The last few years I’ve been doing a year-end favorites post showcasing a number of my best images from the year. I’ve done a variety of numbers. From now on I’m going to focus on 10 images, no matter how hard it is to choose. While I haven’t had a chance to write individual stories for each of the amazing places I visited this last year, you will find many of those images on flickr, 500px or google+. Check out past favorites posts from 2010, 2011 and 2012.

First up we have one of my favorite places in one of my favorite parks: the Eureka Dunes in Death Valley National Park. I always wanted to visit the area and never did in the days I was driving an old Toyota Corolla. Now I’ve been there several times with my Nissan Xterra and can’t wait to go back. I was able to squeeze in a quick trip in April to this place. Exploring around the massive dunes (which reach as far as 700 feet above the valley floor!) I came across this remnant of an ancient lake bed. What really took me by surprise was that it was pink! The color contrasted with the cool sands of the dunes and the magnificent layered Last Chance Range illuminated by the setting sun.

After working like mad for the day job for much of the first part of the year, I embarked on a massive road trip. I needed a break, and I was eager to expand photographically outside of California. Expand I did, covering 9066 miles in 32 days. I’ll have more to say about this road trip in the coming weeks.

The first destination was the Grand Canyon. I had never been to the Grand Canyon. I’ve seen thousands of photos and I’ve heard plenty of stories from people over the years, but I had never seen it for myself. This was destination one. And wow! What a canyon it is! I have seen lots of canyons over the years here in California but none of that really prepared me for the immense scale and awe inspiring landscape of the Grand Canyon. I highly recommend visiting at least once in your lifetime. This is my favorite image I took in the too short time I had at Grand Canyon National Park. This is sunset from a very popular spot – Hopi Point. The light was magical. A single cloud masked the sun and for a moment softened the light and brought out the warm, rich colors of the canyon walls. A few moments later direct sunlight cut back across the landscape and the soft warm colors were no longer so vibrant.

The next major way point in my journey was a place I had learned about after seeing photos from other photographers at the Fred Miranda Landscape Forum. I am a fan of sand dunes. Ever since my first visit to Death Valley National Park in 2008, I have fallen in love with the intricate sand formed patterns and infinite shapes and sizes of these fascinating and dynamic piles of sand. Death Valley does not of course have a monopoly on sand dunes, and there is a whole national park named for them – Great Sand Dunes National Park in southeastern Colorado. My drive there from the Grand Canyon was long. I arrived in the total dark in pouring rain in the middle of black bear country. I couldn’t see anything. The next morning I awoke to find tremendous piles of sand, the largest in North America, in a clearing morning storm. The Eureka Dunes above reach 700 feet. The Great Sand Dunes reach 750 feet at the summit of Star Dune. These dunes are very different than the Death Valley sands. The sand has more of a brown-gold hue, with patches of black magnetite providing dark accents. Added to the mix was the fact that rain had just fallen and the winds were drying sand on the surface. All together, you get the great tonal variation seen here. I loved the texture of these dunes.

The next National Park on my journey brought me to Badlands National Park in South Dakota. This is a park I always wanted to visit. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but after my short one night visit I definitely want to return and spend more time there. Here the flat emptiness in South Dakota is interrupted by “The Wall,” which is a formidable 100 mile long stretch of cliffs separating two levels of terrain. Exposed at the Wall are various erosion patterns and layers with grasslands above and below. One image in particular is a personal favorite. It plays tricks on my mind when I look at it, as the layers of sediments in the eroded landscape form near perfect horizontal lines that break the image up bottom to top in a way that makes me think of scanlines on an old analog television. The landscape was illuminated by a just rising sun. I definitely want to revisit this place soon and explore the land and the wildlife more.

Next up was the number one destination for the road trip – Yellowstone National Park. This is another amazing place I had never had the chance to visit before. I booked 6 nights there and loved every second of it. Wow! Two images from this part of the trip are in the list. Neither of them are iconic places you will see time and time again. I think Grand Prismatic Spring is pretty much the coolest natural thing I’ve ever seen, and yet I don’t include a photo of it here. Instead first we have a rainbow and thunderstorm over the hot runoff from Terrace Spring. My first full day in the park featured scattered showers, and I recognized conditions were right for a rainbow. I was on the west side of the park and the sun was getting low. I was driving around looking for a spot looking East to frame up a potential rainbow shot. Not knowing much about places in the park I settled on the place I started the day at. Here at Terrace Spring the hot runoff heads away from the road with a few trees nearby and the lush Yellowstone wilderness beyond. I set up and waited. A group of tourists came over and asked me what I was shooting. I told them a rainbow would appear and they kinda laughed and started walking off. No sooner had they started to walk off than the rainbow appeared. I yelled to them to look and then they smiled and laughed. This has remained a personal Yellowstone favorite for me.

The second image from Yellowstone that I have chosen is one of simple symmetry. I’ve been a fan of water-reflected symmetry ever since my visits to a flooded Badwater Basin in 2011. I came across this scene wile exploring the edges of Yellowstone Lake. I just loved the simple symmetrical composition of the lodgepole pines, grasses and water. Light rippling in the water provides a little breakup to the reflection surface. I just find it very pleasing to the eye and thus is edged out photos of all sorts of Yellowstone icons to claim a spot in my favorites list.

One of my days in Yellowstone was set aside for a trip down south to the neighboring park below – Grand Teton National Park. My first thought of this park usually is of an iconic image from Ansel Adams at the Snake River Overlook. I found this to be another superlative park. The sudden rise of the Teton Range over the Jackson Hole valley is dramatic and awe inspiring. As it turns out, I picked an interesting day to explore the park. I stopped at an overlook area and watched as an incoming storm passed over the Tetons heading right towards me. With my new lightning trigger I was able to get a little cloud-to-cloud bolt just before I headed to safer ground (also just before horizontal rain started!). The storm was dramatic and beautiful. Living in southern California I really do miss storms. One day was nowhere near enough time for this amazing park. I will be back. This stormy scene is my favorite from my time in Grand Teton National Park.

The next National Park on the journey was Olympic National Park. I had visited this park very briefly about 10 years before. I had seen the beaches and mountains but not the rainforest. I was most excited for the beach and for the rainforest. As it turns out, the rainforest can be dry in the summer. And with the dryness the light can be harsh. I was not terribly pleased with the photos I was able to take in the forest. Cloudless skies dominated above, so we headed to the beach first. Second Beach was a really neat place with large rocks offshore covered in trees. At the coast, a thick marine layer hugged the shoreline in stark contrast with the blazing sunshine just 1/2 a mile inland. Defiantly we stayed at the beach through sunset hoping for a break in the clouds. Fortunately a slight break occurred. The tide was out but was just starting to come back in. Waves wrapped around the stacks and collided in opposite directions, forming neat patterns in the wave surface.

The Redwoods. I love trees. In particular, Redwoods will always have a place in my heart whether they are the tall graceful giant coastal redwoods or the thick, red, massive giant sequoias in the Sierras. In the past I have seen other photographers’ photos of shafts of light in fog in forests. I had always wanted to see such a sight myself, but never had the opportunity. When I arrived for my two night stay in the Redwood National and State Parks area in northwest California, I spotted a scene that was everything I had been wanting to see and then some. Along the coast a marine layer of low clouds was yielding overcast conditions. I drove around to get my bearings in the park and then discovered that the road went right up into the clouds. Near the top, I suddenly was aware of all the beams of the sunlight filtering in from the high canopy above. I pulled over and went to work and watched in awe as the light moved through the trees. The fog revealed each shaft of light spreading out in every direction from the Sun. The scene was magical, and I felt as though I had been transported back in time to a prehistoric era. Not since “Wow” had I felt compelled to vocally say “Thank You” aloud to Nature around me for sharing such a quality experience with me. If forced to choose one picture from 2013 as my “best of”, this is it.

Finally, if you follow my various photography postings around the web, you might occasionally come across a train photo or two. I have since I was a kid been completely fascinated by steam locomotives. This fall I had a chance to take a photo under beautiful lighting conditions. The sun was setting and the Fort Wayne Railroad Historical Society‘s 765 here was steaming home after a series of excursions to the east. Pacing along side the locomotive on the roadway, suddenly the steam engine started emitting picturesque black smoke. We later learned the black smoke was by request of Norfolk Southern, the railroad that owns the tracks here. Normally, a fireman will run an efficient fire which produces little to no smoke. Photographers like me will often wish that the fireman was wasting a little fuel in order to give us some picturesque black smoke. With the setting sun, it was magical. You can see some video I shot while chasing the train here.

So there you have it. After much agonizing over how to narrow down 50,037 photos to just 10, this is what I came up with today. Tomorrow I might change my mind, but I’m going to stick with it. I look forward to many new adventures in 2014. I really enjoyed breaking photographically out of California. It has really ignited a desire to arrange photography trips much further away. Hopefully my day job will afford me new opportunities to travel this year. Also, I have a new years resolution to make the time to write more in this blog to go along with some big changes I have planned for the rest of my web site. Happy New Year!

It’s the last day of 2012, and once again it’s time to try and pick some favorites for the year and reflect on all that has happened. I find this to be a fun exercise that forces me to look at everything I’ve done over the course of the year and to reflect on each image and what significance it has for me in the context of the year’s work. Last year I picked 11. This year I’ve selected 12 to follow along with the last two digits of the year (in 2010 I picked 20). This year started with a double trip to my favorite National Park, Death Valley. First, I took a couple friends on a grand tour of much of the park, from Dante’s View to the Racetrack and back to the Mesquite Dunes and everything in between. Then I met up with Steve Sieren and we set course for the remote western parts of my favorite park, now made accessible by my 2011 Nissan Xterra 4X. After a few days there, we headed back to civilization and were able to meet Carr Clifton at the opening reception for his show at Mountain Light Gallery. It was great to meet Carr, and great to go shooting with Steve. What a way to start the year.

After the Death Valley trips, the day job took over. While back at work I started preparing for my gallery show, and made contact with the Eastern Sierra Inter-agency Visitor’s Center to see if I could donate a print of The 97 Switchbacks At Night to them. I ended up loaning a print to the visitor center and it was able to hang there all summer, a very happy moment for me! I then proceeded to select and print 34 images for my gallery show in my home town of Fort Wayne, Indiana. It was nice to visit the home town a couple extra times this summer, and the show was a great success. I also printed (at the suggestion of seemingly everyone) posters and postcards and set up my online store during this time. In May I also was able to photograph the solar eclipse over LA, producing a surreal apocalyptic scene.

I was then able to make a couple of trips to the Eastern Sierras to photograph the fall color, something that the day job almost always interferes with. It was so great to spend time amongst the golden quaking aspens. I spent six days amongst the trees and valleys, from Bishop Creek north to Carson Summit and back, with most of my time on the South Fork of Bishop Creek which was really exploding with fall color. I came back to photograph a spectacular thunderstorm over Los Angeles, and also got to chase the Space Shuttle Endeavour as it made its historic journey through the streets of Los Angeles to its final resting place. I finished off the year with some camping time in the Alabama Hills and a couple of final visits to Death Valley National Park, including a trip to the Eureka Dunes, a place I had long wanted to visit. The Eureka Dunes were every bit as spectacular as I had hoped, and you can bet I’ll be spending some days there in the future.

This first image was from my first trip to Death Valley this year. Out on the salt flats I encountered this rock resting on cracked wet mud, with coyote tracks walking by. The sun was blazing in the background, and I decided to try and use my neutral density grad filters to tame the extreme dynamic range. I ended using 5 stops of ND filter on the top of the image. This image surprised me with how different it was than so many other photos I’ve taken from this location. To me it seems almost like an alien landscape.

While climbing around on the Mesquite Dunes with my two friends, I spotted this lone outcropping of plant in a sliver of light amongst the deep shadow of the surrounding sand hills. I raced closer to it and switched over to my 100-400mm zoom, framing up this view at 400mm before the light faded. At any other time of year, surely the light would not have hit just this one bush this way. I considered myself lucky.

Here is another 400mm view at the dunes that caught my eye. I really like the abstract nature of the sand avalanche at the edge of the sand with the horizontal shadows.

Morning and evening light are both magical in the dunes. The two shots above are just before sunset in the Mesquite Dunes. This one is sunrise in the Saline Valley Dunes, and I love the sweeping foreground arm of this dune with the edge lit ripples. This one is a particular favorite of my 99 year old Grandma, and I have to agree.

Remnants of old human activity can be found throughout Death Valley National Park, and in this salt lake we see the ruins of a salt harvesting operation long since abandoned. The rotting wooden posts suck up the salty water through capillary action and the salt crystals slowly obliterate the wood from the inside out. The still salty waters provide a mirror for the morning alpenglow on the mountains beyond.

May brought an annular eclipse to North America. In Southern California we didn’t get the perfect circle, but we did get this apocalyptic view of West Los Angeles with the marine layer clouds providing a nice natural filter for the Sun.

On a day trip to the Mount Whitney Portal Store, I came across this stormy scene at Owens Lake on my way back. The setting sun was illuminating the high clouds, the soft blue light of the sky and dark clouds above colored the slightly bluish corrugated metal into a more vibrant blue, and red algae on the lake gave the whole scene a vibrant colorful quality I had never seen before.

No trip to the Bishop Creek area is perhaps complete without a visit to North Lake to see what the fall color was doing there. This iconic location has been shot by countless other photographers. I thought I might see what happened this morning on the far side of the lake with a setting moon. The morning twilight ended up providing the best light of the morning, and the conditions created a star flare from the Moon that I usually more associate with the Sun.

I love aspens. This whole hillside was just on fire with backlight, and in the center in the shadows you can see some red plants in the underbrush.

Every trip I try to explore somewhere new. In this trip I explored the area at the Sierra foothills known as the Buttermilks. I was driving towards a grove of I spotted from afar. I went and set up a shot, watching as the light came and went with the rapidly passing clouds. Finally the Sun was just disappearing and I caught its last rays in this little valley shining on the little grove of aspens.

The Space Shuttle Endeavour traveling down city streets presented some unique photo opportunities. After waiting for hours and hours, finally the Endeavour arrived at Randy’s Donuts as the Sun was starting to get low in the sky. I stuck around long enough that I could frame the Sun in the eye of the donut, and at that moment the Goodyear Blimp decided to fly by. This was quite a juxtaposition.

The Eureka Dunes at last. Finally after years of wanting to go there, I visited the Eureka Dunes. These 700 ft tall dunes are amazing. Their scale is mind blowing. And here, my favorite pic from there so far is of the detail of a side of them. Here some sand avalanches had fallen down the steep side of the dunes. The near noon light proved to be perfect for highlighting these surreal shapes.

So there they are. 12 favorites from 2012. I’m sure I’ll change my mind tomorrow, but then it will be a new year. I hope you have enjoyed my selections as much as I enjoy sharing my images with you. I hope to have many, many more blog updates in the new year. 2012 has been exhausting in many levels, and I have high hopes that 2013 will be much better. I also have a number of adventures planned for next year and I hope to share those experiences here on my photo blog. Check back again soon for more updates and reflections on individual trips. Best wishes for a fantastic 2013!

-Kurt

Well today is the last day of 2011. Last year was a great one for my photography, and this one has turned out to be exceptional as well in my opinion. I learned a lot this year and I feel my shooting has matured at least a little. I still manage to shoot 800 frames a day (lots of exposure bracketing) in places like Death Valley. Indeed Death Valley was a frequent destination this year, as it proved a convenient place for me to do test exposures for my Mount Whitney project. Perhaps I was a bit biased after falling in love with that park in 2008 after my first visit, but its proximity to Mt. Whitney and absence of human or animal interference was a factor. I also got to visit a place I had been longing for: the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest in the White Mountains. I ended up making three visits to this magical place. This year also saw a return to Anacapa Island, as we made good on our plan to camp there overnight. I had planned to shoot star trails at Inspiration Point, but some insane winds all night forced me to use my tripods to stabilize my tent instead. I made quick visit of Yosemite through Tioga Pass, and finally did some shooting in the Alabama Hills. Virtually every single trip prior to August was designed around test shots for the Mount Whitney project. That project turned out to be a huge success, as the final image speaks for itself. I can only hope that 2012 will bring in new and exciting photo opportunities, and I’m looking forward to new adventures.

Sorting through some 18,000 frames was not easy, but in the end here are my 11 favorites from 2011. And be sure to check out my 20 favorites from 2010 as well.

Click here for a bigger version

When I posted this image to flickr, I just titled it “WOW.” I couldn’t think of anything else, and when I had walked away from the landscape I spoke out loud “thank you” for the experience of just being there for that. December 2009 saw heavy rains that created a temporary lake at Badwater, Death Valley’s lowest point in North America. There was no wind, so the lake offered a near perfect mirror to the spectacular light show in the clouds. I couldn’t move my feet as the water would ripple for 5 minutes. I was quite contorted as I shot this panorama without a ripple, and this is the result of those efforts.

After shooting the panorama of the sunset, I went to bed early. I awoke at midnight and headed back to Badwater with one thing in mind: Star Trails. I was shooting my first test exposures for the Mt. Whitney Project, and placed a number of film cameras and opened their shutters. I then placed my 5D2 out in the water and set the timer for a 45 minute exposure. Due to long exposure noise reduction, I had a 45 minute wait after that was done before I would see an image. I decided I would go to Zabriskie Point maybe for my next digital star trails. When I got there the camera was done and I was floored by the image on the tiny LCD. I scrapped the Zabriskie Point idea and sped straight back to Badwater and shot this shot as my second exposure. I’m glad I did! The wind was basically nonexistent again, producing clear reflected star trails with just a bit of rippling at the end of the exposure.

A final favorite from the mirrored reflections is this image from my second trip to Death Valley this year. The water was still, and this morning there were a few other photographers present at sunrise (at the far right of frame). Here the blue shadow of the Earth can be seen just before it is fully chased away by the rising sun. I just love the soft hues here and the mirror reflection.

In March I paid a visit to the mountain that would really occupy my mind for 9 months out of the year. We had just passed into spring but it was very much still winter up on Mount Whitney as you can see . I like this one as it is very dynamic with the clouds and snow blowing across the valleys and passes leading up to the mountain’s 14,508 ft summit. I stood up on that highest point in August 2010 and that trip inspired my project.

The stars! This image, shot in the Alabama Hills looking towards Mt. Whitney (just to the right of center), was one of the shots upon which the Mt. Whitney Project’s exposure was based. Long, beautiful star trails and the rising moon illuminating the tops of the Sierras. This was more the expected colors for the final shot, which would turn out to be colored quite differently.

It should be no surprise that this image, the culmination of my Mt. Whitney Project is here on this list. All the effort of planning and hard work and the generous volunteer work of friends new and old helped me capture this. The infamous 97 switchbacks of the Mt. Whitney Trail, illuminated at night by lantern. My favorite shot from 2011, and pretty much the end of sleepless nights shooting star trails for this year as well.

This year saw the visit of the Union Pacific Railroad’s beautiful steam locomotive 844 to southern California for the first time in many years. Being a lover of steam locomotives since I was a kid, I set out to capture this locomotive during it’s visit. This is by far my favorite capture from this trip. The previous night I headed into Afton Canyon in the Mojave Desert to scout out a location. I picked this exact spot and returned in the morning to capture 844 as she headed downhill through the canyon. She was a little late, but 844 put on a spectacular show of steam.

I saw before 11-11-11 that there was a flickr pool set up for this day with lots of people planning to capture something from this numerically amusing date. I headed out with my gear down to Manhattan Beach, California armed with my new Lee Big Stopper 10-stop neutral density filter. This image was one of my first to use this filter, which allows you to shoot longer exposures in broad daylight. A storm was rolling in and I used it to produce this surreal effect, imagining that it might resemble my previous night exposures but during the daytime. During this shot the sun briefly poked through the clouds producing the sunburst.

No longer focused on star trail tests, I paid a visit to Death Valley to enjoy its many wonderful places. A longtime favorite has been the Mesquite Dunes near Stovepipe Wells. On this afternoon, scattered clouds were breaking up the light, causing some dunes to be in bright light and others in shadow. As I was shooting and the light was fading, the sun descended behind a bank of dark clouds, masking the light and isolating a dune in the distance. I spotted this scene and pointed my 100-400mm zoom, using ever millimeter it offered. I love the isolation and contrast of the bright golden dune vs. the whacky shadowed dunes in the foreground. I honestly don’t know where the blue-green tones came from in the shadows but they were there in the raw file.

I decided to go to Dante’s View for sunrise for once, even though there was a chance of rain. I was seeking out weather and drama in the skies, so I headed up there before dawn and was incredibly glad I did. Clouds in the East masked the rising sun, producing a sliver of light that traveled down the Panamint Range. In my initial pass through these images I had somehow overlooked this one, but now I can’t stop coming back to it. There’s something about it that just captivates me and makes me return to it again and again. I love the red tones and the contrasts of the salty flows on the valley floor.

Click here for a bigger version

And finally, I offer up an enormous panorama of the sliver of light taken at one of the more dramatic points in the morning. It was a frantic morning trying to capture this scene, as the light changed by the second. If I am to print this 12″ tall, it will measure 125″ wide. It was really a sight to behold and I hope that this will offer you at least an impression through which you can experience a bit of that morning yourself.

Well there you have it. Before I change my mind again, here are 11 favorites from 2011. Next year I hope to travel to some new places, both in Death Valley and the Sierras and new unexplored places. I hope 2012 allows me to produce images at least as interesting as these, and I hope that you have enjoyed viewing them as much as I have enjoyed capturing them and sharing them with you. I wish everyone a Happy New Year!

What a year this has been. I have traveled to places I previously never even knew existed. I have climbed mountains and enjoyed incredible views (including Mount Whitney, the tallest mountain in the lower 48 states). I’ve gazed upon turquoise water and glaciers, watched lightning dance in the desert, and experienced the winter wonderland that the Eastern Sierras can be. I’ve visited beautiful coasts and quiet redwood forests. More than 16,500 exposures fired this year. From that it has been difficult to narrow down my favorites, but I have come to a list that I am pretty comfortable with. I will say that many of these trips were made possible by the Wilderness Travel Course offered by the Sierra Club. This class opened my eyes to many many more photographic possibilities and to explore those possibilities safely. I highly recommend this class! Fully half of these pictures were taken on trips related to WTC class, or from class trips directly.

Now, onto the pictures. These are arranged in chronological order.

My sole trip to Death Valley in 2010 yielded one of the most amazing lighting moments I’ve ever seen. When I took this photo, a band of clouds behind me was blocking the sunlight from hitting the dark hills, while allowing direct sunlight to illuminate the salt encrusted mud formations that were closer to me. The result was this wild razor-thin slice of sunlight sandwiched between clouded hills and then rendered symmetrically from the water’s reflection. It was, for lack of a better word, magical.

This wonderful little tree stood out in near white silhouette from the fog and falling snow beyond. I encountered this tree on a snow travel day with WTC where we learned to walk with snow shoes. I loved the simplicity of a black and white interpretation of what was nearly a monochromatic scene anyway.

Panorama at Rock Creek Lake
Be sure to click on the flickr link to view the panorama much larger.

This scene was the view just above our camp during the “snow camp” trip at the end of WTC class. To experience the beauty of the Eastern Sierras at the end of winter was quite the treat. All my friends said I was crazy for camping in the snow, but it is truly an amazing experience.

Oh, Anacapa. Our troubled adventure to this island didn’t quite work out the way we had intended, but nevertheless I’m thankful to have this image above all others from that day. These great pelicans were traveling towards the rock as our boat idled so we could look at seals. I fired off a series of shots to try and see what they would look like over the rock itself. This was the prize exposure from the bunch. For this I was at the right place at the right time.

Misadventure at Anacapa allowed us to spend a morning near Gorman, CA investigating the California poppy fields and other wildflowers that were in bloom. The clouds were moving crazy fast. We were not sure at first if we would get any interesting skies at all since it was so gray further south in Los Angeles. But, I’m glad we went out anyway because the incredibly dynamic light made for some awesome images. Here the sun was dodging in and out of the clouds extremely fast (check out the scene at the end of that linked video). I waited until the foreground trees were in full sun with the hills behind in shadow and snapped off this picture, black and white fully in mind.

This last July I picked up a shiny new piece of glass, the venerable 100-400m Canon zoom lens. Like anyone would want to do, I set out to try and find something to take pictures of with this new acquisition. So, I headed on my bike to the beach to see what I could see. On my way back from my long bike ride, this scene presented itself to me. A dark cloud hung over Santa Monica and Malibu (while it was sunny from Venice on south). This dark cloud had a hole at the Santa Monica Mountains where the sun beamed down in what we call “god rays” in visual effects. In the foreground, big waves smashed on rocks and surfers waited to ride. I spent quite awhile waiting for the perfect shot before I finally moved on. I must have fired off 400-500 pictures seeking “the shot,” and this is the one that was my favorite.

Many, many years ago I paid a very short (perhaps tragically short) visit to Sequoia and Kings Kanyon National Parks. This summer I had the awesome opportunity to go camping there with friends. And naturally that meant hauling all my camera gear along. I was rewarded with a number of memorable images. I also got to see far more bears than I thought I would, including a close encounter within about 15 feet. This image is of a nice couple Giant Sequoia redwoods in Kings Canyon National Park. Fire had damaged and split the trunk of one of the trees, leaving a crack perhaps 30 feet tall or more. In the lower part of the crack there was a little notch like a tiny window, and I just happened to notice the sun was around that area. So, with a little move over I got the sun in the notch, and through the lens flare created with the sun and the f/18 aperture it created this nice big sunburst from the notch. This is I think my favorite picture from that trip. I love these trees!

Big Pine Lakes – Few things I can say other than “wow” about this stretch of the John Muir Wilderness. It’s just a magical place. The glacial water has millions of tiny suspended particles in it which gives these lakes their incredible hue. Here I am in this picture, standing in awe looking at this landscape. The rocky mountain before me is Temple Crag, a photogenic 12,999 ft temple of granite. Never before had I witnessed a landscape such as this with my own eyes.

I’ve always been a fan of the black and white landscape, having studied the works of famous photographers like Ansel Adams. This is my favorite black and white from the trip to Big Pine Lakes. These are snow fields at the base of the immense cliff face of Temple Crag, which I have dubbed its chin.

A nearly 4 year old goal – to climb Mount Whitney was fulfilled this year. Though I haven’t yet written up the blog article I intend to, I can at least say that it was a really incredible trip. The scenery is wonderful and the sheer physical challenge was exhilarating. This image is one I was happy to get. A little sunburst right as the sun (and its warmth) disappeared behind the edge of the Eastern Sierras, which I matched with this one of a little sunburst as the first rays of light broke over the Sierras to our east.

I love star trails. This one just happens to be one that I like from Joshua Tree National Park. This exposure was 30 minutes long as was taken on a backpacking expedition to summit Quail Mountain, the tallest peak in the park.

This image was a total surprise. While on that same expedition, I awoke really early to find a developing thunderstorm to our southeast. Our group had been caught in one in the first hours of our hike the day before, and I was weary of this one as it had tons of lightning activity. Since I did not have my full size tripod, I relied on my little Gorillapod focus for this (as well as the star trail shot above). I set the exposure for 5 minutes at f/5.6 and aimed it at the storm. I had no idea what I would get, but lo and behold I was blown away at the resulting image. Unfortunately, with my headlamp on, I wondered into the shot in the foreground forcing me to crop that part out. However the rest of the image is very lovely indeed, and motivated me to continue trying to capture lightning well into the morning.

And speaking of lightning, I had always wanted to capture lightning photos. I had never really had the opportunity in the Midwest growing up. There was just too much stuff to clutter the foreground and block the view, and there was also too much haze between the storms and myself to get a clear shot. This morning in Joshua Tree was different. I was able to capture lightning as I never had before. I set the camera to continuously take photos while myself and my fellow hikers packed up our tents to get out of there before a storm could find us. I made a couple of adjustments as the morning light began to brighten our world. This was my favorite lightning strike photo from those attempts. The lightning here is striking a little over a mile away.

Later in the morning on that same trip I saw this scene before me. I loved the sky and the backlight on this solitary tree, a few hundred feet from a forest of his brethren. I just loved the quality of light and the low level fog from the rain the night and day before.

In my time in southern California, I have been wanting to seek out fall color aspen trees to photograph. Work seems to always interfere with this quest, but I was determined this time. Leaving much later than I had intended, I still made an 860 mile road trip in two days, crisscrossing the Sierra Nevada range through Yosemite and visiting the eastern flanks lf the Sierras in search of their aspen groves.

Here is an image I love and purposely planned for in short order. While attending the graduation from WTC I shot a couple images of our large group camp. I then also noticed that the rocks around where I was standing were illuminated by our large campfire. I swung the camera around and made an exposure. The intense red and the moonlight were fantastic! The moon was sinking fast so I made another exposure, but this time the fire had died way down and the foreground rocks had lost their presence. So, I made another exposure and ran down to flare up the fire just as the moon was passing behind the crest of the rocks. I stopped down to f/11, the smallest aperture I dared in the dark light, to try and maximize the starburst effect like I had done on the Sequoia shot above. The exposure time of 13 minutes was a total guess based on the previous few. The result turned out great. The moon made a moonburst pattern just as I wanted, and my only complaint is that I didn’t let it go a little longer to get more light on the foreground rocks.

With the pure excitement of the moonburst shot fresh in my mind, I ventured around the camp to take more firelight pictures, and this is my favorite of that bunch. Star trails in the blue sky behind and moonlight and firelight combined on the rocks in the foreground.

Oh what a tree! This amazing tree greeted my father and I as we ventured into Muir Woods National Monument for the first time in 12 or so years. The soft backlight of these ferns was magical to behold. I had fond memories of this place from my sole previous visit, and this new one left me with the same awe and the same feeling of serenity.

This was my last picture as we left Muir Woods. Something about this view stopped me and compelled me to take one last photo. The light was nearly gone, as the sun had set and we were proceeding through twilight. This scene was just so peaceful that I couldn’t pass it up. I think the totally diffuse, soft light captures the feeling I felt at the time. We were basically the last two people in the park and I just soaked up the silence of the forest while I patiently awaited this long exposure to complete. The redwood forests are truly great places on Earth.

Finally, a sunset image from the wonderful El Matador State Beach. I was capturing images from this sunset for awhile this fine evening. A group of three cormorants were waiting out the sunset on a rock. I took some wider views of them before deciding to frame up a closeup. Once I zoomed in, the first bird decided to take off. This was followed by the second. And finally the third one was getting ready to go. I had missed the shot I wanted but was able to capture the final bird as it stretched its wings before taking flight. I think it made for a fantastic image and a nice one to round out my 20 favorite pictures from 2010. At least that’s what it was when I arbitrarily cut off my quest. When I next look through the library, I’m sure I’ll come up with another 5, 10 or 20 favorites in an instant.

So there you have it. I hope 2011 turns out even better. My horizons have certainly broadened this year, so the sky is the limit you could say for next year.

What do you think of my selections?