Tad Gielow Photography

Station Fire A Year And A Half Later

Station Fire A Year And A Half Later

It has been eighteen months since the devastating fire that burned to over a third of the Angeles National Forest and now that one of the main roads is now open I decided to drive up and see first hand how how the forest is recovering.  I had intended to go to one of my favorite spots, the Chilao Campground area that is at the transition between the lower altitude chaparral and the higher elevation pine forest.  I never made it up there because I kept stopping because of something interesting.

First I stopped a few hundrend yards from the Monte Cristo Ranger Station to take in the almost full moon rising over a rock outcropping with a yucca tree on its summit.

A couple of miles farther up, I hiked out a few hundred yards from the road to Big Tujunga Creek.   It was great the see a lot of water flowing indicating a good amount of winter show and rain.   

Continuing my journey up the canyon I pulled over when saw a ridge of burned pine trees with the moon rising over them and thought there might be an interesting composition with those two elements.   Within a few feet of leaving the road on foot, the ground was still black from the fire, but the forest is slowly coming back with a lot of new growth of the native manzanita, oak and numerous other flora.   I made my way to a point where the ridge of burned pine trees was directly below the rising moon and a other burned out trees were in the foreground.  I made the photo at the beginning of this post by purposely underexposed by about two stops so that the sky would darken to a deep blue and the trees would be in silhouette to give the photograph a lonely, spooky feeling.

 

Nature Of Poetry 2010

Nature Of Poetry 2010

I have just returned from Canyon De Chelly, Arizona, after spending a week helping my friend John Fox with his annual “Nature Of Poetry” workshop.  This year we were blessed with a full moon and an abundance of water that brought out many cactus blooms.   Knowing a full moon was coming I hoped that our hosts, and my good friends, Jon and Lupita McClanahan, would have their horses in the canyon during our stay.   I was envisioning a silhouette of one of the horses against the full moon.  As the full moon rose on the second night of our stay, I followed the two horses, Shirley and De Chelly, as they foraged on the hill above me.   After about 20 minutes or so and just before it would be too dark to catch any of the blue of the sky, Shirley stopped right between two fence posts and I lined up the curve of her back with curve of the moon.

The photo of Shirley goes very well with a one I made of Jon and Lupitas other horse, Laverne, taken during a winter trip in 2003.

During our week in the Canyon we visited numerous places with ruins and rock art, but nothing as intimate as a small box canyon not far from Jon and Lupitas farm.

This area is on private land and not accessible to the publick, which generally means that the ruins and pictographs are very well taken care of.

 

Later in the week I went searching for cactus flowers and found an area of over twenty that were being visited by busy bees doing their thing. I setup my tripod, macro lens, cable release, and diffuser and waited. It took a while and a couple of tries, but finally a bee came in a struck a nice pose on the stigma in the center of all the stamens of the Pear Cactus flower.

Joshua Tree Reflections And Abstracts

Joshua Tree Reflections And Abstracts

I awoke this morning and was catching up on the news when I spotted a story indicating there would be full moon this evening and that it would visually be the largest of the year.  I packed my gear and drove the two and a half hour drive to one of my favorite places, Joshua Tree National Park.   Along with the full moon,  I was hoping that with all the recent rains in Southern California the lake behind Barker Dam would have a good amount of water in it.

With the lake almost full and very little wind, I thought I might try to create some interesting abstract reflections where it takes the viewer a few moments to figure out exactly what is in the photograph.  At first glance, it may look like some sort of aquatic animal, but it is indeed, just a rock.

For these two photos, I noticed that the sun was almost ninety degrees from my point of view, perfect for getting the maximum impact from a polarizing filter.
	The left side photo uses some polarization so the parts of the tree under the water are visible. The right side uses a bit less so that the reflected clouds are more visible.

 

Finally, the moonrise. I was searching for a Joshua Tree with about fifty yards of clear view so I could use my Nikon 80-400 Zoom to magnify the moon with a Joshua tree in silhouette. The cloudy horizon required a lot of patience and moving around to find an interesting composition, but the moon finally poked through the clouds and provided an eerie moment.

Tufa By Moonlight And Flashlight

Tufa By Moonlight And Flashlight

Last month I went to the Montrose Arts And Crafts Festival and a met fellow photographer, Paul Renner.  Paul leads photo safaris to Africa multiple times a year that are quite special.   Having grown up in Tanzania makes his safaris unique and I look forward to going on one someday(Check out his website here).  From our long conversation I found out that he was leading a workshop in the Eastern Sierra and I decided to attend.  The first evening the group went to the “Mono Lake Tufa State Natural Preserve” to shoot the tufa formations by full moonlight and by flashlight.  For the shot above, I waited for the moon to rise so that it would provide a glow about the tufa tower as well to generate an interesting silhouette(37 secs @ f/8).

We also experimented with lighting the tufa with various types of flashlights to get some fun compositions.

 

As the sun set and the full moon rose, the entire group lined up, tripods and cable releases ready, setting up exposure. I set up for ISO 200 f6.3 for 13secs to allow light from everyone flashlight to illuminate the tufa towers. When everyone was ready, we all tripped shutters at the same time.

A little later I broke away from group in search of some interesting tufa and found this set with just a bit of sun light left on the horizon. The moon provided a lot of light so there was not a lot of need to use the flashlight. This one was ISO 400 f/16 for 8.5sec to keep the foreground and background sharp.

For this photo, thought I would have some fun with my flashlight. Set up for ISO 200 f11 for 20secs so my flashlight provided more of the light to the tufa and then I moved the flashlight in the zig zag pattern making it look like christmas lights.

For this last one, one of the other members of the group had a flashlight with a ref bulb, ISO 200 f/8 for 80secs.

During the next 4 days the group enjoyed photographing Bodie State Historical Park, Rock Creek, the Minarets, and the upper portions of Bishop Creek.