LA Skyline Twilight on Mount Baldy

From where I live, Mount Baldy looked great. However, from L.A. not so great. The peak kept getting obscured by haze but then it peeked out just barely for a few minutes as the sun was setting over the Pacific Ocean. It was cold and windy outside, and I kept having to refresh the Yahoo Sports results for the Vikings – Saints game on my Blackberry every minute but no way I was going to pack it up early no matter what it looked like outside. Patience and persistence does eventually pay off.

I will still keep my eye open for clean air quality should it ever happen but there are other L.A. shots I want to pursue now. Mulholland Drive, Griffith Park Observatory, Disney Concert Hall, Hollywood Sign, Randy’s Donuts and Staples Center come to mind. Los Angeles skyline photos from Mulholland Drive and the Observatory are some of the most common scenics but I haven’t tried either so those will probably be next on my list when time permits.

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Los Angeles Skyline Against Snowy Backdrop

I am coming to the conclusion that mid-morning winter light might be as good as it gets in Los Angeles. As a landscape photographer, I am always evaluating air quality and lighting conditions in every way and time imaginable even when I’m not photographing. The morning after a storm is usually as clear as our air quality will ever get. As the day progresses, it gets hazier and the snow starts to melt. My efforts to date with this scene concur with that general rule of thumb.

I started off yesterday morning with the intention of photographing trees on Mount Baldy covered in deep snow. However despite heading up Mount Baldy Road shortly after sunrise, there was already a line of cars due to the CHP stopping traffic to make everyone put on chains. Judging from the rate at which people were getting through, I estimated that it would take at least an hour and a half to get to the front of the line just for the “privilege” of putting on tire chains. Pain in the a**. The road up to the ski area isn’t that far but I always avoid putting on chains despite having a set in my trunk. The snow level was pretty far down, probably to 2,000 feet I’m guessing but I’ve driven in much worse without chains so I don’t get what the big deal was. In fact, my brother and I went up there to three feet of fresh powder on a Monday morning following a storm two years ago and no chains were required. We were also the only two up on the mountain that morning. I think chains are probably to protect the L.A. weekend crowd from themselves since most have no clue how to drive in the mountains.

In no mood to waste my morning just sitting there I decided it would be better to try for another skyline photo so I went the opposite direction to L.A. I figured that downtown would be in shade if I had gone any earlier but since it was mid-morning by the time I got there I hoped that some light would be on the buildings by that hour. At sunrise,  Mount Baldy is in shadow too I think. Though there is a chance that the late afternoon hours might have okay air quality, the snow doesn’t look as vibrant as the day wears on following a storm. The Santa Monica Mountains directly behind the Hollywood Sign for example looked amazing in the morning but when sunset came around, there appeared to be a lot less snow and it didn’t look as good. And as for Mount Baldy? It was obscured by clouds for the rest of the day.

There is supposed to be a small storm coming in on Tuesday so I might give this one more try on Wednesday morning or at sunset if it looks decent. Otherwise, I think I can live with this until the next big storm comes. We only get big storms like this every few years so there aren’t all that many opportunities to get this photo.

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Question Written in Snow Piled on Top of Red Car, Mount Baldy, California

After a week of heavy storms that has brought big snow to the local mountains, it promises to make for some amazing photos. I’m so excited! I’m crossing my fingers to see if I can get enough clearing to get my dream L.A. skyline photo.

Mid-Winter Foliage Along East Fork of San Gabriel River, Angeles National Forest, California

I liked how the bare trees contrasted with some remaining “fall color” along the San Gabriel River. We don’t really have true winters here in Southern California but it is nice to photograph the seasons while in transition. The blog isn’t really a good way to view detailed images so I put up a full-resolution version up on my archive that you can view it full-screen if you hit the little button on the bottom: San Gabriel River photo gallery.

Downtown Los Angeles Skyline with Snow-Capped Mount Baldy in Background

No colorful sunset because it was cloudy on the horizon but man, what a view! I’ve wanted to see a snow-capped Mount Baldy behind the L.A. skyline for years now. Friday night had some crazy red light on Mount Baldy that would have been perfect but I was hiking in my local hills which doesn’t come with the skyline view.

Can’t have everything I guess.

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Big Dalton Canyon Waterfall, Glendora, California

“Weather” is sort of a joke here in Southern California. It is generally either hot or warm year-round out here in the valley but the past week was a bit cooler from the 40’s and 50’s during the day. While cool, the at times heavy rainfall this weekend wasn’t cold enough to produce any new snow in the San Gabriel Mountains apparently. On the plus side, I got to shoot a waterfall picture with my new 35mm f2.0 lens. Yay!

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Sunset Alpenglow Over Mount Baldy Village, California

Saturday was the first time in two months that I had gone anywhere to shoot photos. I’ve been burned out from processing and submitting travel photos so I needed a break. For the time being, I’m just going to focus on landscape photography just like how I started off chasing weather and light. I like shooting pictures of a wide variety of subjects obviously but landscape is my true love. I’m not a “traditional” nature photographer in the sense that I don’t go out of my way to avoid human elements in my work (I live in Southern California for god’s sake!) but I do very much consider photos like this to be no different than my landscape photography of wilderness areas.

The stereotype of nature photography is that it is about being contemplative and a methodical process. Contrary to that view, chasing the light is about as satisfying of an adrenaline rush as you can get. Whether you have to hop in the car and drive five miles like a mad man or run a mile at 18,000 feet to match the rapidly fading light with a pre-visualized landscape this is not unlike an action sport.

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Since giving the nature photography lecture at the Sierra Club in March, I had been looking for ways to get parts of my presentation online. It wasn’t until I picked up the Canon 5D Mark II recently that I was able to figure out how to put all of the pieces together. I get a little chuckle out of that too because before I got the camera I was thinking how the HD video was more for marketing the camera than it was for actual professional use and how I wasn’t going to bother with it. That thought quickly got dispelled as soon as I tried out video mode because it is pretty awesome!

There were some issues with getting the video formatted for the web since the video was initially optimized for wide-screen HD TV’s. Also some of the footage I intended to include was unrenderable by my computer so I had to use an alternative clip. Either way, putting this together has been a learning experience. Hope you enjoy the video.

Clearing Winter Storm, Mount Baldy

The San Gabriel Mountains is not really a great place to shoot wide-angle landscapes since there is so many signs of human development all around. By zooming in with a telephoto lens however I can focus on the nice areas such as Mount Baldy summit.

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It ain’t Mount Rainier, and that’s the beauty of it. I’m more interested in photographing the more mundane places that people take for granted. After dropping my dad off yesterday, it took me about twenty minutes to get up to this vista in the San Gabriel Mountains just in time for the sunset. It only really looks decent around here during or just after a storm as it was yesterday so I knew this was a can’t miss opportunity.

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Last night’s sunset. I was dropping my dad off when I looked over at the San Gabriel Mountains and knew I had to go up there to shoot the sunset.

I was the last person to arrive at my grandma’s house for dinner.

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Oak Tree Forest, Big Dalton Canyon Wilderness Park, California – July 9, 2008

I stopped by the local wilderness park on Monday night about twenty minutes before closing time just to try some sound gathering in the woods. I was pleasantly surprised to see some fall color developing. See the two pictures above for a comparison.

I was hoping to hear some animal calls because on a previous visit I saw my first black bear. I caught a glimpse of it darting across the road into the foliage as I drove by. I was also told by the ranger that someone reported a mountain lion sighting the day before that.

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Monrovia Canyon Falls, San Gabriel Mountains, California

The waterfall is located inside of Monrovia Canyon Park so it costs $5 to park. Not bad at all because it is quite a scenic place to hike or picnic. The hike itself to the waterfall is relatively easy compared to most hikes in the San Gabriel Mountains because it isn’t high altitude and nor does it require dangerous stream crossings to access. It is a short trail; about a 3/4 mile hike though mostly uphill so I saw several people having a tough time. However, those folks clearly looked out of shape so take this with a grain of salt. It was funny. One lady heading up the trail (near the beginning) with her kids stopped to ask me how much further it would be. “About 15 minutes. It’s not that bad.” Then she had a look of horror on her face after I said that.

When I first got to the waterfall it was overcast so I took a few photos. The sun burst through within a few minutes so a lot of my images had harsh lighting. As a result, I waited nearly two hours for the sun to dip behind the canyon walls before I finished up shooting pictures, this photo included.

Probably the most eventful thing that happened today was after I got back to the car. This family apparently had just gotten into a dispute so their son stomped off in anger with the dad hot on his heels. The rest of them drove off afterwards. As I drove down the road a few minutes later, I found it blocked off with cops and the family. The son then re-appeared and accused the dad of punching him then proceeded to say he wasn’t armed. I on the other hand was more worried about making it home alive and wasn’t going to take his word for it so I kept my eye on the rear-view mirror. The cops handcuffed the kid without further incident so I let out a sigh of relief. The family should have gone to the waterfall. Nature is good for relieving stress.

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Disclaimer: Activity not recommended for the sake of your health.

I was going to write about my sledding photography adventure the other day but you know… (see previous blog entry). Anyway, so my brother and I discovered last week that it’s nearly impossible to sled on fresh snow that hasn’t solidified. I decided to go back up two or three days later figuring there would still be some snow but not waist deep. It turns out the slopes were packed in and icy, ideal for sledding not so much for staying upright. So on my first run I went 3/4 of the way up the hill and had second thoughts when I saw how fast the previous sledder was going.

Sledder Wipes Out Halfway Up the Slope

I figured what the heck, this is what I’d been wanting to do for a couple weeks so I’m going to do it regardless of how scary it is. Underestimating how little traction there is on ice, as soon as I put the sled down and sat in it barely, I started flying down the hill at a fast speed! It was so scary that I think I probably got one or two blurred pictures, the rest of the time I was mentally saying my last rites. It probably wouldn’t have been so bad if I had fully been situated inside of the sled but instead I was barreling down the mountain spinning in circles. I flew over the embankment at the bottom and landed on my ribs while the camera flew off of my neck thus landing several feet away. That didn’t feel very good but I shook it off within a minute.

Since going up that high wasn’t productive from a photography standpoint, I decided to use a less steep slope and only went 1/2 way up. Going slightly slower and being able to get situated in the sled was the only way I was going to be able to shoot photos while sledding. It worked out sort of. I was able to experiment with different shutter speeds over multiple runs. I didn’t quite achieve what I was aiming to do, as I wanted to show part of the sled under my feet but I was pleasantly surprised to get my own shadow in the 1st image posted here. I don’t know if what I originally had in mind is possible to do but it was certainly fun trying to accomplish it.

To sled, what I did was squat with my camera in my right hand and put the sled underneath me with my left hand. I sat down once the sled was positioned properly and then it took off. I had my camera set on a small aperture to get everything as in focus as possible before the motion blurring, then shot on rapid fire mode blindly and hoped to capture something resembling the experience. I wiped out at the bottom on almost every run except for perhaps two of them but was still firing away even while rolling across the ground.

I didn’t have gloves on because they were still wet from the previous time so I lost part of a nail on one finger and another finger is still sore though with no visible damage. It wasn’t too bad though I felt sluggish the next morning. But the lady in the photo below probably suffered a broken arm or ribs and had to be helped off the snow. As I was driving down the mountain, a fire truck and paramedics were racing up so I assume they were coming to rescue her.

Inner Tubing Injury, Angeles National Forest, California

Though it was fun, I won’t ever try to sled with a camera again. Too dangerous.

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Photographers Rights is my least favorite topic to write about but it needs to be done. Today I went up to Manker Flats in the San Gabriel Mountains / Mount Baldy, Angeles National Forest area not too far from the Mt Baldy Ski Lifts in order to go sledding on the snow before it all melts away. As I was walking back to the car, I stopped to shoot a few pictures of the EXTERIOR of the “Movie Slope” Snack Shop from outside in the forest because it looked rather attractive (not necessarily the above photo). Well after two patrons left without buying anything, the man who presumably owns the snack shop comes out with a smug-looking smirk on his face and asks me, “Do you have a filming permit” “No.” “If you want to shoot pictures then you need a permit. Jeep filmed a commercial here and they paid a lot of money for a permit.” “This isn’t commercial photography.” “I don’t care if it’s commercial photography. This is private property and if Jeep paid money to film here then you have to as well otherwise get out of here.” “This is National Forest property.” (He points to the trees.) “Out there it is, this building is privately owned. If you aren’t going to pay money then you can’t photograph this place so put that (camera) away!” “Alright man if you say so.” “So get out of here then!”, then I left.

After three hours of sledding in which I had lost part of fingernail among other things, I didn’t feel like hassling with this clueless guy though I had every right to be there. If it is visible from public land that it is fair game for taking pictures. I have a U.S. National Forest Adventure Pass and since I was behaving in a non-threatening manner just like any other tourist there this morning then he had no right to harass me for taking pictures. If he doesn’t like that then he should pack his bags and set up shop elsewhere. He clearly has no idea about good PR and marketing skills. I get tens of thousands of visitors to my website each month and that kind of free exposure is potentially invaluable to a small business. However he would rather try and extort money from an Average Joe photographer such as myself by citing the TV commercial thus he missed out on potentially good PR not to mention having quite the opposite effect as a result. No one was paying me to be there and nor did I have a cast, crew nor props. There is a major difference between what I was doing and what he was referring to.

The National Parks rules regarding photography states that commercial photography requires permitting through the NPS system. That is understandable because commercial shoots require security and cleanup costs that potentially disrupt the environment. However, editorial / journalism / personal photography is protected by the 1st Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Now if I was inside of the property he would have a legitimate argument but since I was outside where others were then that is B.S. I was acting in a manner not unlike that of any other tourist.

I emailed Photography Rights Attorney Carolyn Wright, Esq. about this situation (again!) and here is her response about this: “Hi Richard. I understand your frustrations. Think about what happened if you did not have a camera in your hands. Would you have been at risk for being arrested? It doesn’t matter if you are trying to shoot or have a camera. Your actions are what’s important.”

Photographers must stand united in the fight to preserve our Civil Rights because there are many cases of our liberties being stripped away these days by uninformed citizens such as the owner of the “Movie Slope” Snack Shop. I have a permanent link to this article regarding similar incidents published in Popular Photography magazine on my blog already but here it is again if you haven’t read it. The article is an interesting read.

“The War on Photographers.”

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My brother and I went up to Mount Baldy this morning after a big storm yesterday. As mentioned a few blog posts ago, I wanted to get some sledding photos. Well the snow was so pristine that we were unable to get the (cheap) sled moving for the most part because we sank into the snow every time we sat on it. I did get it moving twice and wiped out: camera included… The sledding photos sucked because I couldn’t keep the snow and water off the lens in addition to fogging up but it was quite an experience nonetheless. I probably will have use a polarizer next time also in order to get a decent motion blur in my images.

I hadn’t seen so much snow on trees before and it was amazing. Someday I will probably get snow shoes in order to better take advantage of the winter photography opportunities and not suffer frostbite in the process. This photo is of my brother, Eric holding the sled, my tripod and backpack.

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I photographed this on Sunday with a 300mm focal length. What I want to do next time is use my 17-35mm wide angle lens while actually sledding down the slopes myself! I don’t know how I am going to keep control of the sled while shooting photos but I haven’t seen anyone else do this before so it is worth a shot.

One scenario might be to set my camera on a one or two second time-lapse (gotta read the instruction manual…) while dangling around my neck. The perspective should be about ideal as I’d want my feet showing with snow flying all over the place. The hard part would be keeping the camera facing in the right direction.

The one-handed approach would probably yield the most consistent compositions but the degree of difficulty would be really high. Even without cameras, the people I saw weren’t able to consistently make it down the slopes without wiping out. There is another method that I will most likely use but I’ll keep that a secret for now. Though if you’ve read some of my previous blog entries then maybe you might have an idea for what that is.

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It was two years in the making, but this past weekend finally brought a significant amount of fresh snow powder to the local slopes. Making up for lost time seemingly, the road was packed with cars from Mount Baldy Village up to the ski lifts. It was exciting to see daredevils going up these steep slopes then sledding down, wiping out and taking out spectators along the way.

It had been overcast for several days and I actually had other plans yesterday but as soon as I got to the top of my street, I saw the conditions on Mount Baldy then I immediately had a change of plans and headed up there. For much of the year, Mount Baldy looks unremarkable but right after a snow storm it is as beautiful as a mountain can get. Mount Baldy has a vertical relief in excess of 9,000 feet depending on where you are photographing it from. I think there is about 7 or 8,000 thousand feet of vertical relief from this vantage point. By comparison, I think Mount Everest has 12,000 feet of vertical relief from base camp.

The drawback to photographing mountains with a wide angle lens is that makes them look small. Wide angles are the most commonly used type of lens for landscape photography, but mountains are supposed to be big, imposing, powerful. So I used a 70-300mm zoom lens at 192mm to focus in on the summit ridges.

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Depending on the season and weather conditions, my local area can look beautiful occasionally on the surface. Upon a closer look you will find tree carvings usually of the Boy + Girl variety, you will find a lot of beer cans, and gang graffiti on the granite rocks. Ahh, the drawbacks of having a rugged wilderness area in Los Angeles County. Oh yes!

It’s this type of stuff that I have to deal with every time I go out shooting near my house. As much as I want to shoot only pretty pictures, I want to be honest and won’t make any illusions about what it is like to spend time in the San Gabriel Mountains. Hopefully my pictures will at least make a few people angry enough to positively influence those around them. Making people care about the environment is an uphill battle for sure in this area especially when the average person you see on a trail is a dad with his three young boys wearing sandals and breathing as if oxygen is going out of style, or teenage skinny-dippers in the creek.

I found fall foliage swirling very fast in this creek and used long exposure times to get them blurred. However I couldn’t ignore the fact that a discarded beer can was also in the water. So I took the aluminum can out of the water and set it on the dry leaves. I wanted to do a visual metaphor for the moving leaves representing nature’s cycle of life and the can not going anywhere; which is exactly what non-biodegradable waste does. It stays around forever. Don’t litter.

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Photo: Stream Waterfall, Mount Baldy, California

There was a bunch of new snow on the local mountains today and a rare day of clean air so I continued on my quest to find a good scenic viewpoint to photograph Mount Baldy. I think I have found the location today but wasn’t able to scramble up there to get to it because I noticed the spot after the sun had already gone down. But being out there today reminded me of a couple weeks ago when I went for a little trail walk near the Mt. Baldy Ski Village. It was about 40 degrees that day but no snow and little water in the creek but apparently enough for one guy to be skinny dipping in the creek! His girlfriend was fully clothed (unfortunately) and laughing at him. Thankfully for my eyesight he was covering his package with his hands as I walked by. I probably wouldn’t have noticed them if it weren’t for his girlfriend’s loud screaming so I guess they weren’t expecting to see other people up there on a weekday afternoon. Crazy.

This waterfall photo was taken not too far upstream from Mr. 40 Degree Skinny Dipper.

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