• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content

Trail Option

A personal geography of landscape and place, art and geo-science.

  • Home
  • About
  • Contact TrailOption
  • Subscribe!
  • Lost Journals
  • Show Search
Hide Search

Ernogy

In the days when we could wander… Death Valley, Part 1.

D. Craig Young · April 21, 2020 · 6 Comments

There is always the desert. Although I thrive in arid landscapes, I find them difficult to photograph. Of course, there are waves of contrast in sand dunes, brilliant rocky outcrops, and magical golden-hour light, but so much of desert space is a great wide open, playas to mountains with subtle shifts in color. I occasionally come across exceptional images by the few who take the time to learn the desert light, and I continue to accept the challenge of capturing personal images in these cherished, sharp-edged lands. 

We would meet in the Eastern Sierra, Erno had the idea, heading into Death Valley for a wide-ranging, end-of-winter tour. The Iceland team – ‘the stud puffins’ – gathered at StoneHeart at the foot of the Carson Range on a Saturday afternoon mid-February; Jeremy, Quinn, and Sandy had timely flights, and the weather cooperated to let Erno and Randy drive over from California’s Central Valley. We formed a little caravan of camping rigs, departing Nevada for the short drive to Mono Lake, our first stop. 

Simple evening. The start of the trip was a pleasure, though my early images were difficult.

I scouted the sand tufa a few weeks earlier, but I have not had much luck here.  I need to take more time with these unique tufa formations, but, for now, I am drawn to the lake. This is a pattern; I am still drawn to the big landscape but want to learn to focus on compelling foregrounds and the emotion of intimate scenes – I just need to take the time to do so. 

Beneath starry skies, we camped just off the quiet highway – closed for winter a mile up from our sideroad stopover. The sunrise promised good light, so we were off in the pre-dawn to Hot Creek, a semi-iconic photo spot along a classically wandering Sierra-fed trout stream. Mist from the mid-stream hot springs can add perfect atmosphere under the right conditions. I have been here many times, but always focused on a post-climb/ski hot spring bath. And yet, in the past decade or so, the hot springs have become a dawn-t0-dusk managed and fenced viewpoint, deterring the use of the springs, which at times can be dangerously active and, well, hot. Enough people have gotten themselves into trouble, and not survived the hot pools, that even considerate use has been curtailed. One of those things. 

Hot Creek rise. First light at the local icon.

Death Valley Collection

We took good advantage of the scudding clouds at sunrise, looking up canyon towards the Sierra highlands above Sherwin Creek. As is often the case, there were a few other tripods along the outcrop above Hot Creek, but it was worth the stop. We headed for Bishop under clearing skies, grabbing a late breakfast in town – seems a luxury now – before the long drive, chasing the day into Death Valley. The traffic increased, almost exponentially, as we worked our way through typically lonely desert, crossing through Panamint Valley and dropping into Stovepipe Wells. It was there we remembered that it was a three-day weekend (forgetting that was part of our plan too) and that it turned out to be a fee-holiday in the National Park. The roads and parking areas hummed with traffic, and campgrounds appeared near capacity. 

Our evening photo target was the playa-margin known for polygonal patterned ground and salt formations. It would be a short hike, so we knew that we would have some solitude even amongst the pavement-bound crowd. Erno and Jeremy picked a pull-out and the team began the hike into the basin. In the meantime, I decided to roll into Furnace Creek to check our chances of getting a camp spot – would we have to head out of the park to find public land access in the dark? I rolled into Sunset Campground working my way among wind-blown pup tents, burly jeeps, cruise ship-sized RVs, random generators, and oddly lit banners on towering flag poles, to find some clear gravel at the terminus of the overflow parking. It’ll do. I ditched the trailer, paid the camp fee, and headed back to the sunset location. 

With the light fading, I began my hike before I reached our team’s parked rigs. I worked my way into some salty seeps forming shallow swales that drained further basinward. I liked the lines leading in two directions, upslope toward the eastern mountains or directly into the western skyline. The clouds looked promising, but I could not decide which direction would be most promising at sunset’s illumination. I did not want to chase tonight – I had just finished chasing campsites! I wanted to settle in for a shot. After finding a long linear pool of still water, I stood for a while, gazing back and forth to opposite horizons. I sat down, watching the east, watching the west. As I decided on the eastward view and began composing an image, I turned to grab a lens cloth from my bag. At that moment the western sky, which had been at my back and not at all in my composition, caught fire. So much for the patience of avoiding the chase. This was why I was here, and it was only two or three steps backward to compose the convergence of the reflective line of the pool and the fiery wisps of evening cloud.  

Convergence. The desert aurora of sunset in Death Valley. This is what you hope for.

For a few, all-too-short minutes, the clouds danced in a desert aurora as waves of orange, red, and violet descended into the evening. In the quiet I could hear the others whooping it up somewhere to the north, far out in the glow of the salty basin.  

Convergence 2, Death Valley, California. The flames of sunset race to earth shadow.

Death Valley Collection

Keep going.

Please respect the natural and cultural resources of our public lands. #naturefirst #keepgoing

Palouse Photography: A Roadtrip

D. Craig Young · June 17, 2019 · 6 Comments

Although photo workshops can feel like a one-off experience, and often the expense makes it so, it is likely that you will develop a few long-lasting friendships and collaborations during the workshops you attend. And so it was that a group splintered from last year’s Iceland Workshop, and an excursion to the Palouse of eastern Washington gathered. I think Erno sparked the idea, and Jeremy committed to driving from the Midwest. Soon, Quinn and his son Corbin would fill out the team, meeting in Colfax, Washington, for a long weekend of light-chasing and storytelling. Although I typically prefer to photograph on my own, these guys are good landscape photographers and plain fun to travel with; no better way to practice and engage with the iconic wheatfields, buttes, and scablands of the Palouse.

I left StoneHeart after prepping the new field rig with camp gear (just in case) and a short week’s worth of supplies. The stout little Chevy is brand new and we, the truck and I, hit Highway 395 north for its maiden voyage. The weather promised some scattered storms all the way into northeastern Oregon, so I routed through Alturas, California, and Lakeview, Oregon, turning east toward Warner Valley, my haunt through the days of archaeological field schools and a geoarchaeological dissertation. Along with my girlfriend (still my life-long partner almost 30 years later), I spent countless evenings and rolls of Kodachrome 64 photographing sunsets from our camps. Any excuse for a visit.

Warner Valley, the selfie spot. I have a series from here starting in the 1990s.

I dropped off the back of Hart Mountain into some good storms on the dirt roads of Catlow Valley. The furtive skies chased me all the way through Malheur Wildlife Refuge and into the volcanic badlands of eastern Oregon. The day culminated as I went full storm-chaser along a rolling storm-front slashed with lightning and dust-curling winds. I got soaked and humiliated in a plowed field in western Idaho; so very fun.

Storms building at Poker Jim Ridge, Warner Valley, Oregon.

Day 1

After stopping for the night at the Frontier Motel in Cambridge, Idaho, I was ready to head into the Palouse and join the team at Colfax. I checked into the room I would share with Quinn and Corbin, but finding I was the first to arrive, I set off on a scouting mission. I had some ideas for some astrophotography, having run across mention of abandoned buildings here and there.

Ending up rather far to the west, I found a perfect (I hope) lonely building just off a dirt road near Lamont. It is quite far from the hotel, about an hour drive, but it seems accessible and oriented for Milky Way photography. I plotted a late-night visit.

I ended my day’s drive on Steptoe Butte. It is quiet in the afternoon, but it is easy to see why this becomes an iconic spot for photographing the waves of green and gold extending to all horizons below the stand-alone butte. There is a minimum of a dozen shots from Steptoe adorning the hallway walls in the Colfax hotel. It looks like I will soon have some of my own.

Palouse Collection

Erno and Jeremy planned on meeting me on Steptoe Butte for some sunset shots. Time enough to get a run in, so it’s downhill to the gates of the State Park. Thinking I would turn around at the gate to climb back, I soon noted a black Nissan barreling toward me. The occupants of the SUV kindly offered me a ride, so I climbed in, happily greeting my friends, last met in Iceland, as we drove back to the summit for an evening of photography. The sky gave it a bit of a go at sunset, but we spent much of our time working the rolling wheatfields for patterns revealed in the low-angle sun. The Palouse is where intimate landscapes become iconic.

First patterns. Getting the intimate perspective from Steptoe Butte.

Day 2

The early, pre-dawn morning finds us at a twin tree below Steptoe Butte. Because I tend not to look for local images prior to photographing an area that is new to me, I did not realize this isolated tree in a green field would be a local attraction; and yet, we arrived in the blue hour before dawn and were soon joined by several other photographers. I would not call it ‘crowded’, nice folks, but it seemed odd to be on a dirt road along some random field and have cars show up – I am quickly learning these things are not so random. Shooting into the rising sun is always a challenge. A few of us got low looking for the little orbs of dew on the young wheat. I wanted the sun within the split of the trees, though the mass of Steptoe in the background, due to the position of the rising sun in June, was a distraction I could not avoid.

Twin Tree Sunrise.

As the angle of the sun increased into the morning, we decided to head back to the Steptoe summit. Quinn and his son Corbin had arrived and because Steptoe is the local highlight, we had this landmark as an anchor and planned the rest of our day, and much of our visit, around its light. The forecast hinted at storms further south and we hoped maybe they would creep north. This encouraged us to indulge in a broad tour, hunting for colorful scenes and hoping for a thunderhead. We eventually crossed the Snake River and guessed that a turn up Alpowa Creek to gain access to Knotgrass Ridge would get us closer to the storms. We did not have any prior familiarity with these geographic names, just picking hopeful roads on the map.

Chasing squalls. Random roads in the highlands south of the Snake River.

I kept saying that the storms must be down in Oregon, well beyond our drive plans for the day, but the team remained hopeful. We were out of mobile signal so the radar clues we might normally get were not available. It did not matter, near Peola, WA, we hit the squalls – storms on the windshield are closer than they appear. It was a great tour, not a lot of photography, but we were getting the lay of the land. Sunset found us back at the twin trees to see what that might bring. The storm clouds had long subsided and a hazy sunset left us rather unmotivated. We should rest up for some astrophotography.

Is there a Milky Way here?

We would return to the ‘schoolhouse’ I had scouted near Lamont. I knew it would be at least an hour’s drive, but after leaving Colfax at about 10PM, the journey seemed to take forever. I know Erno and Jeremy, in the rig behind me, began to question the sanity of following me prophetically into the scablands. Quinn and Corbin had already had a very long day. The trip seemed short the previous morning, but everything was new then, and I clearly had lost track of time. Now my estimate seemed well short of reality, would it even be worth it? Does the Milky Way even rise over eastern Washington?

Palouse Collection

Finally, I stopped on a dusty road where my GPS showed my earlier plot, ‘house’. There was nothing, apparently, here in the dark. Nothing. The stars looked good and I promised the guys there was a building right over there, and there it appeared in our combined headlamp beams. This might work!

I had some low-level lighting we could use for the interior, but that meant getting inside the ramshackle wood structure. Quinn and I approached the windows, cautiously listening to the rustling wind and to the scratches of scurrying critters inside. I peered across a pane-less windowsill, shining my headlamp into the musty interior. Its narrow beam barely penetrated the darkness.

“Hey Quinn, this looks pretty good,” I said quietly as he came up behind me. “We should…”

A rush of ghostly feathers carrying a pair of large beasts swooped toward my lamp and out the window, I tumbled sprawling into the deep grass and thistles. Or, maybe I was in Quinn’s arms, having defied gravity at the explosion of ill-disturbed owls. The others only heard a youngster’s sharp squeal and then laughter.

“Ok, you go in first.” Quinn started and I followed, stepping over woodrat collections that blocked our path. We got lighting hints from the gallery of Erno, Jeremy, and Corbin, but it would take some back and forth to get the shots we came for.

Owl School. The experience often outdoes the imagery.

In the end, we had a great time, spending a couple hours beneath the Milky Way and growing accustomed to hanging out in the dark of the school to get the lighting set. We were careful to maintain our respect for the property, leaving things just as we found them during our brief visit. Thanks to the owls for letting us use their roost for a while, sorry for the silly disturbance. I hope the team still thinks it was worthwhile.

Palouse Collection

Day 3

We skipped any sunrise shoot, following the late night and early morning return. In the meanwhile, I gouged around the scablands and loess plains of the western Palouse, the pleasure of exploring.

Quinn and Corbin on the trails of Palouse Falls. Watch your step boys.

Our goal for the day became Palouse Falls, another local icon. We spent the late afternoon hiking its trails; it was nice to experience the powerful falls surrounded by columnar basalt buttressing volcanic tablelands. After all my time in the sagebrush steppe of the dry Great Basin Desert, I found it mildly unsettling to observe the constant spill of so much water and power but still be surrounded by sagebrush and volcanic rimrocks. The Humboldt and Truckee rivers, nearer home, might look the same, I imagine, if they encountered a resistant cliff and dropped a few hundred feet. It does not seem possible, but on it roars.

Beyond the falls. I’m not sure if this image ‘works’, but it captures the long wait, lost in thought, above the falls.

I waited for several hours at cliff’s edge in hopes of engaging the falls with the Milky Way arc. I wanted more practice at blending the blue hour landscape with a starry night scene. I need a lot more practice, and the falls, deep in the gorge, do not hold any lasting light. Clouds partially blocked the galaxy core, but I often like a few clouds in my night images. I find that clouds add something unique to an otherwise constant, from our humble perspective, Milky Way.

Day 4

Jeremy letting it in.
Our mobile barrista.

Our final morning shoot was, I believe, our most productive of the trip. Jeremy had scouted some locations yesterday and we left the gravitational pull of Steptoe Butte for a while. Rambling among wind turbines, rolling wheatfields, and abandoned homesteads, we took our time with sunrise, enjoying Jeremy’s hand-ground beans as we brewed coffee on the tailgate. We met Quinn and Corbin later in the morning among the wind turbines; they had camped at the falls.

Erno, sunrise turbines done, processed, posted. What ya’ll been doing?
Wind flower. A blended composite, after watching the turbines for hours.

Palouse Collection

Rolling east. This is the image I had visualized as my creative goal for the Palouse landscape. A favorite from the trip.

We would return to the heights of the butte for our final evening, and the light rewarded us. I think I got the hang of the rolling fields today. First in the morning capturing layers of color toward the horizon, and then, second, from the vantage point of Steptoe. I have several that I like but it is the icon of the Whitman granary that stands out to me.  If only because, every day on this trip, I walked past a very similar—exact? – image outside the hotel room I shared with Quinn and Corbin. Why not have a local icon to remember the great four days among good friends.

Wheatfield icon. Although I walked past this image in the hotel hallway many times, it indeed captures the essence of the Palouse.
Palouse Crew 2019

Day 5

A long day for a nice, thoughtful drive home. Would I return to the Palouse for photography? I enjoy a few of my images, but it is not the kind of area that captures my imagination. I loved the falls, not to capture images of the towering cascade, but its power engaged me, and I particularly enjoyed the patterns of columnar volcanic outcrops (here and everywhere). I would go back on the hunt for summer thunderstorms. I am happy for the journey and the great visit with the team, but the rolling fields are best left on their own. The patterns of the Palouse are wonderful, whether in the good hands of local farmers or on the walls of a hotel. I belong in the desert.

Creviced flow.

Palouse Collection

I bet you’ll enjoy checking out the Istagram feeds of the team; certainly some Palouse highlights there.

Erno @ernogyphoto

Jeremy @jrleder

Quinn @qjkventurephotography

Iceland Day 12: Kirkjufell Denouement

D. Craig Young · December 8, 2018 · Leave a Comment

We were down to five – Erno, Bob, Ken, Nick, and me. Nick and I had commandeered a rental van early in the morning, then we loaded up the rest of the small team at the guesthouse, dropped Thor at some random roundabout near his home, and headed back to the Snaefellsnes Peninsula. A stop at the Hotel Rjúkandi was required, we’d hit this café for coffee a few times already, stopping here on our first foray to the peninsula.

We had the highway to ourselves all the way to Grundarfjörður, the small harbor town below the most photographed mountain in Iceland, Kirkjufell. The wizard-hat or arrowhead peak rises from the peninsula’s north coast, and with its paired waterfalls—Kirkjufellfoss—it basically composes images for you. We were too late for sunrise, but the clouds were interesting enough that we headed straight for the carpark at the falls. Well, all but Nick; he dropped us and cruised away, having earned some alone-time after a week and a half of shepherding the workshop around. The workshop was over and I think the need for independence spoke to all of us. The trails around the falls were basically empty and our little four-some dispersed, one-by-one, to deal with the icon.

Grundarfjörður sunrise The other view from Kirkjufellfoss.

Iceland 2018 Collection

I had seen 100s of images of Kirkjufell, we all had, but there is definitely something about capturing or trying to capture, one of your own. Only seven or eight days ago Ken had confided to me his disappointment in having a storm prevent our initial visit, and now he was here, gleefully hitting the trail, undoubtedly prepared to capture a long-exposure featuring the towering peak. I wasn’t sure what I wanted. I checked the popular spots around the falls—the iconic perspective, but snow and ice draped the small cliff and in the subdued light the scene lacked the impact I sought. It was beautiful but not in my skill set to really capture it.

I would move higher. It felt good to hike and climb a little; I traveled cross-country, traversing crunching snow and finding traces of sheep trails along a fence line. I liked the higher perspective. It wasn’t particularly original, but it was different enough to feel creative. I worked on images using snow-filled drainages as leading lines between mossy volcanic rocks. For awhile I simply sat in a rocky swale and watched the clouds skittering above Kirkjufell, enjoying my last few hours of daylight in Iceland.

Kirkjufell. Hiking the frozen swales and streams in mid-day light.

As the sun crept low, we retreated to our guesthouse overlooking the small port town. I know Iceland can seem crowded with tourists, but right now, it seemed we were alone on the peninsula. We settled into the quiet, multiroom guesthouse. Dinner was found at an establishment that was either the city library that happened to have a comfortable café and museum attached, or it was a café that was also the city library. A perfect combination if only folks could put their phones down long enough to remember that there are books to read.

The Kp index was in our favor, there would be aurora at Kirkjufell tonight. We geared up for the dark and cold, powered by dinner beer and desert coffee—the nutrition of night photography. Nick suggested we use the bay to get reflections of Kirkjufell glowing in the lights of the port. We scurried along the rocky beach and scattered to set up our images as the first aurora peeked from behind the mountain. With the false confidence of not using my headlamp, I stumbled into an unseen creek in the dark. Ok, the feet would not know warmth again tonight.

Kirkjufell townlight. Watching the aurora build in long curtains behind the front-lit peak.

Using some high ISO images to get the mountain and reflections working, we waited for the aurora to build. It came and went in long glowing curtains, but with little drama. Our patience failed. Someone mentioned moving to harbor to possibly get artistic with some boats and maybe the aurora backdrop would return. The harbor lights proved a definite nuisance and we quickly abandoned that idea. But I recognized the fishing port from the Walter Mitty movie—a bonus. Our evening was over, it was time for the warmth of the guesthouse. We turned north, everyone lulled by the van’s movement through yet another roundabout, but then Bob said something. What? The quiet man who spoke in the most efficient terms, as in, one word a day for the duration of the workshop. A truck driver, the kind man was used to no one being there to hear him, I guess. Hell, I drive alone a lot, uttering all kinds of oratory to no one but the bugs on the windshield. Bob’s cut from very different cloth.

But what? “Turn around, Nick, it’s coming. Turn around now.” When Robert spoke, we listened.

Parting light at Kirkjufell, Iceland. Sitting back with new friends, I could enjoy the last show of a wonderful journey.

Iceland 2018 Collection

The aurora danced around Kirkjufell as our tripods skated on the clear, glassy ice in the meltwater pools below the ponds. We hooted and laughed as we lay prone on the ice, getting wide-angle images as light beams shot from the clouds on the horizon. The aurora’s green and magenta reflections swirled at our feet as our eyes (and cameras) took in the mountain and its awesome sky. Once again, I had to stop photography and simply watch. This was why I came.

Keep going.

Epilogue: Endless thanks to Nick and Thor. I would not think twice about doing it again, and I would recommend one of their dynamic-duo adventures to anyone. But most of all, thank you to every member of our workshop team. It was a great environment to learn in, to share, and to laugh about. The latter came easily and often. I hope each one of you enjoyed our Iceland Winter Adventure 2018 as much as I did.

Using socials responsibly…

Trail Option

Copyright © 2023 · Monochrome Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in

  • Contact TrailOption
  • Waypoints Bibliography
  • Young Archives