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Wildlife Photography

On the edge of wild — Atacama Desert, Chile

D. Craig Young · July 2, 2022 · 2 Comments

Explaining Atacama. Information along B-245, Atacama Desert, Chile

With the wilds of Patagonia still fresh in our minds, Bill and I spent a short night in Santiago and then climbed on another Latam flight. We were headed north, working our way up the latitudinal expanse of Chile, exploring the regional extremes from glaciers to desert dry lakes, from sea level to the altiplano with volcano summits at 20,000 feet. And, for a time, we were only slightly higher flying into Calama in the dry heart of the Atacama Desert.

Turistas. Exploring the small pans of the high desert, Atacama Desert, Chile
Above the salar. Volcan Licancabur rises to 19,553 feet, looming over the Salar de Atacama, Atacama Desert, Chile

It took quite a while in the queue for a rental, but the little truck was perfect once we got going. I was back in my element, driving desert roads stretching to high horizons, strips of pavement and gravel bounded by salars (dry lake beds) and conical volcanoes. The mountains appear in their simplest form, symmetrical peaks with tonsures of snow, as children draw their first mountain scenes. We based out of the little tourist hive of San Pedro de Atacama; it is the obvious gateway for a short visit to the region, with key tracks leading north and south along the cordillera. While it might not be a wild adventure, it is beautiful way to taste the flavor of the altiplano. Our days do not disappoint.

Atacama Collection

Traveling in the time of covid presents some obvious difficulties. While Chileans tend to practice good caution and care, with vaccinations and masking required in most spaces, it also means many places are closed. This is especially true for those areas, even if wide-open spaces, managed or owned by indigenous communities where limited access to health services and allowing access to exotic tourists is a bad mix. We realize soon enough that some of our plans for visiting water features – springs and wetlands – that pock the vast valley-bottom salars will not work out. We are adaptable in every way, though I keep having to wake up an oxygen-hungry Bill as we drive roads at an elevation above the highest mountains in the contiguous US.

High road. Desert highway near Socaire at over 12,000 feet, Atacama Desert, Chile
Sin agua. The playa of the Salar de Agua Caliantes, Cerro Aracar rises in background, Atacama Desert, Chile

We first explore the region south of the village of Socaire. Our wildlife encounters are fabulous – a fox hunting in coppice dunes and bunch grasses, a family of vicuna cautiously grazing, and flamingos wading in the expanse of Laguna de Aguas Calientes. Our early start allowed us to take advantage of the dusty morning light. Even with the various closures, our first trips into the altiplano were all I had hoped they would be.

Morning patrol. A South American Gray Fox (Lycalopex griseus) in sparse grasses of the Atacam Desert, Chile.
Curiosity. Vicuna family in the altiplano of the Atacama Desert, Chile
Flamingo blue. Andean Flamingos on the Salar de Agua Calientes, Atacama Desert, Chile
One and two. Andean flamingos on the vast Salar de Agua Calientes, Atacama Desert, Chile

A dusty ambient light around San Pedro had caught my attention on the previous evening, and with today’s addition of low clouds, the evening held promise of a stunning sunset. We found the Valle de la Luna (Valley of the Moon) closed – even its back entrance near Tres Marias was blocked by an ad hoc barrier of boulders – due to covid restrictions, so we wandered various dirt tracks looking for a viewpoint to capture the expansive evening desert. We hiked a short way into the park’s margin and set up on a rocky bench overlooking badlands in washes tributary to the Valle de la Luna. I might have been disappointed that the park and various popular viewpoints were closed, but this allowed us to walk a bit, getting to places we might not otherwise see, and maybe shooting images beyond the obvious. Or so we thought. We were alone when I first set up, enjoying the patient anticipation in the early glow of evening. As our wait continued and the light progressed, however, a crowd grew on the hills behind us, dozens of cameras (phones, of course) pointed in the same direction. We were furthest in, maybe half a kilometer down-canyon, so it looked as if the crowds along the roadside (including several tour buses) had turned out to watch me work the scene. Oh well. The sunset was putting on a splendid show, and, with the closures, this stretch of highway provided accessible theater for everyone – I was happy we had walked in a bit.

Dust of dusk. Valle de la Luna, Atacama Desert, Chile
Evening alight. Sunset in the Valley de la Luna, Atacama Desert, Chile

Bart met us after we had been in San Pedro for a couple days; his trip paralleled ours for a time after we left Patagonia. Picking him up in the pre-dawn darkness at the edge of San Pedro, our rental truck joined a train of white vans on the highway to El Tatio geyser. Although we had seen clues around town that the geyser trip was popular (and open), we did not anticipate the early morning rush of guided tours. Trying to not submit the rental to an undo beating on the teeth-shattering washboard of the over-used, multi-tracked road to the geyser, I was passed by an incessant stream of vans, sprinters, and buses of various sizes, a long string of red taillights cresting every hill and switchback for miles as we climbed steeply into the darkness. It was not a pleasant drive.

Early arrival. Visitors at dawn at the El Tatio Geysers, Atacama Desert, Chile
Geyser Bill. El Tatio Geyser, Atacama Desert, Chile
Precipitate I. El Tatio Geyser, Atacama Desert, Chile
Precipitate II. El Tatio Geyser, Atacama Desert, Chile

The geysers – after one navigates the various covid sign-ins – are fascinating and it is a nice walk on the necessarily restricted trails of the park. If there is an up-side to tour groups, it is that they seem to be built on rather strict itineraries, so the groups move quickly through the ‘attraction’ and move on. I’m not sure where they might go next, but not long after sunrise (the promise of the ‘sunrise geyser tour’) the trails empty rather quickly. And, not very long afterward, as the day warms and the steam clouds that highlight the geysers and pools dissipate, the park basically closes. Nothing to see here, I guess.

Green and yellow. Atacama Desert, Chile
Morning watch. Andean Flamingo (Phoenicoparrus andinus), Atacama Desert, Chile
Giant coot. The Giant Coot (Fulica gigantea) of the Atacama Desert, Chile
Not yet. A chick considers the options, Giant Coot (Fulica gigantea), Atacama Desert, Chile

With the tours departed for somewhere and someone else’s great attraction, we have the road home to ourselves. This is the highlight of the day. We stop often, looking for little groups of vicuna on the dry hillsides and wandering among the few isolated wetlands to see birds mostly foreign to us. It takes us quite a while to get back to town where our usual cantina and siesta await.

Magellenics and core. The pleasure of an unaccustomed night sky, Atacama Desert, Chile
Crescents. The early morning crescent Moon and Venus, Atacama Desert, Chile

A pleasure during the day, the drive also highlighted a location or two that would provide good foreground for night-sky photography. With this long-held goal in mind, I picked up Bart at 3.30 AM the following morning; Bill wisely chose not to join at this ungodly hour. We retraced the geyser highway, but we beat the rush and were alone. I had chosen a canyon near the village of Guatin, hoping to get a foreground with cardon cacti spread among red-rock outcrops. We walked into the spooky shapes making sure not to wander off any cliff-edge; the southern milky way and Magellanic clouds glowing above us. The nightscape of the Atacama Desert is unequaled, it was almost tactile. While my technical skill at astrophotography is lacking, it was a pleasure spending this time with Bart marveling at the sky, trying different compositions, and laughing as the bolus of tour buses motored by on their way to another El Tatio sunrise. My resulting images did not work for various reasons, mostly because I failed to capture any foreground, but one or two provide memories of the amazing night above San Pedro de Atacama. Our galactic pleasure was followed by the appearance of a new moon and Venus leading to a dusty sunrise above Andean volcanos. Was this really my last day here?

Volcanic dust. Along the frontier of Bolivia and Chile, Atacama Desert, Chile

Atacama Collection

It was, all in all, a short desert excursion; our four days were not nearly enough to get to know anything about this great landscape, much less of its wild interior. The magnetic attraction of this desert will have a hold on me for a long time, and its pull will allow me to plan for a deeper, slower visit when (if) possible. Bill and I left Bart to his worldly travels and returned to Calama to catch our flight out. And yet, the journey had one more surprise in wait for us.

Balanced nap. Andean Flamingo (Phoenicoparrus andinus), Atacama Desert, Chile

Once back in Santiago, we made our preparations for our outbound flights. This included the requisite covid test, available conveniently, as planned, at our hotel. We lunched and watched sub-titled movies waiting for our results. When my phone lit up with the negative notification, I was ready to go. Bill, however, stared blankly at his screen; he was covid positive. Now what? How could I be negative, having traveled with him for so many days, in such close quarters? He had no apparent symptoms, but we decided quickly that I should get a new room so he could isolate. The hotel was very accommodating; I moved down the hall, and Bill began the process of re-testing in case of a false positive. Bill is a very experienced traveler and though cautious, was not overly concerned – he encouraged me to continue with the planned itinerary. My wife and doctor – two people – thought that if I was going to present symptoms, it would be better for me to get home to deal with them; it seemed even more likely that I managed to dodge the viral bullets shot at me.  I would travel home carefully. Yes, I had been in close proximity to Bill over many days, but with the news of rising variants, it seems travelers are likely in proximity to positive fellow travelers (and so many others), knowingly and unknowingly, throughout any trip. It is clearly going to be common characteristic of travel, especially air-travel, now. The vaccinations and boosters are the best things we have for keeping us going. So, with Bill’s zen attitude and approval, I boarded our scheduled late-night flight home. He would stay isolated in Santiago for an additional week, until a negative test allowed him to reschedule his flights home. If not asymptomatic, his brief encounter with the virus was barely noticeable, he says. Our two-legged itinerary – Patagonia and Atacama – had thrown a final curveball at us, but we made it home without too much inconvenience, though Bill got more room-service meals than expected (or usual).

Mudras de Atacama. Cactus in the early morning of the Atacama Desert, Chile

Looking back, I realize we had the good fortune to experience the edges of only a fraction of the amazing wild lands of Chile, getting powerful glimpses of the interface between these spaces and the indigenous, development, and tourist economies that try, along a vast continuum of success and failure, to accommodate those remnants of the wild and natural world. It is good to walk among the wildness, even if at its edges, and to seek some way to communicate this struggle – I travel to learn, experience, and document, but this trip has made me strongly consider, maybe reconsider, my role in the struggle. I have few answers at this point; I’m hoping that that awareness leads in a helpful direction and, sometimes, maybe that is enough.

Keep going.

Nevada High Points #93 – River Mountains

D. Craig Young · December 1, 2021 · Leave a Comment

River Mountain

3789 ft (1155 m) – 1013 ft gain

2021.10.13

Away from hotel early, going for two days in a row. If I must hang around Vegas for the week, I can focus on a few highpoints in some of the smaller local ranges. Continuing east of the city, I shift southward from the Frenchman Mountains to the River Mountains above Boulder City and Lake Mead. I drive into Boulder City before sunrise and find the trailheads of Bootleg Canyon, a local mountain-bike mecca.

HP #93 Collection

A summit marker on the rocks of River Mountain, Mojave Desert, USA

Film takes time, and processing Velvia is a bit of rough, and not so welcome, chemistry, or so I have come to realize. When will the 35mm slides return from the lab?  It has a been almost two months since I summited River Mountain and shared time with the ram. How will the photos turn out?  I’ll update the post with a few scans of the images, good or bad, as soon as they arrive.


I drive up-canyon a short distance and find a good parking area out of the way of any bikers that might show later. Starting out on one of the signed single-tracks, I soon abandon the trail to traverse the broad alluvial fan with several dendritic, inset gullies, eventually finding an access road that runs below a twin set of power lines. The crackle of Vegas punctuates the quiet morning as the endless hunger of paradise draws from the dammed river. The lines cut the pass between the River Mountain highpoint and the prominent scarp of Black Mountain to the south. I must get out from under the line, so I turn north to go direct up volcanic slopes – easily the steepest slope I have been on in a while. There is no trail. I step among the puzzled boulders of talus aprons and colluvial cones below two sets of outcrops before gaining the summit ridge. Easy rock-hopping winds north to a small summit cairn and some benchmarks. The summit has good views of the lake and a landscape of solar facilities to the south – both scars of our quest for power, clean as it might be.

My mountain walks remain a mix of exploration, simple and personal, and documentary photography.  While I am happy with many of the images I create on these walks, I do not think I am investing the amount of time or getting myself into positions with subject that tell the story of the mountain range and its setting. This goal is practically ignored on these pre-workday scrambles; I am basically just peak-bagging.  But today I decided to limit myself to film, working with my 40-year-old Canon AE-1 and Velvia 100. It feels good in my hand, like so many days in the mountains and deserts of my past.

Back to the future. The Canon AE-1, 35mm Velvia 100 on this summit day, but we will have to wait a bit for processing.

Once at the summit, I drop down along the standard trail – the summit register is a rather elaborate ammo-can, it is a popular destination. This will mean intersecting the powerline road again, but that will have to do. As this unfortunate thought burrowed into my head, I heard rock fall and talus crunching and scittering; then silence. Then again, and again. Tracing the sound back to the slopes just behind me, I finally notice a solo bighorn ram climbing easily to the col I just left. He is fabulous. As I’m dropping along the standard trail, I hear talus crunches somewhere nearby. Waiting for a short while, they repeat. I then notice a solo bighorn ram climbing to cross my recent track. He’s fabulous.

Only moments ago, before leaving the summit, I had changed to a 70-200mm lens hoping for a wildlife encounter. I had been thinking possible a desert tortoise or a pair of ravens, not a large, majestic ram. I have learned since that the River Mountains have a large, introduced population of desert bighorns, but, still, it felt a wonderful surprise at the moment. I practically burned the whole roll of 36 exposures on this guy. I hope I am getting the focus correct, this well-used lens is new to me. I’m shooting f/8 and typically around 1/125 or 1/250 of a second. Usually too slow for wildlife, but I am completely novice at working wildlife with analog film stock and camera. On digital I could jack up the ISO and get a high shutter speed, but film is not as flexible and requires talent to get results. Probably could have opened things up a bit, but I only have another stop or so with this lens. I am typically using one stop down to account for the bright sky, at least I think that is what I am reading from the camera. If the camera suggests F8, I set to F8 but then adjust shutter speed to have camera show F5.6 on the meter. I think it is telling me I am shooting one stop too fast/dark, this being my goal. We will see. I hope it they are not under exposed. The ram moves deliberately from the col to the ridge and then disappears. Even if I botched the photographs, the walk provided a few special moments with the wonderful animal.

HP #93 Collection

After dropping along the rough access road, I reverse my trajectory across the alluvial fans. Hoping to intersect a roadrunner or other interesting birds, I find nothing but quiet under blue morning sky. A good walk to begin another workday on the road.

Keep going.

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

Wildlife Photography: Getting Lost with the Red-headed Woodpecker

D. Craig Young · April 18, 2021 · 2 Comments

Red-headed Woodpecker | Melanerpes erythrocephalus; foraging for pinyon nuts. Virginia Range, Great Basin Desert, Nevada.

Ok, this is not a bird photography website. It just happens that this was an interesting week.

Six-Mile Woodpecker Collection

After our brief birding excursion along the East Walker River, Desna heard that a Red-headed Woodpecker had taken up brief residence in Six Mile Canyon in the Virginia Range, just below Virginia City, Nevada. This is interesting because the poor bird seems to be a bit lost. Their common range is east of the Rocky Mountains, with only occasional appearances in the West.

Des made a successful sighting in Six Mile Canyon, along with a few other Reno-Carson-area birders out to add this to their lists and to enjoy the attractive, colorful bird. She said I should get up there and get him for my new avifauna image list. That was recommendation enough, so I went up early on a weekday morning – strange to drive into Six Mile and up to the outskirts of Virginia City, a place we lived for almost ten years. Happy to see Shaun and Debbie right off; Desna had also let them know that they had a visitor in their town.

We waited along the road, hoping he would come out for some morning foraging. This was the reported pattern. Sure enough, after about 45 minutes of waiting, I saw the white wing-flash, moving from the pinyon forest on the hillside to the cottonwoods of the riparian corridor. Unfortunately, the daily flow in the Six Mile drainage is augmented by the town’s effluent plant. But the birds do not seem to care.

Red-headed Woodpecker | Melanerpes erythrocephalus. Virginia Range, Great Basin Desert, Nevada.
Red-headed Woodpecker | Melanerpes erythrocephalus; eyes closed, perched. Virginia Range, Great Basin Desert, Nevada.

The Red-Headed Woodpecker worked his way around the cottonwoods. It was a challenge to capture images of the bird as he was adept at hiding in branches and trunks as he forages. We lose sight of him for long periods and then he reappears in a flush of red and white. Although my images are pretty good (I still need to develop the skill of getting a few more sharp images) it is very fun to share some time with a relatively uncommon bird. I have only been ‘birding’ for a few days, and I now have a rare one on my short list. Very fun, with more practice to come.

Red-headed Woodpecker | Melanerpes erythrocephalus; the bird of hearts. Virginia Range, Great Basin Desert, Nevada.

Six-Mile Woodpecker Collection

Bird Image List: Red-headed Woodpecker

Keep going.

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

Wildlife Photography: Birds of the East Walker River, Nevada

D. Craig Young · April 17, 2021 · Leave a Comment

East Walker sunset. East Walker River, Great Basin Desert, Nevada.

Here is a slightly different angle for the LightOpt Photography blog. My wife and I teamed up on a quick camp trip to the East Walker River to check out birds in the Walker River State Recreation Area, a relatively new component of the state park system. I had passed by here on my excursion into the Gray Hills and thought we might try the campground for an overnight; it is only an hour from home. 

The campground sits on old pasture or hayfields of the Pitchfork Ranch which is now the visitor’s center of the State Park. The campground is wide-open space with several sites are close the river, and this evening the place looks rather full as we pull in. We do not typically do campground locations, appreciating the open public lands, but once in a while they make for an easy break – though we aren’t ever in danger of too much discomfort when out in Desna’s camping rig. Even now, with most of the camp sites taken and the crowd looking ready for a whole lot of motorized recreation, we consider heading back out of the park, into the backcountry. But we came to give it a try and quickly decide to settle into spot #10.

And then the drone of generators begins. I have never really understood the camp-need of endless power generation. We have one in our rig, but hardly find much use for it – we cooked popcorn in the just-as-useless microwave, if only to prove we could – the sound is ridiculous. I understand needing some extra power to prep dinner for a family, but the evening-long rumble from just about all camps is something we hardly bear. Anyway, I should not complain much, it is still nice to be out here, and I can look forward to the quiet of the morning, when pre-dawn quiet still reigns.

East Walker Bird Collection

I was out early indeed, wanting to practice bird photography. Des is a great birder and I have been looking forward to documenting, if possible, the various species we come across together. As I step from the camper, flocks of waterfowl are passing low overhead, their calls muffled in the feathered-beating of so many wings. It seems a good start.

I work my way into a riverbend where a grove of cottonwoods holds a Great-horned Owl pair. It is too dark to photograph, but I watch them until they move across the river and farther north. I turn and wait for a Red-tailed Hawk to move from her nest, maybe for a morning hunt, or to switch duties with her mate. I wait over an hour, as the sunrises, and only the songbirds and some Western Bluebirds pass among the branches above me. Nothing in today’s adventure of wildlife photography, but that is how it mostly goes.

Des comes across the fields to meet me, and we walk back toward the slowly stirring campground. As we pass another raptor nest, a mother Red-tail is guarding her roost, and then it is the little birds that spring to action. A Song Sparrow greets the sun and hurriedly gathers material for a nest as a female looks on. He splits time between singing for his territory and bouncing through the grass with twigs, though I cannot quite tell where they are settling in. A Downy Woodpecker gets up a usual ruckus, ricocheting from tree to tree and jack-hammering up and down the branches.

My simple favorite is the common White-crowned Sparrow guarding the fence as we enter the campground. I have a soft spot for the little passerines, the ones we see every day and practically forget they are there. This sparrow poses patiently and then drops to ground beyond the fence to forage for the sparse seeds of early spring.

I later find I had plenty of difficulty getting the focus and depth of field needed for good images. This is something I need to work toward, knowing that capturing sharp, well-composed images of fast-moving birds (and other animals) is always a challenge. I am hooked, however; and the challenge will be a pleasure in the quiet moments among the birds. Thanks to Des for sharing this with me.

East Walker Bird Collection

Bird Image List: Red-tailed Hawk, Song sparrow, Downy Woodpecker, Western Bluebird, White-crowned Sparrow. Links jump to the ebird.org information pages.

Keep going.

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

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