Posted on July 7, 2012, 10:47 am, by QT Luong, under
Locations.
In this post, I am sharing my favorite high-country hike in Yosemite. On that rugged, but short Yosemite backcountry loop, you’ll reach the Sierra Crest, high above timberline, only a few hours after leaving your car, and enjoy a few days of solitude from there. You will roam cross-country – which is surprisingly easy here […]
Posted on June 8, 2012, 5:39 pm, by QT Luong, under
Gear.
Watching a moonbow with your own eyes is an awesome experience. While the camera can capture colors that the eye doesn’t see (as explained in my previous blog post about moonbows), the way it works doesn’t capture the experience that well. A long moonlit exposure looks almost the same as a daylight exposure that one […]
Posted on May 30, 2012, 12:11 pm, by QT Luong, under
Techniques.
A moonbow is a rainbow produced by moonlight, rather than direct sunlight. While observing a rainbow in the sky requires rare and unpredictable combination of conditions, it isn’t too difficult to predict the appearance of spray moonbows, which occur in the mist of waterfalls. Yosemite moonbows have been known for some time. John Muir described […]
While Earth Day has been internationally celebrated for more than forty years, National Parks Week is a relatively recent initiative from the US National Park Service. It has been argued that the National Parks are “America’s best idea” – recently in the Ken Burns film with that title. That idea first came to fruition with […]
Posted on January 26, 2012, 5:54 pm, by QT Luong, under
Locations.
Although they are not as tall as the coastal redwoods, the giant sequoia trees still reach impressively into the sky. I found it difficult to convey the sense of cosmic height in daylight images. The usually blue sky isn’t visually that interesting, there are almost always harsh shadows or dappled light on a part of […]
Posted on January 19, 2012, 10:01 am, by QT Luong, under
Locations.
Last year, I spent some time in Cedar Grove, Kings Canyon National Park, trying to find out whether it was another Yosemite Valley. In the previous post, I reported about my explorations of the Cedar Grove valley floor. In this post, I am describing some of my findings on the Cedar Grove rims from a […]
Posted on December 29, 2011, 6:20 pm, by QT Luong, under
Locations.
On the occasion of a return to Lexington, I walked the Freedom Trail and the Black Heritage Trail in Boston, before taking again a trip to Acadia National Park – for a third consecutive year. As I set up my camera bag on a slope on the shores of Jordan Pond, it toppled, a lens […]
Posted on October 28, 2011, 3:37 pm, by QT Luong, under
Locations.
Mount Hoffman (10,845 feet, 3,305 meters) is right in the center of Yosemite. For a (relatively) easy to access viewpoint which gives you spectacular bird-eye’s views of the Yosemite backcountry in all directions, it is hard to top this hike. If you do only one high-country summit hike in Yosemite, I would suggest this one. […]
Posted on October 21, 2011, 3:44 pm, by QT Luong, under
Announcements.
For their official 2012 Calendar, the History Channel Club has chosen 12 of my National Parks images from Yellowstone, Glacier Bay, Acadia, Rocky Mountain, Theodore Roosevelt, Everglades, Grand Canyon, Carlsbad Caverns, Voyageurs, Smoky Mountains, Cuyahoga Valley, and Yosemite. The production is not as impressive as the Helma calendars, but it is still a nice 11×14 […]
Posted on September 21, 2011, 9:34 pm, by QT Luong, under
Locations.
Kings Canyon National park was conceived by as a “wilderness park”, mostly free from development. There are only two sections accessible by car within the park, one around Grant Grove, the other in Cedar Grove. Both those sections are small: many visitors do not notice that shortly after Grant Grove, they exit the park, entering […]
