Escalante Part Two

Part Two of my new favorite place on the planet, Escalante Grand-Staircase, with a few from Capitol Reef sprinkled in.  

The desert floor was filled with tiny purple wildflowers, I lit them up at night, using a purple gel to make them glow a bit more.

Temple of the Sun and the Moon in Capitol Reef, catching the first light of day.

Finding beautiful in the smallest details…

A dying leave seeps oils into a puddle in Coyote Gulch.

An old granary hidden in a cliff face. 

A magnificent grove of hoodoo in the backcountry, 10 mi. north of Big Water.

A cool dwelling just off the road south of Page, AZ.

The barn at the Gilford Homestead in Fruita, Capitol Reef NP.

Some more old structures and antiques around the homestead.

A few more from Zebra Canyon.  Was quite a squeeze!

Looking down on Hamblin Arch in the Coyote Gulch. 

Day breaking on the Temples, Capitol Reef.

Clouds cut sharp shadows across the Devil’s Backbone.

So often it feels like all you see in the desert is browns and green for days, so nice to get a splash of an unexpected color.  

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Escalante Grand-Staircase Wilderness Adventure

Coyote Gulch is a truly awe inspiring place.  The alcove and cliff walls rise up and span what seem an impossible height.  For scale, on the image below, see those tiny black dots on far right shoreline? Those are hikers.  To get here, I scrambled down a 700ft. sandstone wall, of course with my giant pack I wasn’t able to scramble back out so it was a nice 18 mi. hike out of the gulch and through the desert to find my home base.

A view from Alstrom Point, a 180 degree stitched panorama looking out towards Lake Powell in the distance.

Zebra Canyon, for obvious reasons.

This magnificent hoodoo is with a patch of others, probably a 10 mi. hike up a wash just north of Big Water.

Just some random fantastic slot canyon.

A few more with the vantage from Alstrom Point.

This isn’t a mirror image, its a 180 degree pano stitch of 14 wide angle shots, I’m inside a giant arch looking out onto the meandering river in Coyote Gulch.

These strange formations are called Moqui Marbles.  I read the Wiki on how they were formed and its fascinating, and I won’t butcher it by summarizing so just look for yourself. My favorite factoid was that they resemble very closely formations found on Mars which are aptly called Martian blueberries.  

A storm rolling in over Lake Powell, a welcome sight on the 100+ degree day…

Where we’re going, we don’t need roads!

And just a few more random amazing canyon lands in the Escalante area…. 

See the little camp site down in middle? Go to the Gulch!!!!

Cali Coastline

Wandering along the Cali coastline, from San Diego to San Francisco, with a few slipped in from a venture in Oregon.  

Scripps Pier in La Jolla

Solitary stairway, Socal

Perfect morning to catch some waves, Ecola State Park, Oregon

Cormorants roosting for the evening, La Jolla

In for the night, La Jolla Cove

Couldn’t decide which version of this image I liked better, the orange glow of sodium streetlamps or the more neutral feel of my speed light.  La Jolla Cove

Patterns in the sand, San Diego

Ocean fog rolling in, Southern Oregon

Misty morning at Ecola State Park, Oregon

Dolphins playing in the wake on the way to Santa Cruz

Sea Lions soaking in the sun

Scripps Pier, La Jolla

A few from the La Jolla potholes

A good night’s rest

Random Roadtripping Pt. 1

I’m going to be playing catchup with the next few posts.  Finally got around to working a bunch of images from some wandering around I did last year, I just kept on traveling and was so busy shooting I never found time to work the backlog.  

 A foggy night at the Umpqua Lighthouse, Oregon

 An old dancehall in an abandoned amusement park, Central PA

 A few from Crater Lake, OR

 Many forest fires raging through SW Washington

 Lighting flashes as the clouds open up an isolated rainstorm

 Crop burns and hundred of geese coming in for a landing

 High atop the Columbia River Valley, OR

 Striated land shows just how series the drought has become in Southern California

 My buddy Banks perched atop Sequoia’s infamous Mono Rock

 The ascent up Mono Rock

 Just down the other side of the Sierra’s are the strange tufa formations of Mono Lake

 QueensBridge’s Finest

My favorite barn in the Palouse, WA

Ice Cave Collection

Definitely some of the most trecherous terrain I’ve ever braved to get the shot, but well worth it!  Such surreal experience wandering around these shifting, swirling caves to the heart of the glaciers.  Below is a collection from inside 7

Icy Abstractions

Even the microscopic landscapes of Iceland were diverse and spectacular.  Here’s a bunch of macros of the of the abstract art created by strange ice formations.  

Mossy Lava Fields of the Eldhraun

From the moss covered lava fields in the Eldhraun area in Iceland, also some from the western peninsula near Breidabólsstadur.  A land carpeted in clouds and green pillows, air hisses as it escapes the moss underfoot.  This was one of the most fun and fantastic landscapes I’ve ever encountered.

The Blue Lagoon, Church Mountain and the original Geysir

A collection of images from around some of Iceland’s biggest tourist destinations.  The Blue Lagoon, a spa and pools filled with mineral rich runoff from the geothermal plant, Svartsengi.  Kirkjufell, Icelandic for Church Mountain for obviously reasons and from Geysir, the original namesake of geysers worldwide (although the images below are of Strokkur, an adjacent geyser which routinely erupts in heights up to 100 ft!)  The actual Geysir is infrequent, and may often go dormant for years at a time.  I visited this spot three times trying to get the right light, and over those days never once saw it erupt.  But fortunately, Strokkur goes off every 15 minutes or so I had plenty of action to capture… 

Iceland’s Most Epic Falls

A view of a few of Iceland’s most epic, Seljalandsfoss, Skogafoss, Godafoss and Gullfoss

Glacial Lagoons – Jokulsárlón and Fjallsárlón

A collection of images from the glacial outlet lagoons on Iceland’s southside, where calving faces of the Vatnajokull glaciers dump their ice into the ocean.  Although it looks like a frozen landscape, it is ever changing, with the light and land looking drastically every time I visited.  I love sitting around here at night, watching auroras dance over head and sounds loud as thundering from icebergs rolling and crashing into one another.  This place has been on my bucket list since childhood, but its still on there because I’m going to have to go back!

Winds so strong you could stand at a 45 degree angle to the ground!  

Ice arches under the green glow of an overcast aurora.

Ice swirling around as the tides come in.

Volcano’s glow high up on the ice shelf.