This would have been a nice post to do for a nice round 500th post but will have to do as the 550th. I am in the process of updating my ancient (circa 2008) website format into something more modern (coming soon hopefully) and thought it would be an interesting exercise to feature some of the backstory and significance of some of the photos that were an integral part of that site. Most of these photos pre-date my blog, but a couple were from a secret cave project that never got their own separate entry. I'll start with the photo above.
1st June 2007. "Moonrise over the Alabama Hills" I took this photo on a UCSB Geomorphology class field trip to the Owens Valley. We camped at the nearby Piranha Camp (beneath a large rock that looks like a big-eyed toothy piranha). On a previous camping trip here I managed to crack the circuitous route to the top of this formation called the Sugarloaf and led several of my classmates. This included boulder scrambling up to a pass where you go underneath giant chockstones, across a thin wood plank bridge, up a slot, some crawling, then finally a slabby scramble to the very top. We went at night and watched the moonrise. This was the best of 6 tripod-mounted photos I took.
I have used this photo as the background for my blog since the very beginning. I like the overall muted contrast, colors, and moonglow on the landscape. I think it looks like an imagined science fiction planet. To me this image evokes exploration; an unknown moon rising over a distant planet with the Owens Valley lights being some primitive outpost of civilization. I enhanced the blues and removed a couple bright stars to help convey the desired mood.
29th August 2006. "Hawkduns, Central Otago, New Zealand" I am pretty sure this photo was taken out of a car window, driving back from a 4-day field trip to the West Coast of the South Island, the end of the school-year reward for third-year students (including me) completing their senior thesis-style field reports. It was the last photo I took of that great trip, driving a lonely road through Central Otago toward the Hawkdun Mountains late in the day with long shadows.
I used this photo as the frontispiece for the home page of my website. I like the balance of warmth and cool, the open road leading you in, and the lenticular clouds this region is famous for (google "Taieri pet"). To me it sums up this entire Central Otago region in a single photo and evokes open road travel. I think it could pass as a Grahame Sydney painting (another worthy google search).
11th August 2005. "The Cubists Have An Idea" This photo was taken at the House of the Black Madonna, a Cubist building in Prague, Czech Republic, a weekend away from doing geology fieldwork in the Austrian Alps. I had never been in a city with such deep history before and was thankful to have a local guide show us around. I was blown away to learn there was such a thing as Cubist architecture and even more that I really liked it. This was the main staircase in Prague's Cubist Museum. Unprompted by others I looked up and my brain immediately registered the staircase as a lightbulb. I snapped a photo.
I think it is an architecturally pleasing photo. It reminds me of that joy of discovery and to remember to look up (or down).
14th May 2007. "Rattlesnake at Sunset" "Chollas After Dark" A double header, I took both of these photos within about 3 hours of each other while camping on a metamorphic core complex field trip to the Colorado Desert. The rattlesnake was right next to one of our vehicles. The cholla I lit with a headlamp from the back and the sides. Both photos were tripod mounted.
I like the pose of the snake, depth of field, subtle blurring of its flicking tongue and rattling tail, and the incredible ground-level sunset light; it feels like such a specific moment in time I was thankful to capture. The chollas are quite the opposite as all the light other than the faint stars was forced upon the scene. I like the mystery of it; it was no surprise that chollas would respond well to being backlit.
9th January 2006. "Zebra Slot Tornado" This was a highlight photo from a Colorado Plateau road trip I did with my sister one cold January. It was one of the earliest multi-day trips I planned and set off without friends or parents. I was very interested and curious but had not really been to a legit slot canyon before this trip so was particularly excited. We explored several on this trip and though technically very easy, they were exceptionally beautiful and ignited my continued interest in exploring them. I remember having to wade through near freezing pools of water to get to this part of Zebra Slot. A tripod mounted shot. I think I edited a spot or two of bird droppings out of this photo.
I like the swirl of patterns, convergence of sinuous walls at the floor, the concretions, the cross bedding, and probably most of all the shadows and colors. It is both simple and complicated.
3rd March 2007. "Rays of Light" I was very fortunate to spend a lot of my childhood deep into rock and mineral collecting, a hobby my dad shared with me. I can remember countless times piling into my dad's Ford Aerostar van on Saturday mornings well before dawn to head out to some mineral collecting locations, usually in the Mojave Desert. The excitement of individually wrapped Entenmann's pastries and watching the sunrise. Many of these trips I researched where to go, read paper maps, helped pack, and acted as navigator as we set the odometer for the many dirt road turnoffs. Unsurprisingly after moving away for college these trips became much less frequent but this was a memorable geology touring trip where we visited this distinctive and well known lava tube in the Cima volcanic field, a basalt arch nearby with interesting petroglyphs, and the Spooky canyon slot in Afton Canyon. The fine wind-blown silt covering the floor of the lava tube was stirred up by our walking, which makes the most incredible sunbeams cast through holes in the ceiling. This was one of many different shots I took. This one was a 0.5 second tripod mounted exposure.
I like the way the beams enter the cave at different angles and cast a warm ball of reflected light into the darkness. It brings up a lot of nostalgia for all those trips with my dad which I am very grateful for.
12th April 2008. "Christi Ranch Bonfire" While a UCSB graduate student I joined a 3-day field trip to Santa Cruz Island, which we mostly spent on the Nature Conservancy side of the island very few people get to visit. The geology was spectacular and so was camping right on the beach at the historic Christi Ranch. I was feeling creative while others were socializing around the campfire ring and eventually set on this framing. This was a 24 minute-long tripod mounted shot.
I like all the distinct elements and merging of different light sources. The bonfire, tall tree, and ranch building cast in warm fire light. The cool LED headlamp light trails illuminating the fence and grass. The streaks of starlight framing the distinctive silhouettes of the dinner bell and cypress tree.
27th June 2006. "Warm Hut, Cold Night" Another long exposure shot (55 minutes), I took this photo of the Takaka Hill caver's hut on the South Island of New Zealand on a frigid night deep mid-winter. This hut has a lot of sentimental significance to me as the cozy home base when exploring the many caves in this region with my friend Travis. On this day we drove to the end of the snowy Cobb Valley Road to look around, but this was where we stayed for many memorable cave and karst trips during my year abroad including Harwoods Hole, Little Harwoods, Summit Tomo, Mt Arthur, and the Tablelands. We would have had a roaring fire going in the wood burner. I stepped out into the snow to frame this shot of the hut, only by accident did I manage to barely capture the south celestial pole.
I'm very nostalgic for this hut. I like the contrast of warm and cold (literally) colors and the surprising amount of color in the streaking stars.
15th April 2006. "Paturau Beach Detail" Every Easter New Zealand cavers and their families descend on a grassy paddock by the sea on the lonely northwest coast of the South Island for a weekend of caving, climbing, kayaking, slip-n-sliding, beachcombing, and pretty much anything else you can think of. I have been to this event four times, each time with a friend in tow- Travis, Giulia, Nathalie, Sara. It has always been a very memorable time. The beach there at Paturau is one of my very favorite places in New Zealand. I have seen some of my best sunsets. The limestone cliffs and shore platform there lead to incredible details, still lifes, and abstracts. Honestly I have probably taken many better photos on that beach but this one stands out to me personally. On this beach even slime is a masterpiece.
I like the sunset light and connecting elements of beach cobble, sand, stylobedded limestone, and multi-colored algae stripe. This photo is more nostalgia fuel for me; I instantly think about everything else on this beach that I am not revealing.
20th October 2006. Milford Sound is a very famous fjord on the South Island of New Zealand and probably one of the top tourist destinations in New Zealand. I have seen hundreds if not thousands of photos of Milford Sound featuring the prominent Mitre Peak at center but in my opinion this image stands up against most of them. It was a particularly grey and gloomy day so it was more about finding the right framing. I snapped this photo right off of the coastal tourist trail, carefully finding just the right vantage for this beech tree branch to frame. This was about the time I was experimenting with Adobe Photoshop for the first time. I liked it in sepia tone but this purple to orange split-toning is what really spoke to me.
Mitre Peak usually steals the show at Milford but here the beech tree silhouette, overlapping ridges, and slice of Tasman Sea provide the framing for the peak top which is not even really visible through the low clouds. Though no purple or orange were present it somehow feels true to the scene to me.
30th December 2006. "Moorea Sunset" Back in 2006 travel agencies were still occasionally relevant for finding good deals on flights. In this instance I needed to find a cheap one-way flight back to LAX at the end of my study abroad year in New Zealand and to my surprise the cheapest option that came up was Air Tahiti Nui. Would I like a free stopover in Tahiti? YES! Not wanting to blow the bank and to get back home to family and friends I only gave myself a very busy 48 hours. I stored most of my luggage at the airport in Papeete, jumped over to Moorea and stayed two nights at a low key hostel there. Everyone spoke French which was a challenge. The first day I walked nearly half the island, counterclockwise around the coast from the hostel and over the Col des Trois Cocotiers on rough trails. This photo was taken at the end of that day. I think I punched up the colors and contrast a bit on this image.
This was an undeniably magical sunset with vibrant color, moody clouds, and a stellar reflection on the calm ocean waters inside the island's fringe reef. I like the muted colors of the pier leading you into the horizon. I like how the two figures sitting at the end of the pier only appear as one.
21st December 2007. "Hot and Cold" This was from a fun college Christmas break trip with Richard and Jeff climbing in Red Rock Canyon near Las Vegas for two days, hiking to the Champion Mine camp for two days, and then ending with an exceptionally cold night at this Wild Willy's hot springs near Mammoth, before some more climbing in the Owens River Gorge. We had quite the adventure driving (sliding) Jeff's Civic down the snow and ice-covered dirt road to the hot springs, at one point careening off the roadbed into a ditch that we somehow managed to churn out of. We had the hot springs all to ourselves and the scenery was picture perfect. I remember getting my long hair wet which soon turned into ice dreadlocks. Hoar frost covered the grasses and rocks around the springs. We camped on a tent right next to the springs. This is a pretty straightforward tripod-mounted self portrait of me in the hot springs after one of the coldest nights of my life.
I like the long shadows, blues and whites, but this photo is probably more about the story for me. It was a special trip with some of my first multi-pitch climbing. This pool is now probably twice as big as the springs have gained considerable popularity and the pool has been "improved" to accommodate more people. Also I miss having long hair.
1st December 2011. "Great Fangs Chamber" This incredible cave is one of the last I explored on Dunedin's south coast by kayak and is only accessible during very rare low swells on this exposed coastline. In several years of weekly monitoring of swell conditions I only managed to get to this cave five times. The sea is usually roughest at the mouth of this cave's towering 50m-high entrance and has one of those "what goes in might not come out" looks to it. The solo first-time exploration of this cave was one of my greatest and most intimidating joys. The entrance passage is a 100m long sloshing corridor along which the ceiling height drops from about 50m to about 3m with a terrifyingly black void beyond. I swear the first time I was there the rolling waves had the appearance of dropping over a waterfall as they entered the darkness. Once through the low ceiling you become engulfed in a vast and unfathomable void, which only shrinks to the size in size to 80m across and 15m high once your eyes adjust. Half of the chamber is a giant surging swimming pool, the other half a great pile of room-sized calcite-coated breakdown blocks reaching almost to the ceiling. The image above is a two photo panorama taken from the top of the rockpile, each exposure 20 seconds in duration. It is completely illuminated by natural light except for Kat's headlamp. There is detail that can only be seen on an enlargement like the thousands of stalactites that coat the ceiling. It was not until exiting this cave for the first time that I noticed the silhouette of the two enormous twin stalactites hanging down from the cave, the spitting image of giant fangs. I had been swallowed by the cave's mouth. I called it Great Fangs Cave.
I love this image. I have pride and joy in the image but more so still just pure wonder at this cave. The incredible colors cast through the waters, the haze leaking in from the entrance, the perfect domed ceiling, and the two showerhead formations leaking waterfalls into the sea. Within this image I saw another I wanted to capture involving the dramatically illuminated tilted slab of rock at the center and the showerhead just to the left. I returned again with camera gear and a friend to try again.
2nd April 2012. "The Void" I returned again to Great Fangs with Kat at the first possible chance (4 months later with the fickle swells). I set up the tripod, composed the shot I had months to visualize, and had Kat press the trigger for me while I posed on the rock with my kayak paddle. This 13 second exposure is completely illuminated from natural light coming in from the entrance. Somehow I managed to stay pretty still and the moment was captured. There was definitely some editing to bring out the colors and details.
I think this is one of the best photos I have ever taken. If not that it is at least one of my favorites. It has been the all-time home screen on my phone and I have a large canvas print of it on my wall. It is my "National Geographic magazine cover photo" if I ever had one. I love showing it to people for the first time and seeing their brain slowly try to process what is going on. I like how the stalactited domed ceiling fades into unfathomable darkness beyond. The single cave-forming fracture illuminated with the low angle light. The subtle shower spray linking the separate elements of the roof and sea. The blurred motion of the waves surging in and out. The faint illumination of the "sinking ship" slab of rock. And the hero's pose silhouette, if nothing just to provide scale and a touch of drama. For the fifty million times I look at my phone I get a split-second reminder of "yeah I did something worthwhile once" and to never stop exploring.
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