American Galapagos Sunset

American Galapagos Sunset – Channel Island National Park

Okay you got me it’s not the Galapagos Islands (I wish) but we like to refer to California’s Channel Islands as the American Galapagos because of their abundant variety of endemic species and plentiful sea life. It’s most certainly beautiful out there!

You can see the path of wind of in the distance. It’s partial evidence of how these high coastal sea cliffs are shaped.

The Channel Islands are some of the most beautiful islands on the West Coast. If you ever get a chance to see them it’s worth while. The weather is not the same compared to the mainland. You can be covered in fog while everyone is out on the beach back in Los Angeles.

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Wild Light Fall Color Reflection – Eastern Sierra

Maybe this is my perception but I feel most photographers go nuts over a sunset reflection, if it’s in front of them. Maybe even prefer it over the golden hour when the best light hits the land and creates interesting light and shadows on the subjects that are important in our photographs. Most of the time I think these sunset colored clouds are just background decor to add a little something extra to a scene that doesn’t have the greatest light. Something to just accent an image. Am I the only one that feels this way?

Field notes: Early that morning at North Lake in the Eastern Sierra, as soon as light of dawn revealed there was cloud cover and we could see that the holes in the clouds would likely let some good light through in a few a places. I was with a couple of friends but we all had different agendas, one of them did not want to go into the mess of crowded photographers at the creek outlet of North Lake so he went of into the aspen groves and we never saw him again until we were ready to leave hours later. We had parked on the north side of the lake where it’s a longer walk to the popular spot there. I chatted with a few strangers but kept it short. I took a photo looking towards the White Mountains and figured I’d at least better get into a position where I could at least shoot into multiple directions. There is a creek you must cross or take the long way around, it was at least 32 degrees out and I didn’t want to get my feet wet but I had a change of pants, shoes, and socks in the car if needed. Before I knew it I was crossing the creek to take a couple of different shots in both directions.

The light was good and I was only spending between 30 seconds and a couple of minutes composing scenes, usually I take longer then. There was a sense of rush but I still very calm in between exposures.

This photo does’t really show how crowded it gets in this one spot here at North Lake but I’m sure you could imagine.

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California’s Unknown Sea

Ok, I’m kidding about an unknown sea in California. There isn’t one. These are just some rocks in a grassland and nothing more causing an illusion that helped my think of a title. The atmosphere just gave it a mysterious feel and a view I hadn’t seen before or anything similar at the least in California.. . .

One thing that I will always remember about this place before venturing in is that it is full of snakes and spiders and that you will not be able to see them because the grass is so high. Great, add mountain lions to that. I accidentally stepped on a poor little defenseless rodent walking around these parts. How easily could that have been a rattlesnake? I still haven’t seen one yet ever after hiking so many miles and miles. I have seen plenty of snakes but never a rattle snake unless it was crossing the highway as I was driving by probably over the speed limit. I should be shooting wildlife if I can see like that, however that is a different kind of patience I do not have. Waiting on the sun to do it’s thing is easy just like what happened here.

The Processing:

This was reprocessed 4 years after an older version, that I decided to replace. This is 2 bracketed exposures blended together in CS4 combined with the use fo a GND soft filter moved up and down during the exposure to reduce flare from the sun. The blending is not that difficult and the hardest part is adding the contrast to where the horizon meets the sky. Photoshopping images can take some time so if you don’t want to spend the time don’t take it out on me for being HONEST about it. Anyone that mentions only spending a couple of minutes in photoshop could be pulling your chain and revealing thier character. We shoot in RAW format which lessens contrast and color so we can adjust things to the look and feel we are aiming for.

Camera used Nikon D70, shot way back in 2006!

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