Chris Skopec Photography & Design

Original Artwork

2011-03-01T07:00:00.000-08:00

Original Ancestral Puebloan Painting

While this isn't a truly amazing image from a photographic stand point, I just had to share it because I think it's a truly amazing subject. If you look back to the first image I posted of Cliff Palace, you'll notice some legs sticking out of the first floor doorway of the square tower on the right side of the village. That person was looking up at these original paintings on what would have been the third of fourth floor of the tower.

I don't know exactly when this room was painted, but Cliff Palace was last occupied in 1260 A.D., some 750 years ago. As amazing as it is that the paint survived, I find it more fascinating that people nearly 800 years ago enjoyed painting the walls of their homes same as we do today. Here's another view of the same room.

The wood beams you see criss crossing both images served to stabilize the walls of the tower and also acted as floor joists for the different levels.

Please Note: The National Park Service has decided that people should be allowed to look up in this tower and have done the required work to ensure it is safe. When exploring more remote, less controlled ruins don't attempt to crawl in them. If the structure hasn't been properly inspected and stabilized it could very easily collapse without notice. Also, repeated contact with the walls of the ruins has a noticeable impact of the stone. Take a look at this image. The oils in people's hands has built up and attracted dirt over the years causing staining around the doorway. The park service has deemed this acceptable in this case, but that's a decision best left up to the experts.

The Purpose of Cliff Palace Design

2011-02-23T07:00:00.000-08:00

A stitched panorama image from "inside" the Cliff Palace ruins

I use Google Analytics to track visits to my website and where/how those visitors found my site. When someone finds my site through Google or another search engine, I can even see what terms they entered into the search to find my site. I noticed an interesting one this morning. "Purpose of Cliff Palace design" Go ahead, try that in Google, the top 3 results are all my site. Unfortunately, I don't think any of those links really offer the information that was being looked for. So without further adieu, my attempt to fix that.

When I first visited Mesa Verde 25 years ago, the working theory was that the Ancestral Puebloans moved into their cliff dwellings for defensive reasons. While more current research shows that theory was wrong, it's easy to see why it came about. These dwellings would have been easier to defend than the mesa top pueblos and the nearby Sand Canyon Pueblo was the scene of a gruesome battle for resources. As drought gripped the southwest in the 1200s, there is increasing evidence of war between neighboring villages.

All good reasons why it would be easy to claim the Ancestral Puebloans moved into cliff dwellings for protection. The problem with the theory is that there is no extensive evidence of violence or warfare in Mesa Verde. So why then did the people move to these cliff dwellings which would be considerably more difficult for themselves to access?

The most likely explanation is again a result of the drought, not violence that resulted because of it but simply because of the lack of water. These alcoves in the cliffs were carved over the eons by water seeping down through the soft sandstone, slowly carving out cracks and crevices and ultimately breaking off larger chunks of the rock. This water seepage created natural springs at the back of the alcoves. Even today these springs are still active and visible in a majority of the alcoves (the most easily accessible of these to modern visitors is the spring near Spruce Tree House). The springs provided a great, clean water supply for the village but the cliff dwellings provided an even greater advantage.

As the Ancestral Puebloan population grew, more and more arable land was required to feed each village. Add to that lower crop yields due to the drought and the need for fertile farmland grew exponentially. By moving the village into these alcoves that weren't able to support crops anyway, the people were able to maximize their mesa top farmland. This farmland would have been difficult to reach, especially considering that their "ladders" were nothing more than a series of crude hand and foot holds on the side of the cliff, but compared to alternative of not having enough food for the village, that would have been an easy trade off.

To whoever was searching for information this morning, if you're still looking, I hope that helps. If it falls short of what you were hoping for, you can find much more information on the impact of the drought on the Ancestral Puebloan peoples, I reccomend (insert shameless plug here) the book my dad and I published a little over a year ago, The Ancestral Puebloan Primer.

Cliff Palace Ruins

2011-02-17T07:00:00.000-08:00

The ruins of Cliff Palace

And we're back to photos from my visit to Mesa Verde after a quick break with my last post.

I'm not sure what all of these room were in the time of the Ancestral Puebloans, I'm sure there's an archaeological survey out there detailing what was found in each room and their probable uses, but I don't have access to it so I won't speculate too much. What I can say is that it is very likely the room(s) in the upper left of the ruin were most probably living space. Above them, on the wall of the alcove, you can see the dark black stain of soot from more than the occasional fire. This heavy buildup would likely only result from repeated fires to heat a living space during cold Colorado winters.

Foggy Morning Trail

2011-02-15T07:00:00.000-08:00

A foggy morning along the trail around Lake Hodges

Time to take a quick break from our normally scheduled Ruins photos (if you're digging them, don't fret, there are plenty more to come! If you're not, hopefully this one will get you through the home stretch of them!) to share a more recent image.

On the eve of Superbowl Sunday, I looked up the forecast for the next morning's sunrise and was excited to see what looked like perfect conditions. I charged my batteries, gathered my gear and set my alarm for 5 a.m. I made it out the door by 5:15 Sunday morning and was instantly excited by the possibilities. Not only were there a few clouds in the sky, but there was some lingering fog. I couldn't wait to get to the lake and watch the sunrise above with a low hanging fog surrounding the lake.

I got to the lake almost an hour before sunrise and found it completely shrouded. Trees just 20 feet away disappeared into the thick fog. Forget sunrise, I was just hoping I be able to see someone approaching me! (The lake is pretty secluded at that time of the morning and with the fog I felt like I was smack dab in the middle of a horror movie, so I was a little jumpy.)

I stayed in my "sunrise" spot for a while capturing some very moody, very foggy images and was about ready to head home when I saw this trail. I've walked this trail a number of times but never found it all that interesting but, since I was there and only planning on taking a nap when I got home, I decided to see if the fog made it more interesting.

As soon as I got to this spot, I knew this would be the shot of the day! Good thing I decided to check it out before heading home.

A friend and fellow photographer had rough plans of meeting up at the lake that morning (I wasn't sure if the alarm would wake me up, so I gave him a general idea of where I would be IF I did wake up) but due to the heavy fog, Shimon wasn't sure were to find me. Instead of staying in the fog, he ventured up the hill behind me and took this photo of the sunrise above the fo g. I'm somewhere near the bottom left hand corner of his image, but it's a little hard to see me with all the fog. I would say it was a very successful day for both of us!

Built In

2011-02-14T07:00:00.000-08:00

The structures conform to the boulders in the alcove.

This is one of the first areas of Cliff Palace where you can get up close and personal with the ruins. The ranger guiding my tour group had stopped and was giving the group a brief introduction and overview of Cliff Palace and the Ancestral Puebloans in general. His talk was informative, but knowing everything he was talking about, I slipped to the edge of the group and used the time to capture a number of images without the risk of any bystanders wandering through my frame.

The Ancestral Puebloans didn't quarry their stones, they simply reshaped the rock that erosion had worked free of the cliff face and without the proper tools to quarry and shape large rocks, they often had to build around the contours of the alcove they wanted to call home. What struck me in this image was the way the buildings incorporated the large boulders and worked around them. Frank Lloyd Wright would have been proud!

Mesa Verde | Cliff Palace

2011-02-07T07:00:00.000-08:00

Cliff Palace Panorama

Mesa Verde has a very special place in my heart. I first visited the park along side my dad when I was six and it was here that I first fell in love with the ruins left behind by the Ancestral Puebloans. That fascination has grown into countless return trips to the Four Corners area and even a couple books co-authored with my dad. Despite the numerous trips to the area, I hadn't returned to Mesa Verde until this past October, nearly 25 years later. I have to admit, when planning my return trip, I was worried that my childhood memories would have become over exaggerated and park wouldn't live up to my expectations.

I'm happy to report that those concerns were quickly alleviated. Mesa Verde was just as incredible, if not more so, as I remembered. The park protects nearly 600 individual cliff dwellings, the largest of which is Cliff Palace, also believed to be the largest cliff dwelling in North America. This city in a cliff is composed of over 150 identified rooms and 23 kivas.

The ruins are accessible only on Ranger guided tours, but for $3/person, the one hour tours are an absolute bargain. The park service advertises the tour as "strenuous" but don't be scared away, the tour was a breeze, even after hiking the entire day before.

This panorama image was taken while I was waiting for the Ranger to start my tour. I removed most of the people from the previous tour group from the image, but left a few on the right side to provide a sense of scale and show just how enormous Cliff Palace is. I wish I could have gotten down there on my own and spent as much time as I wanted shooting among the ruins, but I took full advantage of the time I had down there (and I think I went over my 1 hour limit, but the Ranger was nice and didn't push too hard to get me to leave) so I have plenty of images to share in the coming days.

Humble Beginnings

2011-01-26T17:26:00.001-08:00

Remains of a Pit House

Remains of a mesa top pueblo.

If you've heard of Mesa Verde National Monument, you no doubt think of amazing Cliff Dwellings built into natural alcoves that dot the canyon walls in the park. These iconic cliff dwellings are indeed the main draw for Mesa Verde, however the people who actually lived here had much more humble beginnings. Occupation in the area predates the cliff dwellings by centuries. In fact, the cliff dwellings that Mesa Verde is so famous for represent only a brief sliver at the end of the pueblo culture's timeline in the area.

Along with representing only a brief time span, the cliff dwellings represent only a fraction of the archeological sites found within the park's borders. Of the close to 5,000 archeological sites, only about 600 are cliff dwellings and many of those are far less impressive than the park's best known dwelling, Cliff Palace.

Long before the Ancestral Puebloans moved into the cliff dwellings, they occupied mesa top adobe villages and before those pueblos, the people built and lived in pit houses. The top image here is a 4 or 5 image panorama showing the remains of one of these pit houses. They weren't much more than a shallow depression in the ground that would be covered by a roof of logs and wood. These early homes, while unassuming, would leave their mark on Puebloan culture and modern.

Small, one room adobe structures began to replace the pit house as a primary residence and would eventually grow into multi-room pueblos, or villages. The second image shows the remains of a small, 2 or 3 room pueblo. (Actually it shows the remains of 2 such villages, but the second village is far in the background, near the back wall of the modern, protecting structure and is barely visible.) The structure in the immediate foreground isn't a pit house, it's what the pit house grew into, a kiva. Kivas became an integral part of Ancestral Puebloan culture and are still used by the descendants of the Ancestral Puebloans, namely the Hopi. Today, kivas are used mostly as ceremonial spaces, but in ancient times they were more utilitarian places, serving as living areas as well as ceremonial and sometimes just for storage.

The kiva, at least in my mind, is a trademark feature of the Ancestral Puebloans. While I'm not a scholar, I have read quite a bit about the culture and have never heard of an Ancestral Puebloan village without a kiva and most villages had quite a few kivas. And that's not counting Great Kivas such as those found in Chaco Canyon or Aztec Ruins, but that's a story for another day!

Walls of Escalante Pueblo

2011-01-26T07:00:00.001-08:00

Walls

This image was taken from the other side of the pueblo, looking back in the direction I took the image in my last post from. The light that day was perfect. The large fluffy clouds not only added some interest to the sky but also filtered the sun light just right to really make all the details in this image pop. The details and the relationship between the walls and overgrown grasses and shrubs was my main focus for this image so even though the colors popped quite nicely in the perfect light as well, I converted this one to black and white. That way, the colors couldn't dominate the details.

And that's it from Escalante Pueblo and the Anasazi Heritage Center. I'm currently working on finishing the processing on my Mesa Verde photos and can't wait to start sharing them!

OK, one more image from Escalante Pueblo:

A 2 row, many-many image panoramic of Escalante Pueblo

Escalante Pueblo Vertical Panorama

2011-01-24T23:43:00.000-08:00

The remains of Escalante Pueblo overlook the surrounding area.

This four frame panorama of Escalante Pueblo helps show what made this hill top location a perfect location for a village. The hill itself isn't large enough to be self contained (no arable land or water source) but both are readily available nearby. The reservoir visible in the distance (upper left, just below the horizon) is a modern construction, however it would not have been built where there wasn't already a sizable water source. If you look closely, there are modern buildings in the distance (to the right of the reservoir). Many of these are farms and ranches, indicating good arable land.

Additionally, many scholars theorize that the downfall of the Ancestral Puebloan civilization was accompanied with violent warfare between neighbors fighting over dwindling resources in a drought. A hill top location would have made it much easier to defend and detect incoming threats.

And let's not discount the view. It's easy to imagine that even eight hundred years ago, people would have appreciated a view as amazing as this one.

Anasazi Heritage Center & the Escalante Pueblo

2011-01-19T23:57:00.000-08:00

Time to move on from my Sand Canyon Trail images. There's still plenty more to see in the gallery, and it's not that the rest aren't worth a write up, it's just that I want to move on to other parts from my Colorado trip, so be sure to check out the gallery for other Sand Canyon images.

Layers

My hike along Sand Canyon Trail didn't take as long as I had planned for, so rather than sitting around, I drove up the road a little ways to the Anasazi Heritage Center (that's a link to their site, click here for my image of the center) in nearby Dolores, Colorado. If you're ever in the area, and have an interest in the Ancestral Puebloans, stop by this museum. It only takes a $3 donation to get in, is one of the best museums for the Ancestral Puebloans around and has a couple small pueblo ruins on the grounds.

The smaller of the two pueblos, Dominguez Pueblo, sits right out front of the museum but isn't extraordinarily interesting on its own. I'm not sure I even took a photo of it. If I did, it wasn't interesting enough when I reviewed it at home to save it from the trash bin. Escalante Pueblo on the other hand, is a bit more interesting. A half mile trail of switchbacks leads from the Anasazi Heritage Center uphill to Escalante Pueblo and offers 360 degree views of the surrounding area, but I'll get into that more with the next image.

This image has been my desktop background at work for a while now. There's just something pleasing to me about it. The more I look at it, the more I enjoy the layers within it, the scrub bush in the foreground, the v-shape of the walls, curve of the hill and the brilliant blue cloud filled sky. Definitely a favorite from the trip (I'm pretty picky about my desktop backgrounds, so the fact that this one has lasted so long is proof that I like it)!

Sand Canyon Trail | Saddlehorn Hamlet in Color

2011-01-13T11:00:00.000-08:00

A close up and panoramic view of Saddlehorn Pueblo

Another panoramic image of Saddlehorn Pueblo. This time I got up close and took 6 images horizontally then stitched them together in Photoshop. There's some noticeable distortion from being so close to the structure when taking this image but I like it anyway! The walls were a bit straighter in person than they appear here, but I like the feeling that they're coming out to meet you.

Sand Canyon Trail | Saddlehorn Hamlet B&W

2011-01-12T11:00:00.000-08:00

Saddlehorn Hamlet in Black & White

This pueblo is known as Saddlehorn Hamlet and it's the next major stop along the Sand Canyon Trail after the Unnamed Ruin. As you can probably guess, the pueblo got its name from the unique rock formation above it. This area is composed mostly of sandstone, which makes for some really cool shapes in the rocks. The soft, porous nature of the sandstone in the area made these somewhat iconic alcoves possible for the Ancestral Puebloans to build their homes in.

This image started out as 6 individual frames that were "stitched" together in Photoshop and made for an enormous vertical image. However the sky and immediate foreground were largely uninteresting, so I opted to go with the square crop on it and lose those areas.

I've got a couple more images from Sand Canyon to come, then it's on to the Mesa Verde images!!!

Sand Canyon Trail | Unnamed Ruin

2011-01-11T18:13:00.000-08:00

As the new year begins, I again have to acknowledge that I've let my blog sort of wither away. As the homepage for my site, it's just not acceptable to go nearly 2 full months without a new post. Yes, it was an extremely busy 2 months (there was a new promotion at work and an engagement to my wonderful gal, Kristen just to name a couple big things), but still. That said, I've got a few things planned for my site to make sure it doesn't keep up like this! Stay tuned for updates! In the meantime, I probably won't write quite as much about each image, not that I was particularly verbose about many, but hopefully just a few words will be easier to spit out and get the images coming faster!

A small unnamed ruin along Sand Canyon Trail

Considering the size of this small ruin, I took an absolute ton of photos of it. More can be seen in my Sand Canyon gallery and there are several others on my hard drive. Maybe it's because I found it so early on along the trail. I wasn't tired or overheated yet so I took my time and played around.

This sign is a good reminder to all when visiting ruins of this type, especially in a less developed, less preserved area such as Sand Canyon. These structures are 800+ years old and have withstood the elements without maintenance for much of that time. Even if you're "just going to take a quick photo" or you're "not going to touch anything," please, keep your distance. One wrong move and this structure that has survived for centuries could be gone in an instant.

Future generations thank you for your caution!

Sand Canyon Trail | Castle Rock Pueblo

2010-11-23T10:25:00.000-08:00

A lone standing wall is all that remains of Castle Rock Pueblo.

From the Sand Canyon South Trailhead parking lot, where my little Kia was parked in this image, the trail leads you up a sloping stretch of slickrock and around a sandstone butte known as Battle Rock. That's Battle Rock in the upper right corner of the image of my car in the parking lot and it can also be seen in this image along with the BLM sign for Canyon of the Ancients. As the trail rounds Battle Rock, a spur leads you to the day's first ruins.

All that remains of this once sprawling village known as Castle Rock Pueblo is this lone standing wall. The surrounding ground is littered with cut stones that once made 40 above ground rooms, 9 towers, a D-shaped building and at least 16 kivas. At its height, between 1250 and 1280 AD, the pueblo even included rooms and structures built on the sides and top of the butte. The Crow Canyon Archeological Center in Cortez has an interesting article on the oral history of Castle Rock Pueblo, along with a series of photographs from an 1874 survey of the pueblo showing the remains of structures on the butte. See Figure 1 and Figure 2 to see the additional ruins. Figure 3 and Figure 4 are also interesting but don't show additional ruins.

Also, the first 3 images in the Traces of the Ancient World: Details gallery are close up views of the Ancestral Pueblo stonework from this last remaining part of Castle Rock Pueblo.

Off Roading: Kia Style

2010-10-20T13:42:00.000-07:00

My Kia Spectra at the Sand Canyon South trail head.

Following breakfast and a quick photo walk around the property on my first morning at Kelly Place, I hopped into my car and made my way over to the Sand Canyon South trail head for a morning of hiking.

The trail head is less than a mile up the road from Kelly Place and so close that I drove right past it as I wasn't expecting it so soon. In fact, I was looking at some interesting butte formations on the opposite side of the road, wondering if there we ruins over there as well. It appeared to be private land on that side of the road, but in all honesty, it would be somewhat hard to believe that there wasn't something ancient over there. The whole Four Corners area is so loaded with Ancestral Puebloan ruins (as well as those from other cultures) that I've heard "you can't throw a stone in any direction without hitting something." Often times it may be a small relatively uninteresting structure, but they are everywhere!

After a slight detour up the road and back, I arrived at the Sand Canyon trail head and while this photo insinuates a rough ride in, this parking area is right off the main road. At most, my little Kia only had to survive about 20 feet of driving on solid bedrock to arrive at this location.

The Sand Canyon Trail is part of Canyon of the Ancients National Monument, one of the country's newest National Parks, which was designated to preserve and protect the highest concentration of archaeological sites in the United States. Over 6,000 distinct structures have been identified within the 164,000 acres of the monument and Sand Canyon contains a number of well preserved cliff dwellings. Spurs in the trail take you right to the base of a handful of these dwellings and many others can be seen in alcoves on the other, inaccessible, side of the canyon.

Images of the dwellings to come shortly...

Sue's Ruin in the Morning Light

2010-10-19T13:40:00.000-07:00

Sue's Ruin in the morning light.

Here's another view of the reconstructed pueblo, known as Sue's Ruin, on the Kelly Place property. Sue's Ruin is just one of the many remnants of the Ancestral Puebloans that can be found on a quick walk around the main lodge.

The pueblo, named after the property's original owner's wife, was in use between about 980 and 1225 AD and spans two distinct construction styles, Pueblo II and Pueblo III. The Kellys first excavated this 13 room pueblo and its kiva in the 1960s but back filled it once they were done to prevent further deterioration of the fragile walls. The pueblo and kiva were again excavated in 1988 and stabilized with the help of trained archaeologists.

While this image makes the pueblo look rather small, it's a trick of perspective. From this angle, the back side of the pueblo, only the very top of the reconstructed walls stick out above the tall grasses along the ridge of a hill. The pueblo, and its kiva, is actually large enough to house several families.

Sue's Ruin provided an excellent subject for me while I stayed at Kelly Place. It's accessible (only a couple hundred feet from the main lodge), photogenic and just plain interesting. I've got a number of interesting images to share just of this small part of my trip, and many of the others show the pueblo's true size much better, but next up is Sand Canyon Trail. If I don't keep these posts at least somewhat in chronological order, it's going to quickly turn into a mess of confusion for me.

Granary & Kelly Place

2010-10-15T07:52:00.000-07:00

Ancestral Puebloan Granary on the Kelly Place property.

Disclaimer: In the interest of honesty and openness, I have to say that the good folks at Kelly Place offered me a 2 night stay in exchange for using some of the information found on my Dad's website. That being said, if I hadn't enjoyed the stay, I would only mention "I stayed here" and that's it. But Marc and Jerene really have a great place set up there just outside of Cortez, especially for visitors interested in the Ancestral Puebloan culture that dominated the Four Corners region hundreds of years ago.

OK now that that's out of the way, I recently had a chance to make a return visit to Cortez, Co. This visit was roughly my second and half visit to the Cortez area and it was a wonderful trip. My first visit came around the time when I was six as I accompanied my dad on his move from Syracuse, NY to Los Angeles, Calif. Being the smart guy that he is, Dad knew he couldn't keep a growing 6 year old cooped up in the car for a full 5 days of hard driving so he planned numerous stops for us. One of those stops was Mesa Verde National Park. It was that stop that really entranced both of us in the culture from hundreds of years ago that left reminders of their presence scattered across the landscape. This visit ultimately led dozens upon dozens of follow up visits to the Four Corners area, 3 books (2 as co-authors), my dad's website (anasaziadventure.com) and Dad eventually moving to the area to lead tours around many of the National Parks and Monuments in the area. In other words, it was a rather significant point in both our lives.

Despite numerous trips with Dad back to the Southwest, I didn't manage another visit to Cortez until about 5 years ago and even then, it was only about a half day visit. That's where the "half" of "...my second and half visit..." comes from. When I was moving from Buffalo to San Diego, Dad was living in Cortez and working on his initial book about the region's ancient culture. The quick visit and short timeline to get to San Diego didn't allow for a trip up the road to Mesa Verde even though it was tantalizingly close.

In late spring of this year, Dad was contacted by the folks at Kelly Place requesting the use of his Sand Canyon Trail Guide, which remained unfinished after a hard drive crash a couple years ago. Marc offered Dad a couple nights stay at Kelly Place to help him get the guide finished up. I got to be the lucky beneficiary of Dad moving overseas not long ago and jumped at the chance. I even booked an extra night in one of the campsites Kelly Place offers on their property. Since the drive from San Diego to Cortez takes about 13 hours, the extra night was really worth it. It gave me a chance to spend a day hiking and photographing along the Sand Canyon Trail and a full day to visit Mesa Verde again, 25 years after I first fell in love with the park.

I've never stayed in a Bed & Breakfast before (I was just never high class enough until recently), but if Kelly Place is an indication for how they all are, I can't wait to stay in more! Good breakfasts, nice room to stay in and friendly folks to chat with when I wasn't out with the camera. What more could you want? PLUS, on their property, there's a reconstructed pueblo, the granary high on the cliff wall as seen in the photos that accompany this post, ruins of another pueblo under excavation, a trail that runs through the property to over 25 documented historic culture site and allows easy access to Sand Canyon in Canyon of the Ancients National Monument. In other words, if you're looking for a great and unique place to stay in the Four Corners area, I highly recommend Kelly Place!

A closer look at the ruins of the granary.

Granaries like this one are pretty common throughout the Southwest. They provided a safe place to store a pueblo's harvest for the winter ahead without worrying about rodents and other animals getting fat off the villagers' hard work. Take a look at the image above, just below the modern buildings in the background, there's a corner of a reconstructed pueblo sticking up through the grass. (It's difficult to see at the size image I have here in the blog, but as always you can click the image to see a larger version of the image where it'll be easier to see.) I've got plenty more images of this pueblo, known as Sue's Ruin, to share but I'll get to those in good time. It is likely that the granary shown on the cliff face in these images was built by the same folks who built Sue's Ruin and utilized it as their pantry.

I've got a ton more to come from this trip, so stay tuned!

Morning Reflections

2010-09-27T23:39:00.000-07:00

Morning Reflections

And it's once again been another month since I last posted an update with a new photo. We're still suffering from less than ideal conditions for photography here in San Diego so I haven't gotten out much. In fact, not at all since I took the last image just over a month ago.

I'm also trying to wrap my head around a few things concerning my site. Chief among them is image sizing. My camera outputs images in a 2x3 ratio, a "standard" size for most cameras. But somehow, this isn't a standard ratio for frames and mattes. Scott Kelby (a Photoshop & general photography guru) wrote about it not long ago on his blog, here & here, and I've had some complaints from customers that they couldn't find frames to fit the prints I had available (sorry Mom!). Anyway, since most of my images are in the 2x3 ratio (8x12) and frames come in 2x2.5 ratios (8x10) it's a massive undertaking to overhaul all my images to fit what is best, and easiest, for customers. I'm still in the "thinking" process trying to figure out how best to deal with it, but in the meantime if you're looking for prints, please don't hesitate to contact me with any questions you have about sizing.

To get back on topic, the nice thing about not getting out to take photos regularly is that I've had some time to go back through my archive and find some really nice images that just got "left behind" when I was shooting more than I could process. It's easy to lose track, especially on a weekend where every sunrise and sunset has near perfect predicted conditions. That's what happened to this image, taken at Lake Hodges. That particular weekend, back in December of 2009, had near perfect sunrises and sunsets and it seems that I never got around to fully exploring my images from Saturday's sunrise. In fact, I only processed one image from that morning and there are a lot more from that morning that deserve some attention.

Stay tuned for some more "forgotten" images as I work my way through my archive!

Pastel Beach

2010-08-24T14:04:00.000-07:00

After sunset at Torrey Pines State Beach

It's been just over a month since my last update and I promised back in May I that these types of lapses wouldn't happen, so I apologize! It has been a busy summer to say the least and we've had less than stellar weather for photography. San Diego's marine layer has persisted far deeper into the summer months than it normally does, more or less erasing any chance of sunrise and sunset (when the light for landscapes is at it's absolute best).

Towards the end of last week I started seeing far more clear sky in the evenings and checked Friday's forecast. The cloud cover was predicted to be about 8% at the coast and, with a high tide near sunset, I couldn't resist the call of the surf anymore. After work Friday I grabbed my camera and set out for Torrey Pines State Beach. You may remember this image, also taken at Torrey Pines State Beach, but at low tide.

When I arrived, I found total cloud cover. Absolute, 100%, not an inch of open sky overhead cloud cover. I had to fight the urge to turn right around and head home, but I convinced myself that getting some sand between my toes and going for a walk on the beach with my camera bag & tripod could count my exercise for the week. I hiked to the far end of the beach and was rewarded for my troubles with this scene on my walk back.

With the heavy cloud cover moving off to sea as if it was following the sun (it can be seen above the horizon on the left side of the image), the sky took on a pinkish glow which was reflected by the wet sand as the waves receded. I had to scramble to find an interesting foreground subject as most of the rocks in the area were underwater with the high tide. When I came across this rock, with the wet sand sweeping over top of it I had just a few moments to capture the scene before the glow in the sky faded.

Sometimes you just have to stick it out and get your toes in the sand...

Waves in the Trees

2010-07-22T14:46:00.000-07:00

Eucalyptus Grove Abstract

Another abstract image from a few nights ago at Lake Miramar. The goal of the night was to come away with an image that could be used in the Stripes photo challenge I mentioned in my last post, but the very nature of this type of shooting is unpredictable.

I shot a few hundred frames that evening, doing my absolute best to only move the camera straight up and down while the shutter was open. However, as evidenced by this image, I wasn't always successful staying in a straight line. Many of those images were deleted right away when I saw them on my computer screen, but the gentle side-to-side motion in this one created a nice rhythmic feeling for me, almost like there were waves in the trees.

Natural Stripes

2010-07-16T12:08:00.000-07:00

Natural Stripes

When I've got the time (or a unique idea) I try to participate in DGrin.com's photography challenges and when the newest one, "Stripes," was announced I saw it as a perfect opportunity to expand on my Of an Abstract Nature gallery.

Once the idea struck me to create this type of abstract image, the challenge was to find a dense enough grove of trees to make it happen. That might not be a big challenge for many parts of the country, but here in San Diego, there just aren't a whole lot of groves of trees to choose from. Earlier in the week, I just happened to spot a number of eucalyptus trees along the side of the road on my way to the bank and knew they were the perfect subject for this shot. Their tall, slender trucks are generally uninterrupted by branches, allowing for better streaking, or in this case, more distinct stripes.

I returned a couple nights ago after work but just couldn't get the lighting or composition I wanted with the trees I had originally planned on. Luckily, Miramar Lake was less than a minute away. This reservoir had been on my "to visit" list for a while so even if the light wasn't great, I stopped by, planning to scout out the location for future shoots.

Just a couple hundred feet from the parking lot (good short distance because I'm out of shape and it was the hottest day of the year so far!) I found a tightly packed grove of eucalyptus trees squeezed in between the path and the edge of the lake. From the angle I was at, the late afternoon sun lit up only the left side of the trucks leaving the right side in shadow and further emphasizing the stripes created by the slow shutter speed and moving the camera vertically throughout the exposure.

La Jolla Cove Twilight Part 2

2010-07-12T10:28:00.000-07:00

Twilight at La Jolla Cove

Another image from my night down at La Jolla Cove. This one was taken about 20 minutes after sunset.

I'm nearly running out of things to say about my photographs from this particular night but I think that's a pretty good problem to have, all things considered. If I came back with so many quality images that I can't think of enough to say about them every time I head out, I could safely quit my day job and start living off my photography. In the meantime, I'll just enjoy this little wave of quality images and wait for San Diego's June Gloom to finally clear up so I can get out to some new locations and take some new photos.

If you're a long time follower of my site here, you've seen these rocks before, a while back. You can see these rocks on the right had side, about mid-picture. Back in those days, I wasn't so adventurous with my camera in hand (I was really a good distance from the oncoming wave, just zoomed in a ways). Now, I just throw a plastic bag over the camera and scamper on out there for the shot! If the camera breaks, it's just a sign that it's time to upgrade...

Also available in Black & White, though I may revisit the conversion and make a few tweaks.

Sunset in Black and White

2010-07-06T13:04:00.000-07:00

La Jolla Cove Sunset

Here's another photograph from the sunset on June 21st down at La Jolla Cove. I'm really milking this particular sunset for all it was worth. But with good reason.

This particular night was the best sunset I saw during the week and a half I was out trying to fill my memory cards with worthwhile images and when you find the right conditions, you've just got to go for it. Fill those memory cards and really take advantage of the good light when you've got it.

I can't quite put my finger on it, but something about this image called out to me for a black and white treatment. As I experiment more with the black and white medium, I suspect I'll have a better idea of what would and wouldn't look good in monochrome, but at the moment all I can really admit to is that I tried it, and I liked it!

And for the curious folks out there, I'm sorry I really don't know what the ridge that starts in the lower left corner is. I've inspected it a number of times and always left empty handed (minded?). In person, it appears that someone long ago embedded a metal pipe into the sandstone and left it to corrode in the salt water but I can't find an opening at either end that would indicate it truly is a long forgotten pipe. It's definitely of a different composition than the surrounding rock and has attracted a multitude of mollusks to it but beyond that I just don't know. It's probably for the best that I don't know. The continuing mystery will keep me coming back for more and hopefully that will mean some more evenings like this one!

La Jolla Cove Twilight

2010-07-02T11:10:00.000-07:00

La Jolla Cove Twilight

Taken just 10 minutes after yesterday's sunset image, the mood of this photograph is dramatically different even though it's just a couple feet to the right. The light quickly changes around sunset and the sky begins to really glow during the half hour of twilight that begins once the sun is actually below the horizon.

The quickly changing light makes the time around sunset and twilight a very exciting (read that as frantic) time to photograph. As the last of the day's light fades away, the exposure times increase, I rush around trying to capture as many quality images as I can before the light is completely gone and often times my last exposure is several minutes long when the color on the horizon isn't even visible to the naked eye.

The majority of my images from this time of day showcase a number of educated guesses, especially at the coast. It takes time and experimentation to really begin to see just how the waves will look as they become flattened out over the long exposure. Even now I get surprised on occasion at just how awesome (or horrible) the waves in an image look after 10, 20 or 30+ seconds of leaving the shutter open. Without much light on the foreground, it can be difficult to compose an image and I often have to recompose after seeing the preview on my camera's LCD after the first couple frames of a scene.

I've still got a few more to come from this evening at La Jolla Cove before we're back to where I started.

La Jolla Cove Sunset

2010-07-01T14:34:00.000-07:00

Sunset at the Cove

As promised, I'll move on from the erosion themed images and get back to the photographs you all expect to see here on my site. Though it's difficult to photograph along the coast (especially with the soft sandstone coast we have here around San Diego) without seeing the effects of erosion, but like I said... moving on!

I captured this photograph as the sunset on the same evening as my previously posted Last Shot of the Day image, down at La Jolla Cove. It was taken about 40 minutes before the Last Shot, just when the sun was high enough to still create some interesting highlights in the foreground, yet low enough to begin lighting up the edges of the clouds.

In the short time the sun was at this perfect angle, I managed to capture several different compositions of this scene, but what set this one apart from the others are the leading lines. The various elements throughout the scene work to draw you into the sunset. The middle ground rocks point almost directly at the sun. The highlights on the rock contours in the foreground don't point right at it near the bottom of the frame, but if you follow them up, they eventually curve and point back towards the setting sun. Even the clouds in the upper corners keep your eye from drifting too far out of the image and direct you back towards the sun.

A common problem with large scenic photographs (and I'm sure a number of my previous works suffered from it) is that in a complex scene such as this, with so many different elements, it can be difficult to determine the subject of the image. Without a clear cut subject, your eye will "bounce" around looking for the subject and a place to settle for a little while. The leading lines and elements of this image work to eliminate that problem and highlight the subject I intended.

Layers

2010-06-29T15:37:00.000-07:00

Layers

This is probably the last of the erosion inspired images for a little bit. I know, I know, you're all thankful and want to see the sunset images I created while using the Chris Skopec Homemade Custom Camera Water Proof Housing (patent pending) and those are coming, I promise!

Near the bottom of this image, you can see the Swirlstone from the previous post. I was drawn to both the form of the swirl and the surrounding layers. Those above don't show the same twisting deformation and those below show only a slight curve. Also noticeable is the effect of erosion on the texture of the stone. The Swirlstone marks the top of an outcropping of sandstone, if you look closely you should see the edge all the way across the image. Judging by the textures alone, it's a relatively safe assumption that the smooth stone of the outcropping gets some regular attention from the waves while the water rarely reaches the much rougher rock above.

As in the previous image, the late evening, low angle sunlight set this stone a glow and I actually had to desaturate the colors a touch to keep the image realistic looking.

Swirlstone

2010-06-29T14:03:00.000-07:00

The Swirlstone variant of Sandstone

As a follow up to last week's Grains of Sand image post, I offer another image showing the finer details brought to light by the forces of erosion. On the surface, this image speaks more of the process of sedimentation and how the sandstone was created and subsequently twisted. However, without the effects of erosion to remove the rock above and around this twisted knot of stone, we would probably never see it.

Here, the sandstone's regular, warm tone has been enhanced by the late evening light as the sun was beginning to set. The light in the late evening "Magic Hour" adds a warm glow and enhances the stone's texture. Scenes like this abound along the California Coastline as the ocean has cut into the bordering rock surface exposing the details of the relatively soft rock. Up until this particular evening, most of my attention while at the coast has been focused out over the ocean waiting for the sun to dip to just the right angle but this image is a healthy reminder that I shouldn't ignore the good light and scenery behind me.

New Product Available!

2010-06-24T15:50:00.000-07:00

Keep your camera safe while at the coast!

I'm pleased to announce that the Chris Skopec Homemade Custom Camera Water Proof Housing (patent pending) is now available for the low, low price of $74.98 plus $9.99 shipping & handling!

The Chris Skopec Homemade Custom Camera Water Proof Housing (patent pending) was developed through a rigorous trial and error process along the treacherous California Coastline to keep your camera safe from hazards of salt water! The Chris Skopec Homemade Custom Camera Water Proof Housing (patent pending) is designed to allow you full access to your camera, tripod head, lens focusing mechanism and remote shutter release giving you greater peace of mind while photographing at the coast!

No more ruined cameras when a rogue wave splashes higher than expected. No more watching the waves and losing a good composition running from the splash! Just set your camera where you want and leave it!

A "must-have" for any photographer, pro or amateur, planning a visit to the coast!

ACT NOW SUPPLIES ARE LIMITED!!!

"I've been using my Chris Skopec Homemade Custom Camera Water Proof Housing (patent pending) for three days now! Despite its serious design flaws, I won't leave home without it!" -~~Chris Skopec~~ Happy Customer

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Grains of Sand

2010-06-24T14:34:00.000-07:00

Grains of Sand on a sandstone ledge.

Here's something a little different for me, a macro (almost) image. My eye, at the moment, seems trained to see the grand sweeping expanse of the landscape and I often miss these smaller scene that can be found by getting up close to the details. And in fact I really just chanced upon this view down at La Jolla Cove a few nights ago.

The La Jolla area coastline is composed almost entirely of sandstone in various stages of erosion. Steep vertical cliffs drop into the ocean or give way to small, course-grained sand beaches while other areas, as seen in my previously image, feature an expanse of wave polished rocks extending some distance out into the ocean.

While waiting for sunset, leaning against one of the areas sandstone cliffs with my feet firmly planted in the warm sand, I looked to my right to find these small grains of sand perched on a small ledge and lighting up in the late afternoon sun. The majority of my lenses are better suited for the wide vistas my eye favors, but my 50mm prime lens allows for super close focusing so I was able to get almost right on top of these grains of sand and still have them in sharp focus. Such a close focus creates a razor thin depth of field (the area of the image in focus) allowing the textures of the sandstone to melt away into a pleasing, golden blur.

I've yet to find a better illustration of Elegant Erosion than these grains of sand resting on a ledge they were most probably a part of not too long ago.

Last shot of the Day

2010-06-22T16:35:00.000-07:00

Last Light at La Jolla Cove

After nearly 2 months of not taking any new photos because of various other projects, I've been down at the coast three times in the last week. Now that some other projects are done (or at least done for now) I can get back to having some fun.

The first two nights, last Thursday and last Saturday nights, were both something of a bust. I haven't looked through the complete catalog of images from those two nights and may very well find some compelling images, but neither night had a true sunset. On Thursday, the sun dipped behind some low lying clouds our over the ocean just before sunset and on Saturday it never even had a chance with near total cloud cover at the coast from late afternoon on. When photographing the landscape, you're really counting on Mother Nature to do the lighting for you and when she decides to end the show early, there's not much you can do about it except go home and try again another night.

And try again I did! Last night more than made up for the previous two nights. I headed down to La Jolla Cove where a high tide about twenty minutes after sunset meant the full power of the ocean was coming straight at me for much of the night. And though there was a sizable cloud bank out over the ocean, it was still small enough to let the post-sunset glow show through.

High tide here at La Jolla Cove is a dangerous time, both for camera and person. The splash of the waves can wreak havoc with a digital camera if proper precautions aren't taken (I fashioned a "dry suit" for my camera and lens out of a one gallon Ziploc bag. Worked like a charm!) and this rock under foot, even though it's sandstone, has very little texture to it after countless years of abuse by the sea. I opted to go barefoot while out there as my feet offered better traction on the rocks than my sandals.

This particular shot is out of order. It's the last photograph of the night from last night. It's a thirty second exposure taken about twenty minutes after sunset and just a split second before a large wave crashed down on my location almost knocking my tripod over. I saw the wave coming in and had appropriately braced myself for the wave, but going from mostly dry to knee deep in a split second was enough to tell me that it was time to get out of the way before the waves got any more intense. Thus I present to you this last photograph of the night as a Badge of Honor that my camera and I made it out safely!

Done

2010-06-16T12:13:00.000-07:00

Seashell, down by the seashore.
(Found, not sold by Sally)

Lately I've been doing a LOT of work on my website, hopefully it shows. Some of the recent improvements include:

The "Buy" button is back! Now you can enjoy beautiful prints in your home without all the hassle of visiting local galleries.
There's a new "Share" button. Now when you find a photo you like, not only can you leave a comment and vote it into my popular photos, but you can now share it with friends. In just about any way you can imagine! Send an email, get a link to post it right on your own blog, Be Social and share it on Facebook or add it to a Social Bookmarking site like Digg.
Hand in hand with the sharing, I've got a new watermark on my photos, as seen in the nice seashell photo here on the right. The problem with sharing is that once a photo is off my site, it's completely out of my hands and in the Wild Wild West of the Internet, there are those unscrupulous folks who would try take a photo and sell it as their own. The watermark won't completely solve the problem, but at least it gives me a little piece of mind.
There's a new logo and navbar just to make the site a little sleeker and snazzier (that's right, "snazzier").
Print Packages are now available. Currently there are 2 available for metal prints (printed right on metal!) with a couple more coming soon.
And a few other, behind the scenes type changes.

I've still got a couple notebook pages (the small, pocket sized variety) filled with items that I would still like to make happen, but for now, I'm calling it DONE! The problem is, I've been so focused on making these changes and making the website look good, I haven't taken my camera out in nearly 2 months! It's incredibly hard to tackle both the creative aspect of taking and processing the photos and the technical side of website coding and management. So for the foreseeable future, the website is done for all intents and purposed (not including new photo postings) and I'll be spending my time enjoying the outdoors with my camera. And there's no better time to start than tomorrow, with a low tide just 20 minutes after sunset and a predicted 25% cloud cover for (hopefully) just the right amount of clouds to pick up the colors.

In the meantime, I encourage you to take a look around the website, take advantage of the new offerings and if you're so inclined to support my photo habit, take 25% off the price of all prints! Just enter SupportMyHabit when you check out! (Hurry offer end July 31st, 2010!)

America's Southwestern Treasures

2010-06-08T13:20:00.000-07:00

America's Southwestern Treasures' Front Cover

I'm happy to announce that the second book from my dad and I, America's Southwestern Treasures, is now available to purchase!

As a follow up to our original publication, The Ancestral Puebloan Primer, Treasures is your concise guide to America's Southwest and the remnants of number of distinct ancient cultures who resided there, not just the Ancestral Puebloans. More than 170 archeological sites and 13 museums are covered and the 130 plus pages of Treasures detail which culture built the site, what is important about it and what you can expect to find there on your visit, both in terms of modern services and ancient ruins or artwork.

Additionally, each site is rated on a scale of 0 to 3 so you can spend your limited vacation time at one of the 30 "must see" sites instead of a site with only scholarly interest.

Our six Suggested Itineraries mean you can make the most of a quickly planned trip and the indexes (sorted by geographic location and cultures) help plan an impromptu visit to nearby sites of interest.

You can purchase the book direct from our publisher, Createspace, right here.

Panoramas Part 2: Return to the Same Locations

2010-06-08T12:08:00.000-07:00

Late Evening Light on Lake Hodges

Another panorama from the shores of Lake Hodges. This one is a combination of 4 horizontally oriented frames, taken back in December (or about 3 months before the other panorama I already posted). Both were taken at sunrise and illustrate why it's possible to keep visiting the same locations time and time again. Don't get me wrong, I love finding interesting new locations, and while it's not a perfect comparison, (this one was taken from a slightly different vantage point looking North instead of East) this image and the previous panorama image could have been taken at two vastly different locations not just different conditions.

In this image, San Diego had yet to receive its spring rains and the water level of the reservoir is much lower, showing more reds in the foreground than in the previous image. The air temperature was much closer to the water temperature in this image than the last, as evidenced by the lack of steam rising from the water's surface. Those are seasonal changes though, and can be predicted with relative ease. The major difference is much harder to predict. The light! Light is building blocks of any photograph, landscape or otherwise. Portrait photographers have the luxury of carefully crafting their studio lighting set up to achieve the desired effect time after time. For landscapes, you can make your best guess at how the sunrise or sunset will turn out based on the natural conditions (temperature, cloud cover, etc) but by and large you just need to be there and hope you get lucky. Good days go bad if the clouds aren't in the right spots and bad days can go good at a moment's notice if there's a break in the clouds in the distance. This unpredictable nature is exactly what makes an image such as this one and the previous panorama so rewarding to capture.
See more of my panoramas here, in the appropriately title Panoramas gallery.

Panoramas: Not Just a Fun Word to Say

2010-05-28T09:59:00.000-07:00

Early Morning Light on Lake Hodges

I'm breaking my own post template for this one, and asking you to make sure your browser window is wide enough to take in the full photo above. Go ahead and resize it now, I'll wait...

That's the joy and the problem of panoramic photos. They're HUGE! In fact, it's difficult to properly display them on a website due to their size. This particular image has a wealth of detail, even in the back lit hills, however, due to its overall dimensions, I can't display it large enough for those details to be seen.

In the olden days of film cameras, a specially formatted panoramic camera to be done seamlessly. Now, with the advent of digital photography and the magic of Photoshop, creating a panoramic can be done painlessly and without a special camera. This particular image is actually 6 images, taken in horizontal orientation shot about 20 minutes before sunrise, and then "stitched" together in Photoshop.

Panoramas can be difficult to plan, since you can't see the entire image in the viewfinder at once and minor shifts in camera position can cause insurmountable perspective distortions and, as seen above, the vast scope of the image often encompasses very different lighting from edge to edge. Despite the difficulties, they can be truly rewarding to capture, especially when they turn out like this one!

See more of my panoramas here, in the appropriately title Panoramas gallery.

Soft Light, Soft Water

2010-05-27T09:00:00.000-07:00

Long exposure after sunset, looking at the Ocean Beach Pier.

I love long exposures! There's a bit of mystery in long exposures as you can never tell exactly what you're going to end up with. You can guess and try to envision the effects of the increased exposure time, but you'll never know for sure until you see it on you LCD screen after the shutter closes.

Case in point, this photo was a 30 second exposure about 30 minutes after sunset. It was taken the same night as End of the Day and the image for 12 Minutes Makes a World of Difference, back in mid-April. As I set up for the shot, the sky was already a deep dark blue, edging quickly towards black but I knew the long exposure time would allow my camera's sensor to pick up the last remaining bits of color in the sky. What I didn't know was that I would end up with such nice, soft pastel colors in the sky.

I also expected the waves would be smoothed out quite a bit. My hope was that I wouldn't lose all definition in the ocean, but I couldn't have predicted the reflection of the pier's lights on the smoothed out waves. The reflections of the lights wasn't apparent to the naked eye that night, probably because of the motion of the waves, but once the motion was taken out of the equation, those reflections were allowed to shine.

Finishing up Projects

2010-05-26T09:39:00.000-07:00

Merced River Reflections

I had a dramatic flurry of new photos and posts at the end of last month/beginning of this month and not much since. My time has been filled getting some other projects taken care of as well as finishing up some behind the scenes type things for the website.

Notable changes to the website:

The blog (www.chrisskopec.com/) now "stretches" and fills the screen as you change the size of your browser window. And it now matches the photo site (photos.chrisskopec.com) a little better providing a more seamless transition between the two.
If you're so inclined, you can now leave comments on photos. It's a feature I turned off a while ago because I wasn't happy with the way they looked in the old layout. Now, with the new layout, they can be hidden free up more screen space for the photos. To find the comment section, click on a thumbnail to see the photo larger then click "Show Details" at the top of the page to bring up the Comment/Keyword box and you can comment away.
I've been adding keywords and captions to publicly viewable photos. It's a slow process and isn't done yet, but the hope is that these will help my images be even more findable through Google and other search engines.
Are you a friend or a family? Check out the new "Friends & Family" section of the site. These photos are not for the general public, but recent changes from SmugMug (who hosts my photo site) allowed me to password protect the whole group so you only have to put the password in once. The password shouldn't be too difficult for friends but if you have trouble just let me know.
And last but not least, I've created a "Best of our National Parks" gallery. The images here are collected from the various individual parks galleries in an attempt to group the best of those images in one gallery. The image above is from the new gallery and can still be found in my Yosemite gallery along with the rest of the images from my Yosemite trip.

In other, more exciting news, a major project that is in the final stretches is America's Southwestern Treasure, the second book from my dad and I. All files for the book have been submitted to our publisher and my proof copy is on its way. Once I have a chance to review the proof, and ensure there are no errors, we will approve it for print and make it available for purchasing. More details to follow once the book is available to the public, but together with The Ancestral Puebloan Primer, our goal with this book is to offer you a complete, concise picture of America's Southwest, the ancient people that called it home and what remains of their cultures for us to see today.

Coastal Rocks/Wave Explosion Combo |B&W|

2010-05-11T11:51:00.000-07:00

The previous 2 images combined.

This image is a combination of the previous two shots. Still no interesting sky, but since the exposures and black & white treatment were identical, it was easy to combine them and use the best of both for one image.

According to some folks, this photo is a lie or at least cheating. I would argue that I didn't create unnatural circumstances in this image and therefore have not cheated and since I'm writing about it, clearly not lying either. Both parts are realistic and this particular image probably occurs naturally. I couldn't capture it in one image when I was there because the waves weren't coming in fast enough. By the time a wave was coming ashore, the previous one had already dried out, leaving no reflections.

In the end, whether it's cheating or not, I think the resulting image is greater than the sum of its parts!

Wave Explosion |B&W|

2010-05-10T14:46:00.000-07:00

An "exploding" wave.

Last Friday's photo and this photo came just seconds apart at Crystal Cove State Beach/Park. Both were shot about a half hour before and 180 degrees from my Sunset at Mordor Beach image.

These rocks were lit up with a nice warm, golden glow as the sun set behind me, unfortunately the sky was a flat grey due to the cloud cover. Much of our day here at the coast had been overcast with uninteresting skies and despite my previous follies with black & white images (as mentioned in my last post), I planned for these images to be black & white. Or at least solid attempts at it.

Since the sky was so uninteresting in this direction, I slowed down my shutter speed to catch the motion of the waves and create an interesting element in the foreground to draw attention away from the sky. In the previous image, shot as a wave receded, you can make out the reflection of the rocks in the wet foreground sand. In this image, the next incoming wave hit the smaller rocks with a good amount of force. The slower shutter speed caught the full "explosion" of water created by the wave slamming into the rock.

Both images can be found in my Just Black & White gallery.

Coastal Rocks |B&W|

2010-05-07T15:23:00.000-07:00

Coastal rocks at Crystal Cove

I don't create a lot of black and white images. There I said it. And if you want proof, take a look at my Just Black & White gallery. (I know, I need to work on the title for that one. It's not very imaginative is it?) There's only 6 images in there. And while there may be a few others floating around my site that need to be included in this gallery, that only works out to 8 or 9 images out of the nearly 500 up for public viewing!

The reason? I'm still trying to figure out how to do it. "But black & white imagery has been around forever! What are you trying to figure out?!" I hear you asking. Well, even though black & white is where photography started, that doesn't mean it's easy and it all boils down to color theory and the contrast between different colors. What shade of gray should this blue be? How about that blue? And this red over here, what should that look like? It's all subjective and entirely up to me to decide when making the conversion.

Photoshop offers a myriad of tools for creating monochrome magic (new gallery title?!) and each allows you to precisely control what shade of gray individual colors should be. And that's part of the problem for me. There are just too many options and I would much rather be out taking photos on a nice day then experimenting in Photoshop.

This image is the result of a fairly quick and easy method I recently invented (and by invented I mean, I thought about trying it only to discover it's been around and on the internet for quite some time now). After checking the various color channels, I found the red channel in the RGB spectrum held the best looking image and deleted the green and blue channels, resulting in a monochrome representation of the information held in the red channel. A contrast adjustment, some sharpening and a little dodging to further improve contrast and the image was done. For such a simple process, the results are rather nice, if I do say so myself!

Sorry to bore you all with the technical talk, more information about the location will be in my next update.

12 Minutes Makes a World of Difference

2010-05-04T16:01:00.000-07:00

Just after sunset at Ocean Beach

Taken just 12 short minutes after the image in my last post, End of the Day, this image has a completely different look to it. With the sun now completely below the horizon, what was a 1 second exposure for End of the Day became an 8 second exposure for this image.

The added exposure time allowed the waves to blur even more than the previous image. At this exposure length, the majority of the waves and motion in the water has been smoothed out and is nearly unrecognizable. The effect is somewhere in between the two points where I'd like it to be. In End of the Day, the waves show quite a bit of motion blur but still hold definition. At the other end of the spectrum is Only One Way Out, an older image that shows the effect of a 7 minute (yup, minute!!) exposure. The water is completely smoothed out and lacks any real definition. Those two extremes are where I'd typically like the water to be in all of my images.

However, I don't mind the in between look in this image because this image is more about the different conditions in such a short amount of time after the last one. Notice the sky color, no longer a golden, burning orange. With the sun now well below the horizon the sky has picked up a nice pinkish glow. Also notice the rocks in the foreground. They aren't the exact same rocks, of course, as I moved and found a new composition in those 12 minutes, but look at the difference in the color of the rocks. In the previous image they glow and reflect the sky's golden orange. These rocks, without the direct angular sunlight, look much more menacing and uninviting.

While this image is quite a bit colder and may not be as "pretty" as the previous one, I propose that it is no less interesting. It's amazing how much a scene can change in just 12 minutes...

End of The Day

2010-05-04T08:50:00.000-07:00

End of the Day - Sunset at Ocean Beach

I shot this image about a week and a half ago on the first evening my friend Jay was in town. We grabbed a quick bite to eat at Southbeach so Jay could try their legendary fish tacos then took the short walk to the beach to shoot the sunset.

The beach part of Ocean Beach isn't much to write home about photographically speaking. It's more or less just a sandy beach. But just a bit south of the pier, the beach quickly turns to pock-marked sandstone. That's good news for a couple photographers looking for interesting foreground subject matter. With the sun low in the sky, the sandstone picks up an amazing golden glow. When the sun is very low (as it is in the image on the right), only the top ridges pick up that glow, creating an interesting contrast between the lit up ridges and the rest of the rock.

This is a single image, no multiple exposures or blending or even Photoshop trickery. What you see here is largely what came out of my camera. I achieved this single exposure by using my graduated neutral density filter along with a graduated blue filter. Placing the darker regions of the filters over the sky allowed me to effectively darken the sky enough to capture the sky and relatively dark foreground all in one exposure. Typically, only the graduated neutral density filter would be used for this purpose, however I've found that no matter how "neutral" the filter is supposed to be, there is still a noticeable color shift when using it. The blue graduated filter doesn't reduce the exposure by much, but it does tend to shift the colors back towards reality.

Reducing the exposure for the sky, meant using a longer shutter speed to get the proper exposure. That's something I see as a happy side effect, especially along the coast. With a quick shutter speed, the water is frozen in place, but the longer exposure allows the water to show its motion. The wispy, flowing water shown is the result of longer exposure and begins to hint at the forces of nature that shape this part of the California coast.

Please Excuse Our [Digital] Dust

2010-05-03T11:18:00.000-07:00

Ghost Tree - A never before posted favorite from 2009

Regular visitors to chrisskopec.com should have noticed a rather large change recently. For quite some time, the landing page for chrisskopec.com was a nice little slide show filled with some of my favorite images. If you got past the slide show and looked around through some of the links, you'd eventually find a link to my blog, which contained plenty of nonsensical and infrequent ramblings about where I had recently been along with a couple photos. It's all been switched around now.

The slide show was beginning to lose its appeal to me the more I looked at it. Despite having some of my favorite photos in it, it was largely devoid of content. It wasn't easy to update, so many new photos no matter how good they were never made it there. I didn't like the random feel to having vertically and horizontally oriented photos rotate through, so the slide show featured only horizontal images, meaning a good vertical image (like the one here on the right) would never make it to the front page. And worst of all, the blog, which was intended to be a major connection to the world was buried deep within some drop down menus. (Plus, the slide show was starting to feel very much like a cheesy flash intro and I don't know anyone who actually watches those anymore.)

Now visiting chrisskopec.com takes you straight to my blog solving a few problems all at once.

Findability - OK, I admit one of the major reasons for the switch is a selfish reason. Having an active blog is a key to being relevant to internet search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing...). When the blog was buried, I hardly posted at all. By making it the front page, I'm forcing myself to keep posting and keeping the blog active and hopefully more findable for new visitors.
Better Writing - No more rambling, half-incoherent writing allowed! I'm restricting myself to a set format for each post (with a few exceptions for major photo trips) which is one photo and a short description of it.
More Photos - The new format I've set up, allows for both horizontal and vertical images so I'm no longer restricted to just one type of image. That means each new post will feature the best of the best, not just the best landscape oriented image.

And before this post begins to ramble, I'll wrap it up by saying that while the switch has been mostly implemented, there are still a few links to fix and minor inconsistencies to clean up so in the meantime, please excuse our [digital] dust! :)

PS - If you want to get straight to the photos at any point and skip the blog, they can be accessed directly at photos.chrisskopec.com.

Sunset at Mordor Beach

2010-04-27T21:51:00.000-07:00

It's really Crystal Cove State Park

OK, so I didn't really travel to Mordor for this shot. Not only is it a dangerous place, but it's also quite fictional. Once of the first images that really WOW'd me when I first picked up my interest in photography was a beach scene with a large, prominent rock in the foreground, misty waves and fiery sunset sky. Maybe I had just watched Lord of the Rings for the hundredth time on TBS, but the instant I saw it I thought, "That looks like Mordor Beach!" Forget for just a minute that you never actually see a beach in Mordor in any of the movies. Suspend your disbelief!! If there had been a beach in Mordor, it probably would look a lot like that image all day long. When I first saw this capture on the LCD on the back of my camera, I instantly thought, "Mordor Beach! I have found you!" And while I'm not going to discuss whether I like my image better than the one I remember seeing so long ago, if Mordor had a beach, I imagine it would look very much like this!

This image was actually taken at Crystal Cove State Park near Laguna Beach. I had heard and seen good things about the Laguna Beach area, but had never had the chance to visit until last week when my friend Jay was in town to do some photography. We arrived early and did our best to scout out some locations prior to sunset even though there was heavy cloud cover and little chance of seeing a sunset through it all. The beach has a literal treasure trove of photographic opportunities. Everywhere you look, enormous rocks jut upwards from the sand just begging to be included as a dramatic, striking foreground.

This image can be found in my California Coastline gallery.

Fort Knox |Design Work|

2010-04-26T09:42:00.000-07:00

Fort Knox Proposal Cover

My writings have been pretty photo-centric lately, so it's probably a good time to share some recent design work.

A couple times a month, the Acquisitions and Retention Department (client relations) requests cover design samples from the Production Department for inclusion in proposals for either renewing contracts or obtaining new ones. Essentially it's our time to shine and show what we can do to impress potential clients.

When these request come into production, they're assigned based on who has the most time to work on them. Generally, that's not me, but when the Fort Knox request came in I had just completed a project and was awaiting my next assignment. Unfortunately, the project I had just complete was our last contracted guide for, you guessed it, Fort Knox. That means I had just designed the book and four covers already. Since no new images are provided along with the request for the Proposal Covers, I really had to dig deep for some ideas.

On this version, I was able to combine my photography and graphic design skills. I had recently been out photographing in downtown San Diego and took some photos of concrete walls with the idea of using those textures in some of my designs. The concrete texture goes well with the strength conveyed by the military and was particularly appropriate for the Army as they use a distressed look with the majority of their branding.

The requests that come from A&R are for three covers, of which two will be included in the Proposal to the base. This design was easily my favorite from the group but was ultimately the one left out of the Proposal. It's a little disheartening when you're favorite isn't picked, but luckily I have my nice little corner of the web here to share it so it's not lost forever.

Of An Abstract Nature

2010-04-22T10:38:00.000-07:00

Abstract Trees and Grass

This image is the first of a new series, titled Of An Abstract Nature. The series is an avenue for exploring different photographic techniques and at the moment I've been experimenting with longer shutter speeds and deliberate camera movement.

Most photographers (especially landscape photographers) strive for super sharp, crisp images where any blur from camera shake ruins the image. Even the smallest amount of shake will be noticeable in a print and detract from the overall scene. This image, and the series thus far, explores what happens if the whole scene is a blur. With vaguely recognizable forms and purposeful movement, the image becomes more of an impressionistic, painterly view of the natural world. The colors of the scene are emphasized over the details of the scene.

Part of the fun of this type of shot is the mystery. When taking a standard landscape image with the camera set atop a sturdy tripod, what you see through the viewfinder is what you get (hopefully). With these shots, I could only imagine at how it might end up. I found it best to take multiple shots of similar scenes with varied shutter speeds and camera movements.

Torrey Pines State Beach - Low Tide

2010-04-21T12:18:00.000-07:00

Coastal Rock formation at Torrey Pines State Beach

Torrey Pines State Beach and its neighboring State Reserve are quickly becoming a couple of my favorite spots for photography. Just a quick 10 minute drive from home, these parks offer some gorgeous landscapes just begging to be photographed. Every time I visit, something new catches my eye.

On this particular visit, back in early January of this year, I planned my arrival with an extremely low tide associated with that night's full moon. Most days, even at low tide, these rocks are hidden beneath the waves and the beach is an idyllic, gently sloping sandy beach. Only on very low tides do these rocks emerge from the depths.

Fortunately, the tide stayed out long enough to capture these rocks with glowing sunset in the background. In actuality, this shot is from several minutes after sunset. Generally the best sunset colors can be found once the sun is already below the horizon, and this day was no exception.

This shot, along with being a current favorite of mine, was the inspiration behind a new series entitled Elegant Erosion. The series is intended to look at the benefits and beauty of erosion as opposed to its current negative connotations.

Lake Hodges Sunrise

2009-10-25T23:19:00.000-07:00

Lake Hodges Sunrise

Lake Hodges is a new favorite location for me, especially for sunrise. The lake is peaceful enough in the early morning hours to like a remote destination, and yet is only minutes off the freeway making it a quick enough trip I don't have to make special plans to get to.

This image is from my first visit to the lake and in hindsight, I should have visited during the day to plan out a couple good locations. Scouting locations is almost impossibly hard to do in the pre-dawn darkness. When I arrived, I wasn't even sure where I could park and the delay nearly caused me to miss this special sunrise. I've found that sunrises are best just before the sun actually comes up and as I got out of the car, I could see a few clouds through the trees that surround the lake already lit up with a slight pinkish color. Fearing that was the best color of the morning, I rushed to the lake shore and hurriedly began taking photos. The first few shots were poorly composed and clearly not thought out.

As I slowed down, relaxed and thought through each photo before tripping the shutter, I was rewarded with the brilliant sunrise you see here. Further proof that it's better to slow down and "smell the roses."

Grand Canyon Heat Part 2: Here Comes the Rain

2009-10-13T22:53:00.000-07:00

A small pine tree finds a way to live on the lip of the canyon

Day Two of our Toroweap adventure brought tempratures nearing 120 degrees during the day, overcast skies in the afternoon and a evening windstorm strom enough to rip the door of my tent irrepearably off its zipper. Oh, and another crop of excellent images!

I missed sunrise on Day Two and from what I've seen from the other photographers who made it out of their sleeping bags in time, it was an amazing sunrise, not to be missed. (Have no fear, I made it to the next day's sunrise!) By mid-afternoon a bank of high, thick clouds rolled in to blanket the area. Aaron, Jim and I headed up to the overlook for a while, fearing that with the cloud cover we would all miss out on a chance to photograph the sunset. Turns out we were right, there was no sunset that night, but we were able to capture some sweet images anyway.

The glow and indirect light of an overcast day can be tricky to photograph in. It's a kind of light that is better suited to macro photography, not wide vistas, but I've found that the low contrast, even light can really make colors pop in a scene, as the image to the right can attest. You can see the cloud buildup in the distance hints at the growing storm, but the real proof lies to the east, behind the camera.

Rain in the Distance from atop Toroweap Overlook

From almost the same position as I shot the sunset the night before, this image clearly shows the overhead bank of clouds and the streaks of falling rain. I've seen the rain falling in the distance before but not all that often and never before when I've had a camera in hand and that makes me think this is a unique photo. Lots of people have seen Toroweap and lots of people have probably seen rain falling in the distance like this, but how many people have seen rain falling in the distance from this spectacular vantage point?

Grand Canyon Heat Part 1

2009-10-10T23:09:00.001-07:00

Grand Canyon Light Show

Back in July, a group of fellow photographers and I ventured into the summer heat and headed for the remote Toroweap Overlook on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. The South Rim is nice and easy to get to, but for a photographer, the crowds of people can drive you insane trying to get a shot without someone standing in it. The remote, undeveloped North Rim is much more difficult to get to but a vast improvement in terms of crowd control. The 3 hour drive over rough, rock strewn dirt roads deters all but the most dedicated.

Count myself and the other eight photographers as some of those dedicated few. Over the course of the three days we spent out there, we saw less than 10 other folks who weren't part of our group. The road had a lot to do with it but so did the heat. The mercury rose upwards of 113 degrees while we were there. With that kind of heat to contend with, we woke early to shoot the sunrise and quickly retreated to the shade of a pop-up canopy to drink water and wait out the day's heat. After a quick dinner, we would emerge from the safety of the canopy once more to shoot the sunset and enjoy the cool evening breezes. That is if you can call 95 degree wind a cool breeze!

The image to the right, Grand Canyon Light Show, was taken mid-afternoon on our first day on the rim. Mid-morning through mid-afternoon aren't typical times to shoot landscape images as the light isn't as sweet as it is during the "Magic Hour." But in this instance, I really enjoyed the play of the light through the clouds and the shadows cast down into the canyon. Those shadows and the play between light and dark through the canyon would not have been possible in late afternoon Magic Hour. Rules were made to be broken!

Toroweap Sunset

With camp set up and dinner eaten, the group made our way to the overlook to prepare for sunset. It's a short walk from the approved campground to the actual overlook but there is a vast difference in the view. Toroweap Overlook juts out into the canyon, providing unabated views to the east and west. Rock formation crown the overlook, offering interesting foregrounds and the 3,000 foot drop to the canyon floor brings death-defying excitement to nearly every step. I've never been a fan of heights, that is to say I'm positively scared to death of them, but even I had to inch myself to the edge just to peer over and look straight down.

This image, looking west into the sunset from high above the canyon is easily one of my favorite all time photos. It took a little extra work to "save" it because I didn't capture the image as well as I could have, but the time spent was well worth the effort to recreate this moody sunset of a fascinating place.

More images from the trip to follow soon...

Under the Scripps Pier in La Jolla

2009-05-31T13:49:00.000-07:00

Under Scripps Pier at night

A recent favorite of mine, this image was taken at La Jolla Shores, under the Scripps Pier and can be found in my ever growing California Coastline gallery. It is actually 3 images stitched together. My current gear doesn't allow me to capture an ultra-wide angle of view, so a relatively small space like under this particular pier is hard to capture in it's entirety with one single shot. (And the gear needed for that runs in the thousands!)

I waited for just the right wave to come in and recede before taking the first shot (bottom of the image). The little bit of water left as the wave receded gave me that nice reflection in the foreground. Once that was in place, I just tilted the camera up a little, took the second image and repeated for the third (top) image. Photoshop did an excellent job of stitching the 3 images together for me, but I had to go in and manually correct some perspective distortion that resulted in the camera being tilted upwards.

High Tide at La Jolla Cove

2009-05-30T01:37:00.000-07:00

Waves crashing on the rocky shore at La Jolla Cove

Tides are good for business. That is, if your business is photographing the coast. Particularly good when it's a very low or very high tide at sunset. In between tides and even normal high or low tides are average at best, photographically speaking. Even at sunset, they lack drama or uniqueness because they are so common. But the extremely low and high tides associated with the full moon are another beast all together. During extremely low tides reveal rocks formally hidden beneath the waves and the high tides bring waves that batter the coast with a brutal intensity.

This image, from my California Coastline gallery, was taken during high tide at La Jolla Cove. While these coastal rocks normally do get wet during an average high tide, the extreme high tide brought an energy I had yet to see here. To shoot this image, I chose a slow shutter speed, to allow the crashing waves to blur and show their movement and energy. This technique is not an exact science and I've found the best way to bring home a great image is to choose a composition, then choose the shutter speed that allows for the best movement in the waves and finally to just lock the shutter down for a while. The result is normally quite a few similar photos to sift through, but the payoff of finding that one image with just the right wave splash in it is more than worth it!

Energy Drink

2009-05-26T14:02:00.000-07:00

Energy Drink

I try to participate in as many of DGrin's photo challenges as time allows. Not only are the prizes paid up in credits for my SmugMug subscription, but they push me towards new levels of creativity and excellence in my photography. Every quarter, the forum offers a Mega-Challenge with increased prize payout and only open to those who have placed in the top 5 of a challenge during the previous 3 months.

This image, Energy Drink, was shot for one such Mega-Challenge that my Transportation image qualified me for. The theme for the challenge was Energy and as a caffeine junky, the idea of an energy drink was an instant fit.

The set up for this shot was pretty simple, a couple pieces of black poster board for the background, a cold soda from the fridge, camera on a tripod, couple small flashlights and shoot away.

The bottle was lit up from behind with a small Maglite in three separate exposures which were then stacked together in Photoshop. The swirls were made with a tiny Maglite dangling on a string and swished around the bottle. These swirls were shot in three different exposures and again stacked with the bottle in photoshop. The image could have been produced in one single exposure, but the nature of swirling a flashlight around a bottle is unpredictable at best. Trying to light the bottle and create the swirls all in one shot would have led to needless pain and frustration.

After Dark - Sunset Cliffs

2009-05-21T08:41:00.000-07:00

Only One Way Out - Stairs up from the coast, well after sunset

Amazing things happen after night fall. This new image is from a set entitled After Dark, that strives to document the look of the world once the sun goes down.

With very low light, an After Dark scene demands a long shutter speed to capture the details. This particular scene, from the foot of the staircase leading to the beach at Sunset Cliffs, required a 7 minute exposure (you read that right SEVEN minutes!) and was taken about 2 hours after sunset.

It was a full moon night, and I believe that added to the surreal pink clouds and purple sky, but a large cliff directly behind the camera blocked any of the moonlight from hitting the rocks or staircase. The light falling on those foreground objects is from a well placed, but far off, street light. So far off in fact that to the naked eye, it doesn't appear to be adding any light to the scene, but after 7 minutes of adding up, it's clear the light is on at least the railings of the staircase.

A few more After Dark images can be seen in this gallery.

The Ancestral Puebloan Primer

2009-04-19T20:19:00.000-07:00

he Ancestral Puebloan Primer

Almost 2 decades ago when Dad moved from the East Coast to the West, I joined in for the ride. Being a pretty smart guy, Dad realized the only way to make the cross county driving trip with a 6 year old (me!) and still be sane at the end would be to make a lot of stops along the way and visit "cool" stuff. I don't remember all the stops, but I know we stopped at the Petrified Forrest and Mesa Verde, where we both became fascinated by the ruins of the ancient Native American culture then known as the Anasazi. Recent years have led to the revelation that the term "Anasazi" isn't the most politically correct name and has been replaced by "Ancestral Puebloans."

Over the years, my dad and I made a number of return trips to the four corners area to explore these magnificent ruins in a seemingly inhospitable land. And about 4 years ago now, the opportunity arose for my dad to leave the coast behind and spend his time in and around the Four Corners area, volunteering at some of the most culturally significant sites of the Ancestral Puebloan. Leading tours of visitors by day, Dad would retire to comfort of his trailer at night to research and write what ultimately became this book.

As he finished writing, Dad sent me the files to proof-read and edit, then with my corrections approved I laid out the pages and assembled the book. The result is a compact easy to read, yet full of information volume that bridges the gap between overly simplified literature and signs at the majority of the parks in the Four Corners and scholarly writings meant to be read only by other scholars. The Ancestral Puebloan Primer can be found here on Amazon.com.

We are currently working on a follow up book, America's Southwestern Treasures, which focuses more on what there is to see and do at these amazing sites as well as offering suggested itineraries for those looking to make the most of their time in the Southwest. Treasures should be available by late spring 2010, check back here for updates.

On a similar note, a few years ago, I had the opportunity to go spend a week visiting Dad while he was still volunteering at the National Monument at Aztec, NM. I was lucky enough to get a personalized tour of both Aztec Ruins and Chaco Canyon from my dad and I've recently uploaded a gallery of photos I shot while I was there. You can find them here in my Ruins of the American Southwest gallery. They were all shot with my little point and shoot camera (this was probably 2 years until I upgraded to my new fancy DSLR) but some of them turned out quite nicely.

Joshua Tree National Park

2009-04-10T08:54:00.000-07:00

A Joshua Tree at night, lit by a nearby campfire.

A couple weekends ago I made my first visit to Joshua Tree National Park and it won't be my last. These trees are amazingly cool looking. The dry, high desert climate these trees inhabit shapes them into truly unique beings. After the first year, when they grow about 5 inches, Joshua trees only grow a half inch a year, making the tree shown to the right here several hundreds of years old. For a Joshua Tree to bloom in the spring, it needs to have at least a brief freezing cold spell during the winter, and remember it's a desert area.

The tree shown in the photo to the right was just on the edge of our campsite and on this night, it was illuminated entirely by our campfire. The image was taken long after sunset as my girlfriend and I relaxed from a long day of hiking around the park. Conditions weren't right to create an image of star trails circling the top of this particular tree, so I opted to isolate it against the dark sky instead. By using a medium size aperture, f/8, and a relatively fast shutter, I was able to get a black sky with very few stars showing up. The couple that did show up looked more like mistakes than reality and were edited out.

Hand in hand with the unique trees, the park also houses some very unique geological features. The soft sandstone that composes much of the exposed rock in the park has been eroded into immense boulders pock-marked with interesting features.

Skull Rock

The appropriately named Skull Rock, shown in the image on the left is enormous! This image is actually three horizontal images, stacked vertically and stitched together in Photoshop to create one tall, vertical panoramic. To get these shots, I had to wait for quite a while as other tourists kept climbing up into the eyes of the skull to pose for pictures.

The wait was worth it as the vertical panoramic really helps emphasize just how large this boulder is, and the nice late afternoon side lighting helps bring out the texture of the sandstone.

Another extremely cool rock formation within the park is Arch Rock, seen below. Located just a short hike from one of the park's campgrounds, Arch Rock is just that, an enormous sandstone arch carved into the rock. We got to the arch just in time for that sweet light at Magic Hour. Unfortunately, there were no clouds in the sky to light up behind the arch, but the sandstone took on an amazing warm glow from the low angle sunlight.

More images from the trip can be seen here, in my Joshua Tree National Park gallery.

Arch Rock

Yosemite National Park

2009-04-09T11:59:00.000-07:00

A Giant Seqouia in Mariposa Grove

Back in September I left home on an almost two week journey that brought me to Yosemite National Park, Crater Lake National Park, Lava Beds National Monument and Lassen Volcanic National Park. It was quite a journey and there's no better way to learn your camera than getting out to use it!

That's exactly what the trip was for. With the exception of 3 days while I was visiting family in Washington state, I was out in the field with my camera every day for those two weeks. It was really an awesome experience and if I hadn't used all my vacation time up for it, I'd do it all again in a heartbeat.

I took nearly 6,000 photos over the course of the trip, and now I can safely say, that's entirely too many. It was good for the learning process, but bad for the processing process. Since I have my camera set to save images in the Raw format, I need to process each image before it's ready for public consumption. Luckily there were quite a few overlapping images of the same subject but with different camera settings, so I was able to pick the best of each bunch and process those.

Yosemite has a number of Giant Seqouia groves. The most accessible for me on this trip (since it was nearby my campsite) was the Mariposa Grove at the southern tip of the park. My camera bag currently lacks an ultra-wide angle lens so it was difficult to capture the full majesty of these enormous trees. That didn't keep me from trying however, and I think this image as the late afternoon sun lit up the tree's bark, comes close.

El Capitan reflected in the Merced River

I must admit, I didn't research the park and images from other photographers much before my trip. So when I saw these reflections of El Capitan in the Merced River, I imagined I had stumbled onto a first ever! Delusions of grandeur filled my head as I shot away. "I'm going to FAMOUS!" rang between my ears.

OK, that's a little exaggeration, but in reality I was convinced I had happened upon a scene that was more unique than it turned out to be. Quite a few photographers have found this same scene and photographed it under better conditions than I. (Better conditions photographically speaking means with some clouds in the sky to add a bit more drama and interest.) Despite the abundance of images, I still enjoy my own. There's a nice Yin/Yang feeling to the reflection in the river and the river bank/meadow anchor the reflection in reality.

Bridalveil Falls runs dry after a long summer

Early September is not the optimal time to visit Yosemite. Don't get me wrong, there doesn't seem to be a "bad" time to visit the park and since schools were back in session there weren't as many visitors as I'm sure were there during the summer months.

What made it a slightly less good time to visit was the waterfalls. After the long dry summer, most of the waterfalls were little more and a trickle. The image to the right is Bridalveil Falls, and while there is some water coming down, it's far from the raging torrent of water that pours over these rocks in early spring.

It was an interesting experience none the less, to be able to crawl up and over these rocks. Even though they don't look like it, these rocks are as smooth as glass! I saw one fellow adventurer slip and smash his camera on a rock while trying to catch himself. I don't know that anyone has ever refuted the whole concept of erosion, but if you know someone who has, send them here to see the effects of water on solid rock for themselves.

More from Yosemite can be seen here, in my Yosemite National Park gallery. Needless to say, I'll be returning at my earliest opportunity!

Stand Behind Line

2009-03-25T13:53:00.000-07:00

Stand Behind Line

I'm not sure why Google Maps is choosing to show the location for this image as "Core - Columbia, San Diego, CA," but this image was shot at One American Plaza in downtown San Diego. The plaza houses a fairly busy hub for the MTS Trolleys, San Diego's above-ground subway solution, and was the perfect location to shoot for a recent photography forum contest entitled Transportation.

As soon as the contest was posted, I envisioned an image similar to this one, a red trolley flashing by with that uber-cool ribbed, arching roof showing above and through the flash. Various compositions, angles and shutter speeds were attempted with the sole purpose of capturing just the perfect frame to match the vision I had.

A few hundred frames (mostly because these types of long exposures can be so unpredictable in their results) yielded a nice crop of keepers, but this one here stood above the rest. It was the one frame that matched my vision completely and had the add bonus of titling itself.

Cabrillo National Monument

2009-03-13T11:07:00.000-07:00

Wildflowers at Cabrillo with the Old Point Loma Lighthouse as a backdrop

Cabrillo National Monument is one of my favorite places to photograph. The park might very well be one of the smallest in the National Parks system (this is a guess... please no fact checking), but offers a wide range of opportunities from the views of the bay and downtown San Diego, to the Old Point Loma Lighthouse (circa 1855), whale watching or the tidal plains on the Pacific Ocean side of the park.

I spent this past Sunday there enjoying the warm sunshine and super low tide. The extreme low tide is the lowest I've ever see there and awarded me with and almost alien landscape to stumble across and explore. Before I made my way down to the tidal areas, I took a quick run up to the old lighthouse, mainly to test a new lens and how it could be used to capture one of my favorite subjects, the spiral staircase leading up the inside of the lighthouse tower. I found the lighthouse too popular and crowded to capture anything of real value on the inside, but found some of the seasons first wildflowers blooming just outside.

More of these can be found in my Cabrillo National Monument gallery, here.

Low Tide

The time to visit Cabrillo and make the most of your trip there is durring a low tide. When the tide goes out, you can access a huge area of tide pools complete with tiny crabs, sea urchins and all manner of coastal creatures.

It's especially nice when the tide is out near sunset. Since the park is only open until 5p.m. through out the year, I've found it best to visit in the winter months when the sun is setting and you're still allowed to be in the park. The image was taken in Februrary and the low angled sunlight really lit up the sandstone cliffs and allowed for a slight reflection in one of the tide pools.

The California Coastline

2009-02-19T13:59:00.000-08:00

The rocks of Sunset Cliffs lit up at sunset.

Califonia's Coastline with the Pacific Ocean stretchs on for an amazing 840 miles. This new gallery on my site, approriately titled "California Coastline," is dedicated to documenting my exploration of this fascinating area.

This image is from Sunset Cliffs, just south of Ocean Beach, just before sunset. As the sun gets low in the sky, the almost sideways rays of light cast a warm golden glow on the sandstone of these cliffs. The tidepools in the foreground held just enough water between waves to reflect the blue sky and clouds from above.

I estimate that I've now explored at least 3 miles of coastline, and with only 837 more to go this gallery is sure to keep growing!