Drive

• Albert Einstein.

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On our first day in Oregon, we reached Bandon Beach and its famed sea stacks. I was hoping for one of those epic storm clearing sunsets but was told by the hotel receptionist that those only happen in fall. In our talks he told me that most of the great some clearing sky happens in fall, winter is too rainy and summer to foggy for photography.

So I didn’t have much hope when we ventured out to the beach but I noticed a crack in the clouds close to the horizon as the fog started to slowly gather strength. So I held hope that there will be some cloud as the sun got near the horizon before the fog came in thick. My wife was skeptical but it turns out I was right for once. As the sunset time approached, we had some wind that cleared the fog a bit and the golden light started poured in through the crack in the clouds. It was not as awesome as I pictured in my mind but better than what I hoped for given the conditions we witnessed while we reached the beach.

Here, another album begins. This album is from my travel to Western National parks of USA. It's was on November, 2016. This trip was made with a Spanish travel agency (www.banoa.com).
We began in Montana with Yellowstone National Park and we visited 17 national parks, crossed 7 states and drove more than 7500 km until to arrive at San Francisco. It was a great experience and a fabulous trip.

Mammoth Hot Springs is a large complex of hot springs on a hill of travertine in Yellowstone National Park adjacent to Fort Yellowstone and the Mammoth Hot Springs Historic District. Although these springs lie outside the caldera boundary, their energy has been attributed to the same magmatic system that fuels other Yellowstone geothermal areas.

Yellowstone National Park, USA November, 2016

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The East Coulee Railway and traffic bridge, over the Red Deer River near Drumheller, Alberta, was built to transport coak from the nearby coalmines. The last mine closed down in the 1980s, and ever since the bridge has no longer been used, but it makes for a nice bit of photogenic industrial heritage.

While walking back to the subway after taking my panorama of the Trump Tower, I grabbed this quick panorama of the area around the Michigan Avenue...

Twickenham, London

• William Shakespeare.

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The moment we entered the White Sands National Park, I knew I wanted an image with the delicate patterns in the sand. It turned out harder than expected. The park, known for wind, was serene during our visit. So footmarks stayed on overnight, and it also meant I had to hike quite deep into the dunes to get decent unbroken patterns. While hunting for a composition, I had the idea to make the composition a bit more interesting by adding some more familiar items from the landscape.

The mountain to the west of the park is a dominant feature that immediately caught my eye, and I decided to use it as my background. With their elongated stems, these Yucca plants were the other elements of the park that I wanted to add to my image. As mentioned earlier, this made the search a bit trickier, but my perseverance paid off. The final image is a simple 16:9 aspect ratio composition with the tripod placed low.

• Lao Tzu.

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It's been a crazy few days with an unexpected job change and my sister suddenly dropping in for a visit that I didn’t get much time to spend on photos. We have managed quite a few trips in the last couple of months, and I am already behind processing them. However, I finally managed to take some time and sort through the photos from White Sands National Park. I hope to post more images from that stunning destination in the next couple of days.

Today’s subject is again the lone tree of White Sands that I managed to find in one of my hikes. I was unhappy with the first day’s image of the tree and returned to it repeatedly, hoping for better light. It turns out that’s the best thing I did during the trip. I managed to capture images of the tree in dramatically different settings. While I have returned to locations before, it was the first time I did so within days, and it surprised me how different the area looked each time I went there. It seems like it would be a practice I will be adding to my travel photography techniques.

• Leo Buscaglia.

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Perhaps the most famous oak tree in California, located a short walk away from Yosemite Lodge in Cooks meadow, this tree has been photographed many times by some of the best photographers in the world. I have always wanted to take a picture of this tree with some snow on it but have never managed to do that so far. The best I could do was some early morning frost and with some nice light from the rising sun. This was taken after the extremely cloudy sunrise we had at tunnel view.

After taking this shot while packing my gear into the car my tripod tipped over and fell on its face. Luckily I had shortened the tripod legs so fall was only from about a foot height and my Lee filter holder took all the impact of the fall bending its brass crew without affecting lens or the camera. I am so thankful for small favors.

• Ernest Hemingway.

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As I planned our quick stopover at White Sands National Park, the windy conditions seemed to be a common thread in many of the information sites about the park. I was worried as it was our first extended trip with our daughter. However, it was not a concern as we enjoyed two very calm days at the park with milder temperatures. There were benefits and negatives with these weather conditions.

While the spectacular skies the park is known for were missing during the visit. The thick cloud cover made the morning light much softer, extending our time out on the dunes. I was especially fond of how the soft light helped photograph the vegetation. It was as if the dunes were acting as a giant diffuser softening the ambient light.

As a landscape photographer, f8 or 11 is my go-to aperture to keep sharpness throughout the scene, but for this image, I leveraged the wide aperture of my lens and a 70mm focal length to accentuate the gentle glow on the shrub. I love how the lens gently rendered the background out of focus.