The Terra Galleria Blog – QT Luong

After Railey, my next stop in southern Thailand was Ko (island) Phi-Phi. I catched a long-tail boat ride at Railey East to the small pier of Ao Nammao. The tour operator with whom I had booked the trip sent a mini-bus – late by almost an hour and again packed to the gills – to shuttle us from there to the shiny Krabi passenger terminal, where we boarded a larger vessel for the hour and half crossing.

From the boat, we saw plenty of barely developed beaches, with just a few bungalows nearby, but by contrast Tonsai Village surprised me by being a wall-to-wall patchwork of tourist-oriented businesses. In particular, i had never seen as many dive shops before, offering instruction in any possible language. Yet the atmosphere was relaxed, with not a single motorized vehicle in sight.

The waters, crystal clear, must have been a stunning sight in good weather, when the sun could penetrate them to reveal their turquoise hues, but unfortunately the rainy weather continued. In those conditions, I thought it wouldn’t be worth it to take a boat tour, and instead wandered around with an umbrella. My most interesting discovery was a small muslim cemetery (at the bottom of this page), which, with its low profile graves, was unlike any of the cemeteries that I have seen before.

However, since staying for hours in a cemetery is no way to spend a tropical island vacation, despite the cloudy weather, I headed to the beach, which was lined up with long-tail boats.

The long-tail boats are an iconic watercraft in this part of the world. These ingenious boats use a common automotive engine, mounted on a turret which can rotate through 180 degrees, allowing steering, and also swivels up and down to provide a “neutral gear” where the propeller is outside of the water. The propeller is mounted directly on the driveshaft (with no additional gearing) through a long metal rod of several meters (see here) giving the boat its name. Since there are no roads on Phi-Phi Island, long-tail boats are the means of transportation for locals and tourists to destinations outside Tonsai Village.

Although the scene lacked brilliant colors, there was a sense of tranquility that I tried to capture. As I lingered for a long time there, I noticed that despite the overcast conditions, the light and pastel colors changed in a subtle way as the hours passed. The difference was enough to yield different images that feel different to me, even with a similar composition. Which one do you prefer, and why ?

View more images of Ko Phi-Phi.

Katmai National Park is located near the end of the Alaska Peninsula, in the middle of which is situated Lake Clark National Park. Although further from Anchorage than Lake Clark National Park, Katmai sees a slightly larger visitation, 9000 annual visits versus 6000, making it the fourth less visited National Park. Katmai was created in 1918 (as a National Monument) to preserve the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes, a forty square mile, 700 foot deep ash flow deposited by Novarupta Volcano, whose eruption in 1912 remains the largest recorded in modern times.

Nowadays, most visitors come for the spawning grounds of Sockeye salmon, and the resulting brown bear population, both world’s largest. Katmai stands out as one of the few places in the world where humans can coexist right besides the bears in their own natural habitat. Although as a landscape photographer, my main goal was to explore the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes, I could not miss the opportunity to see and photograph the bears. I planned my visit to coincide with the peak of the salmon run, at the beginning of July. This is the only time in the year to try and capture images of a brown bear catching a salmon flying mid-air by just opening its mouth. Later in the years, the bears may look more fat and happy, but the salmon are no longer swimming.

There is only one place to witness the event, Brooks Falls, where thousands of salmon try to jump the four-foot tall wide chute in a predestined journey to spawn at the place of their birth. Perched on the brink of the falls, and in the water below, the bears wait in anticipation of the coming feast.

To get there, I flew with a Alaska Airlines jet flight to the aptly named outpost of King Salmon. Although a flight from San Francisco to King Salmon (via Anchorage) costs more than $800, it can be booked for just 25,000 miles collected with the Alaska Airlines VISA card – one of the best reward programs out there. Katmai Air operates scheduled 20 minute flights of float planes from the river in King Salmon to Brooks Camp for about $200 round-trip. The flights are timed to coordinate with the arriving and departing PenAir and Alaska Flights. I was told that if your flight arrives late, the float plane won’t leave without you, and if it gets busy, they’ll just add one more flight. The main logistics difficulty is therefore to book a place to stay in Brooks camp during the salmon run window of late June-early July. The small lodge often sells out a year in advance. You can’t camp near the Brooks River except at the Brooks Camp National Park Service campground (which charges only a modest reservation fee).

When I arrived there, after attending the mandatory ranger briefing, I quickly understood why. The campground was surrounded by an electric fence to keep the bears out (like the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park !). As an additional precaution, all food and scented items had to be stored in a shed. In the park, the bears have the right of way. If a bear decides to take a nap on the trail, no visitors can come within 50 yards (100 yards if it is a mother with cubs) creating what is known locally as a “bear-jam”, which can delay by hours your movements in this otherwise small area. The delivery of our luggage had also been delayed by a bear, as there is only one path between the float plane landing site and the campground. Everything in Katmai revolves around bears.

Katmai has the world’s largest population of protected brown bears, more than 2000. With that many bears roaming around, encounters between humans and bears are inevitable, but since the bears are well fed from the salmon, with some rules a peaceful coexistence has been attained. The rules are simple: don’t get near them, don’t surprise them and don’t encourage them to see humans as a source of food. They have worked well, as no one had ever been killed by a bear at Brooks Camp. Credit for this must go to the Park Rangers, who spend most of their time “directing traffic” to keep people a safe distance from the bears, so that they don’t become too habituated. I though about other places where bears had been exterminated. Disharmony between bears and humans were not the bears fault. It was a human inadequacy brought about by our fear and distrust of them.

The only fatal bear attack that occurred in Katmai National Park was the predatory mauling of Timothy Treadwell and his girlfriend in 2003 on a remote section of the coast. As documented in his own book “Among Grizzlies” and then in the Werner Herzog’s 2005 (agenda-driven) film “Grizzly Man”, Treadwell spent 35,000 hours spanning 13 summers living alone amongst the bears, sometimes even touching them, without any previous mishap. Treadwell’s behavior with the bears was unusual and controversial, but he never encouraged others to approach bears as he did. It is tragically ironic that his death threatened to undo his and others work in trying to convince people to adopt a kinder attitude against bears.

I proceeded on the trail between Brooks Camp and Brooks Fall. It is only one mile-long, but I had to wait one hour for a “bear jam” at the floating bridge. After the bridge, the trail entered a forest covered in a lush carpet of mosses. I eventually arrived at the final observation deck, accessed via a series of locked gates – serving to keep the bears from coming up behind you on the decks.

A ranger took count of people, allowing only 40 at a time, placing a one hour limit on viewing and a keeping track of a waiting list when more than 40 were around. The platform provided a stable platform for my tripod, but it wasn’t possible to spread the its legs, and sometimes the view was obstructed. As slightly unpleasant as the crowding was, it reflected an interest in bear viewing that I thought could only be more positive than bear hunting, and a shift in attitude from fear to respect. Anyways, wildlife viewing was so spectacular and the bear behavior so captivating that I soon forgot about these inconveniences. It was like in a National Geographic documentary.

The dozen bears at the falls paid no attention to the people on the platform. They were close enough that my 100-400 f4.5-5.6 lens framed then tightly – although not as tightly as in the famous by Tom Mangelson or Galen Rowell that focus on the fish catching. In those days of slide film and low ISO, I wished I had a faster lens in the late afternoon, when the light improved (the platform faces North East). When the visitors who had came for a day trip left, the platform regained its tranquility. In the evening, as the light became too dim for photography, I just watched. On the way back to camp, the portion of the trail in the dark forest felt intimidating at dusk, as I could sense many bears lurking in the shadows, and was expecting one to step up in front of me at any moment. My close encounter with a bear would happen in opposite circumstances, but this will be the subject of another post…

See more images of Katmai National Park.
See more images of Brooks Falls.

I am mostly known for my work in the US National Parks. However, one of the reasons I came to appreciate them so much is that I have traveled in many corners of the world. This gave me a wider perspective which made it possible to understand how unique they are. This website started ten years ago with images of Asia, so it is fitting that in the months leading to its 10th anniversary I will post mostly new images of four countries in South East Asia from a recent month long trip.

Last December, I traveled for half a week in the Krabi Province of Thailand. I purchased in Bangkok a combined sleeper train and bus ticket for about $42. Train travel by night is environmentally friendly, and saves time as well as a hotel night. Since the bus ticket was purchased at the train station, I expected a comfy government bus, so I was surprised to ride from Surat Thani to Krabi on a mini-bus, packed solid with other backpackers. In addition, instead of arriving in town, the mini-bus dropped us at a tour agency located far from the town center ! After another half-an-hour mini-bus ride to Ao Nang, and then a fifteen minute hop on a long tail boat, I arrived in Railay, a peninsula accessible only by boat, where the most dramatic vertical limestone cliffs of the area drop right onto beaches.

Although December normally marks the end of the rainy season on the Malay Peninsula, I was greeted by a drizzle. In hot places I am familiar with, such as the American Southwest or Vietnam, the rainy season is a good time for photography. When it is not raining, the sky is clear, and the rain itself is preceded by dramatic skies and storm light. Not in Southern Thailand. I was disappointed by a mostly overcast sky. However, although scenic images wouldn’t be too successful (except at twilight), there were still plenty of interesting scenes to work with.

See more images of Railay

Lake Clark National Park, situated on the Alaska Peninsula, does not include the superlatives of the other Alaskan parks such as highest or northernmost mountains, largest icefield or glaciers. Instead, the park preserves a supremely varied wilderness where all the geographical features of Alaska can be found in a relatively small area.

Maybe because the lack of famous features, Lake Clark National Park is one of the three least visited National Parks, with less than 6,000 visits in the year 2008. The other factor contributing to this low visitation is certainly the lack of road access, which makes travel relatively expensive, since one needs to fly with small planes. But isn’t it the case of most of Alaska ? As we will see soon, accessing a place that at first seems so remote and un-travelled is not that expensive nor difficult.

For my trip there, I was accompanied by my fiancee and her sister. While both of them are experienced backpackers, they had not traveled in demanding wilderness conditions before. I thought that Lake Clark National Park would provide us with an easy adventure – for an Alaskan park. This series may sometimes give the impression that many of the most interesting places are accessible only to experienced outdoorpersons. In fact, while I go the extra mile to capture a photograph (for instance climbing a mountain), places that provide a relatively similar experience (the foot of the mountain) can often be reached with only a moderate amount of skill and effort.

For our first spot in the park, I had chosen the head of Lake Turquoise, based largely on the inclusion of a photograph of that lake in the “National Geographic guide to the National Parks”. I’d like to think that my own photographs would similarly inspire others to explore. Speaking with the Park service rangers, as well as the air taxi, confirmed that the area provided pleasant hiking. Arriving in June, we would enjoy the best stretch of weather on the Alaska Peninsula, as well 20 hours of sunlight. The alpine flowers on the tundra would be in bloom. The only problem would be that mosquitoes peak as the same time as wildflowers !

There are plenty of flights to Anchorage, as the northern location of the city has made it an international air hub. From there, the four of us boarded a commuter plane for a one-hour, regularly scheduled, flight to the small (pop 100) community of Port Alsworth, located inside the park. In 2001, the round trip cost was $300 per person with Lake Clark Air, which we found to be friendly and reliable. Upon arrival at Port Alsworth, we all piled up on the “airport shuttle”, a ATV pulling a wooden trailer in which we sat, our backpacks providing the cushioning. This took us the short distance from the dirt airstrip to the shore of Lake Clark, where we loaded our backpacks onto a floatplane.

Backcountry air charters are expensive because to get you to your destination, and then pick you up days later, the pilot has to fly a total of four flight segments. Yet, the total price of chartering a plane for four people from Port Alworth to Turquoise Lake, and then back to Port Alworth, was less than $800. This meant that the cost of the trip from Anchorage was less than $500 per person – the same as a single night in some of the park lodges. When you get there, you don’t spend any more money, since there are no facilities !

After a scenic flight, the plane dropped us at the head of Turquoise Lake. One by one, we stepped onto the plane floats, and jumped onto the beach. The pilot, wearing waders, helped us unload our backpacks on the shore, and then quickly took off. We were on our own, in a wild place, with no other party in sight for days, and this was less than two hours from Anchorage by small plane.

We moved away from the lake shore, settling for a grassy flat spot next to a clear stream where we pitched our tents. We had walked with our backpacks less than five minutes to our base camp location. And what a location it was, looking towards the lake colored turquoise by glacial silt, below the tall and jagged Telaquana Mountains. Even the immediate vicinity of the camp presented a myriad of photographic possibilities.

View more images of Lake Clark National Park
View more images of Turquoise Lake

I had first noticed Michael Frye (see his photographs here) for his pioneering light painting nature photographs. I then greatly appreciated his excellent book The Photographer’s Guide to Yosemite (2000). The only thing I wished was that it been available a decade earlier. Priced at a bargain $9.95, the book, published by the Yosemite Association, comes in a handy 5×7 pocket size. In it, Michael gives more precise, useful, and insightful information than I have seen in any other photographic location guide – not only Yosemite guides, all guides. For instance, beyond the time of day and season, he pays attention to details rarely mentioned, such as the variation of the sun angle at a given location during the course of the year. Besides describing 36 different sites in Yosemite, the book includes maps, a calendar of seasonal highlights, and a number of technical tips for photographing specific subjects such as waterfalls. That’s the work of someone who clearly understands his subject inside and out, and knows how to share it.

Given those qualities, I was delighted to have the opportunity to read his two latest instructional texts, which turned out to be quite different and complementary.

***

Digital Landscape Photography: In The Footsteps Of Ansel Adams and the Great Masters (2010) is a 160 page, easily transportable (9×8) paperback book published by Focal Press. It surveys the whole process of landscape photography, from capture to printing. Besides functioning as an instructional text, it provides plenty of inspiration, including many of Michael’s beautiful images, some reproduced full page, as well as a couple images from the masters.

Right from the first chapter, that addresses a number of technical topics including digital image quality, sharpness, filters, it is clear that the text is aimed at the intermediate photographer, who understands how to use the manual mode, but hasn’t mastered capture techniques yet.

This book’s “twist”, the way it distinguishes itself from the multitude of other instructional digital photography books, is trying to show what can be learned from the Ansel Adams working process and how these lessons can be used with digital photography. In the later part of the first chapter, the explanation of metering is tied to the Zone System, making a connection between the histogram and this venerable technique. While I think this has the merit of leading to a greater appreciation of the master’s works, as well as provide a new viewpoint, I am not sure the comparison would be enlightening for someone without experience in traditional photography – probably not the main target of the book.

The second chapter of the book is devoted to light and composition tips. It evokes the masters mostly by quoting their words, while looking at great selection of Michael’s images which are always relevant to the discussion. Since most of his work has been done in Yosemite, the quintessential Ansel Adams stomping grounds, those familiar with the master will recognize the clear influence on his style, even though his images are captured digitally and in color.

The third chapter deals with the digital darkroom. Again, this is not a primer, but instead those who already know how to use Photoshop will benefit from examples of how Michael uses it to apply some of the masters techniques. Without getting bogged down in technical details or tons of screen shots, he demonstrates simply the steps in solving some common problems, such as low and high contrast. I know many photographers friends who would benefit from the exposure blending explanation. Although I am a fairly sophisticated Photoshop user, I still learned one new technique for editable retouching.

The text is concise and information-dense. Michael doesn’t waste one’s time. Like Ansel Adams, he can deliver his insight with few words. While, due to its length, Digital Landscape Photography: In The Footsteps Of Ansel Adams and the Great Masters cannot go into depth about its topics, it succeeds at providing a good overview of the process of landscape photography as a whole. I liked the design and format of the book, which breaks the text in small segments, making it a quick and enjoyable read with great photographic images illustrating the text. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it to any student of landscape photography.

***

Light and Land, Landscapes in the Digital Darkroom (2010), Michael’s latest effort, is a e-book, which can be downloaded as a PDF file from the popular Craft and Vision site of editor David duChemin, for a very affordable price of $5. This e-book concentrates exclusively on the digital processing of landscape images using Lightroom 3. During my trans-Pacific flight from Asia, I found it particularly pleasant to read on the iPad. It was easy to zoom in image details which would have been more difficult to see in print. Although a relatively short 36 pages, the e-book is a principled text rather than just a collection of tips. I see it as two books intertwined into one.

Part of the e-book seeks to explain the vision and thought process behind processing decisions, how to best express the “emotional and aesthetic ideas” that motivated you to take the picture in the first place. This is taught by examples using five images that chosen to encompass a great range of typical nature imagery, both grand and intimate, color and b&w. Although the workflow remains the same, each image requires different things to “squeeze every ounce of beauty, emotion and inspiration”. I greatly enjoyed being able to watch over another professional nature photographer shoulder as he openly shares his decisions on how to process images. I think other seasoned photographers would as well.

Part of the e-book provides a useful tutorial to RAW processing with Lightroom 3. Although short, its introduction makes two interesting points which changed the way I approach Lightroom: the use of the new point curve tool instead of touching multiple adjustment sliders, and the departure from the default settings. The examples are well illustrated, with screen captures showing panel settings and reproducing images at each of the different steps in processing. Since I personally do the bulk of my processing in Photoshop, the e-book enlightened me to the range of possibilities offered by the latest version of Lightroom.

The e-book is a perfect continuation of the previous book, since it provides a complete step-by-step description of the processing (both from a aesthetic and technical point of view) for specific images, while the book showed techniques separately. The fact that it illustrates its point with a different software (Lightroom instead of Photoshop) is an added plus.

In Light and Land, Landscapes in the Digital Darkroom, Michael has achieved a tour de force, writing a no-nonsense, information-packed text that provides a perfect mix of vision and technique, inspiration and instruction, and should provide something for landscape photographers of all levels.

Glacier Bay National Park encompasses fifteen tidewater glaciers that calve icebergs into a vast, Y-shaped marine fjord on the Southeast coast of Alaska. Two hundred years ago, the fjord was still a solid sheet of nearly a mile of ice, but it now includes plant communities ranging from mature spruce and hemlock rainforests, to thinly vegetated areas just recently deglaciated. We reached our destination, a grassy flat near the mouth of McBride Inlet at two in the morning. This was the first day of the ten-day kayak trip. Arnd and I started to paddle at dawn, stopping only to cook dinner on a beach downstream, so the camp would not have bear-attracting smells. After setting up camp, I retreated to my tent, but couldn’t fall asleep. I felt so excited by the possibilities, energized by the lingering half-light of the Alaskan summer. I wandered around the tidal flats until I saw this translucent iceberg lying more than a hundred feet away in the water.

Glacier Bay National Park is centered around the Y-shaped fjord of the same name on the Southeast coast of Alaska. The Bay is sheltered from the ocean by the Fairweather range, the tallest coastal range in the world. Only two hundred years ago, when Captain George Vancouver sailed by its mouth, he saw a solid sheet of nearly a mile of ice. One century later, the glaciers had shrunk back 65 miles, the fastest glacier retreat on record. Southeast Alaska weather is notoriously difficult. Ansel Adams visited in September and didn’t get far because of the rain. The only three well-known images from his visit are a field of grass in the rain, and two close-ups, one of grasses, and the other of a leaf. Since I intended to reach the glaciers for which Glacier Bay is named, and which are its main attraction, I timed my visit for the spring, when the weather is the most favorable. I chose to arrive in May rather than June to see more ice in the fjords, as well as fewer cruise ships.

The only access to Glacier Bay National Park is either by boat or by air. Since I arrived before the main tourist season, Alaska Airlines had not yet started its flights into Gustavus, Glacier Bay’s airport. I flew into Juneau with my two “body bags”, huge army-issued duffel bags that were each large enough to house my wife, and loaded with 70lbs of gear. Fortunately, back in 2001, the airlines did not charge extra for that kind of luggage! I then boarded a short commuter flight for Gustavus, and from there a shuttle to the National Park visitor center, where my partner for this trip was waiting.

I had met Arnd Pralle, a German researcher in physics, after giving a slide show for CHAOS, the UC Berkeley student outdoor club. During the presentation, I mentioned that I was heading for Glacier Bay in a month. Arnd introduced him afterward to ask if he could join. I was glad to have his company because I had no experience paddling a kayak at that point. I had only taken an afternoon clinic in Santa Cruz so that I could tell the concessionaire that I had received instruction – they wouldn’t rent me a kayak for a solo expedition otherwise. Arnd was neither a seasoned kayaker, but he had plenty of experience as a yacht skipper, which would prove useful as the marine environment of the Bay is extremely dynamic, with some of the highest tides – and strongest tidal currents – that I had seen.

The vast majority of visitors to Glacier Bay see the park from a cruise ship. However, from the high deck, one can take only distant images, which do not show a real connection to the land. Moreover, cruise ships are not allowed into the wild Muir Inlet. With a kayak, we hoped to be able to experience the vastness of the bay through a low waterline, observe closely wildlife thanks to our quiet vessel, cross narrow channels and iceberg-chocked passageways not accessible to boats, paddle and land as close to the glaciers as possible, and camp on isolated beaches. The glaciers are at least 50 miles away from the visitor center, but fortunately, the Park operates a day tour boat that can drop off and pickup kayakers. The dropoff points – which change each year – are still a long way from the glaciers, but at least, we wouldn’t have to paddle the lower Bay.

Because of a persistent drizzle, the daybreak felt dark and gloomy. After loading our double kayak onto the tour boat, we gathered our gear into large clear plastic bags to protect it from the rain. Upon dropoff, we stuffed it back into the double kayak. Although one cannot load a large item, such as a large backpack, it is surprising how much you can fit on board if you proceed with a method: food for almost two weeks in bear canisters, a tent each, and three camera systems (35mm for each of us, plus my large format).

Starting to paddle in the late morning, we took our first stop only at dinner time, cooking there so that our final camp would not have bear-attracting smells. We initially expected to stop when it would get dark, but at those latitudes, it doesn’t get dark. We kept paddling, taking advantage of the advancing tide, and of a break in the rain. One more hour, then one more hour … This took us to our destination, a grassy flat near the mouth of McBride Inlet, at 2am. I had spotted that area on the map as a place with great photographic potential because it was located next to a narrow inlet in which the McBride Glacier calves. Besides the direct view of the front of the glacier, I thought that the icebergs originating from the Mc Bride Glacier would likely be stranded in great numbers on the flats near the narrow outlet channel of the inlet – were, by the way, the tidal currents are too strong for paddling.

By the time we had finished setting up camp, it was 3am. It was now a bit too dark to see if my planning was right, but the reflection of the moon over the Muir Inlet was beautiful. After taking a few images, I retreated to my tent. However, I couldn’t go to sleep despite the long day of effort. I felt excited by possibilities and energized by the clear sky and the lingering half-light of the Alaskan summer, that I could see growing brighter outside. The world felt so beautiful and just invited exploration. After being awake for almost 24 hours in this intensely wild and pristine place, I felt myself in a curious state of heightened awareness. I wandered around the tidal flats until I saw a translucent iceberg lying more than a hundred feet away in water. However, the water was very shallow, and I understood that with the fast rate at which the tide was receding, if I waited, it would be totally out of the water. I left my camera bag on the mud, and wadded into the water with just the camera mounted on a tripod, the focusing loupe and dark cloth around my neck, and a film holder in my pocket.

After sleeping in the morning, we would find more great views near the glacier, but those first few images of the trip remain my favorites.

View more images of Glacier Bay National Park
View more images of Mc Bride Inlet

I had a great month in Asia, but I was now feeling eager to get back home. The flight to San Francisco was scheduled as an inconvenient 3.40AM departure from Ho Chi Minh City airport, with a 5 hour stopover in Beijing. When I showed up at the airport at 2.30AM, no activity was taking place. Checking the departure board, I didn’t even see any flight between midnight and 7AM. Outside the terminal, two Chinese men were spreading on a bench. They barely spoke any Vietnamese or English, but after comparing tickets, we concluded that we were on the same flight, which had been delayed until 7.15AM. Since they had checked out from their hotel, they had nowhere to go, with the terminal closed to passengers, but at least I could take the taxi back to my auntie’s house in central Saigon to catch a few hours of sleep.

After less than three hours of flight, the plane from Air China made its final approach. A large city emerged from the haze. The flight was supposed to be direct to Beijing. It could have been Beijing, except that even with my patchy knowledge of Chinese geography, I knew that it was too short of a flight. The airline made no announcements in English, however the attendants told us to exit the plane with our luggage. After a month spent in temperatures upwards of 90 degrees, the outside air felt cold. Despite the temperature in Saigon, I had taken a sweatshirt for the flight, but it was far from enough when I exited the plane to step onto the tarmac. I read the name of the airport, Shenzhen, on the side of the bus.

Inside the terminal, several hundred people were lining up for immigration control. At first, the airline staff had us follow them in a special line, but after some waiting, we were re-directed into the regular line. I began commiserating with a vivacious middle-age woman who was standing in line next to me. It turned out that Tina – this was her name – was also flying to San Francisco. Once we made our way to the booths, the officers did not process us, but instead told us to go and sit in a waiting area with not enough seats, while they would process all the travelers behind us. Only when the line was empty, hundreds of passengers later, did they look at the transit passengers. It wasn’t a casual look: an officer took a good ten minutes examining carefully every page of my passport. I noticed that I was given an additional day in the country. After that we were told to hurry up, since the plane had been waiting for us.

When we made our final approach to Beijing, it was past the boarding time for the next flight segment, but the flight attendant said “no problem”. However, as Tina and I got out of the gate, there was not a single sign (at least in English) pointing to the international connecting flights. The best we could do was to wander towards the baggage claim area. From there, we eventually found a sign for domestic connecting flights, and at last an English-speaking person who could point us to the train leading to the international departure terminal. By the time we got there, our plane had departed. We were told to return to the main terminal, and after some paperwork, to wait for a mini-bus to take us to a hotel for the night – without our checked luggage. Fortunately, we were amongst the first to get on that minibus, since the airline had crammed several more passengers than the number of seats !

After being assigned the room, when I showed up in the lobby for dinner, an hostess asked “delayed flight ?”, and pointed me to a huge dinning room with a small buffet set-up. Missed flights seem to be a frequent problem, maybe due to fact that China requires a visa even for transit passengers. Since I had no problems on my previous trips connecting through Taipei or Seoul, I made a mental note to avoid flights connecting on mainland China in the future.

But for now I had the morning there, and I wanted to make sure to forget the inconvenience and take advantage of the opportunity offered by the “free” stopover. I began plotting a quick visit to the city for the next day. Tina and I found out that we were both Vietnamese, and living just a few miles apart in San Jose. We decided to travel together. My roommate, a man serving with the US Army in Germany, was eager to join us, but since his flight departed mid-day, he preferred not to take the chance. Our flight was in the afternoon, with the shuttle scheduled to take us to the airport at 1PM, so we would have the entire morning. Curiously, although internet was available, the hotel did not provide Wi-Fi. I was glad I had a notebook with a ethernet socket, rather than just the iPad. After downloading the PDF chapter for Beijing from Lonely Planet for $5, I figured it out quickly where to go. The problem would be to get there, be sure to get back in time not to miss our flight for a second time, and, last but not least, how to cope with the 15 degrees F (-9 C) temperature using just a thin sweatshirt. The hotel was located near the airport, therefore an hour from central Beijing, far from any businesses. Although they were nice – in a direct, frank way – only a handful of the staff could speak English.

To make an already long story short, as you can see on this page of pictures of Beijing, we managed to visit both the historic and contemporary centers of the Chinese universe, the Forbidden City and Tianamen Square, and I even squeezed in a few street photographs !

Since there was so little time, it was important to work efficiently and make every image count. Because of my large format work, people sometimes see me as a contemplative photographer, but my extensive experience at locating the “best spot” helped me find varied compositions without wasting time on shots that wouln’t be interesting. I made sure to tell a complete story, including the vastness of the ceremonial courtyards as well as the intricate architectural details, the timeless atmosphere of the ancient palaces, as well as the throngs of Chinese tourists. Although the guidebook advised that several visits are needed to see everything in the Forbidden City, in just one hour, I walked almost the entire half-mile length of the palace, and photographed a good fraction of its main structures that I had researched the night before – not to mention souvenir shots for Tina. Since this was quintessential architectural work, I used the superb 24 TSE-II tilt-shift lens, handheld, for many of the images, resulting in precise images without convergence which to me are more faithful than the vast majority of photographs taken in that place. We were running most of the time, but would you have been able to tell by looking at the pictures ?

One of the most recently designated National Parks, Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park preserves the most dramatic section of the canyon of the Gunnison River in Colorado.

Unlike other canyons in the Southwest which were carved into soft rock, extremely hard metamorphic rock form the walls of the Black Canyon of the Gunnison. Combined with the steep descent of the Gunnison River (43 feet per mile, versus 8 feet per mile for the Colorado in the Grand Canyon), this has created a canyon with a unique combination of depth (2000 feet) and narrowness (1200 feet from the two rims, 40 feet at the river at the narrowest point).

Both rims of the Black Canyon feature numerous overlooks, each with their own character. After touring them, my favorites were either those with rectilinear views of the Canyon which help show its depth, or those close to the Painted Wall, the highest cliff in Colorado, 2250 feet high. In early May, on the less developped North Rim, I just saw a few other visitors.

Although I am used to exposure on sheer cliffs, standing at the edge often made me feel slightly dizzy. Such is the verticality of the canyon. Each of those overlooks were spectacular, but I also wanted to experience that verticality more directly by hiking down to the river and to look for a more unusual view. The Park Service warns that hiking the inner canyon is a wilderness experience, with “extremely difficult, steep, and unmarked routes”. They require a wilderness use permit even for day trips. Since the North Rim Ranger Station was still closed for the season, I just filled-up a self-registration form.

After parking at the Balanced Rock Overlook, I found the descent for the Long Draw route walking northeast to the bend in the road. Past a small area of trees at the rim, the gully to the river became quickly very steep with a vertical drop of 1800 feet in only a mile. Although there was no trail, the route was obvious, as it followed the narrow gully. However, because the terrain was rather treacherous, with loose rock and a few short ledges to downclimb, it took me an hour and half to cover the short distance.

The canyon is so deep and narrow that the sun reaches the bottom only during a short window of time around noon. For most of the day, the walls remain in the shade, which make the canyon look “black”. I made only a few stops for photos, as I planned to take more time on the way up, and try not to miss the window of light. The walls kept looming above more and more, and the sound of the river grew louder.

I reached the swiftly-moving river. The feeling of wilderness was intense, as I hadn’t seen anyone since leaving the road. The position, next to the roaring river, below the towering cliffs, was awe-inspiring. Yet although I had chosen the Long Draw route (without speaking to a ranger) because it looked like it went down into one of the narrowest parts of the canyon, I couldn’t find a composition that conveyed this sense of a very narrow and deep gorge. I thought that this was because from where I was standing, the opposite canyon walls did not overlap enough, but the terrain limited the possibilities to move around. Instead, I emphasized the river in my photographs, both upstream and downstream, trying compositions with and without the sky.

On this hike, I was using for the first time a lighter and smaller Gitzo series 1 tripod, instead of the series 2 that I normally carry. Although it provided adequate support even for the 5×7 camera, I wasn’t too pleased about its shorter height and smaller footprint. It turns out this was the last time I would use it. Getting ready for the hike up, I strapped the tripod to my backpack and shouldered it. The tripod flew instantly down into the raging rapids. Being shorter than the one I normally use, it wasn’t well secured with my normal strap. I didn’t even think for a moment about trying to retrieve it.

It happened so fast I didn’t have time to regret the expensive piece of equipment. However I regretted not being able to photograph some of the compositions I had spotted on the way down. I was eager to get back to my car – and the other tripod, without which my heavy large format camera was useless. Climbing up without stopping, I made it back in less time than it took me to go down.

From a photography point of view, the hike was not as successful as I had hoped, but I was happy to have experienced the inner canyon. As a few ray of lights began to shine from holes in the dark storm clouds, I hurried back to the Narrows Views overlook. The river, so mighty just two hours ago, now looked so small viewed from the rim.

View more images of Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park
View more River Level images of Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park

I wish everyone a year 2011 full of happiness, health, and success. My sincere thanks for your continuing readership and interest in my photography.

I’ve done quite a few trips to Florida in the past. Each time I concentrated on natural locations in South Florida. They are certainly exceptional, but represent only a portion of what the state has to offer. On my last trip to Florida, this October, I remedied this unbalance by visited mostly cities. I went to some unique sights, including the oldest city in the United States, St Augustine, the largest collection of Art Deco architecture in the world in Miami Beach, not to mention the world largest and most visited theme park, Disney World in Orlando. It was enough of a challenge not to loose the kids in the crowds there, but I still managed to squeeze in some images. If you like to photograph fireworks, this is the place to go. They are fired each night, the pyrotechnics are some of the best I have seen, and the illuminated castle with changing colors makes a beautiful and unique foreground. Check my page of photos of Orlando to see some examples.