Gary Crabbe / Enlightened Images

Picture: Trees & fog at sunset, Berkeley Hills, California

The good folks at Naturescapes.net had recently asked me if I would be interested in writing an article for their web site. One of the topics they thought might hit a chord with their readers would be something about my near-decade long experience working with Galen Rowell. Those within the photographic community know Galen’s name immediately, but for those outside or unfamiliar with his name, Galen was a world-renowned outdoor adventure and nature photographer / writer, along with being a very accomplished climber and mountaineer.

My primary responsibility while working for Galen and Barbara Rowell was managing their photographic library, editing and sending submissions to clients, and licensing the use of his photos for publication around the globe.

It’s been eleven years since I left their company, Mountain Light Photography, to become a stay-at-home dad following the birth of my son, and eight years since the tragic plane crash that claimed their lives near their home in Bishop, California. In all that time, I’ve spoken with many people about my experience, but this is the first time I’ve ever been asked to write about it. Naturescapes.net (NSN) recently published the article while I was away on vacation in Hawaii, otherwise I would have mentioned it here sooner. (read: before the chaos of moving my office.)

The image above was shot on one of the very first Mountain Light Photo Workshops I worked at, taken amidst a line of five or six other photographers and Galen. Like many of the students, I barely knew what I was doing with my camera at the time. There’s no doubt in my mind, that aside from the privilege of knowing Galen & Barbara, being able to participate in the workshops while we worked and assisted students in the field was one of the great job-related perks.

Click here to read: Working with a Legend; Galen Rowell.

Picture: The Embarcadero Office Tower at Four Embarcadero Center, San Francisco, California

Since I did a last post from my old office, it should be fitting to make a first post from my new office. After days of dedicated moving and cleaning over the Fourth of July holiday, I’m delighted to say that I’m fully moved into my new office. The one pictured above isn’t my new office. My office has a slightly different look, feel, and view.

As a photographer, I’ve been hassled every time I’ve been to this location and tried taking this particular shot. Without fail, while standing on the steps and holding my camera up to frame the picture, security guards have come to tell me that I can’t take that picture. Why? Because I’m on private property. (The steps.) Each time I ask, “O.K., where can I take that shot from?” I’ve gotten a number of answers. Some have told me that I can’t take that shot at all, even if I was in the road. Some have said, “Not from here.” My favorite was the one who said, “You can’t be on the steps.” Of course, I stepped down three stairs and took the photo. I’m still pondering the logic…

After a decade of not having to leave the house, I must admit that I feel much freer in my new space. However, I’ll likely need some time to re-adjust to the idea of having a (micro) commute. Most unbelievably, I don’t have to pass a single Starbucks while heading to work.

Picture: Wooden deck chair and storm clouds at sunset over Lake Bomoseen, near Rutland, Berkshire region, Vermont

This is it. One last post…

I don’t get a vacation this holiday weekend. My wife & kids do. They’re enjoying a weekend in the Sierra at my Sister-in-Law’s cabin near Arnold. I already took my vacation in Hawaii.

This weekend I’m moving my home office that has been base to my business for the last ten years. My son & daughter have been happily bunk-bedding it in the same room. But we always knew the day would come when my son would need his own room, and Dad would need to find a new office. After a year of figuring out what we were going to do as a solution, we had my Brother-in-Law build us an exterior stand-alone office on our property. She’s already called the painter to repaint what will become my son’s room, and she’s given me a deadline of Wednesday morning to be all moved out and the walls stripped clean.

I’m in one of those great purging states of mind. If it isn’t tied down or essential, it gets tossed or moved into deep, archival storage. I don’t know much about Feng Shui, but I already have a much different mindset about this new space; none of the old clutter is allowed.

The new office promises to be great, and will represent a great new start for me. I have a new corner desk and windows that look out at my lawn & garden.

So this is the last post I’ll be writing from this old office space, which will be momentarily “put out to pasture,” i.e. retirement, before being reborn into my (pre-)teenage son’s new room. I bid this space / place a fond farewell, and thanks for being “my office” for the last ten years.

Picture: The US Flag and the USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor, Oahu, Hawaii.

Seeing as how this is the 4th of July weekend, a big Holiday here in the United States where we celebrate the birth of our country, born out of the Revolutionary War, I thought a picture of the US Flag would be just as appropriate as the more traditional fireworks photo.

When we were in Hawaii recently on our family vacation, I felt very strongly about the need to bring my 11-year old son to visit Pearl Harbor and the Arizona Memorial. He’s at that age where he’s really into guns & shoot’em up games with his friends, and playing with his nerf-guns around the house. I know that the shoot’em up video games are fun, and help kids with cathartic relief of the stress they feel from school and household chores, etc.. As much as he enjoys them, I feel even more strongly about teaching him and constantly reinforcing the idea that there’s nothing fun about real guns, killing, or war. Since he recently started playing the Call of Duty video game where the US troops are fighting the Germans, I thought taking him to the Arizona Memorial would give him a first-hand look that war has a real cost; lives.

It was a great experience to be there with just him and myself, and I think it was certainly the civic and educational highlight of our trip.

One quick tourist-related note, though. This was our second trip to Pearl Harbor that week. The first trip was with the entire family a few days before. All of the tourist books say “Get there early” if you want free tickets for the shuttle tours to the Arizona Memorial. They open at 7:00am, and we got there at 9:30 am. We were two people away from the ticket counter when the ranger announces they’ve handed out of all 3,300 tickets for the day, and there are no advance hand-outs for upcoming days. My son & I went back a few days later. At 6:30am, people were already in line to get tickets, and by 7:00am when the gates opened, the line had already snaked back into the parking lot. So when they say, “Get there early,” they should specifically state, get there before 8:00am if you want tickets for that day, or sign-up for a $90.00 / person bus tour in Honolulu where they will give you a free ticket.

I hope everyone enjoys their Fourth of July holiday weekend here in the U.S., and take a moment on our nations birthday to remember why we celebrate, and the cost of our liberties.

Picture: Hula Dancers underneath an evening moon while performing at the Paradise Cove Luau, Ko Olina, Oahu, Hawaii.

The title words alone should give you a good hint at where I’ve been. And it was a long time overdue. I just finished a two week family vacation, of which one of those weeks was spent on the island of Oahu, Hawaii. Although we had our kids with us, this was our family celebration of our 20th wedding anniversary. The sad part is that the last time I had been to Hawaii was 20 years ago on my Honeymoon.

My wife feels (rightly) that it’s best not to advertise online when we’ll be away from home. That would explain the proverbial ‘dropping off the map’ regarding posting or broadcasting this trip in advance.

I did take some photos; but this wasn’t a photo trip. We were simply there as tourists. The photos I took fell pretty much in line with just being another guy with a camera slung around his neck, and family in tow.

With the kids on this trip; we just had to do the typical tourist Luau. (A huge thanks to my F-I-L Richard & Laura Simonds for treating our family.) Paradise Cove is about 40 Minutes west of Waikiki, and was the exact same place my wife and I had been to twenty years ago. Talk about deja vu; it seemed that nothing had changed in those 20 years. Still, the kids enjoyed it, and my eight year old daughter got picked to go dance up on stage with some of the male Hula Dancers.

In the coming weeks, I’ll be posting some of my images here, and on my Enlightened Images Facebook page.

“Aloha & Mahalo”

Picture: Sunrise light on the western Sierra foothills, Fresno County, California

Click on the photo to see the image larger.

This image follows on the heels of my last post. As I mentioned, I’m usually attracted to the larger landscape type photos, but will use my eyes like a virtual zoom lens to explore the details and really identify what parts of a scene are really attracting my attention.

So is it pretty easy finding the previously posted patch of trees that I isolated in the broader view? It is for me, but then again, I took the photo(s). Compare with the larger version of the detail shot.

Photo: Morning light on tree-covered hillside in the Sierra Foothills, Fresno County, California

See the image larger.

Whenever I work with other photographers in a workshop setting, giving a lecture or presentation about improving their photography, I have a few general themes that I like to try and hammer into their heads. Those that have been field workshop clients know that I joke with them, “If you hear my voice in your head six months or two years from now, then I know I’ll have done my job.”

One of the first and most obvious is to “Photograph what you like.” Now that may sound like a no brainer, but it’s not. Otherwise, why would you see so many people showing photos with the caveat that they didn’t like this or that, be it a stray branch, bright patch of sky, etc.. I tell people to use their eyes like a zoom lens before taking the photo, to literally hone in on those elements of a photograph that they like.

In this image, I was coming back from Kings Canyon one morning, and was overlooking this really nice scene of the western Sierra foothills. While my brain and camera was set on wide-angle, I used my eyes like a telephoto lens to isolate parts of the larger scene in more detail. Then once I got my telephoto lens on the camera, I was able to focus on just that area or subject, and worked to include what I did like, while excluding what I didn’t like about the scene.

I mean seriously, if it’s something you don’t like, why would you want it in your photo? Right?

Picture: Sunrise light on Mount Tom and the Eastern Sierra over cattle grazing in pasture in the Round Valley, near Bishop, California

Click the image to see the photo larger in a new window.

This is another image that marks one of my first few attempts at a panoramic composition using the PhotoMerge feature in Photoshop. One of my personal favorite images from the Eastern Sierra was taken many years ago in the same area, and also shows cattle grazing in the Round Valley. After being held up in Bishop waiting out several days of very strong storms, a clear morning prompted me to revisit that location. While the images contain similar subject matter from a similar location, the difference in the photos is fairly striking.

Picture: Cattle grazing in the Round Valley near Bishop, Eastern Sierra, California

To me, this really reinforces the idea of how different light can render a particular landscape, along with the mood and feeling the resulting image evokes. The panorama feels very tranquil, peaceful, and bucolic. The earlier image is more like a rugged, pioneering-type image with overtones of foreboding. Would you agree?

Picture: My wife, Connie.

Readers of this weblog know that I very rarely ever use this space for expressing personal items, or even more rarely, political opinions. Today, I make an exception on a personal note. I want to publicly tell my wife, Connie, how much I love her, and thank her with all my heart for sticking by me all these years, on this, our 20th wedding anniversary.

Woof.

… and now back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Picture: Car driving on suburban street in downtown Pleasant Hill, California.

File this one under: Photography is not a crime, or “Are you by chance a little paranoid?” After all, it was the British rock group, The Kinks, who reminded us that paranoia is The Destroyer.

Not long ago I stopped into a local camera to shoot a few frames on the Nikon D700. I wanted to test the focus tracking and frame rate, so the guy behind the counter walked outside with me while I burst off a few sets from the side of the street, aiming at random oncoming cars. A few moments later, a woman comes into the camera store and asks me what I was taking pictures of and why. It turns out she said she was a manager at a nearby Courtyard Hotel, and that “several of her guests complained.” This was at 2 pm on a weekday afternoon.

Ok, my immediate thought is, sarcastically, “Several Guests?” Let me guess… these are people who are there with someone OTHER than their spouse.

I looked at her blankly and said, “I’m testing the speed capability of the auto-focus servo and frame rate in conjunction with the continuous high speed shooting mode.”

What I really wanted to say was, “Yeah, I was spying on several of your ‘cheating’ customers. Why? What’s the problem with that? I was standing on a public street taking pictures of things in plain view.” I would’ve loved to hear her answer to that.

BTW – I hid the identity of person in this car, just in case they were guilty, or innocent.