Wow, what a trip!  After a delayed start due to weather and getting through a significant snowstorm around Vail, CO, my good friend John Clark and I made it to Moab, UT on Saturday, April 4th.  What a place.

If you’re a landscape photographer and haven’t been to the national parks in the Western United States then make it a priority.  The beautiful rock formations, soaring peaks and big skies are worth every penny you spend to get and stay there.  Utah is especially interesting as it is home to five national parks – Zion National Park, Bryce Canyon, Arches National Park, Canyonlands National Park, and Capitol Reef National Park.  Utah also claims the North Rim of Grand Canyon National Park, since it is best accessed through southern Utah. In addition, Mesa Verde National Park is just across the border in Colorado, Great Basin National Park hugs the Nevada border and Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park straddles the Utah/Arizona border.  It’s easy to see why Utah is one of the premier places to explore some of the amazing natural resources of this country.

I am lucky to have a good friend in John Clark.  John has logged many hours in the national parks making stunning images and acquiring a deep knowledge to the best places and times for shooting these landmarks.  Up before sunrise and out until after dark, we cruised the roads of Arches and Canyonlands National Parks and Dead Horse Point, a Utah state park.  At each turn, John knew exactly what was ahead, where the best vantage points were and how to make the “classic” shot.  I couldn’t ask for a better guide!

Here are a few of my favorites from the trip:

Sunrise from Dead Horse Point – Utah State Park

Mesa Arch – Canyonlands National Park

Green River Overlook – Canyonlands National Park

Tree Near Mesa Arch – Canyonlands National Park

Skyline Arch – Arches National Park

Courthouse Towers – Arches National Park

Shooting the Moon Through North Window – Arches National Park

Hopefully, this gives you a feel for the type of photography that is so prolific in this part of the world.  I’m already thinking about taking a couple weeks to explore this area and the rest of Southern Utah in the near future!

Tomorrow morning I’m heading to Denver to meet with fellow photographer, John Clark.  From there, we’re driving five and a half hours to Moab, UT and Arches National Park.  Later in the weekend we’re heading over to Canyonlands.  I’ve always wanted to shoot Arches.  It’s kind of a “have-to” shoot for landscape and nature photographers.  So, I’m grabbing that “hat” as I head out tomorrow to see what I can capture.

I’m taking my standard gear, nothing long this time – my 70-200 f2.8 will have to do.  I just purchased the Pixel Racing Harness for my ThinkTank belt system to place more of the load on my shoulders instead of pulling my pants down.  That’s the only disadvantage I see to this fantastic system. Actually, maybe it’s my waistline that causes the problem.  Anyway…

As usual, I’ll attempt to blog and post pictures as I travel.  I can’t promise we’re staying anywhere “fancy”, you know, with wi-fi.  If we do, I’ll be sure to post.

In the mean time send me some suggestions on things to shoot in the comments.  Since I’m new to the area, I haven’t a clue to the things to shoot (John is the expert so I’m following his lead).  Anything unusual or different is always cool.  Send them along!

Be back soon!

Thursday, January 29th – Cozumel, Mexico

Ahhh, Cozumel!  No crazy excursion at this port, just a relaxing day on a catamaran snorkeling and enjoying the sun.  Raising the sail (and starting the engine), the cat scooted across the crystal clear water taking us to our snorkeling location.

Unfortunately, I’ve never taken up underwater photography, although I’ve thought about it many times.  As a former avid scuba diver, I hope I can one day take my love of photography and combine it with my love of the oceans and diving.  We’ll see.  Underwater housings and lights are not cheap!

After snorkeling, we spent the rest of the day at the beach, enjoying the sun.  I’ll keep this text short and just show some of the photos I took that day.

It was a beautiful day to hang out on the beach and relax…

Saturday, January 31st – Key West, Florida

Early in the morning of Friday the 30th, we got a nice little surprise.  Due to a cold weather front cutting across the United States and part of the Caribbean cutting temperatures dramatically, our captain decided to change our last port of call.  Previously, we were scheduled to spend the day on the cruise line’s private island on the beach.  Since cold and beach don’t go well together, the captain changed our itinerary and turned towards Key West, Florida.  I think the whole ship was happy!

I’ve had the opportunity to spend a number of vacations in Key West.  The keys and especially Key West are some of my favorite places in the country.  Cold or not, I was looking forward to spending the day in Key West.

We arrived early on Saturday and, after clearing customs, went looking for a sweatshirt.  It was chilly!  Jen and I spent the day roaming around the town looking to capture some images.  There are some odd and interesting things to photograph as you walk down Duval Street.

If you’re ever in Key West stop by The Key West Butterfly and Nature Conservatory.  This was one of the nicest butterfly display and conservatory I’ve ever been to.  You’ll be covered with butterflies and it’s a great place to photograph them.

The day was fantastic and a great way to spend our last full day of the cruise.  I’ll close with a few more of the images I took that day.  I hope you’ve enjoyed my journey!

Tuesday, January 27th – Roatán, Honduras

Our first port of call was Roatán, Honduras.  Roatán is a less widely traveled destination for cruise ships, but one that is becoming more and more popular.  Roatán is a small island that is part of a chain of five islands known as the Bay Islands of Honduras.

My previous visit to this island was in 2005 and a great deal of new infrastructure was apparent, including a complete renovation of the Port of Roatán.  Actually, the day after our visit, the Honduran President was coming to officially dedicate the new port.

Unfortunately, this was still the rainy season and the skies were overcast (okay, the picture above is from later in the day!).  Our shore excursion was a trip to Gumbalimba Park and the Tabayana Beach Party.  Gumbalimba is a small park where you can see various parrots including the military and red macaws and interact with monkeys.  Of course, upon arrival we were greeted with a downpour.  This was the first time I’d used the belt system from ThinkTank (I’ll do a mini review in the next few days) and they have built-in rain cover for their pouches.  A nice feature that was very useful this morning!

When the rain stopped we had a short walk to see the macaws.  I’ve always been a fan of parrots.  Their intelligence and beauty are fascinating.  When looking in the eyes of these birds, you can sense their intelligence.  After a couple quick shots, it was off to see the monkeys.

In this area, there were a number of monkeys freely jumping from tree to tree, but also a few “naughty” ones on leashes.  Peter, a capuchin monkey and the baby of the group, was also on a leash.  Some guests were given hyacinths to feed the monkeys.   Peter, not shy at all, ran from guest to guest, pausing only long enough to eat the flowers.

I’d never been close to monkeys before and this was a neat experience.  The little hands were very soft and gentle, not what I expected.  Photographing these little fellows wasn’t easy as they constantly ran around grabbing treats from people.  Yes, I could have a number of shots with a monkey on someone’s shoulder, but I wanted pictures of just the monkeys, not the guests.  I was able to grab a few.  This one was my favorite.

The rest of this park was a short history of the island and walk through the grounds before boarding a bus for the beach party.  To my surprise, the sun was shining with bright blue skies and white puffy clouds.

Tabayana Beach is a private beach attraction where most of the private tours end up.  Hundreds of folks were at the beach, but it never appeared crowed or difficult to get food, drink or rent any of the equipment available.  It was a nice day to swim, soak up the sun and relax.

I did take a short walk down the beach and found a few marine iguanas.  These small, black iguanas live in the old coral walls that are now part of the landscape.  When it’s sunny, you can almost always find them basking in the sun.

Of course, I couldn’t just end this section without a quick mention about my good friend Tim.  Tim decided he wanted to sing with the reggae band and they were more than willing to have him!  Great job, Tim!

It was back to the ship and a slow trip to our next port.

Wednesday, January 28th – Belize City, Belize

In Belize, our ship needed to anchor a good way out and we had to tender into the port.  You’d think this would take a lot longer than walking off, but you’d be amazed at the number of boats coming to take passengers into the city.  Once arriving in port, I thought about stocking up on various pharmaceuticals before our excursion.  It’s amazing what you can buy!

In Belize we signed up for a cave exploration, a Land Rover tour through the jungle and a boat ride down the Sabun River.  What sounded like a fun day turned out to be a most excellent adventure!

An hour school bus ride through Belize City and into the surrounding jungle was narrated by our guide giving us a history of the island and overusing the phrase “Seeing is Belize-In!”.  Nevertheless, it was informative and entertaining.  When my butt had just about had enough of the bouncing down dirt roads, we came to a stop in the jungle camp.

Strapping back on the ThinkTank belt system, we showered in bug spray before heading off to the caves.  Fortunately, we weren’t lite on the spray as we were quickly covered in mosquito’s.  Hundreds if not thousands.  It was nasty.

Now I’ve been in caves before.  In fact my gallery contains a nice picture of an underground lake from Indian Echo Caverns in Pennsylvania.  I’ve been to at least two other PA attractions with caves.  This was nothing like I’ve ever seen and something that would never have been allowed in the states.  Pictures aren’t going to do this justice.

Suffice it to say, I’m not a small guy.  At 6′1″ and… well, a couple pounds more than the most liberal weight charts, this was going to be a test of my ability to fit into tight places.  Entering the caves meant squeezing though a narrow entrance and through small crevices.  At one point, I removed the ThinkTank and camera, slid them through to Jen and, on my hands and knees, crawled through to the next section of the cave.  It was very cool!  Here’s a shot of Jen entering the cave.

The Land Rover tour was even more of an adventure.  The previous few days had spilled a lot of rain on Belize.  After boarding the Rover with another couple and heading into the jungle we realized this wasn’t the best day to be on these trails.  With mud over the front bumpers of the vehicles we bounced, bopped, jumped and nearly flipped our way through the jungle.  In this shot, you can see one of the Rovers stuck in the mud.  Definitely, an extreme trip!

At this point I think we were running a little behind on the schedule as we were supposed to break for lunch hours previous.  I finally got one of the guides to admit (with a laugh) that it was probably a good day to have canceled the Rover part of the trip.  They didn’t know how bad the trails were until it was too late.  Hey, it was a blast!

After a short respite with a traditional lunch of chicken, beans and rice (and a few glasses of rum punch) we got ready to board the boat for our trip down the river.

I love boats so I was looking forward to this cruise down the river looking for wildlife.  While we were traveling too fast and furious for shooting the egrets and other birds taking off from the riverbanks, we did stop to see some of the larger iguanas living in the trees.  The large male iguanas were orange in color and fairly easy to spot in the green treetops.  The green females took a little longer to spot.

A few minutes later, we stopped to check out another denizen of the river – a crocodile.

The rest of the trip was pretty quick.  In fact, we were so behind schedule that we were almost too late to board the ship.  So, our guides decided it was easiest to run straight back to the ship instead of to the port for a tender.  So out of the river and straight into the ocean we shot making a beeline for the Pearl.  It was the perfect end to a blast of a day…

This is the second part (of how many, I don’t know) of my posts catching you up on the last few, very busy, weeks.  I intend to continue with the posts each day until I catch up.  Thanks for reading!

Monday, January 26th

The first full day had us steaming (can I still use steaming if it’s a diesel-electric engine?) through the Caribbean Ocean, past the West coast of Cuba and down to Roatan, Honduras.  The only official duty I had that day was to shoot a small reception in the evening for all the wedding guests.  For this gathering, I selected the 17-55 f2.8.  I believe this to be too wide for this type of work, but without a 24 – 70 (a future purchase) my only other options were a 60mm and/or 95mm primes.  I’d just have to get a little closer to the subjects.  Ultimately, this worked out because there wasn’t a whole lot of working room in the little club where the reception was held.

The SB-900 is my primary strobe and it works like a champ.  The secret (okay, maybe not a secret to most, but it took me a long time to figure this one out) is to shoot in manual mode not aperture priority that I normally use.  Set the camera to an ISO allowing you to get some background exposure using ambient light and not the strobe.  In this case I was using ISO 400.  This gives some exposure to the environment, but not nearly enough to be a distraction to the subject.  Then, set your aperture and use a shutter speed that’s complimentary to the chosen ISO for background exposure.  The flash then varies it’s output to properly expose the subject and foreground while the ISO and shutter speed expose the background.  Chimp like crazy here (that means check your LCD screen) and check your histogram to make sure you have a decent image.

Also, I try to keep my shutter speed high while using  ISO changes to fine tune the exposure.  Make sure you’re working within the capabilities of your camera’s sensor (you don’t want noisy images), but ISO is an easy boost to the background exposure.  I like a higher shutter speed (the flash will have to work a little harder) to combat camera shake (hand shake, boat shake, whatever) giving you a clear image.

The images captured the mood of the evening – relaxed and ready to enjoy the upcoming week.

My apologies to all my readers!  It’s been too long since updating this blog and I’ve a lot to catch you up on.  Tonight, I’ll start the journey of bringing you up to speed on the many events that I’ve been fortunate enough to be a part of in the last few weeks.  Thanks for understanding!

Saturday, January 24th

After a 4-hour delay (and a number of Bloody Mary’s) where the airline had to fly in a filter for one of the plane’s engines, the trip to Miami was easy.  Clear, turbulent free skies allowed Jen and I to catch up on some much needed sleep.  I remember something about turning off the seat belt sign then Jen hitting my arm as we were preparing to land.  It was the perfect flight if you ask me as I’m not a fan of flying.

A short taxi ride took us to Doral, Florida, a suburb of Miami, and the stunning Marriott Golf Resort and Spa – home of the Green Monster.  If you’re a golf fan, this is the place for you.  Simply stunning!  After checking in and exploring the grounds, we met up with the crew for a quick bite to eat.  It was nice to catch up with some old friends and to make some new ones.  This night was an early night.  We had to be up early to get ready for the wedding shoot.

That evening I didn’t sleep very much.  I wanted to wake before sunrise to see if the light during the golden hour (the time when the light from sunrise or sunset produces a golden light) would strike the grounds of the wedding.  That led to me getting up every hour or so to check on the time.  Truly frustrating!

Sunday, January 25th

Unfortunately, the sun came up in the east that morning (always check how the sunrise will affect your images before staying up all night!) which meant behind the buildings I was hoping to shoot as they caught the first light of day.  Nevertheless, I photographed some of the grounds and got my bearings for the wedding.  A friend and mentor told me, when on assignment, you have to get the shot.  So I photographed the buildings knowing it wasn’t perfect, but realizing I needed some of the grounds to tell the story.  Maybe a background image or two for a wedding book.

Around 9:00 we headed to the spa to take some shots of the bride, Janella, getting ready.  Janella has beautiful, bronze skin and a smile that radiated the excitement of the day.  With her sister helping, we were able to get a few very nice shots of the preparation.

The groom, Kris, was wearing a traditional Filipino shirt and appeared ready to get the party started!  A good friend for many years, I spent a few minutes with him before the wedding started.

Just before the wedding started, the bride arrived.

Show time!

The wedding took place outside in the beautiful morning sun.  I shot mostly with my D300 and 70-200 f2.8 VR allowing me to zoom in tight for my shots, yet staying out of the action.  For a more expansive shot of the wedding, I used a D200 with 17-55 f2.8.  Having two bodies with two very different focal length lenses worked really well.

Posing some group shots after the wedding was slightly challenging as the light was very bright and shade a minimum.  Fill-flash was a huge help in this lighting condition as was using a large reflector to block some of the sun, but some shadows and highlights were visible in some of the images. Overall, though, they looked really nice.

The following reception/brunch was in a glass-walled building providing excellent lighting.  Again, I chose the 70-200 to capture the expressions of the day without being noticed.  This type of “hunter”-style photography (aka Photojournalism) is very fun for me allowing me to capture the emotion of the day without the “fake” smiles all too common when asking to take a picture.

This was a great assignment and a fun day.  You couldn’t ask for a better day or location and I enjoyed the experience very much.  I think the couple will be very pleased with the results.  I know I was.

Time to Relax

As our bellies filled and the excitement ebbed, it was time to run back to our rooms, change into something more comfortable and head over to the cruise ship.  The trip to the cruise ship was quick and easy as was the process to board.  Actually, I’m really amazed at how easy the boarding process was.  Maybe it was because we arrived towards the end of the boarding time, but there was no wait and no lines.  It was a fantastic experience that could have started the trip off on the wrong foot.  Fortunately, this was not the case and the experience was perfect.

Our trip was aboard Norwegian Cruise Line’s Norwegian Pearl.  The Pearl is three years old and a beautiful ship holding over 3,500 passengers and crew.  Our outside room had a nice little balcony to take in the sites and enjoy the sounds of the water.  I was ready to relax and enjoy the rest of the week.

Fortunately the first and second days (Sunday and Monday) are at sea and I was looking forward to relaxing, getting some much-needed rest, and laying low.  The days with shore excursions would be busy shooting stock images for my online portfolio.  After making multiple copies of the wedding photos, a great wave of relief hit me, knowing that it was time to enjoy my trip.

So why do I hate packing so much?    I’m getting ready to travel to Miami for a wedding shoot and then hopping on board the Norwegian Pearl for a Western Caribbean cruise.  Yep, some rest and relaxation while earning a living.  Not too bad for a week of work!  Clearly, the focus of the trip is the wedding.  The couple is very laid back and really looking for a good time – not a stuffy wedding to say the least!  The type of pictures they want is, of course, photo journalistic.  That is the term in wedding photography and has been for a long time.  Basically, keep your posed pictures to a minimum and focus on capturing the spontaneous events of the day. As a photographer you don’t want anyone to know you’re there as this will allow you to capture the “real” expressions and moments throughout the day.  I’ll post some of my images (with the couple’s approval) when I get back.

Besides the wedding, my partner Jen and I will be looking to beef up RTP’s stock image portfolio with landscapes, wildlife and anything else we can capture.  The ship stops in Roatan, Honduras, Belize, Cozumel and the cruise line’s private island.  Most of the excursions we’re taking allow us to maximize our photographic potential and we’re looking forward to capturing some amazing scenes.

I received an interesting email the other day from one of the stock agencies I use.  They were letting me know one of my images, a picture of a stethoscope in the shape of a heart, was used in a design contest submission.  A little legwork and I found the image is being used on the front cover of a French novel, Un Cancer, mon amour by Biliki publishers.  My French is a little rusty terrible so I’m not exactly sure what the novel is about besides someone’s fight against cancer, but it’s interesting to learn where some of my stock images are used.  I haven’t found a good way to discover more of my images in the “real world”.  If anyone knows how, I’d love to hear about it.

Another bit of news I somehow missed came from a fellow Nikonian, Tom Trujillo.  On October 8th, 2008 he was with a group of fellow Nikon photographers in Curry Village in Yosemite National Park when a landslide occurred destroying cabins and tents in the village and causing minor injuries to some folks.  Tom, instead of running away with everyone else, ran into the chaos and was able to pull a few children from the area.  Check out his interview with FoxNews, an article in the LA Times and the writeup in the Nikonians eZine.  His images were picked up by the Associated Press and published nationally.  Way to go, Tom, not for the images (although national publication is very sweet!), but for your reaction to people in need.  Nice work!

My suitcase is still open and unpacked with many of my clothes in the dryer.  It’s going to be a long night.  Stay tuned for some pictures when I return.

Wow, it’s finally the last day of the workshop.  We (Martin, Steve, Cathy and I) decided to sleep late and have a final breakfast together at a nice place in town.  Ahhh, sleeping in!!!  The great part of today is that I’m not heading home!  In fact, Martin, Cathy and I are taking a late-morning run up to Yellowstone to have another full day of shooting.  Martin was staying for another workshop the following week and Cathy and I were flying out on Sunday.  Sweet.

ROAD TRIP!!! After stocking up on gas and junk food, we headed out towards Yellowstone.  The plan was to drive for half the time and head back to the Tetons for sunset images.  That was the plan…

Our first stop  Oxbow Bend where I took my winning picture.  I wanted to show how many people are there to shoot Oxbow, but in the middle of the day, there aren’t many.  Oxbow is a morning spot with upwards of 100 people crowding around to get the shot.

As we progressed, we came upon a number of vehicles on the side of the road and people with cameras standing looking down in to the woods.  Wildlife.  In this case it was a mother moose and calf:

Heading further into the park we ran across a crow that really wanted to pose for a photograph.  Using the 300mm f2.8, I shot this:

While not a huge fan of the composition, I was blown away by the sharpness of this lens.  This was shot wide open at f2.8  Hmmm, where did I put my lottery ticket?!?!

Our next stop was the Artist Paint Pots.  This is an area of thermal activity where the mud in one location bubbles or shots into the air.  It’s actually very interesting to watch.  Simply set up your tripod and start shooting until you get something interesting:

Watching the bubbles

One highlight of Yellowstone is the animals.  They’re so used to people that you can often get too close.  People tend to forget that they’re still wild animals and a number of folks each year are gored, trampled or otherwise hurt.  Of course, everyone blames the animal.  I was amazed how close we were able to get to a mother and calf elk in a parking lot by the side of the road. I waited until I could improve the background to a stream instead of a parking lot and shot this:

I was also able to capture this:

Mother elk looking for her calf

Our final stop of the day was at Grand Prismatic.  This is a huge hot spring with amazing colors of red and blue from the bacteria growing in the water.  I was surprised at the amount of color this year.  It was much less than what I saw last year at this time (although still quite striking).  I’m hoping this isn’t a forecast of what’s to come, but a natural cycle of the springs:

As the sun went down, I shot into the sun for this unique shot:

As the sun went down, we ended the road trip and the last day of the trip with this image.  The colors were outstanding, the company fantastic and the location amazing:

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This morning we met at 5:30. To start, the entire group went to shoot the sunrise over the valley.  I hopped in Scott Stulberg’s Jeep along with Richard, another ANPW winner.  When we reached the shooting location the whole group set up and waited for sunrise.  Now, sunrise isn’t a “flip-the-switch” type of activity.  You see this coming.  Common sense would have kept me in a warm car until the light of day was coming over the eastern hills.  But, no…  We all stood out in the 20-something degree weather, in the dark and waited.  And waited.   No complaints, but I certainly learned something.  It’s better to be warm and on time than early and cold!  I attempted my first HDR panoramic.  It still needs some clean up, but here are the results:

Panoramic of the Tetons Range

Next, the group headed towards Mormon Row.  This was one of my favorite places in the Tetons and the location of two of my favorite images from last year – Moulton Barn and Moulton House).  As is typical of this location in the morning, it was packed full of photographers.  I shot this HDR of a small barn:

This was a good time to chat with the others and we soon were in a small lighting technique lesson by Scott Stulberg.  He showed us how to properly use reflectors and natural light to light the side of a model – in this case Lisa Bettany.  I wish I had pictures, but I was the guy holding the reflector.  I’m hoping Lisa or someone else posts the images.  It was interesting.  After a failed attempt to find some animals to photograph, it was off to lunch and our last day in the classroom.

In class we learned additional ways to create in Aperture and looked at some of the new plug-in technology.  Martin reviewed books, cards, slide shows and more.  I’m even more impressed and excited by the things I’ll be able to do with Aperture.  I’ve wanted to find a way to show pictures to family and friends without sitting around a laptop or viewing a typical photo album.  I love the book feature and the amount of options you  have with them.  This is something I’ll definitely look in to for sharing my pictures going forward.

Lastly, we were given a taste of some of Steve Simon’s photography in the form of Aperture presentations.  Set to music, we sat in awe as we viewed the solemn aftermath of 9/11 to the funny, but thought-provoking Big Cow to the captivating images from the Republican and Democratic conventions.  Steve is one of the best photojournalists around.  Visit Steve’s site to get a sampling of his talent.

As Scott Bourne brought in more “gifts” for us to see (one year subscriptions to training site Lynda.com and a certificate for Lensbaby equipment) we learned that the evening shoot was wildlife.  I have to say, when Scott gets prizes, he doesn’t mess around.  Everything was the top-of-the-line including the Drobo (Firewire, not the USB model), subscription to Lynda.com (premium all-access for one year), the certificate to Lensbaby (so we could get the latest Lensbaby creation), the ThinkTank 360 Backpack (their latest creation) and the PeachPress books (all photography related books).  Plus a copy of Aperture and a lifetime subscription to Photrade.com.  It’s amazing that he put this all together and I’m extremely grateful.

Teaming up again with Martin, with Brian in the car, we took off for the place we found elk the day before.  Unknown to us, it was also private property.  While we did manage to see another herd of elk, property management also found us and escorted us off the property.  Hey, sometimes it’s better to ask forgiveness then permission!   Caravan in tow, Martin took off looking for more wildlife.

We drove for a while heading towards the place were we had seen the bison the evening before.  As we did, light was fading fast.  We noticed that Scott Stulberg had dropped from the caravan.  Still we searched for wildlife.  Scott Bourne dropped off as well.  It was just Martin’s car with Martin, Brian and I inside.  Around the next courner and BINGO!  A large heard of bison.  Fantastic.

This again proves that you have to keep going to find what you’re looking for and to MAKE YOUR SHOTS.  Also, shooting in dim light isn’t a bad option.  Sometimes you need to get the shots the clients looking for and you can’t wait for perfect light or anything else.  Make your shots.  Sometimes they don’t always come during the “golden hours”.

Heading back towards the hotel, we were in contact with Scott Stulberg’s car.  They had pulled on to Mormon Row and were looking to make some astro shots.  We joined them and I captured one of my favorite pictures from the trip – Big Dipper over Grand Teton

This one also:

You can see a very thin line towards the bottom of the picture.  This isn’t a plane or shooting star – it’s a satellite.  Yeah, I couldn’t believe it either, but you can see satellites with your naked eye provided there isn’t any light pollution.  It was one of the most interesting things I’ve ever seen.

As we were getting ready to leave another group approached.  It was David Black a legend in the Nikon world.  He was shooting with a National Geographic team in the surrounding mountains.

One last picture before I turn in.  This one is Jupiter (the large point of light), the Milky Way and the light from Jackson Hole.  Oh… and a stop sign!  Enjoy!

I have to admit, after getting up early, shooting like a fiend and having a large, late breakfast, I thought my attention span in Martin’s first Aperture class was in jeopardy.  I was tired!  But my tired feeling quickly took the backseat to Martin’s fantastic hands-on demonstration of Aperture.  Simply put, Martin’s reputation as the premier Aperture instructor is firmly in place!  As for Aperture, this application is fantastic and a huge step up from my current work flow.  While I really like Nikon’s Capture NX software, the elegance and depth of Aperture will greatly improve my time to edit images.  I’m a believer and moving to Aperture as soon as I get home.  Check it out at apple.com/aperture.

I teamed up with Martin again for the afternoon/sunset shoot.  On the way out the light was really flat and dark clouds adorned the sky.  It didn’t look like a night to be out shooting pictures.  Ha!  One lesson I’ve learned is that regardless of the situation you’re put in, there are times when you need to make pictures.  Your clients aren’t going to listen to, “there wasn’t good light”, “I didn’t find anything to shoot”.  You must make the shots and “Never give up, never surrender!”.

Following this motto, we continued into the park when the sun broke through the clouds and bathed the valley in a glowing light:

The clouds behind the Grand Tetons opens and the sun shines down on the valley

Continuing on we drove north through the park looking for animals.  We were able to shoot a number of horses, some distant antelope and a lone bison.  I’m processing images, but it’s taking quite some time and there isn’t a lot of it on the trip.  It’s shoot, learn, shoot, shoot, sleep!  It doesn’t make it easy to post.

On the way back it was getting dark and the clouds were preventing us staying out for astro photography.  We did stop to shoot a well lit statue on the way into Jackson:

Statue on the way into Jackson, WY

In the evening, Martin and I decided to take a walk around town.  Honestly, I wasn’t feeling well, but didn’t want to give up on shooting for the day.  Remember the motto – “Never give up, never surrender!”  the town of Jackson is very beautiful and shooting at night was interesting.  Again, not a lot processed, but I thought this was interesting:

Of the way back to the hotel, we noticed the sky had cleared.  Against my body’s wishes, we loaded up the car and took off for the park.  Our goal – to get far enough out of town to escape the light pollution so we could shoot astro photography.  I’d never shot astro and was very interested in learning the technique.

When we finally pulled over and hopped out, there were more stars in the sky then I had ever seen.

The haze in the sky is actually the bands of our Milky Way galaxy.

The haze in the sky isn’t from clouds, it’s the bands of the Milky Way.  It was awesome.

Enough for now.  I need some sleep.