvia. I have to admit that I miss the feeling of anticipation while opening a box of slides for the first time. Sometimes I will let a few days or more than a week slip before I review digital images on the computer unless I need them processed in a timely manner but every time I received a box of slides from the lab I would view my photos right after returning home or in the car even if I couldn’t wait. It’s not unlike the excitement that kids get when they Christmas gifts.

Now I will go into what it took to produce this master file of this 35mm Fuji Velvia slide: I was taking a digital printing class during my last semester of grad school toward the end of 2004, and making a good digital file for print from this slide was one of my first class assignments. It took me about 40 hours (no joke!) on this Seal Rocks file from the time I started until the final week of class when we had to produce a portfolio of photography prints from our digital files. I am a self-taught photographer, but I learned so much from this class during the critiques. It was an invaluable experience. I also learned what a pain in the ass it is to make a perfect rendition of your photo from film scans because there is no such thing. It is a 2nd generation reproduction by that point. Of the different types of slides that I scanned, I found that Fuji Velvia and old Kodachrome are the most difficult to get right. No matter how much Photoshop tweaking I would do to this file, there would always be a bit of unwanted magenta in my shadows, not quite the right balance of shadow to highlight detail. My instructor had commented toward the beginning that this was going to be a very difficult image to get right but if I could get this file looking good then I could probably process anything.

With all of that time invested, this is close though the original slide is probably a bit more saturated. For the portfolio, I ended up going with half film scans and half digital captures. Though I didn’t feel that digital was as good as 35mm at the time, digital was convenient, less expensive, and required little processing to look right so I never looked back. I shot one or two more rolls of film after this class ended before closing the book on that era.

I’d probably shoot some more film for fun if I wasn’t concerned about selling my work and sharing the photos with you but I have no desire to work on anymore film scans. Besides, the 5D Mark II is the most amazing tool that I have ever used in photography.

See more of my San Francisco pictures.

Foggy Evening, Pacifica, California

As with the Point Reyes National Seashore post, I’m going to be posting some older images in the coming days. I didn’t have a blog back then so it should be fun to take a trip down memory lane. Anyway…

This photo was taken up the street from my apartment. I had lived at this location for over a year by this point but never realized that just a few blocks up the street was this amazing view of the San Mateo coastline. Living close to the Pacific Ocean in Northern California is an awesome experience, but also very aggravating in some ways. Every morning for instance, my windows would be covered in a layer of fog and would be difficult to keep clear because it was usually cold, windy and moist outside at all hours of the day. As you can imagine, the car starts to get dirty at some point and then I’d have to take it to the car wash. The problem was that it would get back dirty again by the next day. If I had the luxury of parking the car in a garage then perhaps it might not have been so bad but I think most others probably had similar issues.

The positives far outweighed the negatives though. Within a few miles of driving, one could easily escape the urban life and do serious nature photography. Wilderness areas in the Bay Area aren’t thrashed like they are in Southern California. Most trees don’t have carvings in there, you don’t see a lot of graffiti outside of man-made structures and there aren’t beer cans and potato chip wrappers lining every river bed. Also, San Francisco was so easy to get to. I was just a 15 minute BART ride away from downtown, or an equally as short drive provided that there were parking spaces available.

Bay Area residents have the best of both worlds in my opinion.

See more of my SF Bay Area pictures.

Point Reyes National Seashore, California

There was a point in my development as a photographer that I realized how lucky we are in this country to be able to pursue our passions such as landscape photography. That moment for me came to me one weekday morning at Point Reyes National Seashore six or seven years ago when I had a rare day off from both grad school and my job. I didn’t have much time nor money back in those days so pretty much every time I went out shooting photos was a treat to me but on this one cold morning it was different.

I went to McClure’s Beach and there was no one there. Not a single soul. No human development on the shoreline. No cars. No footprints on the sand. Nothing but just me and the pounding surf. This was my 2nd visit to Point Reyes, and the first time was very crowded since I went on a weekend during peak spring wildflower season so it really caught me off-guard with how much different this experience felt. It hit me that out of the six billion people on this planet, that I was the only person in the whole world who got to spend the morning at this world-renowned national park beach. I didn’t come away with any photos worth processing but that experience has since stuck with me.

Tomorrow I bet there will probably some 23 year old kid out there doing the same thing that I did. Trying to find his way in the world while telling his story through photos. For someone eager to carve out their niche on this planet, the world can seem like a crowded place but when you look for long enough you start to realize that there is enough room for everyone to be themselves.

See more of my Bay Area pictures.

Mulholland Drive Scenic Overlook, Los Angeles, California

If you are the “hustle & bustle” type then L.A. is probably perfect for you. As I was turning left onto Cahuenga, I intended to stop inside of the gas station but noticed this Mercedes following way too close to make it into the gas station safely so I kept going. Before you know it, the guy is cussing me out from behind then pulls up alongside me still cussing me out and then started to flip me off. Eventually he cut me off with his middle finger still sticking out of the window up into the air for at least a minute until I pulled off onto Mulholland Drive. Welcome to Hollywood!

Anyway, I had never been up to Mulholland Drive before despite being one of the most visited scenic locations in L.A. I was pleasantly surprised. I had the Hollywood Sign to my left, Hollywood and Downtown right in front of me and the Pacific Ocean obscured by clouds to my right. The view from Mulholland Drive is completely different than the other downtown L.A. skyline pictures I have been shooting. Despite a steady stream of tour buses, I’ve seen much worse crowds at places like the Grand Canyon, Joshua Tree NP or at Yosemite. At least the people were respectful toward each other’s personal space.

Now that I have crossed this off of my checklist I think I might try for an evening panoramic of the San Fernando Valley from Mulholland Drive next or perhaps the Staples Center and Disney Concert Hall at night.

See more of my Los Angeles pictures.

Cross on Cahuenga and Downtown Los Angeles, Hollywood Hills, California

As I was driving down from the Santa Monica Mountains with Patty Griffin’s fantastic new album, Downtown Church, playing on my car stereo, I spotted this large cross overlooking downtown L.A. so I immediately pulled over into a ditch then used the last of my three remaining frames that I had on my memory card. I thought it was a funny random occurrence since I had no idea that there was a giant cross overlooking Los Angeles.

See more of my Los Angeles pictures.

Los Angeles Winter Storm Sunset

This was taken on Wednesday night after another day of rain on Tuesday. I can’t keep talking about the same thing over and over again so I’ll talk equipment this time… My first few attempts at this scene were taken with a Canon 70-200mm lens on the full-frame 5D Mark II but it wasn’t enough focal length to get Mount Baldy as large in the frame as I had wanted. In the past few weeks I have been using my 20D which added 1.6x to the focal length of the lens but still wasn’t enough. So last Saturday I picked up a 1.4x extender accessory for my lens so I could get more reach. I didn’t know what the expect image quality wise but I’m happy to report that I didn’t see a significant drop-off sharpness when compared to my earlier shots. In fact, I haven’t even taken it off the camera since I purchased it.

In addition to shooting some skyline photos that I hope will sell someday, I also picked up the extender because I will need it this year for the grizzly bear photo tour in Alaska and Yellowstone. In my opinion, getting an extender is a more cost-effective way to get more focal length from your existing lenses rather than having to purchase more expensive telephoto lenses that will set you back a few years of future retirement investments.

See more of my Los Angeles pictures.