Below you'll find a list of all posts from 2014
Common Yellowthroat, Borrego Springs, California.
I have been trying for a couple of evenings to get a nice clean image of this beautiful bird, but it likes to stay in the thick reeds watching for bugs to pounce on. So, I decided to embrace the reeds by including the plants. 🙂 As Janine pointed out, seems like such a beautiful bird shouldn’t have “Common” as part of its name.
An older photo of wildflowers in Saguaro National Park, near Tucson, Arizona.
I have made the trip from Alaska to Anza-Borrego and are now situated comfortably. Part of that trip involved driving from Phoenix to Anza-Borrego in Southern California, a drive that gave me a bit of an over-view of what’s to come. Here are my thoughts.
I was really excited about the prospects of wildflowers during my visit to Arizona in September. In Northern Arizona I saw some of the best fields of wildflowers I have seen in the desert in two years – and it was September! This was due to some heavy rain during the month of August, numerous YouTube videos showed flashing flooding and crazy rainfall from Anza-Borrego, California, to Page, Arizona. Even now, the water year to date rainfall total for Borrego is way ahead of the last few years.
Fast forward to today – unfortunately, the desert has seen little if any rain since those Augusts storms, and California is experiencing the most extreme drought in modern history. Because of this, my expectations were extremely low. I was pleased to see a report on the news when I arrived talking about an early bloom this year. I was even more surprised to see numerous green areas though out Arizona that showed some good potential for a bloom. Even more encouraging, there were a two of small areas that were actually already in nice bloom right now!
Both areas were along Highway 8. The first was at mile 149. There is actually a nice picnic and parking area on the South side of the highway right at the best spot, which included a thick carpet of yellow flowers amongst the saguaro cactus. At 70 miles per hour, I couldn’t tell what type of wildflowers, but it was a pretty area. Another nice area was on a rocky hillside at mile 125 – the hills were spotted with a good collection of blooming Brittlebush. Between the brittlebush, rocks and cactus, this was another nice area similar to what is pictured above. There were some nice patches of wildflowers in other areas of Arizona, including lupine, but most of those were limited to the shoulder of the highway, an area that always has some bloom.
Now as I made my way West, things looked worse, and I must admit, it doesn’t look very promising for Anza-Borrego. There are a few blooms in the washes, but most areas are brown. Now a nice rainfall could change all this, but the forecast isn’t promising either. In fact, the whole region is experiencing record high temps which should last for at least a few more days – the heat won’t do the wildflowers in favors. If things do change, I’ll let you know!
Leonard Knight, creator of Salvation Mountain.
According to the L.A. Times Leonard Knight pasted away on Monday. Leonard was the builder of Salvation Mountain, you might have seen it in the movie Into The Wild.
This image is from 2009. We had the pleasure of meeting him, and getting a tour of his creation. He was a very friendly, interesting gentleman who lived year around in the back of a truck and worked on building Salvation Mountain. Even in the middle of the brutally hot Summer, he worked continued adding new elements. I’m glad we had the pleasure of meeting him, I don’t think it was too long after this he had to move into a retirement home. Rest in peace Leonard.
Polar bear photo by Hugh Rose.
I have good news and bad news. The bad news, all my photo tour trips for 2014 are full. But the good news, I will be working with Hugh Rose on a polar bear tour and there is still space for anyone who wants to join us this Fall! This is something we have been talking about and planning for months, and are now ready to begin taking reservations.
Hugh created and pioneered this Polar Bear tour many years ago. In recent years this trip has been copied, but no one comes close to having Hugh’s experience guiding photographers in the Alaska Arctic. I have always thought this was one of the best photo tours in Alaska and I have referred a number of people his way over the years.
I first meet Hugh back sometime in the mid 90’s on a Kenai Fjords tour boat. I was just beginning to pursue my passion of photography more seriously, and he was already an established guide leading a group. Fast forward 15 years or so to today. We are now good friends, and I have worked with him on trips to Antarctica, and in Alaska on a photo trip into Prince William Sound and Cordova, Alaska. Not only is he an excellent photographer, but maybe one of the best, if not the best naturalists I know. It is an honor to be joining him. It is going to be a fun trip – there is typically no shortage of laughter on trips we work together!
Horned Puffin in flight, Lake Clark National Park, Alaska.
We are a bit behind and are just now editing and adjusting last Summer’s photos. So I thought I would share some since they are still “new” to me.
Horned puffin are really tough to photograph in flight. Not only are they fast, but they are about the size of a football and don’t always fly a nice even path. Over the years, some of my guests have captured killer flight images of puffin, but I have been a bit skunked. Now that I have a much better flight lenses, the Canon 70-200 f/2.8, I decided to give more of an emphasis to flight photography. This past Summer, between two trips in Prince William Sound, and my two Bear and Puffin Photo Tours, I had lots of opportunity, and was able to finally captured some decent puffin flight images! This was from my June bear trip.
Canon 5D III, 70-200 with 1.4 converter @ 280, ISO 200, f/5 and 1/3200 of a second. Original is a horizontal cropped to vertical. I rarely crop, but this image worked much better cropped.
Abandoned whaling village of Grytviken, South Georgia.
A snowy evening in the abandoned whaling ghost town of Grytviken is where I celebrated New Year’s Eve this year. It looks gloomy, but there is a British Antarctica Survey (BAS) station nearby, just out of sight of this image. The interesting folks from that base came aboard our ship for New Year’s dinner and celebrating – despite the gloomy appearance, it was actually a fun night.
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