Posted on November 4, 2018, 3:00 pm, by QT Luong, under
Locations.
Wetherill Mesa, located on the west side of Mesa Verde National Park, is a long and narrow peninsula of land rising above deep canyons. Its rock alcoves are home to structures as impressive as those found on Chapin Mesa, however the experience of visiting is quite different. Many visitors rush through the landscape of the […]
Posted on October 29, 2018, 5:33 pm, by QT Luong, under
Locations.
A few weeks ago, when I drove out of Montrose, Colorado, on the way to Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, a sign warned of winter conditions. I wondered what that meant, but quickly found out as the nighttime temperatures dropped to the upper tens. The next day turned out cold and mostly cloudy. […]
Posted on October 8, 2018, 1:08 pm, by QT Luong, under
Locations.
The dual side of Hanford Reach, and reason for the accidental existence of Hanford Reach National Monument, is the Hanford Site (Hanford Nuclear Reservation) the former top secret Manhattan Project plutonium production facility established in 1943, which is almost entirely surrounded by the national monument. Visiting the mysterious site used to require a security clearance, […]
Posted on October 1, 2018, 12:48 pm, by QT Luong, under
Locations.
Hanford Reach could the national monument with the most unusual history of all. Its lands, located in Eastern Washington, were initially set apart from development not for conservation, but as a security buffer zone for the top-secret Hanford Nuclear Reservation where the plutonium for the Nagasaki bomb – and many others during the Cold War […]
Posted on September 10, 2018, 10:15 am, by QT Luong, under
Locations.
Observing natural changes is a rewarding aspect of revisiting a place, as I did for the Tinkers Creek Gorge of Cuyahoga National Park – obscure and far from California. The water flow fluctuated, and you can see in this post which conditions worked best for each scene and how I adjusted my composition in response […]
Posted on September 3, 2018, 10:54 am, by QT Luong, under
Locations.
Mammoth Cave National Park is generally a dry place. I explore a few out-of-the-way watery places within the park, while discussing some of the compositional strategies I used in those relatively plain scenes. Sloan’s Crossing Pond Water has made the longest cave in the world. The karst landscape of Mammoth Cave National Park is characterized […]
Posted on August 12, 2018, 11:20 pm, by QT Luong, under
Locations.
I have found the adage “Bad weather makes for good photographs” generally true. Cloudless days are not what I look forward to for daytime photography. There are two approaches to finding favorable weather conditions for landscape photography. You can go to a location based specifically on the weather forecast – the best is little-known Meteoblue […]
Posted on August 5, 2018, 11:28 pm, by QT Luong, under
Locations.
Shenandoah National Park is a long and skinny park. The Skyline Drive runs its entire length of 105 miles. For most of it, the road is never more than a few miles from the park’s boundary on both sides. For this reason, besides the Appalachian Trail that closely parallels the Skyline Drive, there are few […]
Posted on July 15, 2018, 5:59 pm, by QT Luong, under
Locations.
With more than 10 million visitors per year, Great Smoky Mountains National Park is the most visited of the national parks, and its most popular area is Cades Cove which receives over 2 million visits per year, more than many large entire parks. Cades Cove is so popular because it has a bit of everything […]
Posted on July 8, 2018, 3:15 pm, by QT Luong, under
Locations.
In this post, I revisit a firefly photograph in some detail, first comparing it to a similar image made with a different technique, then showing its components images to highlight firefly specifies within. Single exposure v. Digital composite I mentioned previously that there are two approaches to photograph fireflies together with the forest, a carefully […]
