Fly Geyser and Bonus Stars

I recently made a day trip from the Bay Area to Gerlach, Nevada which is famous for hosting Burning Man each year but is also the home of Fly Geyser. I had wanted to photograph in this area for a while, but it was on private property and permission to access was difficult or impossible to obtain. The property was eventually purchased by the Burning Man Project and tours are now available through the Friends of Black Rock High Rock. At this time, tours are offered on Saturday mornings and evenings and I booked an evening tour in the hopes of getting some good late afternoon light.

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Southwest Winter

Mesa Arch – Canyonlands National Park, Utah

I had been planning a trip to the area around Moab, Utah with my friend Alejandro Velarde for a while. I had been there several years ago on a very short visit and was looking forward to spending more time exploring this beautiful area. Our main goals were to get a good shot of Mesa Arch (above) and to get some images of Monument Valley in winter conditions. Our friend, Marcell Puzsar was able to join as well and we made the trip in early February, with 5 days and 4 nights to photograph. For those looking for a good time to visit these often crowded locations, this was a good one. Temperatures hovered around freezing and even popular locations like Delicate Arch and Mesa Arch only had a few other people around at sunrise and sunset.

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2022 Favorites

2022 was a very different photographic year for me as I actually captured far more images than usual with the vast majority taken over a two week period in early July. While I usually plan several trips for landscape photography during a year, my 2022 plans were based around my twice-delayed African safari in Botswana. You can also see that in the blog posts that I shared this year – virtually all of them were from that tip.

That said, I was able to take some images I enjoyed in California and Montana and hope that you enjoy them as well. Images are presented below in the order I captured them. I’ll also note that this is NOT a list of my ten “best” images from the year. I focus on my favorites – chosen either because I believe the image is particularly strong or because of the memories I associate with it. Best of lists have no room for memories!

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Botswana Safari Part 4: The Okavango Delta

The final portion of our Botswana safari took place in the Khwai Community Area and Moremi Game Reserve in the northeastern part of the Okavango delta. We spent one night in a lodge in Khwai while our campsite in Moremi was readied, and then camped there for four nights. The Okavango is an inland delta where the rivers that feed it, including the Okavango and Khwai, do not flow into an ocean but instead evaporate and simply disappear in the swampy land. Unlike the Savuti, water in Moremi was everywhere and this created a tremendous concentration of wildlife.

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Botswana Safari Part 3: The Savuti

The Savuti is on the western edge of Chobe National Park and is known for its savannahs, grasslands and wildlife population. Our visit was during the dry season so there were limited supplies of water (primarily several large watering holes) available to the animals. We spent 3 nights camping in the Savuti and during that time saw many lions, elephants, giraffes, wildebeest, impala, and buffalo. We also had the opportunity to photograph some impressive African sunrises. The rest of this post consists of some of my favorite photos from the Savuti and are shown in the order captured.

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2021 Favorites

2021 was once again a year of limited travel. I expected to write more posts during the year as I had extra time near home, but I really struggled with wanting to sit at the computer and write after working all day in that same spot. I have been blessed, though, to live near some really beautiful places in California and Montana and all but one of my favorite images from this year were captured in either Glacier or Yosemite National Parks. I did capture a lot of images that I really like this year, but in the end, these are my 10 favorites and are presented in the order captured.

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Wintering at Lake McDonald

Glacier National Park, Montana — *Lake McDonald at Sunset*

I spent most of this winter in Kalispell, Montana which the gateway to Glacier National Park. Our home is less than an hour from Lake McDonald, where most visitors get their first view of the mountains when they visit. This gave me the opportunity to photograph the lake several times over the winter, seeing the area in different conditions and learning how it changes through the season.

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Favorites from 2020

As 2020 comes to a close, it is time to select my favorite images from the year. Needless to say, it has been an interesting year. Like many other people, I had to cancel several planned trips and I got used to spending a lot more time at home. For the early part of the year, my photographic endeavors were limited to taking macro shots at home and some flower photos in my neighborhood. As the year went on, I managed some day (night?) trips to photograph the stars before making the decision to invest in some property in Montana. All of the photos shared below were captured within driving distance of my home bases in Northern California and Northwest Montana.

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Changing Seasons in Glacier National Park

With 2020 being a “work from home” kind of year, I had a chance to work from a different home in Northwest Montana for much of the summer and fall. Being close to Glacier National Park, I was able to photograph several areas of the park through the change of the seasons. Here a a few images from the western side of the park.

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Night Sky Planning

Hidden Lake – Glacier National Park, Montana

While presenting a recent night sky image to our photography club at work this week, I was asked a lot of questions about how to plan those kinds of shots. I hadn’t thought about it for a while, but there can be a lot that goes into it if you have a particular image in mind. My goal is often to try to line up something in the sky (usually the Milky Way) with a landscape scene. To make it work I need to figure out when those things will line up, when the sky will be dark enough to see the stars, and how much light will I want on the landscape, all while also keeping track of the weather and sometimes tides. In this post I will list some of the tools that I use and show how I used them to plan some recent images.

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