Be Patient

 

"Be patient."

It's one of my photography mantras that I share when I teach my beginning digital photography class at the University of New Mexico's Continuing Education department.  

This morning's sunrise was one of those "wait for it" events.  The sky to the east was overcast, but there was just a touch of pink above the Sandia Mountains at 6:13am . . .

But after a few minutes, even that had disappeared (6:21 am):

At this point, I would usually conclude that there was no more to be seen, pack up my camera and tripod, and go back in the house.  But that earlier hint of pink above the mountain -- and the streaks of pink off to the southeast -- suggested that behind the mountains (where I couldn't see) there might be a gap between the cloud layer and the horizon that would allow the sun to illuminate the underside of the cloud layer, at least for a few minutes.  So I left everything in place, and waited.

Four minutes later (6:25 am), to the northeast, where the mountain descends and the horizon isn't so obscured, something was happening:

Moments later, even the sky above the mountain began to light up:

In two minutes (6:28 am), the sky was ablaze:

Three minutes after that (6:31 am), it was beginning to shrink at the lower level, but was lighting up some of the higher (actually nearer) clouds:

A minute later (6:32 am) it was almost over:

So what initially appeared to be a "nothing" sunrise turned into a beautiful 8-minute light show.  It doesn't work out this way every time, but it's always a good idea to . . .  be patient.

- - - - - - - - - 

Later in the day, a bonus:  clouds streaking across the sky . . .

If you would like to see these images in a larger format, please visit my photography website, Todos Juntos Photography, by clicking here.

Enjoy!

Covid Respite #7 - Valley of Dreams

Valley of Dreams is a separate area of amazing landscape features within the broader Ah-Shi-Sle-Pah wilderness area.  I have visited it twice before, and it seemed like a good destination for another Covid Respite trip, so at the end of October I headed out there with another of my photo buddies, Bruce Shah.

(You can see my earlier blog post about Valley of Dreams by clicking here.)

When we arrived in the area mid-afternoon, we had some beautiful streaky clouds -- always a plus for New Mexico landscape photography . . .

. . . but by the time we hiked in a mile from our car to the main area of hoodoos and spires, the clouds had all evaporated (sigh):

To give you a sense of the topography and scale, here's a satellite view of the area from Google Maps.  Of course, it's hard to tell what you're looking at from this altitude, so I've added some notes:

Hoodoos are mudstone pillars topped with harder sandstone caps, and they come in all sizes:  

. . . large (with Bruce for scale) . . .

 . . . and small:

The hoodoos in the southern side of the area are primarily walls of mudstone capped with giant blocks of sandstone, many of which (as you see in the image below) lie strewn about after the mudstone supporting them has eroded away:

But the northern side of the area is a riot of free-standing hoodoos sprouting from a complex base layer that has eroded into thousands of nooks and crannies:

That tall hoodoo in the center of the image above actually has a name:  Alien Throne.  In a world of strange shapes, it's one of the most strange.

There are plenty of other strange-looking hoodoos out there:

It's extremely rare to see anyone else in the same area, but as we wandered around, we noticed another person in the hoodoo forest.  He was a photographer from Minneapolis on a months-long solo trip to the Southwest, so we chatted for a while and I took his picture:

Besides the large features like hoodoos, there are many beautiful small features as well, such as watercourses with flow patterns (it had rained a few days earlier) . . . 

miniature hoodoos emerging from the ground . . .

 . . . and millions of pebbles everywhere.

One feature on the south side of Valley of Dreams caught my eye:  a triangular mudstone feature and a round rock about 60 feet apart.  For all I know, the rock might have been the caprock for the mudstone feature that fell off and rolled away.

Here's where they are in the satellite view:

As the sun was setting in the southwest (ah, so that's where all the clouds went) . . . 

I decided the triangle feature would make a good subject for a "blue hour" image.  (See previous post for more on "blue hour".)  So when the direct sunlight ended, I went to work, "walking around the teacup" to find the best composition.

I got some nice anticrepuscular rays, which are actually shadows projected on the sky from the clouds in the southwest (behind my camera position):

But as the light faded away, I found an angle I liked better for capturing the color and peacefulness of the "blue hour":

If you would like to see these images in a larger format, please visit my photography website, Todos Juntos Photography, by clicking here.

Enjoy!

Covid Respite #6 - Ah-Shi-Sle-Pah Wilderness

The month of September in New Mexico (as in most other parts of the United States) is when the weather turns cooler and it's more tolerable to go out and do photography.  All through the month, my friend Alan and I had been itching to get out into the field for another Covid respite trip.

This year, however, it has been unseasonably warm -- temps in the 80s and 90s instead of 70s -- until mid-October, when we finally got a break:  a day with the predicted high in the low 70s.  So we jumped into our separate vehicles to hit the road . . . this time to one of my favorite areas of the New Mexico badlands:  the Ah-Shi-Sle-Pah Wilderness.

I have posted about trips to ASSP a number of times, so if you need some background or a refresher, you can check out my earlier posts here, here, and here.

Our goal this time was to avoid the highest temperatures of the day and shoot in the late afternoon and early evening -- especially in the period after sunset known to photographers as the "Blue Hour."  (And here, again, if you need a refresher on the "Blue Hour," take a look at a post from 2019 here.)

When we arrived, there were two other cars in the very small parking area -- usually there are none, or at most one -- and in the five minutes we spent getting our gear out of the car, three more cars drove up!  Yikes!  A veritable mob scene for this remote area.  Fortunately, there's plenty of room for visitors:  the area covers over 6,500 acres (that's about 5,000 football fields).

So we wandered around, enjoying the freedom of being out in the field instead of tethered to the house, and seeing (and photographing) all the strange and beautiful formations:

We spent a couple of hours exploring and scouting interesting formations that might be good candidates for Blue Hour photography.

To be a good candidate for Blue Hour, a formation needs to face the direction of the sunset, or turned at a slight angle away from that direction.

And as we walked around, I enjoyed photographing some smaller scale features like the hard sandstone caprocks that sit atop softer mudstone columns to form hoodoos:

As the sun set, we got out our tripods and prepared for the soft shadows and colors that are created by the diffused light from the blue sky above.  

The term "Blue Hour" is actually a misnomer.  Depending on the time of year (the sun rises and sets faster in winter than in summer), the usable soft light lasts anywhere from 15-45 minutes -- never an hour at our latitude.

Moreover, in the first 10 minutes or so after sunset (and the last 10 minutes before sunrise), the light is what photographers call "flat" because the sky is brighter than the light on the ground.  Here's an example:

The prime "Blue Hour" light is when the sky and the land are more or less equally lit.  And, as noted above, it doesn't last long.

I had scouted a few different formations that I wanted to shoot, and they weren't all in the same place, so I chose to shoot each one briefly and then quickly carry my tripod and camera to the next spot as the light was changing (and fading).  Here are my "Blue Hour" images (including the image at the top of this post).  I'm happy with what I got.

If you would like to see these images (and more) in a larger format, please visit my photography website, Todos Juntos Photography, by clicking here.

Enjoy!