The Terra Galleria Blog – QT Luong

It’s been a month since I arrived in Vietnam. In the evening, I remark again, on the street where I am staying, a construction field of the size of exactly one townhouse width, between two standing houses. The ground is covered with rubble from a recently demolished building. This is a site that I have already photographed a few weeks ago. Back then, the street vendors active in the area had watched me, wondering what I could be taken a picture of. After seeing the photo on the LCD, they commented that although this a ugly sight, the picture is beautiful. I had felt so rewarded by the appreciation of the men and women of the street.

Today, among the rubble, a small group of workers are sitting around a tiny plastic table, apparently eating. Although I have decided for my last day in Saigon not to make any photographs, the scene is so visually striking that I cannot help but stop to have an extended stare. The construction workers notice me, and motion for me to join them. A plastic chair is pulled.

They are in fact having rounds of shots. The liquor is quite strong. As I am quite sensitive to alcohol, after three rounds, I manage to excuse myself. In the while, most passing tourists stop to snap a photo of the scene. Everybody seems to be happy that I can speak Vietnamese with them. I am given warm accolades and even kisses as I announce that I’ll most likely be back in half a year.

Of the Lonely Planet list of “top ten” experiences in Vietnam, I was missing the round of drinks in a bar. I guess this will do. What I liked so much here is being an inside outsider, or maybe an outside insider ?

Kenai Fjords National Park, like many other Alaskan parks, is a place of superlatives. Its centerpiece, the Harding field, is the largest ice field in North America, covering more than half of the park. At some places, the thickness exceeds a mile.

Unlike other Alaska parks, one section of the park can be easily reached. After my extended backcountry adventure in Gates of the Arctic National Park, the complicated logistics of Denali National Park, not to mention Wrangell St Elias, I was feeling ready for a easier trip.

I drove the Exit Glacier Road just a few miles out of the town of Seward. Although the signs there pointed out to winter travel by snowmobiles and skis, in September, it looked like the snow season was still far way, making access through the 9 mile, well paved road, a breeze. From the Nature Center, a half-mile, flat trail (also paved !) lead through a cottonwood forest to a panoramic vista of Exit Glacier. Along the trail signs indicated the date at which the front of the glacier reached that particular position. I was surprised to see how recent those dates were, even though the ice looked quite a distance away.

From the glacier viewpoint, the trail branched to two areas of that offer a closer view of the glacier. The trail to the Edge of the Glacier took me near walls of ice. After the sun had disappeared, in the late afternoon, the soft light helped reveal the delicate shades of blue of the ice.

I returned early in the morning the next day, easily hiking the short distance in the dark. I stopped at a small glacial pond that I had spotted the day before, thinking that it would provide interesting reflections when the first rays of sun would hit the front of the glacier. I was pleased to see that it was now frozen with delicately textured ice on its surface adding more interest to the image as two types of ice temporary existed together.

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View more images of Exit Glacier

Wrangell Saint Elias National Park is a park of enormous size, even larger than Gates of the Arctic National Park. At 13.2 million acres (528 thousand squares kilometers), it is six times the size of Yellowstone, and larger than Switzerland. While the Brooks Range mountains that lie in Gates of the Arctic are of modest elevation, Wrangell Saint Elias National Park includes 9 of the 16 highest mountains in the US. Immense glaciers descend from those mountains, such as the Malaspina which alone is the size of Yellowstone.

The park is so vast that many are just content of photographing it from the air, but I wanted to create a large format image that showed some of the Park’s vast glaciers. The scenic Mc Carthy road posed no particular problem for my rental compact car, despite the fact that the car rental companies prohibit driving there. I parked at the footbridge at the end of the road, crossed the bridge on foot, then hitched a ride to the impressive abandoned old copper mining town of Kennecott, situated right above the glacier of the same name. After visiting the ghost town, I hiked to a campsite 1.4 miles north of town to spend the night.

I planned to spend the next few days climbing Donoho Peak, a mountain which lies like an island between the Kennicott and Root glaciers. The first day, I crossed the Root glacier. Since the ice was not snow-covered, there was no danger of falling into a crevasse after a snow bridge collapse, yet navigating around the crevasses and glacial streams proved somehow tricky. The ice was not slippery most of the time, but at one point I had to put my crampons on to tackle more steep slopes. As I was making many photographs along the way, the glacier crossing took a whole day. I set up a base camp at the base of Donoho Peak.

On the second day, I proceeded up the steep scree slopes of Donoho Peak. As I arrived at the top in late afternoon, I was disappointed to notice that the air was extremely hazy, due to distant forest wildfires. The backlit light over the Wrangell range was also not favorable. Although I didn’t carry my sleeping gear with me, having left it at base camp, I decided to spend the night there, in order to capture a hopefully better photograph in the morning. I had my stove with me (an habit left over from my alpine days), so I was able to melt some snow to make water and cook myself a hot meal. I then rearranged rocks to make a flat surface and shelter myself against the wind, slipped my legs into my backpack, covered myself with a survival blanket, and settled for a rather cold Alaskan mountaintop night.

I wasn’t too lucky with sunrise for which I had been waiting, as low clouds blocked the light. Since I didn’t sleep too well during the night, I drifted back to sleep in the warmer temperatures. Eventually, in the early morning, with the clouds parting, the light got brighter. Upon waking up for good, I was rewarded by a commanding view. As I had hoped, the summit of Donoho Peak provided me with a viewpoint which made it possible to picture the sheer size of the glaciers and the Wrangell Range.

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View more images taken from Mt Donoho

I am honored to report that my Yosemite Winter Sunset photo has been displayed continuously on the home page of the National Park Service for a year and half. The first screen shot is from June 2009, the second screen shot from Oct 2010. You may be able to date them using the headlines.

Ansel Adams photographed many times from this viewpoint, as can be seen for example in his book “American Wilderness” and the centennial retrospective “Ansel Adams at 100”. It is the spot where I felt in love with Yosemite. No matter how hard I looked around for a less photographed view, I could not find a viewpoint that captured the “essence” of the Valley better. I felt that Ansel Adams “owned” the view so much that I consider my images made there an homage. However, even when using one of his most often repeated compositions, I still sought a distinctive photograph. An obvious way to differentiate my photographs from his would be to fully use color. That means not merely making a color version of a black and white photograph, but designing the photograph around color, making one that would not work in black and white. I thought about ways to maximize the color contrast. Since the Yosemite granite walls are gray, the most color contrast would be found at sunset between the yellow/orange illuminated cliff tops and the valley bottom, which would turn blue because of the open shade conditions. Blue and orange are opposite colors. Most evenings, the valley bottom would be too dark, but I pre-visualized that fog in the bottom would lighten the valley bottom and enhance the blue tint. One evening, as I was in the Valley, I noticed the fog forming and a hole in the clouds on the western horizon. I rushed to Tunnel View, and here was the image, almost a decade and a hundred visits after I first set foot in Yosemite. A great reward for perseverance!

The first 46 National Parks I went to were relatively easy to visit. In fact, I have always found one of the big draws of the US National Parks was how easily one can access such pristine and magnificent scenery. The last ten include some seriously remote locations. This post features what is possibly the most challenging of the 58 parks to visit. It was such an adventure that I have written a more detailed account of that Gates of the Arctic backpacking trip. At the time this was written, in 2001, there were not much published information available about the area, so I had included in the logistical details in the write-up, in the hopes that they would be useful to those planning their own adventure there. This post is a shorter introduction to this wild area.

Gates of the Arctic National Park is one of the largest protected wilderness areas of the world, four times the size of Yellowstone, almost the same size as the entire country of Switzerland.

After flying from San Francisco to Anchorage, and then Fairbanks, we caught a commuter flight into Bettles, the gateway to Gates of the Arctic National Park. As it names implies, this is the routine way to get to Bettles, since the frontier town cannot be reached by road in summer. This was clearly going to be the same for the park. From Bettles, we chartered a floatplane who dropped us off at Circle Lake, inside Gates of the Arctic National Park.

After the plane took off, my friend and I were on our own. With no trails inside the park, we had to find and earn our way, step by step, into the vast tundra. My backpack weighted close to 70lbs (30 kg), with about 25lbs of camera gear and film, nine days of food, and 28 lbs of gear to survive in the harsh conditions found above the Arctic Circle – we found one morning the tent covered with snow in August. Our objective for this trip was the Arrigetch Peaks area, a place of gothic black granite spires and pinnacles considered to be one of the most beautiful mountains inside the vast Brooks Range.

After two days of backpacking along the Arrigetch Creek, we caught our first good sight of one of the most striking group of peaks in the area, called the Maidens. They were obscured by the clouds most of the time, but the few time they revealed themselves made it all the more rewarding, as I was able to picture them reaching for the clouds above one of the most stark mountain landscapes I have seen.

Read detailed account of Gates of the Arctic trip, plus logistics details to help plan your own adventure

More images of Gates of the Arctic National Park

I thought that the alpine gardens of Paradise were hard to surpass in terms of beautiful vegetation in the summer, when they are covered with an incredibly thick wildflower display. After a new visit last fall, I am no longer sure which season I prefer in the park. While the flower carpets cover lot of the sub-alpine floor, the berry plants cover almost all of it. While the flowers offer diverse color accents, the shades of yellow, oranges, and reds found on the floor are also astonishing.

Although the sub-alpine meadow color is the most spectacular, at the lower elevations, there are also some fine displays of color to be found. My favorite was Stevens Canyon, where the steep slopes offer compositions different from the gentle slopes of Paradise.

View more images of Mount Rainier National Park fall foliage

Located in South Carolina just a half-hour’s from its capital Columbia, Congaree National Park preserves the largest remaining old-growth bottomland forest in North America.

The easy 2.4 mile boardwalk loop trail is an obvious choice for an introduction to the park, offering diverse perspectives, and natural environments. It begins on the bluff where the visitor center is built. The first section is elevated as much as 6 feet above the forest floor, while the second section rests on the forest floor. The benches along the way provided a perfect place where I paused to enjoy the tranquility of the primeval forest.

Looking overhead, I noticed the height of the canopy. Because of the periodic flooding and deep fertility of the alluvial soils, the floodplain is home to bald cypress, tupelo and other trees growing to unusually large size. I learned from the interpretative signs that this was one of the world’s tallest temperate forest canopies, averaging over 100 feet high, and including two dozen champion trees.

As on my first visit, the place was named “Congaree Swamp National Monument”, so I was surprised to see the floodplain quite dry. One spot where I found water in abundance was Weston Lake, a abandoned channel of the Congaree River. There, I was able to photograph trees growing out of the water, the natural sight that I associate the most with the American South. I stepped out of the boardwalk to find positions that maximized the amount of reflections of the trees into the dark waters, while minimizing the brights spots caused by the sky.

Read the interview (PDF) that appeared in The State, South Carolina’s largest newspaper, on the occasion of my visit to the redesignated National Park.

More images of Congaree National Park
More images of Weston Lake

Mount Rainier dominates the surrounding landscape like no other mountain in America. The ice-capped volcano is visible from more than 100 miles away. However, the mountain is so big that it creates its own weather, often hiding in the clouds when everywhere else is clear. During my last trip to Mount Rainier National Park, I saw the mountain for only a few hours.

This let me concentrate on closer subjects which are easy to overlook, as the mountain is so prominent. Although the rain forests in the park are not as impressive as those on the Olympic Peninsula, they are nevertheless very lush.

I found Comet Falls to be one of the most beautiful waterfalls in the Park. While it is only 1.9 miles to the falls from the trailhead (ten miles from the Nisqually Entrance), the elevation gain is almost 1500 feet. I found the trail to be very pleasant, as it follows the cascading stream, in and out of a beautiful forest. This was a perfect hike for a rainy day. At 300 feet tall, Comet Falls is quite impressive, but what makes it stand out are its three tiers. I first took a general view from a viewpoint overlooking the falls. Then, I moved lower in order to align the three tiers more tightly. I eventually scrambled above the lower tier to get closer to the water flowing from the middle tier. Although that lower tier is no longer visible, I feel that the flowing water and stronger perspective added dynamism to the image. What do you think ?

More images of the trail to Comet Falls

Virgin Islands National Park protects a significant part of the Caribbean island of St John, the most relaxed, preserved, and affluent of the US Virgin Islands.

Since there are no airports on St John, to travel to this lush tropical paradise, I flew into St Thomas, then took a ferry to St John. There, after renting a car, I was surprised to see that on St John, you drive on the left side of the road, like in Japan, UK, Australia, and some other British Commonwealth countries, but unlike on those countries, the car is built for driving on the right, with the driver seat is on the left ! Supposedly the reason for that is to let the driver see the edge of the road better, as many of them in the island are quite narrow and bordered by steep cliffs. The resulting confusion (and night blindness as lights are angled at you) made driving alone quite an adventure. I was glad that the speed limit was 20mph, quite fitting for such a relaxed place.

For my first stop, I headed to Trunk Bay. I had to find out why the beach is consistently rated as one of the top ten beaches in the world, even named at one point by National Geographic as the beautiful beach in the world.

With such a reputation, the beach was extremely popular as expected. It included excellent amenities such as showers, restrooms, snack bar and gift shop, lifeguards, shaded picnic areas, which I understand count quite a bit in the a “best beach” rating by travel magazines. The white sand, turquoise clear water, steep surrounding forested slopes with coconut palms, and small offshore islets made it indeed “picture perfect”, except that the beach is quite crowded and too straight in its middle.

However, I found images at both ends. At the east end, after scrambling on rocks, I spotted some cactus for foregrounds. At the west end, because of the walking distance, I found fewer people and a small curving cove with some rocks. Photographing towards the main section of the beach to emphasize its length, the beachgoers were quite small in the photographs.

To cool down, I got into the water to check out the unique underwater snorkeling trail. The trail consists of a series of underwater signs providing environmental information and identifying some of the flora and fauna of the coral reef. After relaxing a bit, I had to get back to work. I went back in the water with my Nikonos underwater camera, and tried to capture the schools of tropical fish and the coral. Maybe because of the popularity of the area, the reef environment was not exceptional, but yet it was a perfect way to use the high noon sun. While landscape images often benefit from the low angle of the sun, underwater images need the sun rays to penetrate under the surface, which does not happen when the sun is low.

In the late afternoon, people began to leave the beach. I drove back to an overlook situated West of the beach. The higher perspective made it possible to see clearly the whole bay, beach, and islets. As the shadows on this north-facing beach were distracting, I waited for the light to become more even, after the sun had set. The beach was now empty. After making a few exposures, I lingered there to enjoy the quietness of the moment, planning to return there at sunrise to have the place for myself again.

View more images of Virgin Islands National Park
View more images of Trunk Bay

My second goal in visiting North Cascades National Park was to photograph some fall foliage there, especially since I had photographed fall foliage in each corner of the US, except in the North West.

The first source of fall foliage color I found on that trip was provided by maple trees, in particular vine maples that can turn a bright orange not often seen on the West Coast (and California in particular). I found a few pockets of those trees along the Cascade River Road. The rain was falling all day. This made it a bit difficult to work, but it provided a perfectly soft light. The wetness of the leaves enhanced the colors, once a polarizing filter was used to reduce the glare. For fall foliage forest photography, I’ll take rain over sunny weather any day. I looked for mossy boulders to include in the compositions. Their electric-green color complemented well the orange-red of the leaves.

At those northern latitudes, there is a more impressive source of fall foliage color. Berry plants blanket the sub-alpine elevations, and can turn whole mountain slopes crimson when the conditions are right. Normally, late September would be have been a good time to witness this event in the North Cascades, but it appears that the fall colors were late this year. Instead of looking for large autumn landscapes, I sought intimate scenes in the forest. After covering a lot of terrain, on the fifth, and last day of my visit, I eventually ran on a beautiful patch in the forest with a variety of reds and yellows. The foggy weather was just perfect for that scene, and the dark spruce trees added to the color contrast.

More images of North Cascades National Park Fall Colors