Notes To My Mother

  I have titled the above image "The Window".  It was taken from a dirt road on the way to Buttermilk Boulders east of Bishop.  Bishop is out of sight below the horizon in the middle of the image.  The distant mountains are the White Mountains to the East of Bishop.  This is illustrative of how the storm was all around bishop with Bishop remaining in sunshine. Bishop Ponds were especially attractive in the late afternoon light as the sages seemed to glow. The early morning light in Pleasant Valley with the storm seeming to clear.  For the time being. 30 miles north of this 395 was still closed due to the storm.  This is a popular trout fishing area blessed by the Owens River.

In the fall of 2023 I became aware of a composition I wanted to capture in the Eastern Sierras.  The problem was not knowing exactly were it was.  I had seen a picture of it and knew it was in the Bishop area due to the particular mountains in the scene. I was pretty sure it was taken from Table Lands north of Bishop.   I started searching, driving around, walking to the edge of Table Lands with no luck.   I was able to rule out a number of locations.   Then I resorted to Google Earth and, finally after much exploring, figured out what I thought was at least the approximate location.  I had found a dirt road and knew I could continue my quest on that road and get fairly close to where I thought I should be.  I began planning a trip to the Bishop area but what I needed for success was a good storm to bring the snow down the eastern faces of the Sierra mountains.  Finally, a good storm was predicted for early March 2024.    ...

In my blog last week , I talked about my first day in Iceland and left the story when we arrived at Hraunfossar water falls. But that was by no means the end of our first day in Iceland. Just up stream from Hraunfossar is a really cool area called Barnafoss. The width of the river is narrower, deeper and swifter than at Hraunfossar. After shooting Hraunfossar I wandered up stream and found this little gem. My only regret is that I did not climb down the bank you see in the shot above and get a better composition with the water coming into the gorge. Just below this area the water moves swiftly and has carved out some very interesting contours. By the time I had finished with this shot it was getting pretty late and we had a long way to go to get back to Reykjavik, though none of us actually knew how far or which way to go exactly. The Storm Arrives We headed west knowing we should be able to find our way to highway one, the ring road that goes all the way a...

He told me it was the scariest shoot he had ever done. Standing on the edge of the raging ocean, he was constantly worried the surge of the surf was going to pull him into the well. Looking down into it you can pretty well know if you go in you will not be coming out. How thrilling! I looked it up on the web and in reading about it saw more of these kinds of comments about how scary was. O.K., it would be really thrilling! When my friend told me the conditions were expected to be prefect soon and would I like to go, there was no hesitation “Count me in.” It is called Thor’s Well and is located about half way up the Oregon Coast. It is a hole in the rocks that extends out to the ocean so that as a wave comes to shore it enters the hole and surges up through it coming out the top and spilling over on the surrounding rock shelf. It is a continuous emptying, gushing up and out, spilling over, and emptying again. Add to this the surf coming up onto the surrounding shelf as wel...