Terra Galleria Photography

Posts Tagged ‘california’

Photo spot 11: Joshua Tree National Park – Cholla Cactus Garden

Joshua Tree National Park lies at the convergence of two deserts, the Mojave and the Colorado. Joshua trees and granite boulders characterize the windy high Mojave Desert, while at the Colorado Desert’s lower elevations, cactus and native California palm trees thrive among sandy washes occasionally flooded by unpredictable torrents. The Cholla Cactus garden lies right […]

New images: Death Valley National Park

Over the course of the next month and half, I will continue posting new images of Western National Parks. Those are of course already well covered on this site, so each update will be rather small, covering either areas for which I had not published images before, or picturing areas with existing images in new […]

Photo spot 8: Lassen Volcanic National Park – Cinder Cone

Lassen Volcanic National Park is a real-life dictionary of volcanic geology. The volcano had a series of eruptions less than a century ago, creating cinder cones and hardened lava fields, as well as active features such as hot springs, hissing, steaming fumaroles, boiling mudpots and pungent sulfur vents that are reminiscent of Yellowstone National Park, […]

Photo spot 7: Kings Canyon National Park – Dusy Basin

Kings Canyon National Park features two easily accessible sites: a beautiful sequoia grove (Grant Grove) and the deepest canyon in the country (the Middle Fork of the Kings – about twice the depth of the Grand Canyon), however at least 95% of the park is backcountry with no road access. Since in the previous posts […]

Photo spot 3: Death Valley National Park – Zabriskie Point

Zabriskie Point gives you a good introduction to Death Valley. From there, fantastically eroded and colored badlands surround you, with Telescope Peak (the highest point in Death Valley, at 11,000 feet) and the salt pan in a distance. During the winter, temperatures in the Valley are mild, the air more clear, and Telescope Peak snow-capped, […]

Photo spot 1: Yosemite National Park – El Capitan Meadows

This is the first in a new series of postings. Each will feature one specific photographic location (sometimes referred to as “photo hot spot”) in a different national park. I will describe the location, sometimes give tips, illustrate it with a few typical images, and, if warranted, provide links to all the images on www.terragalleria.com […]

New images: Channel Islands underwater

I’ve posted new underwater images of kelp taken a month ago during a day of diving in the Channel Islands They were all taken with a Sea & Sea 15mm lens on a Nikonos V using Fuji film. This might sound awfully wide to those not familiar with underwater photography, so here are some explanations. […]

National Geographic Explorer article about QT Luong

If you are wondering why I received so many student letters, that’s because the younger generation had a chance to read about my National Parks project in the October 2009 issue of Explorer, National Geographic’s magazine for children. The article was illustrated with pictures from Yosemite. If you’d like to read the article, here is […]

A day of diving in the Channel Islands

This past Saturday, I dived one of the most beautiful sites I had seen. Although I had done three trips to the California Channel Islands before, I had never gotten into the water there. Part of the reason was that, being used to diving in warm waters, my only diving experiences in California, near Monterey, […]

New images: Oakland CA

Oakland is the third largest city in the San Francisco Bay area. When I was working at the University of California, Berkeley, I’d sometimes drive there for a medical visit with Kaiser Permanente. Since then, Oakland has been largely out of my map, maybe because the perceived urban grit didn’t appeal. It wasn’t until one […]