Posts Tagged ‘photography’
Posted on August 6, 2017, 8:56 pm, by QT Luong, under
Locations.
Two weeks ago, on the first day of the trip to the North Woods national parks, I woke up at 5:30am to catch an early flight from San Francisco to Saint-Paul Minneapolis, arriving in the mid-afternoon because of the time difference. This was followed by a five-hour drive, without a stop for groceries nor dinner, […]
Posted on July 22, 2017, 8:30 pm, by QT Luong, under
Locations.
Because slot canyons have no vegetation and are mostly in the shade all the time, one might think that their appearance doesn’t change much. But in fact, the interplay of light with the walls varies much faster than in more open scenery, so much that visual surprises abound and reward multiple visits. Follow me on […]
Posted on July 16, 2017, 10:19 pm, by QT Luong, under
Locations.
The Subway in Zion National Park is a unique tunnel-like canyon with water flowing over polished rocks and small emerald pools, often bathed in an ethereal light that confers to it the atmosphere of a crypt. For hikers, it is accessed through the “bottom-up” strenuous 7-mile round-trip hike through the Left Fork of North Creek […]
Posted on June 10, 2017, 12:58 am, by QT Luong, under
Locations.
Most of the times a barren-looking grassland, the little-known Carrizo Plain came to life thanks to the abundant rains of last winter, to become the site of a “super bloom”, with some of the best wildflower displays I had ever seen in California. Find out where I discovered the best blooms in this vast and […]
Posted on May 7, 2017, 5:25 pm, by QT Luong, under
Locations.
Visitors to Brooks Camp, Katmai National Park, come for the bears, and few are even aware of the Dumpling Mountain Trail. However, the hike offers superb scenery and an environment very different from the Brooks River. Follow me up the mountain on an autumn day with changing weather. As the first part of the trail […]
Posted on April 29, 2017, 1:14 am, by QT Luong, under
Locations.
While nowadays visitors come mostly to see the bears, Katmai National Park was established as a National Monument in 1918 to protect the site of the 1912 Novarupta eruption, the largest volcanic blast of the twentieth century. It buried a valley in pumice and ash and its surface was steaming with thousands of fumaroles, hence […]
Posted on April 22, 2017, 10:16 pm, by QT Luong, under
Locations.
Most visitors to Katmai National Park come for bear viewing during July to see thousands of salmon jumping over Brooks Falls, sometimes straight into a waiting bear’s mouth. The autumn is a much less known time to visit, but it is also great, providing a quite different experience. Brooks Camp is one of the most […]
Posted on March 24, 2017, 12:53 pm, by QT Luong, under
Locations.
Lake Clark National Park is the third less visited of America’s 59 National Parks. Lack of road access may contribute to that. My summer visit used a chartered floatplane to travel into the park’s backcountry. On a recent 2.5-day visit aimed at seeing some of the park in the autumn, I limited explorations to the […]
Posted on March 16, 2017, 1:18 am, by QT Luong, under
Esthetics.
I wrote previously about finding a new view of Horsetail Fall, Yosemite “natural firefall”. The high vantage point let me frame the waterfall in a rich wide-angle composition that brought me much satisfaction. But would most people consider it to be “better” than the classic photograph? What would their relative preferences say? On the day […]
Posted on March 7, 2017, 11:40 pm, by QT Luong, under
Locations.
For most of the year, Pinnacles National Park is quite a dry place. I revisited right after the high rains of this winter – which put to shame last year’s El Nino conditions, to observe the place transformed by the flow of the creeks and to photograph another elusive waterfall. Pinnacles lies less than 50 […]
