Adam's Nature Photographs

Goblin Village

A photo becomes more special after persistence allows for a result you are happy with. After 3 visits, I gave up on this location. I deemed it lacking in good compositions. A couple years went by, and I decided to revisit. I searched areas I had not seen before. As you wander deeper into the hoodoos, and further uphill, the scenery gets better and better, more alien. Nearly at the top, I came around a corner to see this scene. I had been searching for days. This was undoubtedly THE shot, far better than anything else I had found. It was a great feeling. Excitement and satisfaction. Finding your own shot after searching for so long is the best!

Kauai Coast

Getting this photo right was a real effort. I woke up an hour before sunrise many mornings to come out here and shoot this location. The weather just did not agree with me for the first 8 days of the trip. It was rainy, and overcast. It rained hard a few times, including in the middle of the night. I was staying in a rooftop tent. All of the campgrounds are really close to the ocean, so It was very windy. Water made its way into the tent. Finally the sun started coming out. I was focusing on the predawn glow. I was about to pack up for the day, then the sun got just high enough to accent the rocks and water at the bottom of the frame. It was even prettier. From then on I focused on shooting this moment, just after the sun hits the foreground. There was a “just right” angle as well. The higher I was the clearer the mid ground could be captured, but lower was better for the foreground. There was definitely a sweet spot, just with a narrow margin. This is one of those shots where keeping at it, and allowing it to evolve really paid off.

Towering Above

This place is very near Monument Valley. I’m surprised more people don’t visit the Valley of the Gods. The road that cuts through it winds up and down like a roller coaster. There are campsites right at the base of these amazing towers. They are some of the best campsites anywhere. It’s peaceful, and pretty solitary. Right next to it is the moki dugway. Combining the 2 roads makes an epic motorcycle route.

Badlands at the Blue Gate

These hills formed as rain eroded dirt away from the side of a plateau. The ground between the hills is hard, but the hills are airy and soft. It crumbles under your feet. To put it to scale, the hills at the bottom are about 40 or 50 feet high. They stretch on for miles!

White pocket swirl

Proxy

I love visiting Proxy falls. There is a peaceful free campground close to the trailhead. It’s a beautiful short hike to the falls. The trail changes constantly. You hike through an area full of lava rocks. You can wade through the river up to the falls. You climb over huge fallen trees, and through bushes, with running water underneath. The falls are massive, and utterly spectacular. I dawn my waders and rain jacket, as the mist from the falls rains down, searching through the cascades of water below the falls for a good composition. This is joyous. So many options, and different every visit. I have been here so many times. It’s my favorite waterfall. I decided years ago to keep at it until I had an exceptional shot. It took more visits, and years, than I expected. The road beyond the trailhead is incredibly fun on a motorcycle. What a day! Ride to the trailhead, shoot the falls, then have a blast speeding up the windy road! Go eat at a charming little breakfast spot, then relax at the solitary campground.

Flame

The Navajo Nation in Arizona is home to a lot of fascinating geology. Most of it is on nearly flat terrain, and looks pretty typical from the ground as a result. From above the textures, colors, and patterns emerge.

Serrated

I took this photo on my first trip to a mountain range in Europe. At the top of the road there is a small restaurant/hotel. These peaks are visible out the large windows where you eat, or sleep. You hike a little over a mile down the trail, and another small building with a restaurant and bedrooms is waiting for you. only accessible by foot. Then, you hike a further distance, and find another! I hiked through the rain and fog for a couple days. I took in the view as it passed in and out of view behind the clouds, stopping for a coffee at these neat destinations, of course.

Tree Fern in the rainforest

I was fascinated by the variety and diversity of the ferns in this rainforest. There were countless types. From 6 inches tall up to these tree ferns, some of which towered 25 feet in the air. I was keen to try to find a photo of a tree fern, since I find them so beautiful, with an ancient presence. This shot was a real pleasure to take. I had to take a bunch of exposures, waiting for the leaves to stop swinging in the wind. One area at a time I waited for enough stillness, while shooting a focus stack. It worked out, the result is sharp everywhere. taking this shot was my favorite experience of the whole trip.

Red Earth

Spots like this one are all over the Colorado Plateau. You have to spend hours upon hours scouring over google maps satellite view looking for unique patterns and shapes. The quality of the satellite images varies, and the color is never even close to as vivid as you get from just a few hundred feet off the ground. You need to assume there will be better color than what you see on the maps. This one is on a reservation. You need a permit to be on the land. You drive past homes waaay out in the middle of no where. The locals are curious what you’re doing there, since you stick out like a sore thumb, and they don’t ever see anyone. Routing here was far from easy. There are no marked trails. Just wide open desert with barely visible trail marks on the maps. I had to log about 20 different spots where you turn, noting the gps coordinates for each one. Then when you’re driving out there you pull up each coordinate one by one to route find your way to the spot. It’s a real hassle the first time. Then you just create a gps track on your way out, which you can follow back in from then on.

Snowdona

Limpet Coast

Paria Rainbow

Pastel Hills

This image is special to me for a few reasons. What is on display is really stellar. If you look for it you can see rows of sedimentary stripes that start at the bottom of the frame and go all the way back, to the top. Also, these rows fill the frame from left to right. The variety of colors on display are spectacular. Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, blue, Purple, the whole rainbow is present. Part of the reason this is a special image to me is how difficult this was to find. In the middle of the day, the sun makes viewing the color impossible, it washes it out and hides it in harsh contrast. It’s only visible after the sun goes down. It took a couple days before I even noticed the extremely long rows of color stripes moving through the terrain. I had to scour this area for days before finding this composition hiding among the vast expanse of hills. Occasionally I view a photo straight out of the camera with no adjustments, and it looks just stunning, requiring very little change in post. This is one of those images. The cool soft shadows filling the valleys and the incredible color were spectacular in this sunset light.

Salt flats at dusk

In the middle of the day these salt flats are as white as snow. I did not expect much this evening since the sky was so empty, but after the sun went down it filled with this pink and purple light. It was beautiful. I suspect the upper atmosphere was full of pollutants or moisture, which lit up in the dusk light. I came back a few other nights with a clear sky, there was no glow. I've never seen anything like it!

Stacks of Rock

My 10 week trip to the Pacific Northwest was full of misfortune. My camera was water damaged, costing me a week. I visited Vancouver Island hoping to shoot Rivers and streams only to find them completely dry. But the worst was day after day of completely clear blue skies. I waited so long for the sky to deliver, and only came away with 2 evenings better than pure blue. This was the prettiest sunset of them both. Also, the beach had this beautiful low lying mist that drew out the sea stacks as the cascaded away. The foreground is a blend of 50 exposures to create a soft water effect. The amazing colors are as they occurred, unadjusted, other than stretching the contrast, bringing them out.

King’s Crown of Sandstone

From the first time I saw photos of this place, I was immediately excited to go shoot here. The experience of white pocket is special. The nearest campground is 80 minutes and 2000 feet of elevation away. You drive most of it on a sandy, sometimes bumpy 4x4 trail. Plenty of people struggle to get there. In the month of so I’ve spent on location I’ve pulled about 7 vehicles out from being stuck in the sand. You hike a short distance on a sandy trail, and then you come over a rise to see it, an area about half a square mile of open rock surface. The slick rock terrain is truly like an alien planet, with pentagonal patterns of white or pink rock mixed with marble textured swirls of multicolored rock. In several spots the formations get really vertical and wild, like in this scene. The sign at the entrance says there are dinosaur footprints preserved in the rock, and you do see what looks like very large footprints. It’s otherworldly, so beautiful. I spent so many evenings at this spot waiting for a nice gradient of light to grace the scene, but clouds kept covering the area of the sky around where the sun sets, flattening the light. I was excited to see a nice gradient with a beautiful sky behind it, but was not expecting the clouds to light up a pinkish orange and add such color. When I looked up from my camera to see this sudden change, my response was audible. I immediately started my shot over, as I knew it would only last a short time. As quickly as I could I took my shots. It’s a 10 image stitch, 3 shot HDR, and a 5 shot focus stack. I was really pushing the time it takes to capture all of that, so I minimized it as much as possible, cutting it down to a 2 shot focus stack on the top row of the stitch, and only shooting HDR on the left third of the frame, where it’s needed. It was such a brief window of colorful light, it faded fast just as I was finishing. In the 2.5 weeks I was there, the best light lasted about 3 minutes! It was a risk that ended up paying off.

A blue morning under the Golden Gate

I went to this beach in search of a completely different photo, I was just looking to shoot out to the sea with some pretty rocks in the foreground. I need low tide for that shot, and the next time there will be a low tide around sunset is 4 months after my visit! I saw this composition, and came back in the early morning when the tide was the right level. Walking out across the beach in the near dark with the bridge glowing ahead of you is peaceful. The sound of the waves crashing to your left echoed off a steep rock cliff to the right, making a sound that reminded me of putting a seashell to your ear. It was a surround sensation. I was knee deep in the ocean, tripod legs buried in the sand for stability. It ended up taking 4 visits to get the shot. The sky was so boring most mornings. It's a 3 shot focus stack, 2 shot HDR. Soon after was a stellar sunrise, I'm sure there were plenty of other great photo opportunities that morning. Every time I got back to my car I cheered when I saw it wasn't broken into. There are over 30,000 break in's a year in San Francisco, and I parked in a shady spot at 4 am for this photo!

Wilson Arch under the Milky Way

Wilson Arch is around a 25 minute drive south of Moab, Utah. It's a beauty, and huge! The first attempt was ruined by the moonlight coming out before I could capture the stars, reducing the clarity. I came back a few nights later, and captured this. I spent a lot of time lighting the rock, to get even light while also skimming the rock surface to bring out the cracks in shadow. This is not a composite, everything occurred in one session in the same frame.

Toketee Falls

The first time I hiked out to this spot, I didn’t make it to the water. Just before you reach the river you have to drop down a slope so steep you use a rope for support. This early morning it was raining, and the wet rope just didn’t feel secure in my hands. I left disgruntled. I came back on a dry day and slowly descended, cheering when reaching the bottom. Wading out to take the photo was no easy task either. I was waist deep in moving water, holding my camera and tripod while trying to navigate over big rocks underwater like the ones pictured. Was it ever worth it though!

Goblin Hoodoos

Finding a good composition here has been tough. Goblin valley is beautiful, with so much to explore in a relatively small area. I have tried a few times over the years to find a good photo of the place, but only recently discovered the trick to making a good photo here. There is a 10 minute window, about 20 minutes after sunset, when the light graces the hoodoos and the ground with an awe inspiring look. For this brief time everything really is that much prettier than the rest of the day. Form is brought out, the warm color of the rock is enhanced, and the erosion patterns on the ground look majestic.

The wettest place on Earth

This shot was taken from a helicopter. The doors were off. I was strapped in, but I had to stretch out as far as I could to shoot down far enough for the composition. I took a good look at the hardware bolting my seatbelt down before takeoff!

Lightning on the San Juans

I drove out to catch this storm, and followed the stream until I found a spot where I could get the water reflecting in the direction of the lightning strikes. I scrambles down a slope in a hurry and just barely managed to get set up in time for the last lightning strike.

Above the Colorado

The area around this photo is one of my favorite places. The scenes are awe inspiring. Every last thing you see is beautiful, there is no looking away from the stunning landscape, it engulfs you. This photo displays Potash Road, Hurrah Pass, and the White Rim trail. These 3 trails are some of the most beautiful scenes in all of Utah. The Colorado River winds around the camera, and back through the scene, right next to itself. The mountains in the distance are the La Sal mountains on the border of Colorado. The view stretches over 180 degrees side to side. Me, and my vehicle are in the photo. I’m so far away you can’t see me, even in the full 180 megapixel version of the photo.

Chocolate Tort

I love when a memorable journey separates me from a photo location. Few have been as entertaining as the hike to Zebra slot canyon. You hike through the wash for about 1000 feet before reaching the most stunning section. The slot is narrow. So narrow that at 2 spots there is simply zero extra space at your chest, stomach, and butt. Meanwhile you are chest deep in water, camera bag held overhead. Sometimes the ground is literally a crack, and you must awkwardly wedge your boot into it to find footing. My waders tore on the rock at my belt buckle, filling my waders with water by the end. There are a few other slot canyons nearby, they are so fun to explore!

Frosted Tree

Taken near my home in Colorado. A fog moved through and froze to all the tree branches, frosting them over. It's was a beautiful day, The fog was still in the air as I drove around searching for a photo. The trees and bushes shimmered with a brightness against the soft backdrop. I found this tree and came back at night. There is a fence between my camera and the tree, just out of the frame. There are a mess of trees behind this one, just barely far enough away to stay in the dark. This is a truly unremarkable scene just about all of the time.

Forest moon

I never knew the complex variety of forests before photography. Some of the most incredible forests have giant trees. Redwood, and old growth forests feel surreal, like science fiction. You feel so small among such massive trunks and tall canopy. Del Norte Redwood forest is my favorite area for Redwoods. It’s far enough north the fauna on the forest floor shows signs of the pacific northwest’s character.

Thor's well under the Nebula

If you are planning on shooting the Oregon coast, this spot will make for an experience unlike any other. Simply watching the water heave up and down 15 feet inside the hole is mesmerizing. Occasionally it will come spraying 10 feet out of the ground, drenching any photographers who take a shot so close. For this reason most stand back on a few rocks that surround it, staying a bit dryer. I made the mistake of turning my back to it once, soaking my camera bag in the process. Plenty of things need to line up for a good shoot. It's helpful to have a pretty sunset, which I was denied for all 8 plus evenings I spent shooting here. Some nights are a waste due to the tide level being wrong, and others it's just too treacherous to even attempt a photo. It helped to go there at low tide mid day and experiment with camera position and composition without all the drama making it difficult.

Shi Shi at dusk

Shi Shi beach on the tip of the Olympic Peninsula, Washington. Most photographers visit the far end of this beach, to the left when the trail reaches the water. Just there to the right, and over a small but steep hill sits this spot. You can camp here, right behind my shot, and what a place to spend the night! Everyone lines their tents up near where the trail reaches the beach. But if you hike over the hill you come to this amazing spot. It's far better than where everyone stays. the beach curves inward, with seas stacks on both sides. This view is right in the middle. Behind you is a very steep hill. It's like a scene out of a James Bond movie. I kept expecting a mini submarine to show up, with a guy in a tuxedo and his mistress inside!

Sooke Forest

Vancouver Island has a lot of pretty spots like this if you look enough. Just wander around parks and natural areas with streams on the map and you are bound to find something eventually. I hiked through this park, and had just about covered the whole place, expecting to go away without anything. Then right at the end I came to this spot. There isn’t much room to set up the camera. Just behind me is another small drop. You’re standing right in the middle of the stream for this one.

Towers of the Gods

This is an aerial shot. I flew my drone about as far as I ever have to get this, almost 2 miles away. You only have enough power to fly out, take one set of exposures, and fly back immediately. Finding the spot required a lot of map and ground searching. Learning the terrain surrounding Valley of the Gods, and looking for a spot where you get a view of the towers with a unique foreground took a lot of work. There we a couple other good angles, but this is my favorite. I got very lucky with the sky. I spent so much time preparing for the shot, then when I flew out at the right time of dusk, I happened to get a great sunset on the first try.

Glacier Forest in the Mist

One early morning while returning from a hike, I stopped to enjoy the view from above a valley with a fog rolling through. The treetops stuck out of the fog, making for a better photo than the one I set out to take that morning!

Windy Mesquite

Hiking through sand dunes is normally a peaceful experience. It can be so quiet you hear your own sounds like they’re amplified. Not this day! It takes about 50 mph of wind to kick up sand like this. You get sand everywhere. It hits you like sand paper. What most people find miserable becomes a delight to a nature photographer. If you watch the ripple texture on the dunes, you can see it slowly moving. It feels like the dunes come to life. These are the best days to shoot dunes. The sand whipping over the dune crests are stunning. It's even more beautiful in motion. This was the first exposure I took. I kept at it, refining the shot, but the sand was the most intense right at the start. I have better compositions, but the way the scene fades to windswept sand at the bottom only happened like this for a moment.

The rainforest in the mountains

This photo really puts to scale how massive the mountains are in Milford Sound. I zoomed way in to get this shot. The huge trees are so distant, and far above the valley floor. Then, towering above in the distance through the fog is a sheer rock wall. Sometimes over 3000 feet seperate the floor from the peaks!

Spanish Marsh

Twice a day these marshes flood and empty with sea water thanks to the tide. Viewed at low tide there is nothing but mud between the grassy islands. Nutrients for the grass to feed on come with the water. I am curious how the shape of each inlet formed over time. Did the grass grow on top of existing patterns, locking them in place? Or, was the grass already there, and the inlets form more slowly? I left here pleasantly surprised at how fascinating the location turned out to be.

Salt Expanse

You are looking at a nearly dry Salt lake. As water drains into the lake bed, salt comes with it. Sometimes desert environments trap water in the valleys, since the water has nowhere to go. As the water evaporates, the salt remains. The highly concentrated salt is fed on by algae. The algae produce colorful pigments as a result of their photosynthesis process. The cracks form as the salt crystalizes, and expands. Amazing, and beautiful.

Towering Hoodoo

This lone hoodoo sits way back in a remote corner of Zion.

Proxy at Night

I've been really enjoying light painting recently. This photo was a blast to shoot. I was dying to shoot closer, and wider. This was the closest I could get without getting droplets of mist from the waterfall on the lens. I had to start exposing, hike up the stream(waders) with my studio light in both hands, and then balance on the extremely slippery log while holding and spreading the light. I would have much preferred to be standing in front of the heaviest part of the falls, but there was no climbing that slippery log! Plus the drop was 8 feet down onto the rocks. The camera was repeatedly taking 15 second exposures. The flash was set to constantly produce light, so the water would be soft. Each area is actually a 4 shot noise stack. The falls, foreground, and myself were each different shots later blended together, making for a 12 exposure image. I wanted to keep shooting, but I was completely spent by the time I was done with the first round!

Ribbons in the soil

I am in awe of how the light sweeps over these hills just after sunset. The complex patterns created by erosion are a sight to behold.

The Stacks of Canon Beach

This is a great spot. The road there winds through the Oregon forest like a roller coaster. I’ve been meaning to walk the road with my camera, it’s beautiful. I have another shot posted from the same little area, of trees with fog. One day I was walking along canon beach(the scene in this photo), I was near the famous massive sea stack, Haystack rock. Someone started to fly a shiny new $2000 drone behind the sea stack. Once you fly out of line of site, you typically lose your drone. I warned him, but he didn’t listen. When he flew behind it and lost his connection, he stood there with a puzzled look on his face. I suggested he run to the right as quickly as he could to try to re-establish line of site with his drone. Instead he slowly walked left. I never saw him recover his new toy.

Canyon de Chelly under a glowing sunset

This spot proved to be a difficult image to capture. I visited this location 3 times the year I captured this. The first 2 times the weather did not give me a pretty sky the many days I spent waiting on the ledge. Finally I was graced with a stunning evening, with a bright red cloud overhead, off camera. It made the canyon glow intensely with colorful soft light. I did not adjust the color to saturate more red, only contrast adjustments. The scene is about 220 degrees from side to side. The right side faces behind the left side of the photo. This is an 18 image stitch, which results in a stunning 442 megapixel photo. I needed to capture as much above and below as possible to compensate for such a wide pano, so I frantically moved my tripod twice to get far enough over the edge to capture down. Native american ruin sites can bee seen in the full version on the canyon walls in 3 different spots. Sitting on the edge for so many hours turned out to be a very enjoyable experience. It's is such a peaceful spot. There is so much to see. I never grew bored of waiting there. I love this location!

Proxy on black

I’ve visited several waterfalls in Oregon and Washington, and this one is the most awe inspiring one I have seen yet. I arrived a bit early, the road was still closed. I had to hike 2.3 miles up it to the trailhead, and another .5 to the falls. The gradual uphill walk made for the perfect skateboard luge back down! What took about 90 minutes up was around 10 minutes down. I had to lodge a branch under my feet to use as a brake to avoid speeding out of control. The trail wanders through a field of lava formed rocks covered in moss, very pretty. The falls required wading through up to 18 inches of water to get certain shots. This one is a 9 image stitch, and 2 image HDR. The full 350 megapixel result if superbly sharp and clean. I like to think if this was a drawing, it was made on black paper.

Calm after the storm

I've been spending my evenings shooting Seal Rock, Oregon. The spot I have in mind is intense. You climb up on a sea stack with water on all sides. Huge waves crash into the rocks, spraying water 40 feet up. The rocks are jagged and vertical. The wind and waves roar. If you don't take the time to see where the wave energy can go, this can be a deadly location. Then, you walk back across the beach through a mist for a mile to the parking area. This photo is on the way back to the car. A vast open flat stretch of sand. As the light faded, the setting was peaceful and serene. The total opposite of where I just was a few minutes earlier.

Hidden falls of Quinault

I’ve been on a mission all year to find my own locations and compositions. This was the first real payoff for taking the time to scout out new locations. I decided to just hike up and down every stream and river possible in the Quinault rainforest of Olympic National Park. This is not an easy task! Getting anywhere off trail here is a huge pain. You are hiking over huge logs, giant ferns, piles of dead trees and branches with moss growing on top, through trees, up big hills, or just straight up the stream everywhere. Covering 50 feet can take 10 minutes. This river was no exception. It took about 20 minutes to go less than a quarter of a mile. I was pretty close to turning around, when I came around a corner to see this breathtaking waterfall right in front of me. It was beautiful. The light was great. I shot it on the spot, and didn’t have a need to come back. It’s bigger than it looks. The logs jammed in the falls are large. The falls are probably 35 feet high.

Erosion

My visit to Petrified forest was almost a let down. I spent many days searching for a good photo, and came up short. I was starting to doubt the location, and planned on moving on, when I came to this spot. There wasn’t much there either, except these hills. Finding this spot made the entire trip worth it. I showed up for the first time to the scene at the end of dusk, when the light was fantastic(pictured). The gradient of light produced by the sky had grown sharper, but remained a soft light source. I shot with my tripod low to the ground to try my hardest to avoid letting the wind ruin the sharpness. I came back again the next night, but the light was just perfect the moment I discovered it. In the middle of the day the same scene looks incredibly different, like a whole different photo! I took a 4 image stitch, since that was all I had time to set up. I really love this photo, it was worth spending a lot of time getting just right. Day after day I came back to it and put thought into the color balance, and the depth of the shaded sides of the mounds of dirt. Getting these subtle details just right feels so important with this image. The dirt really was that PURPLE in person!

Mist on the hills of Quinault

The Quinault Rainforest was my favorite place on the Olympic peninsula. One early morning this scene presented itself on my way to a hike. It seemed fitting for black and white, When I dropped the color the image hardly changed at all. In all my years taking pictures I've never come across a scene that was so lacking in color!

Cannon beach pastels

This photo really shines printed big. Up close, the finer details look a lot like a painting. The way the light came through the mist gave it this look. The scale of this scene is huge, The large sea stack in the distance is 235 feet tall.

A tree on a tree

This is a famous spot to take a photo. I didn't plan on shooting such a ubiquitous location, but I happened to drive right past it on the way to my campsite. I took a 30 second exposure, which turned the small ripples on the water into the vertical blur you see in the shot.