B&W

Endless

This is, once again, from my favorite location to shoot at in La Jolla. The tide pools along that small section of coast, are so dynamic, it would be impossible to get the same shot twice. I have visited this location many times before, so I tried to stray from the normal sandstone formations I normally shoot, and find a new composition. With the tide higher than normal, I decided to use it to my advantage, and show the waves crashing and interacting with the rock. I made sure to use a long exposure to show the movement of the water and sea foam as they moved through the eroding rock. Wave after wave, I kept taking photos to try to get the perfect look of the water sweeping over the rock. After a half hour in this location and hundreds of photos of the rock formations, I knew I had captured what I needed with this single image. I decided to have this photo in black and white to accentuate the rough texture of the protruding stone, and the silky look of the moving water.

Radial

On a long hike near my home, I was climbing to the peak of a rarely visited foothill. As I pulled myself up the rocky hillside, I noticed this small succulent that made its home in a small crack in a massive granite boulder. I pulled out my camera to get a close up shot of this delicate plant just barely clinging to life on this rock.

Eagle Rock

This is one of the newest locations I've found here in San Diego, and incredibly beautiful. Located near the Pacific Crest Trail in a small cow pasture, this granite feature rises up 20 feet into the form of an eagle. It almost looks like it was carved by human hands because of how accurate of a depiction it creates. This was the first, but certainly not the last time I will take a photo of this spot. In the near future I will make another trip to this rock and get some shots of it during the night.

Sandscape

This was my first stop on a 1,500 mile road trip through Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. After a brutal 13hour, 1,000 mile drive from San Antonio to Alamogordo, I finally made it to my destination. White Sands National Monument, stands out like a sore thumb in the desert. As the name would suggest, the sand is pristine white, even more pure than what you'd expect to find at a white sand beach. I arrived at 3 in the morning and waited for the first sign of sunrise over the mountain peaks. When the sun started shining on the dunes, the small ripples in the sand appeared contrasted by the dark blue sky, creating an other-worldly scene. As I ran through the dunes, racing the rising sun, I set my tripod down and saw this scene that would best represent the extraordinary expanse of these sand dunes.

Edge

The early morning light at White Sands National Monument is the best time to capture the best photographs. When the sun is high in the sky, the wind carved ripples in the sand are invisible, but when the sun is low in the sky, the shadows created suddenly create incredible textures on the desert floor. That, coupled with the absolutely pure white color of the sand makes for incredible photos.

Sand Abstract

As the sun set in Death Valley National Park, these textures in the Mesquite Dunes caught my eye. My goal for this photo was perfectly sharp focus across the whole frame. With a high quality lens, and a high resolution camera, every grain of sand is visible in this photograph making an incredibly textured photo

Mesquite Dunes

I've always been fond of minimalist photography, and I feel like I've drifted away from that style over the past year, moving more towards vast landscapes and colorful images. I've been going through my old photos to see if I've missed some great photos because I was distracted by some of the grand images. Images like these are some of my favorite because it's an image that almost nobody else has. Going to iconic locations, like the Mesquite Sand Dunes in Death Valley National Park, it's very easy to have your eye focused on the dunes rising over 100' high. I very frequently forget to look down every once in a while to capture other interesting aspects of these places. Tucked far back in the field of dunes, some old cracked mud, probably the bed of a dried up lake, was uncovered by the brutal winds of the desert. I loved the hard texture of the dried mud going right up against the soft flowing patterns of the dune in the back. Going through these old photos reminds me sometimes that there's more to landscape photography than the popular scenes, and colorful images, sometimes some of the most interesting images come from small spots of dried mud

Afterglow

My final full day in the park was definitely hectic. There were so many spots that I still wanted to see, but didn't have the time. I was keeping my fingers crossed for my last sunset in the park to be good, the last few days hadn't bee too remarkable for colors in the sky. We made a loop around the park searching for anything unique that we hadn't seen yet, and this spot really stuck out to me. A small bridge crossing the river had the perfect viewpoint to see Half Dome framed by the hundred foot tall pine trees. I must have stood in that spot for an hour to try to capture any sort of color that might pop out at any time. When I was about to give up, one short burst of light appeared like a spotlight above half dome, and I set my camera to capture it. My camera sat gathering the light for over a minute, which was the extent of that scene. The frame before this, and the frame after this, didn't capture anything like this one did. I was glad I was there to see it!

Fallen Monarch

The first morning we were in Yosemite, we decided to make an early morning trip to Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias to beat the crowd and get the soft lighting of the morning on the western slopes of the sierras. We were the first people to arrive in the parking lot at the bottom of the grove. I got bundled up in a thick jacket to keep my mind off the near freezing temperatures. The first sight that anyone walking through Mariposa will see is this 2,000 year old Sequioa, which fell over 300 years ago. With the roots spreading outwards 15' in the air, they seem to dwarf anyone standing near them. Looking at the roots, you could get a sense of these thick mangled roots working for millennia to bring nutrients to this giant. Although the grandness of the scale is lost here, the weathering of thousands of years of life was evident in the rough texture of the roots.

Water Abstract

Abstract photos are some of my favorite subjects to capture, it's art in the purest sense, no specific subject just pure design. During a quick trip down to La Jolla, CA i was hoping for an amazing sunset. But as the sun inched closer to the horizon, it became evident that the clouds which normally make beautiful sunsets, were too abundant to let the sun shine though. So my plan B was to capture small elements from my surrounding that didn't require beauty in the typical sense. I pulled out my powerful telephoto lens to capture the small ripples near the tide pools below me. After several dozen shots, I finally got the photo I wanted. Smooth repetitious patterns of small waves forming on the ocean surface.