Living World Photography

Horsetail Falls 'Firefall' and Yosemite National Park

Every year, during the last three weeks in February, visitors to Yosemite National Park can be treated to a truly spectacular sight; the Horsetail Falls 'Firefall'

Many years ago there was the tradition of holding a large bonfire at the top of a cliff, and when festivities were done, the coals were pushed over the edge and it appeared like a waterfall of fire from afar. Eventually this was banned because of the fire hazzard it made.

 

Enter Horsetail Falls. Many years later, someone noticed that for a few days in February, right before sunset, the sun caught the water of Horsetail Falls on the side of El Cap. and lit it up. It reminded them of the old firefall. Soon word spread and now every year, hundreds of photographers from around the world flock shoot this phenomenon. (This is info I learned from the magazine Outdoor Photographer btw).

My friend Will and I decided to try our luck on February 10th of this year. We arrived at the traditional location for shooting it about two and a half hours before sunset and very carefully selected the spot where I wanted to shoot from. I chose to shoot a wide angle lense and frame it so that there were some leafless trees silouhetting the sky and the firefall itself.

I took a huge number of photos, but eventually a cloud wandered into the scene and I shot this. It was taken at 39mm, F 4.0, and a 1/320th shutter speed. I have another shot that is very similar but with a longer exposure time, but I think this highlights the waterfall better than the otherone. It was definitely worth the wait, and it's not likely that I'll get to do again anytime soon. We almost lucked out, as the waterfall itself was flowing very, very, slowly, but things picked up towards dusk and it all worked out.

This photo was taken earlier in the day on the banks of the Merced River. I don't know the name (if it has one) of the granite bluff in the background.

 

This is a photo of Half Dome taken from a bridge overlooking the Merced River. Hard to believe it's the same river that flows so rapidly in the previous photo.

Yellowstone National Park

Our last stop on the trip took us to Yellowstone National Park, the oldest of the national parks, and still one of the most amazing.

When we arrived we came across the above lake filled with yellow water lilies. It would have been a nicer photo, but the sky was overcast the whole of the first day. We got as far as Old Faithful before a torrential downpour began forcing us to beat a hasty retreat. We still got to explore some of the hot springs, but the photography wasn't very good.

The next day was the opposite; sunny and beautiful with big fluffy clouds. We started out the day back at Old Faithful, only to have it outshown by Beehive Geyser.

I believe this next photo was taken in Black Sand Geyser Basin, though I don't think this is the famous Firehole river. The name of the geyser also escapes me.

We continued to drive around an enjoy the fantastic weather and amazing colors of the springs. We even saw some Elk while we were at it. This next photo is of a hot spring that I can't recall the name of at the moment. The wind was nearly still for this photo, luckily.

 

There really isn't much to tell about this place, it really has to be seen to be totally appreciated. With that in mind here is one of the best photos of the trip, and I hope it can convey a bit of a beauty of this park.

 

With that I reach the end of this photo blog (for now). If any of these prints interest you, please contact me for prices and options.

Grand Teton National Park

So part three of the series took me and my friend to Grand Teton National Park outside Jackson, WY. This is a truly spectacular park, and the Teton range is one of the most recognizable in the country.

Our first night was in Gros Ventre campground and was marred totally by a gang of 8 Haley riders that roared into camp at 11 PM and blasted AC/DC. We put the kabash on that (nicely) though. I have developed a strong dislike of them because of this trip.

The next day we drove around looking for photo ops of the mountains and anything else we could find. The best shot for me was this great fence row following the curve of the land off into the distance with the tetons in the background. It makes a very nice black and white photo too. Of all my photos, I wished for a better lens for this shot more than any other. It would have picked up the detail and increased the sharpness quite a bit.

There are a number of lakes around the park, and this next shot was taken by one of them. The flower is some ilk of Aster, though I have no idea which one.

We camped at a place called Jenny Lake that night, and it was absolutely gorgeous, more than making up for the night before. The campground is above the lake and our campsite actually led right down to it; it was perfect.

The next morning I got this photo as the sun rose (unfortunately it was behind me)

 

This final shot captured some wildflowers with what I believe was the Snake River flowing next to it

Lassen Volcanoes National Park

Here's the second installment of the four-part series.

There is spotting on this photo that is going to be removed. Sadly, it was most evident on this photo, which was also my best shot for this park.

We arrived in Lassen near sundown and while we got the last site available to camp in, it was a bad site with extremely noisy neighbors that decided to let their children play bocce ball at 7 in the morning the next day.

Before we headed to bed we decided to get the quintessential shot of Mt. Lassen. This was at a small pond near the entrance. After experimenting with different settings, I finally got this photo of Mt. Lassen reflected in the nearly still water. If you look carefully, you can see submerged driftwood in the water near the bottom of the frame.

The next day we went out and explored the park some more and decided not to stay an additional day. In a small wet meadow near a lake we found a large number of Crimson-ringed Whiteface dragonflies, Leucorrhinia glacialis. There were also a number of Chrysobothris buprestids flying around the slash piles, saved from collecting by dint of being in a National Park.

As we continued to climb, we reach the summit of the road through the park at 9000' at the base of Mt. Lassen. Near this place I shot the next photo. Snow was still everywhere in big drifts and the lake was iced around the edges. 

As we didn't spend that much time here, I don't have any more good shots to share.

Tomorrow or in a few days I'll add Grand Teton National Park, with some more photos.

Redwood National Park, CA

So this is going to be the start of a multi-post series on the four national parks I visited with my friend Todd. We camped our way through Redwood, Lassen Volcanoes, Grand Teton, and Yellowstone National Parks. And out of nearly 900 photos, I've picked some of the best landscapes and several other macro shots to share.

All the photos here are going be available as a limited edition of 30 prints. Please contact me for prices if you are interested.

Our journey started bright and early in San Ramon, CA on the 4th and we drove all the way up to a state park outside Redwood National Park. This park is kind of odd in that there are very few roads and no camping in it, but it has many small state parks on the outskirts.

After arriving late in the afternoon we managed to get the very last site at the rather coveted Golden Bluffs camping area. This gorgeous site is set right on the beach between the large bluffs and the ocean. While cloudy and misty, it was really one of the prettiest sites we stayed at on our trip. Nothing beats listening to the ocean echo off the cliffs behind you.

Between the fog and the gathering dusk, photography wasn't ideal here, so I don't have any photos from this day, but we hiked into Fern Canyon which is covered with five-fingered fern and other ferns of various sorts. Lots of Saxifrage too. We also got to see Roosevelt Elk, Cervus canadensis roosevelti which was a treat, and nearly got charged by a buck, which wasn't so nice.

The next day we drove up into the Redwood National Park to get some photos of the redwoods in the mist. This part was much more successful. It resulted in one of the better shots I got. 

Further on up we ran into something completely unexpected: a large number of Leopard Lilies - Lilium pardalinum. This turned out to actually be bad, because when I switched my lenses on the dirt road over to a macro, it got 4 large flecks of dirt into my sensor, which marred a large number of later photos. Most aren't noticeable, but several were nearly ruined. But at least the flower photos turned out.

Before the fog lifted much more and the forest still under shadows I snapped this photo of the road winding away into the distance.

By the time we got back from the summit of the mountain we were on, the fog still hadn't burned off at the bottom, and when we arrived at the Redwood Grove called the Lady Bird Johnson grove it was still misty. This was a gorgeous grove of trees with lots of Rhodendron all over. It made me wish devoutly it was still spring. However, it was still beautiful and provided me with one of my favorite shots of the entire trip.

The tree in the center is a Rhododendron. Imagine what this would look like if it was blooming with pinkish purple flowers.

Having got our fog shots and some other good ones, we left a day early and drove 4 more hours to Lassen Volcanoes National Park, but that is for another day.

Here's one more shot of the fog in the trees.

The Florida Keys are truly unique, representing a habitat type that is found nowhere else in the United States. The Keys are made up of a long, sweeping line of subtropical coral atolls, stretching from the Atlantic coast all the way into the Gulf of Mexico. The vegetation is comprised of a mix of tropical hardwood hammock and coastal mangroves. Many of the plants there are found nowhere else in the US save perhaps the southern tip of peninsular Florida. Among the more common plants found there are Rhizophora mangle (Red Mangrove), Languncularia racemosa (White Mangrove), Conocarpus erectus (Buttonwood), Bursera simarubra (Gumbo Limbo), Swietenia mahogoni (West Indian Mahogany) and the infamous Metopium toxiferum (Poisonwood).

With such an interesting assortment of plants and a unique geography, it isn't surprising that the Keys are host to a number of unique creatures, including a great many insects. Recently Jeffery Cole and myself traveled down to the Keys in early May in the hopes of coming across some of these insects. His goal was subtropical katydids, while my target were beetles, an those of the family Buprestidae in particular. 

We arrived, with permits in hand, at John Pennykamp State Park in the hopes of locating several species of buprestid, a katydid called Turpilia rostrata and as many scaly crickets as we could find, which likes to live way up in mangroves, well out of reach of even the longest nets. After a great deal of beating on vegetation during the day that yielded copious crickets and almost no coleoptera, we started blacklighting. This proved to be much more successful, and yield many hydrophilid beetles from the nearby swamps and estuaries, multiple curculionids, several large Anomala marginata, and two beautiful Elaphidion irroratum. And after several hours, we also managed to collect several Turpilia.

 

Elaphidion irrotatum               Chrysobothris tranquebarica                Physonota calochroma floridensis

The morning dawned bright, hot and humid, a very common combination in the the Keys. After an initial pass through the hardwood hammock, Jeff called my attention to a wood pile of freshly cut timber from Buttonwood and Gumbo Limbo. There I hit the proverbial jackpot, because we walked straight into an emergence of Chrysobothris tranquebarica, a species of buprestid that is restriced to Florida in the US, and is mostly found in the Keys. We managed to collect 22 specimens over the course of an hour, all but one were females. We also hit upon two other interesting beetles, Brentus anchorago, a very interesting Brentid weevil that lives on Gumbo Limbo, and Physonota calochroma floridensis, the Geiger Tortoise Beetle

We moved on the Curry Hammock and got stopped dead in our tracks by the heat, and decide to lay low till it cooled down a bit (it didn't, but we started again anyway). Curry Hammock is much further down in the Keys, near Marathon, about 50 miles away from Key Largo and Pennykamp. It's a very open state park, and is heavy on Buttonwood and Mangrove in terms of vegetation. We were hoping this would yield Chrysobothris sexfasciata, Acmaeodera xanthosticta and A. marginonotata, which all live on Buttonwood, as well as a tropical katydid in the genus Neoconocephalus. Unfortunately we struck out on all counts there, with not buprestids or interesting katydids. We did have some luck blacklighting and picked up a rather uncommon cerambycids; Eburia stigma.

Photo Spotlight: Latrodectus bishopi - Red Widow

I first learned about this spider several years ago, and was told that I could find them at Jonathan Dickinson State Park, which is near where I live. However, after years of trips in winter and spring out there looking for this species, I kept coming up empty. But last week for the first time I went out there this time of year, and low and behold I cam across two females while exploring. This individual was shot at night with a ring flash.

Latrodectus bishopi is a member of the widow genus, and is one of several species that can be found in Florida (L. mactans and L. geometricus are also here, and maybe L. variolus too). However, the Red Widow is endemic to central Florida in the scrub regions in the area of Lake Okeechobee. Unlike most widows, which prefer dark crevices building or under rocks and bark, this species builds its webs exclusively across the upper fronds of palmettos. The webs are large, spanning several feet across, and like most Therediids are very dense. The female creates a crevice by binding together the leaves of the palmetto and stays there until something makes its way into its web, then it comes out to bite it and feed. This individual is eating what appears to be a small scarab beetle of some kind.

The spiders themselves are very distinctive; there isn't anything else like it. The usual color pattern of a Black Widow looks almost reversed. The legs and cephalothorax are red, while the abdomen is black with extensive red markings. In my humble opinion it's one of the most beautiful spiders I've ever come across.

Dry Tortugas Trip: April 23-25, 2010

This post is more like a traditional blog than what I'm used to doing, so I beg your forbearance to anyone who actually looks at this site regularly. On April 22nd I headed out to Key West from where I live in Palm City. After a beautiful but lengthy 5 hour drive I arrived at the dock and met up with Larry Manfredi who organized and led the tour. We stayed at a hotel that night and the next day woke up at a horribly early hour to wait for the replacement boat (the previous one almost sank on his last trip). The boat ended up not arriving till around 9:30, which s kind of annoying, but such is life.

We got on the boat and started to head out at a very slow speed to the Tortugas. I made the mistake of staying at the prow of the boat for the entire 6 hours that it took to get out there, and managed to burn myself into a stupor. The birding was a bit slow on the trip out, but I picked up Bridled Tern, Roseatte Terns, and Brown Booby which were life birds for me. We finally neared the island and I added Sooty Tern, Maked Booby and Brown Noddy, which you can see in the above photo. I got pics of the Masked and Brown Boobies, and the Bridled Tern, but they didn't come out very well so I've chosen to not post them on this site. The Sooties and Noddy's were everywhere, and they breed in huge numbers on the island adjacent to Fort Jefferson; 40000 and 2000 respectively. Magnificent Frigatebirds also breed on the island, and I got to see a male displaying with its throat all puffed up.

We finally docked and got off the boat and started birding. Inside Fort Jefferson we picked up Black-whiskered Vireo and Grey-cheeked Thrush, which were both lifers for me, as well as getting a few photos of a very cooperative female Hooded Warbler and an Ovenbird. Also saw three species of falcon; Merlin, American Kestrel and Peregrine Falcon. They all seemed to be doing pretty well for themselves. I added Black-throated Blue Warbler and Cape May Warbler to my ABA list.

Ovenbird

Hooded Warbler

We poked around the campsite and picked up a few more warbler species and then headed back to the boat for dinner

The next day we got up bright and early and were on the island for sunrise. I got to see Gray Kingbird and Swainson's Warbler which were new, before I got really sleep from dehyrdation and poor sleep and went back to the boat to sleep for an hour or so. I came back nice and refreshed and spent the rest of the day wandering around the fort and the campsite. We were shown to a Blackburnian Warbler that was staying in some weeds on the beach and had a Worm-eating Warbler come walking across the sand and got some photos of it. The Blackburnian photos didn't turn out too well though. We stayed till dusk to see a nighthawk fly and we decided that it was an Antillean Nighthawk, which was new for everyone but Larry. The only downside was that we, (and especially me) ran out of water about two hours before the boat came, and I started feeling really bad, but Larry managed to get a hold of two gallons of water that held us over till the boat got us.

Gray Kingbird

Worm Eating Warbler

The last day we only spent two hours in the morning in the Fort, and didn't see much that was new for the trip, though it picked up a bit after I had gone back to the boat after getting sleepy again. The trip back took 7 hours this time and the birding was slow, except that we picked up 6 Audubon's Shearwaters, which brought me to 499 ABA birds. All in all it was an excellent trip.

Prairie Warbler

Northern Parula

Swainson's Warbler

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Photo Spotlight: Pogonia ophioglossoides - Rose Pogonia

Been quite a while since my last post, but I thought this was worth posting on my main blog. This is a Rose Pogonia, a terrestrial orchid. It's found up the Atlantic coast in marshy, boggy areas in the spring. It's listed as a federally threatened species, which isn't too uncommon for orchids. I only saw a single specimen while I was out hiking at Jonathan Dickinson State Park in Florida. Hopefully I'll have some more cool orchids and other flowers to share as the season progresses a bit.

Photo Spotlight: Cicindela scutellaris scutellaris - Tiger Beetle

I took a whirlwind weekend trip to New Mexico and Texas with some entomology friends from school and we did a bunch of collecting at Mesalaro Sand Dunes in NM and then at Devil's Creek, TX. The sand dunes were amazing, as were the attending flora and fauna on this unique habitat. Dominated by mesquite, yucca and sage, the dunes were perfect habitat for a number of things. My friend Jeff got many uncommon species of Katydid while I went after beetles. It was during that search the we came across this amazing Tiger Beetle.

I don't know if I've covered Tiger Beetles before, but I'll give a refresher now. Tiger Beetles are members of the subfamily Cicindelinae, which is in the Ground Beetle family Carabidae. These beetle are hunters. They can run extremely fast and can catch quite large prey (comparatively to their size). This beetle is Cicindela scutellaris scutellaris, which means it's the nominate subspecies of this particular species (I have another subspecies, C. s. unicolor in my photo album). The beetles in this genus are usually no larger than 2.5cm, though other genera can get much larger. This particular subspecies can be recognized by the metallic red eleytra and blue/green head. They're an amazing group, and always fun to photograph.