How Do You Measure a Year?
I’m thankful that this blog didn’t take 525,600 minutes to write.
Happy New Year! For those of you who ordered 2023 Portfolio Calendars, you can now finally unpack them and hang them on your walls.
The calendar not only shows a selection of my best work, it also embodies the lessons I’ve learned in the past year. I truly understood the value of returning to places I had visited before. Not only did several photos in this year’s calendar come from locations I had photographed previously, two of them even feature scenes that appeared in last year’s calendar. It goes to show both how perceptions of our “best” work change with time and how we can find inspiration in familiar locations. This has been most evident in my photos from the Sierra Nevada. My countless visits throughout the past year have allowed me to be in the right places at the right times for those lucky moments when beautiful scenery coincides with good light.
I intend for my portfolio calendars to highlight some of my best work from the previous year. Summing up a year in fourteen photographs proved to be a challenge. Selecting photos in this way inevitably separates them from the context in which they were taken. In this blog, I’d like to share the stories behind the photos.
Front Cover: Owens Valley on a Fall Morning, Eastern Sierra
Photographed in October 2022
On my last day of a fall trip to the Sierra, I realized that I didn’t have any picture in mind for sunrise, a rare occurrence. Overcast skies also precluded the chance of any strong alpenglow. Without the pressure of finding a subject to photograph, I drove around the outskirts of Bishop, looking around anything that caught my eye. Finally, I noticed some soft, pink light on the Sierra as the sun peeked up from the horizon. I worked through my mental list of potential angles and narrowed it down to one particular spot by the Owens River I had visited a year before, which afforded a wide view of the entire Sierra front range. I sped along the backroads until I arrived at my designated spot. I rushed out of the car, pulled out my tripod and camera, and then ran back and forth between one shore and another in search of a composition.
As I did so, the pink glow from sunrise had given way to some stronger, more direct light, but clouds covered the sun just enough to prevent the light from becoming too bright. That light shone on the entire Sierra front range.
That sunrise turned out to be a fitting final act to a hectic stretch of traveling: two weekend trips within the span of a week-and-a-half, with almost 1500 miles of driving. In exchange, I received some priceless memories, a new batch of portfolio-worthy pictures, and a bit of photographic wisdom I’ll use for next year’s trip.
January: Winter Sunrise outside Bishop, California
Photographed in February 2022
This scene might look familiar to those of you who have a 2022 Portfolio Calendar. I had this scene in my head for almost a year. When I first visited the Owens Valley, I knew I wanted to photograph the Sierra front range from the valley floor. However, I didn’t know the area well and couldn’t find the right angle for the picture I wanted. Over multiple trips, I combed through different maps and drove along Owens Valley backroads trips until I finally found the right spot.
That initial attempt resulted in a photo which I used in last year’s calendar. Though I was satisfied with it, I still wanted to return to the scene when there were some storm clouds lingering over the mountains. I got my chance to do so on a weekend trip to the Eastern Sierra in February, just as a storm passed through the area.
February: Dawn at Badwater Basin, Death Valley National Park
Photographed in December 2021
Death Valley earns its name. It receives an average of just 2.2 inches of rain annually, making it the driest place in North America. It was a fortunate coincidence then that I encountered snow on my most recent visit there. I arrived at Badwater Basin on a chilly December morning to see a light dusting of snow coating the summit of Telescope Peak, which rose over 11,000 feet above where I stood. I spotted the mountain’s reflection in a pool of water near me and knew that I wanted to juxtapose the two in the same image. I used a 55mm lens to neatly pack both into frame. The hikers on the salt flats lend some perspective to the sheer size of the valley behind them.
March: Cascades along the Merced River, Yosemite National Park
Photographed in April 2022
On this trip, I wanted to photograph the dogwoods in Yosemite Valley. I really enjoy William Neill’s work and consciously tried to see and photograph the way I thought he would. It was quite a challenge, as I don't usually look for close-up scenes. For a few days, I drove and walked around the valley, constantly looking through my camera viewfinder for something that caught my eye. I lucked out when it came to this photo. My friend Blake Johnston and I stopped along the Merced River and spotted some nice ripples in the water. I decided to try photographing the scene, not expecting much from it. I found myself pleasantly surprised at the result.
April: Moonbow at Lower Yosemite Falls, Yosemite National Park (II)
Photographed in May 2022
So far as I know, I have only seen one other film photograph of a Yosemite Falls moonbow, from Keith Walket. All other photos I’ve encountered have been made on a digital camera. That made getting this picture a bit of a technical challenge. With a digital camera, a photographer can easily crank up the sensor’s sensitivity to light, record a shorter exposure of a scene, and double check the results on the screen. As a quixotic film shooter, I lacked all those capabilities, so I had to maximize my chances of success with some very deliberate gear and technical choices.
Surprisingly, my biggest challenge had nothing to do with either of those issues. Instead, it centered around keeping my equipment dry. The spray from Lower Yosemite Fall soaked both me and my camera. I held a microfiber cloth over my lens and wiped it down between shots. I detached the camera from my tripod and shielded it from the spray with my jacket when I changed lenses. Thankfully, the photos turned out well, revealing an otherworldly sight not visible to the naked eye.
May: Boulder Field at Sunset, Humphreys Basin, John Muir Wilderness
Photographed in June 2022
I made this photo on a backpacking trip with Blake Johnston into the High Sierra. We found this area on our penultimate day camped out in Humphreys Basin. After a somewhat harrowing afternoon traversing a snowfield and boulder hopping around Muriel Lake, we returned in time for sunset. I hopped from boulder to boulder, tripod in hand, looking for the best way to photograph the cascades in front of me. I eventually decided that a wide-angle shot would most adequately capture the vastness of the boulder-strewn stream. Not pictured here are the mosquitos which buzzed incessantly around my head as I clicked the shutter.
June: Clearing Summer Storm at Sunset, Tuolumne Meadows, Yosemite National Park
Photographed in June 2022
This was another picture that took a year to come to fruition. I first photographed this scene in June 2021. At the time, I had miscalculated the exposure and the picture turned out a bit too bright. I resolved to try it again and waited patiently for a year to return here. I got close with a Memorial Day trip but just missed out on the best light due to some thick cloud cover.
A month later, I drove through the area again on another weekend trip as a summer monsoon began to clear. Initially I drove past the meadows, intent on making it across Tioga Pass before dark. I stopped when I noticed that the clouds seemed perfectly positioned for a vivid sunset. I turned my car around, drove to the trailhead, then jogged to my now very familiar spot by the edge of the creek. The light show began as I set up my tripod. For a few minutes, the storm clouds glowed orange and pink as they caught the last rays of sunlight that day.
The resulting picture above combines all the elements that I could have hoped for; the stormy skies and strong alpenglow match up well with the reflection in the perfectly still water. Even though I had to wait more than a year, I made one of the most satisfying pictures of the entire summer.
July: Barrett Lakes and the Palisades at Sunset, Kings Canyon National Park
Photographed in July 2022
I made this photo on a backpacking trip in July with a group of friends to the Palisades, a group of cragged peaks in the central Sierra. There are no well-established trails into Palisade Basin. Getting there required some degree of cross-country hiking across some uneven terrain. Unbeknownst to us, we had chosen an unnecessarily difficult path which entailed climbing and traversing a boulder field on the side of Columbine Peak (12,662 feet) until we had found Knapsack Pass. We limped to the top feeling physically exhausted, yet what we found on the other side made the effort worthwhile. We found a bare but beautiful landscape and encountered no one else for two days. This scene, a mere five-minute walk from our tents, evokes the same sense of calm we felt that day after our adventure.
August: Afternoon Fog, Marin County Foothills
Photographed in July 2022
Summer is prime fog season in the Bay Area. Mount Tam occupies a unique place in the local geography as its summit is often high enough to overlook the fog that rolls into the San Francisco Bay. I didn't get to photograph Mount Tam very much this summer as I spent many of my weekends in the Sierra. However, I did find time one Saturday to drive up to Mount Tam with my dad, who had never seen the fog there before. That afternoon, we lucked out, as fog swept through the low-lying foothills below us. I used a 70-300mm telephoto lens at full stretch to pick out this scene in the mist.
September: Fall Color at North Lake on an Autumn Morning, Inyo National Forest
Photographed in October 2022
In 2021, I arrived at North Lake about a week too late to witness fall color. Despite the unfortunate timing, I deemed a photo of this scene good enough to feature in last year’s portfolio calendar. This year, I made it there in time to see the slopes covered in orange and yellow hues. Because North Lake sits at almost 10,000 feet above sea level, it is often one of the first places in the Sierra to show peak autumn color.
That makes it a popular destination. You may recognize this locale from a MacBook wallpaper several years back. Crowds regularly line up on the banks of North Lake in the fall to photograph this scene at sunrise. I ventured out here on three consecutive mornings, with each day’s crowd larger than the last. I eventually realized that the sunrise on the first day had the perfect balance of all the elements I wanted: the optimal angle, still water, and strong alpenglow.
October: Spectrum of Fall Color, South Fork of Bishop Creek Canyon, Eastern Sierra
Photographed in October 2022
My first fall trip to the Sierra in 2021 proved frustrating in part because scenes which appeared neat and tidy to my eyes turned into a cluttered mess on film. I realized that our brains make unconscious inferences about what we see, allowing us to simplify and make sense of the world around us. At the same time, our eyes can also often see a far wide range of light than most film or digital cameras can capture. While evolutionarily useful, these traits make photography a bit of a challenge, as our cameras will never quite see the world the way our eyes do.
I used that knowledge to my advantage on my recent fall trips. Most of the trees in Bishop Creek Canyon remained green in early October, but patches of bright orange and yellow showed up throughout the area. Initially I wished that more of the trees had turned color. But then I realized I could use that patchiness to my advantage. Our eyes perceive certain colors as more vibrant when they’re juxtaposed against a contrasting one. Aspen leaves in the canyon looked particularly vivid when set against a background of dark green trees or granite.
I noticed this patch of trees while driving along the road and quickly parked my car. I walked back and forth along the pavement with my camera and tripod, zooming in and out with my telephoto lens as I looked for the right combination of elements. After some hemming and hawing, I found the right balance of color I wanted. The green trees in the picture makes the orange and yellow leaves appear more vivid.
November: Two Soaptree Yucca Bushes at Twilight, White Sands National Park
Photographed in November 2021
In November 2021, my parents and I embarked on an ambitious cross-country road trip, visiting nineteen states in four weeks. Along the way I visited seven national parks for the first time. White Sands was one of my favorites.
Unusually for a national park, White Sands has limited hours (7 AM-6 PM when I visited). In the fall, sunset happens at around 5 PM, meaning we would have about an hour to hike back to our car and leave the park before the gates closed. As a landscape photographer who loves photographing during blue hour, I saw that rule as a challenge to hike out to a nice spot for sunset, then make a mad dash back to my car and exit the park before the gates close. My parents and I did just that when we visited in late-November. After sunset, we started the hike back to our car, except along the way I kept finding scenes that I wanted to photograph. Halfway through our return hike, I found this composition. I had already collapsed my tripod and packed away my camera, but I had a feeling that I would regret not taking a photograph. Caught between the prospect of walking away from a shot or possibly sleeping on sand that night, I chose the latter and pulled out my tripod and camera once again.
I had some very slow film, Velvia 50, loaded in my main camera, and the light was fading quickly, so I only allowed myself one shot at this scene. Though it’s a tad underexposed, it captures the cotton candy skies that captured my attention initially.
The sand was nice and cozy that night. (If anyone from the National Park Service is reading this, that was a joke!)
December: Clearing Autumn Storm over Dream Lake, Rocky Mountain National Park (I)
Photographed in November 2021
Back in July 2021, I visited Dream Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park. However, I wasn’t completely satisfied with the photos from that trip. I returned during the aforementioned cross-country road trip, just after a small snowstorm had passed through the area. My parents and I hiked up at sunrise uncertain if we would even see anything, as lingering storm clouds stuck stubbornly to the mountains. But as we ascended the trail, wind began to disperse the clouds, and by the time we arrived, we could start to see the peaks above the lake. Unfortunately, that same wind also blew snow at 30 miles-an-hour into our faces. I struggled to keep my lens and filter free from snow. As my hands slowly froze from the bitterly cold winds, I accidentally dropped a filter pouch into the lake. I desperately rushed over to fish it out of the water, only to fall through the ice and into the lake, soaking my pants all the way up to my thighs. I hiked back down to the car cold and wet, but thrilled by the view I had seen.
Back Cover: Owens Valley Ranch Land beneath Mount Tom, Bishop, California
Photographed in January 2022
I drove around Bishop after photographing the sunrise shown in the January photo. I made a detour to Round Valley, just north of town, with the intent of photographing the pastures underneath Mount Tom. After driving around the backroads, I found a suitable spot with some cattle grazing in front of me.