We have two landscape and travel photography workshops that we are excited to announce. Both workshops are meant to teach you the fundamentals of travel photography and better understand light, time of day, and how to plan properly to get the best photos.

1) In March of 2012 I will be taking a group to photograph the canyons of the southwest in Arizona and Utah.
Some of the highlights will be Zion Canyon, Bryce Canyon, Arches, Canyonlands, Mesa Verde, Canyon de Chelly, Monument Valley, Antelope Canyon, Horseshoe Bend, and the Grand Canyon.
More information for this southwest travel photography workshop can be found here:
http://www.arisingimages.com/learn/travel_workshops/201203_arizona_utah/index.htm

2) In November of 2012 we will be going to Northern Spain to explore the mountains and historic cities.
Highlights include Madrid, Barcelona, Coca Castle, medieval towns and structures, the Bilbao Guggenheim, Castle Butron, sunrise on the Bay of Biscay, the Pyrenees mountains, old monestaries, harbor towns, and much more!
More information for this european landscape and travel photography workshop can be found here:
http://arisingimages.com/learn/travel_workshops/201211_spain/index.htm

2010 was an amazing year for us and I put together a collection of images shot throughout the year that includes photos and paintings from weddings, landscapes, babies, high school seniors, etc.
These images were created through a lot of hard work, but we feel blessed to have been a part of all these things and hope you enjoy this video slideshow.

Two weeks ago I went on my annual fall road trip. This year I decided to fly out to Seattle and start the road trip from there. I’d been out there on one of my first backpacking trips with my friend Ben probably about 11 years ago when I was just starting to get into photography but didn’t know much about it yet. We saw a lot of great places but didn’t come home with very many good photos. This trip was more of a driving trip with just some short hikes mixed in.

Day 1
The flights were smooth and even landed 30 minutes early however things started on a bad note when my luggage didn’t show up.
I had to spend a few hours driving around Seattle waiting for the next flight to come in which would hopefully have my bag. When I do these trips, I typically camp in my rental minivan. I have NO idea where I’ll be from one day to the next and don’t have an address for the airline to ship luggage to so I had no choice but to wait for the bag as I really needed my sleeping mat and bag.
While driving around, I hit some highlight spots including gasworks park along with Golden Gardens Beach Park which provides a nice view of the Olympic mountain range.

Then I drove all around to try to find a nice view of downtown Seattle with Mt. Rainier in the background. I was not able to find the view I was looking for so I headed back to the airport through rush hour traffic to get my luggage which thankfully was there. I then drove to an area where I thought I would get the view I was looking for. It was still the wrong angle but I ended up shooting a 150 megapixel panoramic shot of the city.

I continued to look for “the spot” and realized I needed to head up Queen Anne street into a hillside suburb that reminded me a lot of San Francisco. I got there shortly after sunset so I missed the evening light hitting Mt. Rainier so I waited for the sky to turn a deep blue and shot a whole bunch of city shots.

It was beautiful seeing Mt. Rainier looming behind the city.

It got dark at 7:00pm and I new I wanted to start the day in northern Washington so I drove for a couple hours north to Bellingham where I got dinner and spent the night. The next morning I woke up at 4:00am to drive into the mountains via highway 542. It was a roughly 1.5 hour drive up to Mt. Shuksan and Mt. Baker. The road ends at Artists Point. I arrived at the end of the road well before sunrise. It’s been many years since I’ve seen such a beautiful and clear night sky. Stars were EVERYWHERE. I waited for the first hint of light and then started shooting some long exposure star photos which gave some cool star trail shots. I thought I was looking at Mt. Baker but it was so dark, I was disoriented and realized later that I was actually looking at Mt. Shuksan.

Prior to the sunrise I started exploring around Artists Point and found this beautiful pool of water to shoot a mirror reflection of Mt. Shuksan.

I then turned the opposite direction where I had a beautiful panoramic shot of Mt. Baker with the first morning light hitting the glaciers. It took an HDR shot to capture the light in the foreground and background.

Looking yet another direction, there were some beautiful clouds off on the horizon which were being lit by the first sun of the day.

By 8:00am I realized I had already been up for 4 hours and hadn’t eaten breakfast yet so I went back to the van, had some cereal and then shot a few infrared photos near Mt. Baker.

I started to head back down the mountain and took a few more photos of Mt. Shuksan with the morning sun. Mt. Shuksan is better viewed in the afternoon when the sun hits the mountain but that wasn’t going to stop me from shooting some pictures.

As I headed back down the mountain, I stopped for a quick look at Nooksack Falls which is an incredibly massive 100 ft high waterfall that is easily accessible to get to the viewpoint.

I spent some time exploring the river and woods nearby.

At this point it was around 11:00am and time to head into the cascades. As I was driving across US-20 to head into North Cascades National Park, I stopped to photograph a few scenes near the side of the road.

Driving through the cascades, I was not that impressed. Although pretty, the whole park is a massive hydroelectric project. One of the highlights is Diablo Lake where the view is also tainted by power lines that run around the whole edge of the lake. I planned to have lunch enjoying the view but it was INCREDIBLY windy so I sat in the car and ate (3:00 pm).

Next stop was Rainy Lake on top of Rainy pass. This was now outside of the park. It was odd that the landscape actually got more beautiful as you left the park. The top of rainy pass was quite…well…rainy. It was grey and overcast and didn’t provide much of a scene at the lake itself however, there were some nice photos along the way.

The highlight of this area is definitely Washington Pass which provides an incredible panoramic overlook. I took a nearly 150 degree panoramic image made up of 12 photos that I stitched together.
The dramatic sky provided the perfect opportunity to sit and wait for the drama of sunset.

After the sun went down I drove a few hours to the old west styled town of Winthrop, WA where I stopped for dinner and for the night.

Day 2
The next morning I woke up early to do more star photography but it was overcast with just a few stars showing through. I started the drive down towards Lake Chelan and made sure to stop as the sun was coming up.

As I continued down highway 153, I found a few nice spots along the way for some pictures.

As the morning progressed, it was very hazy and foggy which created some eerie scenes which are always fun to get pics of. This was along the river by highway 97 just north of Chelan.

I drove to Lake Chelan but it was a massive lake that was pretty built up. The clean and pristine areas are farther north but not as accessible and the light was not good for photos as it was now nearly 10:00am. I continued on to a Bavarian village called Leavenworth where they were getting ready for their annual Octoberfest. People were dressed in Lederhosen and the building were all adorned with flowers on the balconies just like in southern Germany.

I then decided to drive towards Mt. Rainier. I love it when the GPS takes me through some country roads as it provide a lot more photographic opportunities than if I was on the expressway.
On the eastern side of the cascades, it is very dry and almost desert like. There are lots of vineyards and the landscape and trees reminded me a lot of Tuscany in northern Italy.
I saw some beautiful little steams, farms, ranches and horses, etc.

This is when things started to get interesting.
The GPS was showing that I was roughly two hours from Mt. Rainier. The roads were nice country roads driving by ranches and farms. Then the ranches turned into cottages and the paved road turned into gravel. Then the cottages grew sparse and the gravel road turned to dirt. Then the cottages ended and the dirt road turned into a REALLY potholed crazy dirt road. It was extremely narrow, hilly, and definitely not the kind of road to be driving a two-wheel drive rental minivan. I looked on the map and there really was no other way to go to get to Mt. Rainier without a major detour. I figured that I was probably going to be on this road for a short time until connecting with another paved road. I drove for about 6 miles which took nearly half an hour due to the road conditions. I started to get freaked out and realized that if I broke down out here, NOBODY would find me. I also realized that this forest road was going to take me over the mountains and I had roughly 30 miles to go before getting to a better road. There was also a concern that at any point, the road could become un-driveable or I might have to do a river crossing or who knows what else. I made the UN-macho decision to turn around and take a nearly 2.5 hour detour back to the main highway and around the mountains to get to Mt. Rainier. This was not a fun decision as I would now have VERY little daylight left by the time I arrive in Mt. Rainier and there was 2 days of storms coming so today was pretty much it.
As I got closer to Mt. Rainier National Park, the natural beauty was everywhere. I came across this peaceful scene of a couple guys fishing on a small lake with a mirror reflection of the trees.

I entered the national park from Highway 12 and as you come around a bend you get an ominous view of Mt. Rainier. The clouds were starting to come in and collect near the top of the mountain.

As you drive closer to the mountain, it becomes so big that it fills your entire windshield. The size of Mt. Rainier is just incredible to see.
I drove up to Tipsoo Lake which is near the intersection with highway 410. It provided very peaceful mountain scenery.

Driving up to Tipsoo Lake, was only a mile or two from the Mt. Rainier loop road but it has some serious elevation gain which provided an incredible view of the surrounding area.

One of the highlights of Mt. Rainier is the road to Sunrise Point. The road has switchbacks up through the trees until you get above the treeline and get panoramic views of the whole area. At 6400 ft. and above the trees this place provides one of the most amazing sunrise locations in the world. This was actually the location that I wanted to propose to Cheridy but when we were out here in 2001, it was a rainy snowy day and the road was still shut down due to heavy snowfall and it was so cloudy you couldn’t even see the mountain. That’s a whole different story.
Unfortunately I was there at sunset this time instead of sunrise. I would have spent the night and waited for sunrise but a storm with 100% chance of rain was coming any minute. Mt. Rainier was already starting to be shrouded by the rain clouds but with the sunlight backlighting the clouds and the mountain, it still provided for some amazing pics.

I started to head back down the mountain and stopped for some other incredible views.

My goal was to try to find the location that I actually did propose to Cheridy. I knew it was along the southern edge of the loop road. Unfortunately sunset had already happened and I was losing the light of day and I was hoping to get one more shot of Mt. Rainier from Reflection Lakes. I tried to find the proposal spot but there were just too many similar turnouts and I didn’t have the time to stop at them all so I had to keep going. I got to Reflection Lakes just as the rain was starting. By this point the rain clouds had completely enveloped Mt. Rainier and it was interesting to watch as they collided with the massive mountain.

With the rain here and the light of day gone, any more photo ops were pretty much done. I stopped for dinner and to sleep for the night. With two days of heavy rain in the forecast, there wasn’t much for me to photograph so I decided to head down to Oregon to visit my good friends Eric and Shawna Anundi.

Day 3

The next morning I started driving south and stopped at a few locations before first light to capture the misty rain clouds hovering on the pine forests of southern Washington.

Before getting to Eric and Shawna’s house I stopped off at the amazing Multnomah Falls along the Columbia River. It was raining VERY hard when I got here so I did my best to keep my camera gear underneath a small umbrella while I setup my tripod to do some slow exposures of the waterfall. Waterfalls are one thing that are still great to photograph in the rain.

As I got closer to their home, I drove through lots of farms which always make for interesting photos:

The rest of the rainy day was spent catching up with Shawna and Eric, watching football, and relaxing.

Day 4
Another day of rain was forecast but I knew that most of the day would be spent doing the 5.5 hour drive into the Olympic mountains in northwestern Washington. The weather was TERRIBLE until I got near my destination. Once I arrived at the Olympic Peninsula, the rain was just starting to clear which is always an AMAZING time to be out photographing in the mountains. There were some spectacular scenes with the clouds rolling through the hills.

My goal was to head up to Hurricane Ridge in Olympic National Park to watch the sunset. At 5200 feet, Hurricane Ridge sat right in the middle of the breaking clouds which was one of the most magnificent scenes I’ve ever witnessed. The wind was blowing so the clouds were moving quickly and with each passing minute the light and the landscape looked different. I sat for almost an hour just watching the beams of light travel across the mountainside. Here are a few images shot from the top of the ridge.

With the position of the sun and the clouds, I was not expecting a great sunset from Hurricane Ridge so I decided to do the two hour drive out to the ocean to watch the sunset. Unfortunately this meant blazing through the park and barely having any time at all to appreciate the pristine beauty. I passed by the amazing Lake Crescent but only had time to stop for a few quick photos.

I had to hurry to make it to the ocean before sunset. There were a few locations that I had picked out which had dramatic rock formations and sea stacks. The one I chose to try was Second Beach.
What I didn’t know was that when you park for second beach, it’s nearly a mile walk through the woods to get out to the beach. I had to run through the muddy trail to make it out there before the sun went down. When I got to the beach, I was NOT disappointed. It was an incredible place. Unfortunately there were not dramatic clouds to make a dramatic sunset but that just required shooting and editing the pics a bit different to take advantage of the location.

I waited for the sun to go down so I could capture some of the dramatic evening light.

This was shot with a 6 second exposure of the crashing waves which is what makes it look like mist around the rocks.

The difficult part about waiting until after sunset was that I now had to hike a mile back through the woods in the dark. Once you get under the canopy of trees, the evening light pretty much disappears. The path was really muddy and a few times I sunk in to my ankles. Thankfully I had a pocket flash light with me to help me get back to the car.
After getting back to the car, I drove the few miles around to Rialto beach which I found was MUCH more accessible. I wish I had known that a couple hours ago!!
When I arrived, the moon was just about to set behind the sea stacks so I got one more picture before going to find some dinner.

After dinner I decided that since the weather was clear and sunny, rather than staying near the beach for sunrise, it made more sense to camp by the Hoh Rain Forest on the southwestern side of Olympic National Park that way I could get up and explore the rain forest at first light. Once the sun comes into the forest, it creates very spotty light that is difficult to photograph.
While driving out there, I decided to find a clearing to do some more star photography. Unfortunately I had to drive nearly an hour to find a good opening in the trees but it was well worth it!

Day 5
I woke up early to find that I was the ONLY one in the Hoh rain forest. There were NO cars or people anywhere…it was kind of creepy. I got my camera out and did the short walk around the Hall of Mosses trail which provides some really unique hanging moss. This is where I decided to shoot a quick self-portrait.

After that, I headed back out to the ocean at Ruby beach along highway 101. By the time I got to the beach, the light was very uninteresting so I only took a few documentary photos that weren’t worth much. However, walking back to the car, the sun was coming into the forest and lighting up the undergrowth and it was really beautiful.

I had a choice that either I could drive back into the main section of Olympic National Park OR spend the day relaxing. Most of this week I was going nonstop from very early in the morning to after dark and driving hundreds of miles every day. I was TIRED! As much as I would have liked to see more of the park, I decided to park the van overlooking the beach, kick back, read a book, and take a nap. It was very peaceful listening to the waves crashing. I then headed back to Seattle, found a hotel where I could clean up and organize my gear for the night and then I headed back to my lookout point overlooking the city to get a few more night shots.

Here’s a map showing the whole route which was roughly 1800 miles:

The last few days I’ve been working hard to create beautiful paintings from some of my travel photos. I’m really excited to show the latest pieces.
In a few days, I’ll be offering a service to take YOUR vacation photos and turn them into one-of-a-kind masterpieces.

This first one will go in our living room and it is a 55″x100″ canvas wrap.
If you want to be able to zoom closer to see all the detail and brush strokes, click here:
http://arisingimages.com/painting/amalfi/amalfi.html

Town of Amalfi along the Amalfi Coast in southern Italy.

Here’s the original:

This next one will be a 55″x183″ canvas wrap that is split up into 3 panels. This will be by far the biggest piece that I’ve ever printed and it will go in our living room.
It is a photo of Cliff Palace which is an ancient Anasazi Indian cliff dwelling in Mesa Verde National Park in south western Colorado.

Here’s the original:

As many of you know, I go on a fall trip every year for the goal of getting out and photographing for myself. It’s a time of reflection and refreshment. This year, my trip ended up getting planned too late to take advantage of the fall color in the areas of the US that I still would like to explore. My friend Ben who is the one that I used to do all the backpacking with was also available so him and I decided to team up and go to Italy for a week. I was able to use frequent flyer miles so the free flight was quite nice!

Day 1
The trip started out pretty rough. Our goal was to rent a car and drive into Rome and spend 2 days there. We knew that traffic and driving would be difficult in Rome but we didn’t account for parking being nearly impossible. We drove around Rome for 3 hours and couldn’t fine a place to park. Frustrated and exhausted, we decided to get out of the city and come back later.

Our first stop was a mountain town called Norma which was built on the top of a steep cliff where a number of paragliders were effortlessly hovering back and forth hundreds of feet above the ground.
The town itself didn’t have much but it looked really cool from far away:

We then stopped at an old medieval village called Ninfa but it was closed for the day. Our next stop was another old town called Sermoneta where we spent an hour wandering the steep streets and just in awe of a different way of life:

Our goal was to drive to Naples to stay the night, but we didn’t realize that it would get dark at 5:00pm and driving on the roads after dark while being tired wasn’t a great idea. We ended up stopping at a city called Caserta where we got a “great price” (which I think in Italian means “I’m going to screw you over you dumb tourist”) on our room and meal where they ended up charging us nearly $55 for some of the worst spaghetti I’ve ever eaten at a fairly dumpy hotel/restaurant.

Day 2
The next day didn’t start too much smoother. We drove into Naples and ended up having the same luck for parking as we had in Rome. We eventually realized it was a lost cause but the streets are setup in a way that it is very difficult to turn around and combining that with the sheer volume of traffic, it ended up taking us nearly half an hour just to turn around and head the opposite direction to get out of town.
We left Naples and headed for nearby Pompeii which is where an ancient city was left in ruin after being buried in ash from Mt. Vesuvius. The city itself was absolutely enormous and ended up taking a few hours to explore. It was amazing to see although after a while, seeing ruined structure after ruined structure got a bit old.

one of the most unique things about Pompeii is the body casts. The ash from the volcano completely buried the city along with whatever people where in it. When they dug out the city, in one area they found a number of people laying there including mothers and children and were able to create body casts from the remains.

After leaving Pompeii, our next stop was the Amalfi coast which is known for having towns built right down the sides of the mountains which was an amazing thing to see. We were able to find a hotel and get settled in with enough time to find a perfect sunset location overlooking the town of Positano.

Day 3
Unfortunately Day 3 didn’t start out much better than 1 and 2. We woke up at 5:30 am to go photograph the sunrise and found that we were locked in our hotel which apparently locks up between 4:00am and 6:30am. We had no choice but to go back to bed. Our day today was going to consist of going to the island of capri. We left Positano in the morning and I was able to shoot a fun and colorful shot of the buildings on the cliffside:

We drove to Sorrento where we caught a ferry to Capri. The main harbor had lots of fun and colorful buildings that were hoping with tourists trying to figure out where to go and locals trying to sell those tourists pretty much everything under the sun.

One of the main attractions on Capri is the Blue Grotto which is a water cave where light comes through the bottom and lights up the water. The blue is a color that seems magical, unnatural, and mesmerizing. To get to the Blue Grotto, you have to take a boat to the cave entrance and then get into a rowboat where you get to row in the tiny entrance and duck to get through the opening that’s only a few feet high. The whole experience is unbelievably commercialized to the point where you really can’t enjoy the experience or the cave, but if it wasn’t commercialized we probably wouldn’t have gotten to see it.

The main boat that took us around to the Blue Grotto continued around the rest of the island where we got to view and enjoy the beautiful limestone cliffs and the turquoise water.

Unfortunately the schedule of getting there and back along with the length of the Blue Grotto excursion did not leave us much time to explore the rest of this beautiful island so we went back to the main dock and wandered around until our ferry was there to take us back to the mainland. While at the dock, I was able to capture a few scenes that I enjoyed a lot:

One of our reasons to rush off Capri was that we really wanted to catch the sunset on the Amalfi coast again and I’m really glad we did as it was one of the most spectacular coastlines I’ve ever seen. This was about a mile west of Positano:

That night we stayed in a little town called Praiano.

Day 4
Another early day for us. We woke up around 5:30 and headed out super early to catch an Amalfi coast sunrise since yesterday we missed it from being locked in our hotel.
It definitely did not disappoint. Here is a view of the coastline with the lights from Positano showing in the distance.

A few miles down the road was the larger and more well known town of Amalfi. We still had some incredible morning light to photograph the marina.

After Amalfi, we headed inland and up and over the main mountains that lead to the Amalfi peninsula. Our goal was to make it back near Rome but we wanted to take a round about way that would bring us through some really picturesque areas. Once again, today did not go smoothly. The first town we were visiting was called Opi which is an old village buried in the mountains in one of Italy’s national parks. We plugged Opi into the GPS, did a quick check and saw that it was in the park and then drove the 4.5 hours to get there. We were surprised at how NOT big the mountains were and Opi didn’t look anything like the photos we saw. When we plugged in our next destination which was supposed to be close by, we wondered why it was 1.5 hours in the wrong direction which is when we learned that there are TWO villages called Opi that are both in central Italy and both located inside large parks. We picked the crappy one in the GPS…AAAARRGGHH!!! So Opi along with our next lake town destination of Scanno were now in the wrong direction. Thankfully on the way to the wrong Opi, we did pass a couple of cool scenes.
The first is the town of Acciano:

We then came across the town of Beffi and I loved this simple scene with these ruins:

Looking in the opposite direction was a really moody sky with beams of light coming through that looked incredible with the infrared camera:

Since we had driven significantly out of our way, most of the planned locations were the wrong direction so we skipped those. Our next stop was Tivoli which had a number of villas and cool places to see. It was already 3:30 and with it getting dark at 5:00, things were bound to close. Our guide book suggested Villa Adriana as the place to go. If you like LOTS of ruined buildings, then it is definitely the place to go. After seeing hundreds of them in Pompeii, I was pretty much done with that especially since the bright sun and no clouds didn’t provide any help for photographic opportunities. I only photographed one scene in the whole complex and that ended up being one of my favorite photos from the trip.

We planned on going to Rome for the next two days so we decided to stay in a hotel close to the airport and a train station so we could park and take the train in to the city. We checked into the hotel to find out that the nearby train station was closed and we now had to take a shuttle to the airport and then pick up the train. The cost for two people to do that was so high, we decided that we would risk driving again…yes…we are idiots!

Day 5
Since we had decided to drive into the city, we got up super early and skipped breakfast and drove in and parked before anyone was there. It was pretty cool to walk through some nearly deserted streets downtown. Our first stop was the famous Trevi fountain. However, it was so early in the morning that the fountain wasn’t running so I just took pics of the statues.

Next we came across a really cool building that wasn’t on our nifty tourist map so I don’t know what it is but I liked it.

Next was the Pantheon which is an impressive structure but it was still too early and closed and the photos of the outside didn’t make my blog cut. Next was the incredible Piazza Navona which had amazing statues, fountains, and architecture.

We realized that we had already seen a number of the major attractions and it wasn’t even 8:30am. We decided that we could probably see Rome in one day so we headed for Vatican City which was the furthest walk. On our way we passed a number of really cool street scenes:

Vatican City was so incredible with the dome of St. Peters Basilica along with the columns that surround the main square…AMAZING!!

The fountain in the main square was so pretty with the morning light that I have to post two photos of it.

St. Peter’s Basilica was…ridiculously amazing!! The size and ornateness of every surface was unbelievable.

Next we walked through the Vatican Museum which led to the Sistine Chapel where the famous paintings by Michelangelo adorn the ceilings.
I first took a photo of the famous scene that everyone knows at which point I was yelled at for taking photos. I’m sure they don’t want photos so the flash doesn’t ruin the paintings and I don’t shoot with flash.

I then took an overall shot of the whole ceiling which shows how large and amazing the whole thing is at which point I was told again to not take photos.

Upon leaving the Sistine Chapel, there was an amazing ramp that led down to the exit:

The next few hours were eating lunch, walking down the wrong road for a LONG way and seeing some less than awe inspiring locations which didn’t make the cut.

After that we passed by the Campidoglio and then the Monuemento a Vittoria Emmanuel II which was a HUGE building but unfortunately had a lot of scaffolding which didn’t lead to any pics.
We then passed some really impressive buildings and ruins but had our eyes on the prize…the Coliseum!!

By this point, we were totally exhausted and were hoping to get back to the car to get our tripods and do some night photography. We ended up passing through the Trevi fountain area again and this time it had water…along with about a billion people. We wiggled our way to the front and I was able to get a great photo.

Our car was parked near the Spanish steps but the area was so overrun with people that we didn’t even try taking any photos. After walking 10 miles around the city and seeing pretty much all the major attractions, it was time to go back to the hotel and sleep.

Day 6
Since we did Rome in a day, we had an extra day to kill and nothing planned. We decided to drive into southern Tuscany and photograph the landscape and scenery. I’m SOOOO glad it worked out this way as these turned out to be some of my favorite photos. The first half of the day we went to a few cities that weren’t very good from a photographic perspective so we kept moving along.
The trees and vineyards were bursting with yellow fall color leaving us a number of beautiful scenes most of which were near Montalcino.

One of my favorite stops was at the Abbizia di St. Antimo which was a beautiful abbey amongst the rolling hills and rich fall color:

As the evening sun got lower and lower, the light across the valley was exquisite.

Then one last parting shot with Ben:

Overall I was able to capture a lot of unique scenes and great images, however, Ben and I really struggled on this trip with lots of people and situations that provided unnecessary challenges around every corner. It was hard being away from Cheridy and Mayz and I am definitely glad to be home!! My eyes are closing as I type this because I’m so tired…time for bed.

Yesterday was a day of photo shoots for students of Cranbrook academy. The grounds at Cranbrook are usually amazing, but yesterday they were even more spectacular with the fall color. Here’s a shot overlooking Cranbrook Lake. We feel very fortunate to be on their exclusive photographers list!

Mayz, Cheridy, and I spent the last couple of days out in Grand Haven for a little R&R. We stayed at our favorite place which is The Looking Glass Inn. It’s a fantastic bed and breakfast right across from Grand Haven State Park which has been rated as one of the top beach spots in the US.

One of my favorite sites is watching the sailboat head out for the sunset cruise:

We spent our first day driving there and then doing pretty much nothing on the beach all day. We bought our first beach umbrella and are now wondering why we didn’t do that years ago since Cheridy+sun=lots of redness. Anyway…in the evening we had a nice dinner downtown and then watched the Grand Haven Musical Fountain which is one of the big attractions. Sadly, it wasn’t as impressive as these photos might have you believe. For anyone that’s been to the Bellagio in Vegas, you should probably pass on this one. This picture was taken with the longest zoom I own as the fountain is actually on the other side of the waterway.

The weather was supposed to be terrible while we were out there, but it ended up being fantastic and we got to see some beautiful sunsets.

Mayz had a good old time playing in the sand:

He always makes a goofy crinkly face when you ask him to smile. What a great photo of my beautiful wife and goofy boy!!

Chillin like a villain:

Quick family pic:

For anyone looking for a place to stay in Grand Haven, we strongly recommend The Looking Glass Inn. Norma and Howie Glass are fantastic hosts and Norma cooks up an awesome breakfast every morning. This is our second time going there and we already made reservations for next year. After chatting with them, we’re actually going to be making them a cool new website which will be online soon at www.LookingGlassInnMI.com
Here’s a quick shot of their balcony which shows the view of the beach on Lake Michigan:

Before leaving New York, we had the pleasure of getting to watch one of the most impressive displays of fireworks in the whole world. Our friends Jeff and Angela have an apartment in the city and we were able to watch the fireworks from the rooftop which is at around 40 stories. This year the fireworks were on the Hudson River side in honor of the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson.
We watched the impressive show and then I took a few more pics from the roof showing some city scenes:

On Friday I had a mini art show as part of the Eyes on Design Show at the Chrysler Museum in Auburn Hills. It was an event that focuses on automotive design but this year they expanded it to include, a fashion show, live museum, and other types of art. I was able to have a number of fine art pieces on display in the VIP lounge along with a few others around the main part of the museum.
It was a really interesting dynamic for me since I used to work at Design Center at GM. Seeing all the car models and concept cars really brought me back. I even ran into a number of people I used to work with back in the day. Being there reminded me how much I’m glad to not be working in the automotive world any more.

If anyone is interested in purchasing any large framed or canvas wrapped art work, please see our fine art page at www.arisingimages.com/fineart.

I spent some time walking around the museum to check out some of the cool displays.

Cheridy brought Mayz up to hang out for a little while:

I am really excited to say that this month, an article I wrote was published in Rangefinder Magazine which is one of the premier monthly magazine for the professional photographers all around the country.

The article is about the buffalo roundup in South Dakota that I photographed last fall.

The entire article can be seen in the April 2009 edition of Rangefinder magazine or an online version can be viewed here:
http://www.arisingimages.com/blog/images/2009-04/rangefinder_article.pdf

After Imaging USA, I went on a road trip with my friend Ben and Adam.  The trip started off on a rough note with Ben being pretty sure that he broke his foot playing volleyball the night before.  That left Adam and I scrambling to rent a car so we could continue our trip.  Thankfully after going to the doctor Ben found out that he had a broken blood vessel which caused all the bruising and swelling and he was ok to go on the trip with us (although it probably wasn’t a great idea).  We returned the rental car, met up with Ben and headed out for the four corners (Arizona, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico).

We started out in northeastern Arizona at Canyon De Chelly which is an amazing place.  Other than the sound of the wind, it’s super quiet there.  Of course we had to break that silence by yodeling into the canyon which was awesome when after the 12th echo the cayotes down below howled back!  This is spider rock viewed from the south rim of the canyon.

After shooting some photos from the rim, I spent some time taking some pictures with my infrared camera.

After exploring the rim, we hired an indian guide to take us down into the canyon. Ben has a 4×4 Nissan Pathfinder which was perfect for offroad driving in the canyon, across the river washes, and through the mud. We shot some video of the truck tearing across the river, but that will have to be posted later.
One of the highlights in the canyon is the White House which is an Anasazi Indian cliff dwelling.

It was really cool to see all their carvings in the rock faces.

When down in the canyon, going from sun to shade made a huge difference.  The sun provided warm soft light and it was comfortable to walk around without a jacket.   Here are some horses basking in the sunlight.

However, in the shade, it was cold with a biting wind. Here’s some ice from an area of frozen river. I loved the warm colors reflecting from the canyon walls.

The clear blue sky, orange rocks, and white snow was spectacular:

The light in the canyon provided some good opportunities for some infrared pictures:

After lunch we took off for Monument Valley in southeastern Utah. Our goal was to get there an hour before sunset and drive around the valley to photograph the soft evening light and sunset. When we got there however, the road was closed off except for guided tours which were more expensive than what we wanted to pay. Adam had the idea of paying one of the Indian guides to let us in which worked out great.

Here’s a view of the valley from the deck of the visitor center:

The evening light in the valley was beautiful and I loved the silhouettes of the rock formations against the clear skies.

After the sun went down, it got dark…fast!! Their was a blanket of stars across the sky so we setup our cameras on tripods and did some long exposures. This is probably my favorite photo from the whole trip.

That night we drove out to Cortez which is in the southwest corner of Colorado and right near Mesa Verde National Park. Right before getting to Cortez, we were pulled over twice in 10 minutes for having a busted headlight. The headlight was busted because while driving at night, we hit an elk at 65 mph on the highway. We were really blessed to have just clipped the back end of the elk. If we had hit it straight on, it would have been a REALLY bad accident. It was a huge animal…it’s back end was up higher than the hood of Ben’s truck. We were lucky to just bounce off it. However the damage was still pretty bad with a smashed in quarter panel and a driver side door that wouldn’t open.

The next morning we got up really early to photograph the morning light at Mesa Verde. The mountains heading up to Telluride, CO were not too far in the distance which made for some nice photos:

Mesa Verde is best known for it’s cliff dwellings. These are some of the largest and most well preserved cliff dwellings in the US. We came across a number of different ruins. The first one was called Tower House.

After that, we stopped at the most famous spot in the park which is the overlook to the Cliff Palace. It was a spectacular site and really interesting to just look at and wonder what life must have been like to live there.

The view driving out of the park was beautiful with the snowy mountains and blue sky.

After Mesa Verde, we checked into our hotel in Farmington and took a nice nap. Then it was out to the Bisti Badlands in New Mexico for a short sunset hike. The Bisti Badlands are known for their unique rock formations. They reminded us of the unique desert rock formations we saw in Egypt back in 2004. We walked across some really odd terrain. It was very dry and cracked in some areas and extremely wet and muddy in others. I think we all gained about 5 pounds on this hike from all the mud stuck to our shoes.

Here’s a panoramic photo that is 5 shots stitched together:

As we waited for the sun to go down, we sat back and enjoyed the soft light on the rocks with the wispy clouds in the sky:

Once the sun went down the clouds lit up with spectacular colors to give us an amazing show:

We started hiking out after sunset and we found a mud pool that was reflecting the last bits of color in the sky. This made for a fun abstract photo. It looks like a large lake but it was actually a 4 ft. mud puddle:

When we got back to the car, it was nearly dark. Rather than heading back to the hotel we decided to setup to do some more star trail photos. Shooting photos in the dark, you need to be very careful to make sure your focus is set right. This first picture was a 20 second exposure to just test my focus, but it still brought out a lot of light and color in the sky with just some hints of the first stars of the night.

We then waited for it to get VERY dark when all the stars came out. This photos is a nearly 30 minute exposure of the night sky:

The next morning it was on to Chaco National Heritage area where they have more spectacular Indian ruins. We followed our trusty GPS to take us on a short cut that was going to cut about an hour off of our drive. However, we soon realized that the shortcut had us going down roads that weren’t really roads. In the end, we made it to our destination and DID save a lot of time, but for most of the drive, we weren’t sure if we were going to be able to make it there. When we arrived to the park, the ranger was ever so helpful and told us to never trust the GPS in that particular area. Thankfully we had 4 wheel drive and were able to go where we needed to go.
Here’s a quick shot at sunrise before turning off onto the side roads:

When we arrived in Chaco, we were unfortunately there at a really bad time of day where the light was bad. The photos didn’t turn out that great, but it was still a unique experience to see all the spectacular ruins. Here’s a photo taken after hiking up the cliffs to look down on the main ruins of the park – Pueblo Bonito:

and here’s a photo taken from inside the ruins. It was really cool to be able to walk through and see how everything was built.

It was time to start driving back towards Phoenix as our flights were going to be leaving tomorrow morning.

We stopped at the Painted Desert National Park which had some beautiful colors in the landscape but was otherwise not too thrilling.

There were a few wispy clouds that provided a nice backdrop for some infrared photos:

Our last stop was at Sedona where we went to watch the sunset at the Red Rock Crossing. There were lots of other photographers all doing their best to stay out of each others way. What a spectacular location:

As we walked out, I saw these tree roots which I thought made a cool abstract photo:

Just after sunset the sky turned a beautiful hue of pink above the red rocks:

Here’s a photo of Adam, Ben, and myself at the Bisti Badlands:

The latest free screensaver slideshow themed “Waterfalls” is now available for download.
The link below will be the location of all of our screensavers and it contains the download links and installation instructions:
http://www.arisingimages.com/fineart/screensavers