Autumn morning on Oxbow Bend, Grand Teton National Park – Wyoming, USA

I shot this image about 45 minutes after my previous shot, Pre-dawn Stillness on Oxbow Bend. At this point, most early morning photographers had left the scene. I stayed and watched countless other folks arrived with cameras in their hands, hurried some shots, then rushed of to else where. I wasn’t in a hurry to chase the next best thing. As I grow older, I’ve learn to slow down and to appreciate life as it unfolds instead of spending my present time anticipating and searching for better moments that I might have. I believe that even if I am living on borrowed time, I don’t have to live on trespass-ground. So, there I sat on this Snake River bank for hours, looking through my view finder to find a composition that speaks to me. It is nearly impossible to capture a unique photograph of Grand Teton since every inches of this place have been photographed to death. One of my goals for this trip was to bring home images that contain a part of me. As I drank my cold morning coffee from my aluminum canteen and contemplated on what compelled me to linger out here instead of searching for my next scene, I realized that I was observing a distance moon watching over two floating reeds drifting in slow motion on a mirror water surface reflecting the iconic Oxbow Bend landscape …

Swiftcurrent Lake sunrise – Many Glacier, Montana.

Although we encountered wind gusting 25-40 mph and rains during our week long visiting Glacier National Park, this area is one of the most visually stunning locations that I have visited. The diversity of photographic opportunities were amazing: rugged mountains, towering peaks, dramatic clouds, turquoise lakes, raging waterfalls and cascades, exquisite flora and exotic fauna … I was in heaven. No wonder why this little corner of the world is known as “The Crown of the Continent“. Over the next few weeks, I will post a series of photos that I managed to capture during my time there.

This ninety seconds exposure was taken during my second sunrise photographing Swiftcurrent Lake in the Many Glacier area. The prominent peak on the right is Mt Grinnell and Mt Gould is under those fast moving clouds above the valley. Both mornings, the strong wind destroyed all the lake reflections:(

To maximize the wind effect, I stacked three GND filters (3 stops hard + 2 stops hard + 2 stops soft) to simulate solid ND filters to lengthen my exposure time. With the sunrise light changing rapidly every minute, I could not afford to experiment with too many of these long exposures and loose the exquisite sunrise light. In my next post, I will upload a much shorter exposure of the same location shot a few minutes later.

I was out shoot this spectacular sunset when I spotted these two behind me. This was shot about eight minutes before X.

Moonrise after sunset on a Southern California beach.

Once in a while, I caught a moonrise just right after a sunset. I took this shot a few weeks ago, but didn’t get around to posting it until now. The moon is too small on this 800px image to appreciate its subtle existence. Why I feel that the moon is an important element in this image? It represents Aether or Space as one of the five classical elements (Earth, Water, Air, Fire, and Aether or Space/Void). It’s easy to add in the moon in post production, but this moon is authentic. I don’t add element that wasn’t there in the original shot. Occasionally, to remove unwanted distraction, I remove elements that I could not eliminate while shooting, but never add.

Have time to contemplate about the five classical elements?

• Air is primarily wet and secondarily hot.
• Fire is primarily hot and secondarily dry.
• Earth is primarily dry and secondarily cold.
• Water is primarily cold and secondarily wet.

• Earth represents solidity.
• Water represents fluidity.
• Fire represents temperature.
• Air represents mobility.
• Space encompasses all other four elements.

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PS: For the past three weeks, this site’s response time has been a little slower than normal due to the increasing traffic from StumbleUpon referrals. Came upon this post from SU? Again, thank you for the thumb’s up vote. I hope you like what you see enough to come back on a regular basic.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I couldn’t decide whether to post three separate images or to post them together.  Each image is strong enough on its own, but I thought that all three collectively tells a better story.   Thus, my decision to create a triptych.

The top and bottom left images were shot about a second apart, and the right image was shot over twelve minutes later. I had my 2-stop split ND filter on for all 3 shots.  It’s too bad that the large version is still not big enough to show the crescent moon.

I shot this Big Sur moonlit coastline photo last year, but didn’t feel like posting it because I blew the exposures. After some post processing works, I decided to post this shot now to make a dedication to those in Big Sur going through the Big Sur Basin Complex fire. I can’t imagine what it was like for Big Sur residents seeing the fire jumped the Pacific Coast Highway and threatened their safety. I have a couple contacts from Big Sur. I hope you’re all safe. Big Sur is incredibly beautiful, and I’m very sad to see it’s burning :(

Back to this shot, for those to have traveled on the Pacific Coast Highway through Big Sur should instantly recognize this spot, especially those who have seen the McWay Fall. During the day, the rugged coast line plays hide-and-seek with the mists and the turquoise blue Pacific Ocean water, making this cove an idyllic location for a little picnic break. Driving through Big Sur during the day is enough of a distraction; try driving through it during a full moon night! My wife kept on yelling at me to keep my eyes on the road! The coastline was absolutely stunning under the golden moon light. I wished that I was good enough to capture the scene better.

This image came from one single RAW exposure. I tried to hold back the brightness of the moon with a 3 stops split ND filter. If I had a two stops filter with me then, I would have tried to stack them. Looking back, I should have done two separate exposures, one for the moon, and one for the water. Perhaps next time…

Shot this on my way out of Zion National Park after the Angel’s Landing hike. This was the light that I was waiting for on top of Angel’s Landing, but I just couldn’t afford to stay up there that long.

This was one of a few decent shots that I took during the lunar eclipse on Feb 20 2008. Half an hour into the show, the moon was completely covered in dark clouds. I guess I’ll have to wait for 2010 to try again.

This image came from a single RAW exposure. I didn’t have to cut and paste the moon from another image. The base exposure was taken for the moon. The foregrounds were a little dark, so I bumped the same RAW file with +1 stop, then blended it with the base exposure. I also tweaked the moon’s tone curve slightly via Adobe Lightroom.

Most lunar eclipse photos I saw focused on just the red moon on a black background. I wanted my lunar eclipse shot to have more background context to provide some story telling and a sense of scale of how big the moon appeared. As soon as I saw the couple on the beach watching the giant moon rising over the mountain range, I knew that I had to work fast to include them in the frame before all the available light disappeared. I was hoping for some colors on the evening sky, but dark clouds blanketed the horizon behind me. I ended up using day light white balance to give the image a cooler blue tone.

The tower in the background is UCSB Storke Tower. UCSB students and alumni might recognize those Isla Vista houses on DP.

Friday evening traffic was heavier than usual, so I got off the freeway and sat on the beach for a while … a sliver of hope …

I wanted to shoot with a slower exposure time to smooth out the foreground even more, but a longer exposure would render the moon out of focus. Not wanting to combine two different shots, I settled for a 6 second exposures.