Icy Reflection

This is an image from Emerald Lake that I captured on a hike up to Emerald Lake for sunrise on December 30th of last year. I have posted on this trip before on this blog and I have many images from this that you can already see in my Emerald Lake gallery mixed in with older images. I spent a long time out on the ice this day capturing many images of the ice and reflections on it. I will post more from this extraordinarily beautiful place but for now here is an image created by stitching 9 images from my D600. This image will print wall sized with amazing detail. Click on the image for a larger view.

Emerald Ice Dragon. Buy a print. On flickr. On Facebook. On G+.
High resolution composite from 9 images from a Nikon D600, Nikkor 24-85mm f/3.5-4.5 at 24mm, f/16, 1/60s, ISO 100.

Green River overlook

On my Arches/Canyonlands/Moab trip this February, I visited False Kiva by myself on the last day (more on that later). After the hike there and back I found myself driving back down around lunchtime and decided to have something to eat at the Green River Overlook, which is itself close to the Willow Flats campground. I couldn't resist taking pictures as the light was quite nice for midday because of the milky clouds and the snow all around. Here is a quick handheld shot panorama focusing on the river basin and Turks head.

Canyon Country. Buy a print. On flickr. On facebook. On Google+.
Stitched from 8 images. Nikon D600, Nikkor 70-200 mm f/4 at 70mm, f/8.0, 1/400s, ISO 100.

You can very clearly see the White Rim road down there which I biked several times. It looks very different down there. I also never noticed the remains of a landing strip (click on the image for a bigger view which clearly shows it) on the finger of the white rim that points towards Turks head. It's not marked on the topo maps, so I am curious what its function was. There was some Uranium mining in this area decades ago. Here is a zoomed in image of the landing strip. Click for 1:1. People on retina screens already get the 1:1 served in line.

On the right bottom you can see the white rim road snaking along and it crosses the end of the landing strip. Probably the strip is invisible from the road.

An Arches Windows Sunset

A few weeks ago, I spent a few days in the Moab area with some photographer friends photographing in Arches, Canyonlands and other associated areas. The day I arrived here driving from Fruita (see here for some pictures from Colorado National Monument) and spending a few hours trying to fix my bike's frame at Moab cyclery (they carried the part (a derailleur dropout for my Santa Cruz bike) that I tore apart in the Fruita mud and were very helpful in fixing the problem), I decided to hit Arches for sunset as I hadn't been able to hook up with anybody yet. The area had just seen some snow a few days ago I think and sunset was great. Below are a few of my favorite pictures from that evening.

This is North Window Arch as seen from the "window well".

Balance. Buy a print.
Nikon D600. Tokina 16-28mm f/2.8 at 16mm, f/11, 1/40s, ISO 100. Handheld.

North window from a different angle

I see you! Buy a print.
Nikon D600. Tokina 16-28mm f/2.8 at 28mm, f/8.0, 1/60s, ISO 100. Handheld.

The shadow cast by Turret Arch on the South Window really looks like a mountain lion head here.

Mountain Lion. Buy a print.
Nikon D600. Tokina 16-28mm f/2.8 at 16mm, f/8.0, 1/10s, ISO 100. Tripod.

I found this awesome puddle on the far end of Turret Arch that nicely reflected the turret's eye. The water was frozen over in a very thin and very reflective sheet of ice and its shape appears to mirror the Turret. The camera is probably not more than 6 inches from the water (the puddle was tiny) so I had to stop this all the way down.

Seeing Double. Buy a print.
Nikon D600. Tokina 16-28mm f/2.8 at 17mm, f/22, 1s, ISO 100. Tripod.

This is another image from Turret arch seen from the back. The sun had just gone below the horizon but is still glowing warm. You can see the La Sal mountains to the right and a hint of North Window through the arch. I like the leading line leading up to the arch.

Happiness is a warm turret. Buy a print.
Nikon D600. Tokina 16-28mm f/2.8 at 17mm, f/16, 0.6s, ISO 100. Tripod.

I captured this long view looking towards the La Sal mountains. There was some nice pink in the sky and the snow-capped mountains looked nicely blue. A nice color harmony that begged exploitation.

Jaws. Buy a print.
Nikon D600. Nikon 70-200mm f/4 at 135mm, f/5.6, 1/10s, ISO 100. Tripod.

Walking back up to the North window, I thought I was more or less done and would head back to town to meet up with my friends, but I was struck by the sunset behind the Turret. So I took out the gear again and shot this image looking west.

Glow. Buy a print.
Nikon D600. Nikon 24-85mm f/3.5-4.5 at 32mm, f/5.6, 1/30s, ISO 100. Handheld.

I'll let this speak for itself.

Moon Cradle. Buy a print.
Nikon D600. Nikon 24-85mm f/3.5-4.5 at 24mm, f/5.6, 1/13s, ISO 400. Handheld.

Last but not least, Also check out the galleries on the social sites:
Gallery on smugmug. Gallery on flickr. Gallery on Facebook. Gallery on Google+.

Let the light be right

In browsing through my images from last week's Moab trip I came across a set of images that are almost exactly 1 day apart but are framed almost identically. One taken several hours into the day in relatively harsh daylight and the other shortly after sunrise in soft light. Both were taken looking out from Dead Horse Point towards Canyonlands National Park. In the first, we visited it with the group to scout it out. The next day, I was the only one to rise in time and drive over to catch the sunrise. It had looked like it would snow that morning and be cloudy all around so everybody had more or less decided to stay in. However, I could see stars when around 4 am I stepped outside the hotel, so I set off by myself and had an awesome morning.

On the left, the daylight image. On the right, the sunrise image softened even more by the presence of clouds. The moral of this story of course is that getting up early pays...

I'll blog about the Dead Horse Point sunrise sometime later. In the mean time, here is a link to the above sunrise image in it's full glory.