The Terra Galleria Blog – QT Luong

Part 1 of 3: 1 | 2 | 3 One of the most mesmerizing spectacles of nature you will witness is glowing lava cascading into the ocean to form new land in front of your eyes, as clouds of steam rise from the dynamic meeting of fire and water. This winter, I traveled to the [...]

In South Korea, I had stayed at hostels and at a “love motel”. In the fishing village of Seongsang Ilchulbong, I was going to try a third category of accommodation, a “minbak”: room for rent in a private home. Arriving quite late after hiking Mt Halassan, disoriented after getting out of the bus, I called [...]

On the occasion of a return to Lexington, I walked the Freedom Trail and the Black Heritage Trail in Boston, before taking again a trip to Acadia National Park – for a third consecutive year. While in Acadia, as I was getting ready to set-up a time-lapse, I downloaded hurriedly a 32GB memory card on [...]

The Na Pali Coast, on the North Shore of Kauai has some of the most spectacular coastal scenery anywhere, with the the grandest fluted coastal cliffs in all the Hawaiian Islands. Because of its steepness the Na Pali Coast is entirely roadless. Besides boat and helicopter, the only way to see the Na Pali Coast [...]

Even more so than for landscapes, many photographers prefer to shoot seascapes at sunrise and sunset. I see two main reasons: to get more color (enhanced by the open horizon and water reflections) and to capture water motion through a longer exposure. Thinking about it, I saw no reason a beautifully flowing seascape could not [...]

The weather system that produced interesting clouds over the crater summit continued to hang over the coast. I was hoping to do some night photography, but when I got up two hours before sunrise, it was pitch dark, with the stars totally obscured by dense cloud cover. I crawled down to the beach and set [...]

Most visitors to Haleakala National Park visit the Haleakala Crater, however the Park extends down from the summit to the ocean, reaching it in a small, but interesting area called Kipahulu. Instead of driving from the summit to Kipahulu through the Hana Coast, this time I tied the more direct, but seldom-traveled route through the [...]

For a change from working in the rain in Hawaii Volcanoes NP, I drove to South Point, the southern tip of the island of Hawaii. The access to Papakolea Beach consisted of a maze of badly rutted vehicle tracks, along the coast, alternatively sandy and rocky. A four wheel drive was definitively necessary. Hiking would [...]

The National Park of American Samoa is located in the South Pacific, in the Southern Hemisphere, right in the center of Polynesia, making it the most remote of the 58 National Parks. Its slightly different name (not “American Samoa National Park”) reflects on its status: The National Park of American Samoa is situated on a [...]

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 [...]