Posted on October 4, 2012, 8:55 am, by QT Luong, under
Announcements.
Summer 2012 issue of Black Card Mag (the luxury lifestyle magazine for holders of the exclusive credit cards for the 1%) opened with a 24-page travel feature about the US National Parks. Yellowstone, Olympic, Arches, Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Rocky Mountain, Crater Lake, Denali, Glacier, and Everglades are introduced with a brief description, not-to-miss highlight, and […]
Posted on September 5, 2012, 11:18 am, by QT Luong, under
Locations.
Big Bend National Park, named after the prominent northward bend in the Rio Grande River, has three distinctive environments: the Chisos Mountains, the desert, and the river. During my previous visit, I spent most of my time in the Chisos Mountains, where the temperatures are much cooler than in the rest of the park. Since […]
Posted on August 30, 2012, 11:47 am, by QT Luong, under
Locations.
I saw a few cactus blooms from the trail in Guadalupe National Park. Although they were less than a hundred yards away, it took me more than 15 minutes to reach them, because of thorny plants covering the slope. Returning with plenty of scratches, I decided that I’d put more effort into photographing desert plants […]
Posted on August 24, 2012, 5:08 pm, by QT Luong, under
Locations.
During my two previous visits to Carslbad Caverns, more than a decade ago, I took the elevator to get quickly to the most scenic section of the Cavern, the Big Room. This time, I walked down from the Natural Entrance. I tried to make images to illustrate the experience of visiting the cave: the cavernous […]
Posted on August 9, 2012, 11:00 am, by QT Luong, under
Locations.
On the day I photographed the solar eclipse, I hiked for more than six hours (considering the morning scouting session) and did not return to the car until 11pm. My initial plan was therefore to take a rest day, photographing the desert plants near the visitor center, and in particular the cactus which were starting […]
Posted on August 2, 2012, 6:55 pm, by QT Luong, under
Locations.
The May 20 2012 solar eclipse was to be an “annular eclipse”, which occurs when the Moon passes directly in front of the sun, but the lunar disk is too far from the earth to cover the entire sun. This leaves a “ring of fire” with the full brightness of the sun around the black […]
Posted on July 7, 2012, 10:47 am, by QT Luong, under
Locations.
In this post, I am sharing my favorite high-country hike in Yosemite. On that rugged, but short Yosemite backcountry loop, you’ll reach the Sierra Crest, high above timberline, only a few hours after leaving your car, and enjoy a few days of solitude from there. You will roam cross-country – which is surprisingly easy here […]
Posted on June 8, 2012, 5:39 pm, by QT Luong, under
Gear.
Watching a moonbow with your own eyes is an awesome experience. While the camera can capture colors that the eye doesn’t see (as explained in my previous blog post about moonbows), the way it works doesn’t capture the experience that well. A long moonlit exposure looks almost the same as a daylight exposure that one […]
Posted on May 30, 2012, 12:11 pm, by QT Luong, under
Techniques.
A moonbow is a rainbow produced by moonlight, rather than direct sunlight. While observing a rainbow in the sky requires rare and unpredictable combination of conditions, it isn’t too difficult to predict the appearance of spray moonbows, which occur in the mist of waterfalls. Yosemite moonbows have been known for some time. John Muir described […]
While Earth Day has been internationally celebrated for more than forty years, National Parks Week is a relatively recent initiative from the US National Park Service. It has been argued that the National Parks are “America’s best idea” – recently in the Ken Burns film with that title. That idea first came to fruition with […]
