The Terra Galleria Blog – QT Luong

Sequoia National park is named after the trees it protects, the giant sequoias, the largest trees on earth. The heart of Sequoia National Park is the Giant Forest, an area of just 3 square miles that include dozens of sequoia groves, amongst them General Sherman tree, the most massive living thing on earth. While there are other areas of the park dense with sequoia groves, none is as easily accessible.

Because of that, the area around General Sherman can see heavy visitation, particularly in the summer. Moreover, several trees there (including the General Sherman) are fenced. However, a walk around the Congress Trail (easy 2 mile paved loop), which starts at the General Sherman tree, will let you get away from most of the crowds, and discover many other equally impressive and more approachable trees. Those include a number of photogenic clusters (the House group and the Senate group) and other presidential trees. In particular, a side trail offers a good view of the McKinley tree. Huge fallen logs and a stream can also be seen. For an even more peaceful setting, try some of the other trails that connect to the Congress Trail.

The sequoia trees are so tall that they are difficult to photograph. From the ground, I found out only two possible approaches: either point the camera up to capture the whole trees with wild converging lines, or try to capture only the base of the trees, maintaining their parallelism with a perspective control (shift) lens. The first approach works in a range of conditions, including a sunny day, a day with thick fog, and at night, while for the second approach I prefer the softer, but directional light of dawn or dusk that will reveal the texture of the bark. If you have other ideas, please comment !

Protecting most of the Olympic Peninsula, Olympic National Park comprises three regions: the Olympic Mountains, Pacific coastline, and temperate rain forest. Located in an area notorious for its wet weather, situated near the coast, and near high mountains, the western forests of Olympic National Park receive receive annual precipitation of about 150 inches, making them the wettest spot in the continental United States. Saturated with rains, everything is covered with living plants, making those forests luxuriant and primeval.

The two main rain forests are Hoh and Quinault. Of the two, Quinault is the quietest, maybe because it is further from Port Angeles, the gateway to the Park for most visitors. Hoh has more mosses, however the undergrowth at Quinault is more rich, and there are more streams and cascades.

To explore the rain forest, hike the fairly short Maple Glade, Cascading Terraces, and Irely Lake trails. An interesting sight in the area is the Big Cedar, reached through a very short trail 2.0 miles up the North Shore Road from hwy 101. A little known fact, Quinault features the largest trees in the world outside of California. For waterfalls, you can start on a trail at the Graves Creek Campground and hike towards the Enchanted Valley and turn back when you run out of time. One day I’ll have to return to all the 13 miles, leading to a valley that I’ve been told is one of the most beautiful you’ll ever see.

Heavy rains drench the forest in the winter and early spring. In late spring, the vegetation is at its lushest, and frequent cloudy days make it easier to photograph in the forest.

Redwood National Park protects a forty mile long stretch of foggy California coastline, home to the earth’s tallest plants, the giant redwood trees. The national park is made up a patchwork of state parks. Situated in Del Norte Coast Redwoods State Park, the Damnation Creek Trail is unique in that it lets you experience both a rich virgin redwood forest environment and a isolated black beach in a cove with sea stacks offshore. You are sure to find a measure of solitude and tranquility in those ancient forests, and on the coastline.

To find the trailhead, drive 8 miles from Crescent City along hwy 101, to a marked small pull-out area on the west side of the road, near mile marker 16. The trail is 5 miles round-trip, with 1000 feet of elevation loss, that you’ll have to climb on the way back.

Even if you do not hike all the way to the Ocean, the beginning of the trail offers one of the most beautiful redwood forest environments in the park. Giant ferns carpet the forest floor. The hilly character of the trail and its witswitchbacks offers you more varieties of compositions than the flat forest trails.

If you visit during the last weeks of May or the first weeks of June, you will be treated with pink and purple rhododendron blossoms that climb high overhead. That particular section of Del Norte Coast Redwoods is only one in three of Redwood National Park where such blossoms can be found in great density. They create a wonderful accent amongst the dark woods, popping up on a foggy day. I have found that the more fog in those forests, the better the photography. Fortunately, as fog is the frequent visitor that allows the redwoods to thrive, if you stay a couple of days, you’ll likely to encounter some.

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I’ve posted new images of Zion National Park from 2008. I was with my family, and the conditions were not particularly favorable, with no atmospheric drama, the vegetation still bare (this was late March), but the snow long gone. Yet I found a few new images on that trip.

Hiking the Riverside walk (no Narrows this time), I noticed for the first time the “Desert Swamp”. I guess on my previous trip, on the way to the Narrows, I was too much in a hurry, while on the way out, it was just dark.

Lacking landmarks besides the Checkboard Mesa, as well as designated trails, the Zion Plateau offers many possibilities to make your own discoveries by scrambling cross-country. We found a small wash where the walls have been sculptured by water like some of the better known slot canyons.

The lone pine on a swirl is a subject well-known to photographers, one that I had photographed in the past on two occassions. On this visit, a half moon invited me to try a new angle, which I found emphasized the bonsai-like quality of the tree.

Glacier National Park preserves a part of the Northern Rockies that belongs to one of the most intact mountain ecosystems in America, where grizzlies, wolves, moose, mountain goats, and big horn sheep still roam. The heart of this environment is easily accessible from June to mid-October. During those months, you can drive the Going-To-The-Sun road, an engineering marvel that takes you above treeline, crossing the Continental Divide at Logan Pass, 6646ft (2025m).

Almost all the visitors to Glacier National Park stop at Logan Pass, and you should too. After only a mile and half on an easy trail (starting as a up hill boardwalk, then leveling off), you reach the Hidden Lake Overlook, amidst stunning alpine scenery in all directions.

Although the view of the deep glacial valley, lake, and Bearhead Mountain is certainly spectacular, the light can be difficult to work there. You will be pointing the camera towards the SW, so the mountain would be backlit starting from the afternoon. Because the lake is in a deep depression surrounded by tall mountains, it is in the shade in early morning and late afternoon. I have not tried myself to photograph the location in those conditions, but I guess that with proper contrast control methods (grad filters or HDR) an early morning view could work fine. For a late afternoon view (which would also require contrast control), I’d crop out Bearhead Mountain and instead focus on the peaks South and East of the lake. With an additional 3 hours, you could try to follow the trail to the edge of the lake to seek other viewpoints.

Even if the Overlook views do not work for you, on your way to the overlook, you will walk along alpine meadows covered in July with wildflowers, and surrounded with distinctive looking peaks. Numerous streams and cascades can be found. After you reach the level section of the trail, you will most likely come to close distance with mountain goats. They are so unafraid of visitors, you can often use a wide-angle to include them in the scenery. That’s the only place in the National Parks that I know where you can reliably approach those animals at such close distance.

Have you been to Logan Pass ? What did you think ? If you have memories to share, please comment below. Feel free to link to your own image galleries if you have photographed there, especially if you managed to get nice landscape images !

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View more images taken from Hidden Lake Trail

“Treasured Lands”, my series of 58 large format images of the National Parks (one for each park) is on exhibit at the National Heritage Museum in Lexington, MA. The exhibition opened on Feb 20 and will run through Oct 17, 2010.

I will deliver a Lowell Lecture about the project at the Museum on Sunday March 14 at 2pm. There will be also a Gallery walk (given by the museum staff that I will brief personally) on Sunday March 21 at 2pm.

I’ve posted new images of Bryce Canyon National Park. That park presents the photographer with a dream and a challenge. It offers one of the most striking sights anywhere, the hoodoos of the Bryce Amphitheater, but once you’ve photographed them, what else new can you do ?

On my last visit, in 2008 (my 4th) I tried three ideas: (a) working with a particular reflected light that I had noticed, but not captured on previous trips (b) hiking more extensively below the rim (c) exploring more locations outside of the Amphitheater.

The most interesting was the area around Mossy Cave, which had many natural openings. My previous visit to the cave itself was in November, when the ice stalactites were quite thin (and more photogenic). In this late March visit, I was surprised to find them quite thick. After that first visit, since I had exited the main park road, I assumed that I was no longer in the park, so I labeled Mossy Cave incorrectly for years, before eventually realizing that it is part of Bryce Canyon National Park. It’s well worth checking out to see something different and out of the mainstream sites.

Established in 1872, Yellowstone National Park is America’s first national park. Although Yellowstone preserves a large terrain with varied resources such as mountains ranges, lakes, rivers, waterfalls, canyons, and large wildlife, it was created and is mostly known for geothermal features. There are as many of them in Yellowstone than in the rest of the world combined. With that many geysers and hot springs to choose from, it can be difficult to know where to photograph.

While a visit to Yellowstone must include Old Faithful, the most popular geyser in the world, and its Upper Geyser Basin, as far as to the colorful Morning Glory Pool, I’ll highlight here two other favorite less known locations in the park further up the road to Madison.

The Grand Prismatic Spring is the largest hot springs in the US (third in the world). While you look from the outside at the hot springs in the Lower Geyser Basin, here a boardwalk let you step right onto the springs for great wide-angle compositions. Pigmented bacteria grow in the mineral-rich water. As each bacterium has its own color, and the temperature of the water favors one bacterium over another, the springs is a rainbow of colors.

If you’re into aerial photography, that would be the place to fly over. A straight down aerial image of the springs reveals its size, structure, and colors like no others. Alternatively you could hike up the hill for a view from above. You cannot get there from the springs, the trail head is about a mile down the road. However, the springs would be a bit far (telephoto needed to isolate features of the spring), the angle quite oblique, and some trees are in the way (incorporate them into your composition).

The Great Fountain Geyser, as implied by its name, is a fountain-type geyser, which means that it erupts through a pool of water in a series of bursts. This travertine-decorated pool of water makes for great reflections, certainly more interesting than the dry terrain around Old Faithful. The western ridgeline behind the geyser is quite low, so if you are lucky, you could shoot the sun setting right behind the geyser. Intervals between eruptions range from 9 to 15 hours, thus you’ll need to find the predicted times for eruption at the Visitor Center near Old Faithful. Once you have them, it’s not that difficult to catch, as the prediction times are generally accurate to within one or two hours, and the eruption lasts between one and two hours. Great Fountain Geyser has also the distinction of being the only geyser that can be observed from your car, which makes waiting in inclement weather easier.

A dozen of my images from Vietnam are on display in the ISSI Carnavale exhibit at the Northeastern University’s Gallery360 from February 22 to March 20, 2010.

I was not able to attend the opening, however, I will give a lecture, scheduled at 3:00 pm on Friday, March 12th.

In Vietnamese, the same word is used for “country” and “water”. In this series, I explore the relationship of people’s lives with water through images from thirteen different sites spanning the whole country.

I’ll update that post with installation pictures when available.

Among all the mountains in America, the Grand Tetons – rocky, jagged, and abruptly rising seven thousand feet above the valley of Jackson Hole – remind me the most of the Alps, on the high peaks where I had my first life-changing wilderness experiences that inspired me to become a photographer.

With many lakes laying in the valley, there are quite a few choices for photographing the Teton range reflected, but some are a bit too close, while others are a bit too far. The body of water which yields the best reflections is a modest pond, called the Schwabacher Landing. To reach it, watch for Schwabacher road, a dirt road 4 miles north of Moose Junction on hwy 191, and follow it to the end. Then walk a short distance along the river until you see a spot to your liking.

You will be shooting straight west. Since this is considered by some to be one of the most beautiful mountain scenes in America, many gather there for sunrise. A grad filter helps to brighten the reflection, but even though, I find that without clouds above the mountain (more likely in summer), the scene looks a bit flat because of the lack of cross-lighting.

You sometimes read that landscape photographers should just take a nap at mid-day, as the light is “bad” (this will be the subject of a future blog post), however, after photographing the scene at dawn and sunrise, I made sure to come back for a mid-day shot. I positioned the reflection better, since I had missed a better spot while setting up in a hurry before dawn, anticipating that the contrast of the cloudless sunrise would be to high. More importantly, the cross-lighting brings more relief to the mountains, and the polarization angle makes the autumn colors shine brightly. The enduring popularity of the resulting image (more on that later too) would seem to contradict that “golden rule” of landscape photography.

More images of Grand Teton National Park