Sunrise this morning just a short time ago. Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, California.
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From the category archives:
Photos
As a kid we called these guys “horny toads”. They look like something that should be roaming with the Dinosaurs! This Flat-tail Horned Lizard was in Coyote Canyon in Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, California.
This was captured with a Canon 5D III, 70-200 f/2.8 lens with a 2x converter at ISO 200, f/5.6 and 2,000 of a second shutter speed.
I spotted him on my way to a mountain bike ride. Fortunately it rain across the trail or I don’t think I would have ever spotted it. Look at how well it blends into the desert.
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A blooming Fishhook Cactus, Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, California.
Another storm pasted through this area late last week, but didn’t bring too much in the way of precipitation. Temperatures forecasted to reach into the 90′s this week won’t do the limited and late wildflower bloom any favors.
The best area in the Park that I have seen has been along the Elephant Tree Trail. Here you can find some nice cactus blooms especially Beaver-tail and Barrel. There are a wide variety of other wildflowers – not the thick fields that get photographers excited, but a nice variety that should interest the flower peepers including poppies, phacelia, lavender and Desert Chicory to name just a few. There are many small blooms that I didn’t take the time to identify.
In Borrego Palm Canyon you can find more lavender, lots of Chuparosa and a little Brittlebush along with other wildflowers.
Yesterday in Coyote Canyon I spotted small patches of Sand Verbena, but it is very limited. The famous fields along Henderson Canyon Road are empty.
On a positive note, I’m seeing lots of cactus with buds – I think there will be widespread cactus blooming later this month.
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A mountain biker crossing the Goat Canyon Trestle in the Carrizo Gorge. At 200 feet tall and 750 feet long, this beautiful trestle it the longest, tallest curved wooden trestle ever built in the United States.
I have been wanting to visit this amazing structure located in a remote portion of Anza-Borrego for some time. A year ago, fellow photographer and writer Bert Gildart hatched a plan to mountain bike old railroad to this trestle. We were able to complete our plan this past week and it was a blast!
I’m getting ready for another workshop this weekend, but will provide more details and images of this trip next week.
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A stormy recent morning at our campground in Borrego Springs. We have had a nice variety of weather this year – from cold, stormy weather like you see here that brought fresh snow down the mountains, to temps approaching 90!
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Laughlin, Nevada at sunset.
Since it has almost been almost a week since I have posted, I though I needed to do an update as to what we have been up to over a busy week.
Recently we have lost out on some photo sales for laughlin photos because my coverage was not current enough – evidently some of the hotel names have changed. So we ended up doing a quick three day trip over to Southern Nevada.
We then returned to Anza-Borrego for my Anza-Borrego photo workshop along with a private tour – I had a lot of fun, wonderful people and great photo opportunities! The highlights for me included the amazing sunrise on Sunday morning and watching a young Desert Bighorn nurse just a short distance away from us on Friday morning. I won’t be sharing photos from those days since I don’t photograph during my workshops, but it sure appeared everyone else got some pretty cool stuff and for me that is very satisfying.
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I have spared you from my shameless self promotion posts over the last few months, but this magazine it too cool not to share. It showed up just before we left on this current trip and I grabbed a photo of the magazine cover just as I was walking out the door. The cover photo is of beautiful downtown Spokane, Washington.
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The fact that I was out last night photographing this cool statue, one of many in and around Borrego Springs, probably speaks volumes about the current wildflower conditions – there aren’t too many right now.
Anza-Borrego is well know for its desert wildflower bloom, and because of this, a lot of people like to read about the predictions for the current season – myself included. Some years there just aren’t any wildflowers, but a good bloom has a big economic impact on this community, so it makes sense that wildflowers are the source of a lot of speculations. And us nature photographers love a good bloom. So, here is a bit of a summary from what I have read, heard and seen over the past week. In short, there is good news and bad news, let me start with the bad news.
There are many factors that lead to a good bloom and the relationship between most of them are really not all that well understood. But, there is no question that lots of rain is a good thing. The rainfall totals are based upon a June 1 water year, so year to date figures begin in June. Two years ago was a good but not great wildflower year, and the visitor center had already received 7.43 inches of rain by this date. Last year was a poor year and the visitor center had received 3.60 inches of rain by this date. By comparison, this year to date, the visitor center has only received 2.93 inches of rain, well less then half of two years ago.
So what is the good news? Well these figures were as of yesterday, February 19th. Last night it rained pretty steady all night long. I haven’t seen the latest figures, and I know rain on a RV can sound like more then it really is, but judging from all the standing water this morning, it was significant.
In addition, It is helpful to have some rain in the Fall, but most beneficial to have the majority of the rain during the winter months. If most of the rain came in September, most of it would be wasted. Even though this years totals are very low, much of it came during the winter. This area received over an inch of rain at the end of January, and more rain last night could be perfect timing.
We have only been in the area for about a week, and already I have seen some big changes in the desert – lots of areas are turning green. Now granted, a lot of the green could be weeds, but it looks like some of it is wildflowers beginning to sprout, at least in certain areas.
So I agree with what most of the experts are saying and there will be a wildflower bloom this year. That is good, I have been here on years where there isn’t a bloom, and it is a bummer. Now the question is – how good will it be? Stay tuned for updates.
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Our icebreaker Ortelius at Brown Bluff, Antarctica.
I have missed a few days on the blog as we traveled, got setup and enjoyed some warm weather in Anza-Borrego, but all is well. A storm is passing through the next few days that could bring rain to the desert – could make for some interesting photo opps!
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Our icebreaker the Ortelius as we approached the Antarctic Circle.
Speaking of breaking ice – we are heading out the door – my next post will be from Anza-Borrego Desert State Park!
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Crabeater Seals. I think Crabeater Seal is a funny name for a seal that doesn’t eat crabs. They eat krill and other crustaceans.
I found it difficult to capture interesting images of seal in Antarctica because they pretty much just laid there. I thought this was one of my more interesting seal images thanks to that wonderful background!
Canon 5D Mark III, Canon 70-200 f/2.8 lens at 180, ISO 320, f/8 and 1/2000 of a second.
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This was at 2:29 in the morning as we neared the Antarctic Circle.
Our icebreaker cruised through ice flows like this as if they were nothing. But, the large ice ridges off in the distance were a different story. The captain studied them closely before picking his route so that he could push through a weak spot. We were allowed in the bridge and it was interesting listening to our captain shout out orders. Things like “Go right there and ram it!” Even though he was Russian, he was giving orders in broken English I think in part for our entertainment. I got the feeling that icebreaker Captains live for this – at least it appeared that our Captain was having a good time.
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As we were photographing this sleeping Leopard Seal we were very surprised to see this Gentoo Penguin blast out of the water and land very near one of its feared predators! Before the Leopard Seal could wake up, the Gentoo Penguin quietly walked to the edge of the iceberg and jumped back into the ocean undetected.
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A group of Gentoo Penguin. I’m guessing this one may not resonate with a lot of people, but I liked the graphic nature of this image.
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This is the moon over the Antarctic Peninsula near the Antarctic Circle.
So many things were backwards down there. For starters, it was summer in January. It seemed weird to head South during the summer for longer days and North meant shorter days.
The one thing I hadn’t thought about was that the moon would be backwards. It appears backward because we are basically looking at it from upside down when you are at the bottom of the earth, kinda like standing on your head.
So in the Northern Hemisphere, the sun light moves across the moon from the left to the right creating the familiar DOC shapes as it moves towards full and then away, it does just the opposite down South. In the Southern Hemisphere, that same memory tool becomes COD. In other words, the D shape you see in this photo we associate with moving towards the full moon actually means we are moving away from it when seen in the Southern Hemisphere.
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These are three Adelie Penguin – definitely cute and curious little guys. Penguins have so much personality and can be so expressive – they are really fun to watch!
Here they are on an iceberg. I often preferred finding them on icebergs because it usually meant nice, clean bright snow. Since it doesn’t snow much in Antarctica, the snow in and around the colonies was often very dingy looking. I also liked the graphical simplicity of this setting with a diagonal of snow splitting the blue sky.
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Sunset was around 11:30 at night this close to the Antarctic Circle. This was from Booth Island.
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Google made a lot of news not too long ago when it brought a portable version of its Street View camera system on a hike into the Grand Canyon. What I didn’t know is that same system would be joining us in Antarctica!
Our trip was joined by a number of researchers working on penguin research for Oceanites including Ron Naveen who had written the guide book to the Antarctic Peninsula I was carrying with me – didn’t expect to be having dinner with the author during my trip, that was a real treat!
Some of the researchers including Ron left us in Antarctica part way into the trip, but two, Dr. Heather Lynch and Dr. Michelle LaRue were not only with us for the entire trip, but were bringing with them Street View cameras from Google.
Heather who you see pictured above carried a portable camera system around Antarctica as she did penguin counts and the different penguin colonies. Her ongoing research and permits will allow viewers access to areas within the penguin colonies that the typical visitor isn’t allowed to access. She also carried the system on hikes like the one we did from Baily Head on Deception Island. This hike begins at Baily Head and continues past a huge Chinstrap Penguin colony before going up and over the volcano rim and down to Whaler’s Bay. It will be fun to relive these places on Google – and for many people, this may be as close to a hike in Antarctica is they will ever get. It was my understanding that Heather was carrying the same pack that was used in the Grand Canyon.
Michele was using a different system, it was a tripod mounted array of Canon 7D’s with fish-eye lenses that she would set up at different historical sites. I thought the 7D instead of the Canon 5D III or II was an interesting choice.
Watch for the final results on Google Earth later this year.
As a side note, it was wonderful having Heather and Michelle on board the vessel because they were so willing to share their vast knowledge of penguins. Both have spent a great deal of time in Antarctica over the years and had many fascinating stories. You may have seen Michelle not too long ago being interviewed by Brian Williams on NBC nightly news – her recent discoveries of some previously undiscovered Emperor Penguin colonies brought her a fair amount of attention.
Below is Heather carrying the Street View cameras in a colony of Gentoo Penguins on Cuverville Island.
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The amazing ice in Antarctica provided endless photo opportunities. This particular day around Brown Bluff had to be some of the best. I was taking a group of passengers “Zodiac cruising”, one of my favorite activities, and we found a bunch of large icebergs that had become grounded by the low tide. Being grounded helped to reveal some amazing details and patterns typically hidden below the water level including what you see here.
This is our last day in Southern California as I thaw out for a few days in Anza-Borrego. Tomorrow we head back to Alaska! It will be nice to be home.
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It is hard to be creative when it comes to penguin portraits – that said, I was excited to see the shadow of a nearby Gentoo penguin on the chest of this guy as I felt like it added a new dimension.
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