Santa Rosa Plateau Ecological Reserve

“Our experiences can be so much more peaceful if it weren’t for having to deal with our own kind sometimes.” – Mark Graf.

Particularly when you have overly-chatty park docents talking everyone’s ears off. There were a few birders and photographers at the Vernal Pools but it felt more like a ride line at Disneyland when [...]

2010 Southern California Wildflowers

I was headed to the Santa Rosa Plateau Ecological Reserve yesterday afternoon so I stopped in Lake Elsinore briefly to see if there were any flowers. The hillsides look green from I-15 but not a lot of other color so I didn’t expect to see anything. Up close however, I saw a few patches of [...]

Mammoth Lakes Scenic Vista (Caption Help Needed)

I’ve had this and another unprocessed photo sitting on my computer for six months now because I haven’t been able to track down the name of this location. This scenic vista was taken from the waterfall bridge on the Mammoth Lakes Loop. I don’t recall the name of the bridge nor know what the valley [...]

Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge

One of the most amazing places in California is not even located in a pretty location. However, during the winter months, the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge comes alive with hundreds of thousands of migrating Pacific Flyway birds. I visited on a December day five years ago to shoot some new slides for class and was [...]

Wade in the Water

The nice thing about all this rain we have gotten in February is that we have water in the San Gabriel Valley. It’s been a few years since I’ve seen anything other than a dry river bed. This photo shoot was a bit more difficult than I had anticipated. There was a vantage point that [...]

Bridalveil Fall Double Rainbow

Excuse the lack of blog posts lately as I have been tied up with optimizing the photos in my web galleries for faster load times. Some of the web galleries get bogged down because I was lazy when I created my site by not creating small thumbnails and just used a one-size-fits-all solution. Anyway…
I took [...]

Point Reyes National Seashore

There was a point in my development as a photographer that I realized how lucky we are in this country to be able to pursue our passions such as landscape photography. That moment for me came to me one weekday morning at Point Reyes National Seashore six or seven years ago when I had a [...]

LA Skyline Twilight

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 [...]

Los Angeles Skyline Photo With Winter 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 [...]

Mid-Winter Foliage in Southern 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 [...]

Mount San Jacinto State Park

I’ve always been impressed with the size of the San Jacinto Mountains rising above Palm Springs and I knew that one way to go to the State Park was via the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway. I was curious to see if there was another way to photograph the area so I drove toward Idyllwild. It [...]

Another Kelso Dunes Photo

Another view of the Kelso Dunes. If you look closely at the left side of the ridge, you can see the slide marks from where I went down. Everyone else was on the other dunes to the left of here so I had this whole place to myself. I saw a few people run all [...]

Kelso Dunes

Rising more than 600 feet from the desert floor and covering about 45 square miles, the Kelso Dunes are quite an amazing sight. From the parking lot, the dunes appear to be easily accessible. However, it is a bit deceiving since the dunes are so large that it looks like a much shorter hike than [...]

Mojave Trails National Monument

Senator Diane Feinstein recently introduced legislation to create two new national monuments in the California desert. This was especially interesting to me because the area around Amboy, which I recently photographed, lies within the proposed Mojave Trails National Monument.
Happy New Year!
See more of my Mojave Desert photos.

Southern California Rain

“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 [...]

Amboy Crater

Usually before I go shoot a location for the first time, I do a fair amount of research to find out what the terrain is like, history, and what other photographers have done. It was while researching Roy’s Motel a couple of years ago that I discovered the Amboy Crater was located nearby so made [...]

Seals and Grizzlies

Having been inspired by Mark Graf’s recent trip to Alaska, I have been considering signing up for a grizzly bear photo tour. I’ve only seen one black bear in the wild for a split second in a wilderness park near my house so I’m sure it would be a huge adrenaline rush to be surrounded [...]

San Jacinto Wildlife Area

My previous visit to the San Jacinto Wildlife Area was a productive one, but that was in the winter three or four years ago. I feel that a photographer can photograph a place at least three or four times with a fresh perspective so I wanted to see if I could get some of the [...]

Mount Baldy Village Mountain Light

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 [...]

Point Lobos State Reserve Sunset

As pointed out in my previous blog posts, California State Parks Access Pass and Allan Memorial Grove, Point Lobos SR, the California State Parks system is in danger of being compromised from the proposed budget cuts. I could get by just fine without a city like L.A. but I cannot imagine living in a California [...]

keep looking »

Subscribe to In The Field.

In the Field: Photo Blog by Richard Wong