20-FEB-2007
Encircled, Twenty Mule Team Canyon, Death Valley National Park, California, 2007
As the sun rises, its low rays set desert plants such as these aglow. I use my spot meter to expose for the highlighted plants. Because the black hill beneath them is still in shadow, the illuminated plants seem to float over the ground below them. I isolated this particular grouping of plants because they symbolize a community. They form a circle around a plant that appears that does not appear to be as healthy as most of the others. It becomes an image about survival and renewal.
24-FEB-2007
A landscape revisited, Alabama Hills, Lone Pine, California, 2007
Returning to the Alabama Hills, just outside Lone Pine, California, for the second time in for months, I had a chance to work on a different version of a landscape I had photographed on my earlier visit. Click on the link at the bottom to see it. In that vertical version, I drew on the contrasts of color ranging from the brown rocks of the Alabama Hills to the golden pink dawn on the peaks of the Sierras. In my new version, I use a horizontal format to frame just the lower reaches of the mountains, the valley at their base, and the boulders of the Alabama Hills in the foreground. The first light of dawn is now seen in the valley, rather than on the mountain peaks. I place more stress on the field of boulders, which fill the foreground, awaiting the light. This version is no better or worse than the first – it is simply a different way of expressing the same idea on the same subject.
23-FEB-2007
Ghost riders, Alabama Hills, Lone Pine, California, 2007
Lone Pine's Alabama Hills provided the location for many western movies. The setting sun spotlights this tree and the surrounding grasses, creating background shadows resembling huge, haunting figures. They bring to mind the actors who once dueled in the dust of these same hills. The barren tree seems just as ghostly. Its branches reach out towards the shadowy figures that dominate the image.
20-FEB-2007
A touch of light, Zabriskie Point, Death Valley National Park, California, 2007
Light comes to the barren ridges of Death Valley very quickly. In a matter of moments, the scene goes from dark to light. I made this image at first light, catching the glow on the repeating ridges, and letting the rest of the image stay in the shadows. I spot metered on the brightest part of the scene to hold detail in the highlights. Shooting from high above these ridges at the Zabriskie Point overlook, I composed this scene as a series of flowing diagonal repetitions – eliminating the sky and stressing the variation of light on the stone ridges unfolding below me.
23-FEB-2007
Winter light, Alabama Hills, Lone Pine, California, 2007
In winter, the plants that blanket the Alabama Hills are bare. The evening light shines through them, creating glowing clusters of branches that symbolize the cycles of life itself. In this case, I photographed these bushes in front of massive rocks for contrast in scale and substance. The rocks are permanent. The bushes grow, cycle through seasonal changes, and then vanish, eventually replaced by others. Nature has created both rock and plant and gives us the light to bring energy and meaning to the scene.
21-DEC-2006
Progress, Tineghir, Morocco, 2006
This landscape offers five layers of content, starting with the plowed fields in the first layer, which lead to the palm grove in the second layer. The third layer features the old adobe city, while the fourth layer provides the focal point of the image – new construction, spotlighted by a narrow shaft of sunlight coming though the clouds. The fifth and final layer provides a backdrop of earth and hills. The glow around the new construction implies that better days may be in store for the provincial Moroccan town of Tineghir.
11-DEC-2006
Where land meets sea, Essaouira, Morocco, 2006
Trade winds often rake the Moroccan coast at Essaouira, smashing the roaring surf into the huge rocks that line the port. The most important decision I made in making this landscape was to frame the image without the sky, instead filling the image with water and rocks from top to bottom. The waves grow in energy as they move down the image, finally ripping into the rocks at the bottom in an explosion of spray and froth.
17-DEC-2006
Zis Valley in winter colors, Midelt, Morocco, 2006
The vivid winter colors of these golden Aspens appear even more startling when seen juxtaposed against a sea of palm trees. The contrasting colors and kinds of trees create a seldom seen incongruous beauty.
21-SEP-2006
Sunset, Arches National Park, Utah, 2006
We went into Arches on a heavily overcast evening. Rain was falling lightly. There was no indication that we would see even a hint of a sunset. As the sun was dropping in the sky, it found a crack in the clouds just above the horizon, spreading golden light along the fields of sage and the distant rock formations. I emphasize rich golden brown fields of sage, which contrast dramatically to the heavy clouds above. Nature offered us a lasting lesson that evening – never look at dreary skies overhead and assume that sunset light is impossible. All it takes is a small crack at sunset between the clouds and the horizon to create the lighting conditions for an image such as this one.
21-SEP-2006
Evening on the Colorado River, Moab, Utah, 2006
I built this image around a single spot of glowing late afternoon light on the bluff across the river. I used my spot meter to expose for that spot of light, and allowed the rest of the image to darken. I lowered my camera to my waist so that I would fill the bottom of the image with a screen of brush, creating a primary anchor layer. The reflection of the light in the river becomes my middle layer, and the subject itself is the final layer.
19-SEP-2006
Reflected light, Bryce Canyon, Utah, 2006
Bryce Canyon is filled with thousands of colorful hoodoos, creating a fantastical assembly of shapes and colors. The canyon holds a series of walls that can act as reflectors for light. This image is the product of such a wall, which catches the late afternoon sun and throws its glow back on the hoodoos before it. It is as if we are looking into a giant basket of glowing hot coals. I backed up from the edge of the canyon to fill the foreground with a ridge of bushes and trees to add a sense of spatial dimension to the landscape.
27-SEP-2006
Dawn on the Firehole River, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, 2006
This image contains three contrasting areas of light. The foreground is in deep shadow, containing softly glowing red and brown grasses. The middleground contains the thermal hot springs that line the river – they send up clouds of steam that catch the pinkish light in their plumes as they contrast to the dark hill behind them. The background of this image is the crest of that hill, lined with the stark remnants of the wildfires that ravaged Yellowstone in 1988. The dead trees are thrown into stark relief by the pinkish yellow light of rising sun behind them.