Prayer Flags at Sunrise

Sometimes your travel itinerary can have a big impact on your photography and bring you new, unexpected challenges. The Annapurna Circuit is a 18 to 21 day circuit trek in the mountains of Nepal. You climb to heights of 17,000 ft. carrying your pack and sleeping in rudimentary guest houses with no heat. Some might not call this a vacation, but I love hiking and the challenges that it brings. Plus, this was a chance to use my new filters and wide angle lens in the mighty Himalayas!

Photography while trekking is like running a marathon in a way; at mile 18 you see something you want to shoot and you have to get out your 5 lbs of camera equipment and put on the right lens and filters, take the photos, and then pack everything away again and resume running to mile 19. It’s exhausting!

The eyes have it

Due to the nature of the itinerary, weather conditions, and high altitude; I found the photography much more challenging than my normal trips. I don’t like to carry a lot of equipment when trekking therefore I stuck to my Cannon 40D, and 3 lenses. No tripod, no flash; I had to keep it simple.

I quickly realized one of the biggest challenges was the constant changing light situations. Bright sun and dark shadows in the mountains made exposure a nightmare. Plus, I didn’t have the luxury of shooting at the ‘best sunlight times’. When you are trekking, you don’t have the extra time to sit around and wait for the right shot with the right light. After all, we had an itinerary to get over the pass and due to weather conditions we had to try to stick to it.

Glacier Lake

Normally I would go out and research a place/people one day with a few shots, review the shots that night and then go back out the next day. However, when trekking and covering great distances, you don’t have the luxury of going back. You are always moving forward!

Not only did the light prove challenging, but the physical exertion took it’s toll. Once above 9000 feet, I was working and breathing so hard simply trekking and I couldn’t physically get the camera out fast enough to get shots; I was moving in slow motion!

I look back on all of my photography of the trip and realize that I did shoot a lot more in the beginning and at the end. However the middle of the trek which required a great deal of physical strain, I didn’t take nearly as many photos.

Rocky Landscapes

In addition on the day we crossed the pass at 17,770 ft, it was too cold and I was too worried about the trekking challenge ahead of me as well as my safety, that I didn’t even carry my own photo equipment. I packed it safely away in my guide’s bag and I simply carried my point and shoot. As we started the slow 4 hour climb up the pass, I saw a guy setting up a shot of the sun peaking over the peak and I immediately was filled with envy.

However, even though I was envious of his shots and all of the shots I was missing, I knew that I had made the right decision. My concern was first making up the pass in one piece, photography second. I knew my limits and was positive that the mental struggle I would’ve had carrying my expensive equipment in a precarious situation, outweighed the need to shoot. So I relied on my point and shoot in this situation.

Connection Point

I was still able to get hundreds of great photos, the challenge was mentally accepting that I wasn’t able to get EVERY photo I wanted! So, as you plan your next travel itinerary, consider your shooting conditions, time, and environmental factors and set your photography expectations appropriately!

Car Models

View all of Sherry’s Nepal Photography

Blessed to live in the heart of the Ozark Mountains in Chester, Arkansas. I’m just a stones throw away from several photo blindes I’ve built around my place. Nature and wildlife photography are my passion. My wife Lisa and I have just returned from a tour of the state trying to capture the beautiful fall foilage. We spent a week putting tents up and down in several different places, (in the rain I might add, rained every freaking day). We returned home with so much more than we expected. We celebrated our 21st wedding anniversary while we were on tour and I think I had one of the best weeks of my life. Not only did we accomplish the fall foilage shots, with all the rain we had waterfalls everywhere around us.
I’d like to share some of my photos with you and talk a little about how I shoot. If you have a camera and a tripod you can very quickly be taking photos just like them. I never shoot without a tripod! The next secret is timing. Most of my shots are done very early in the morning or right before it gets dark. This allows you to open your shutter for extended periods of time on your landscape photos. I like to open my shutter on the waterfalls for at least four to thirty seconds. This gives the water a milky look as it spills over the ledge. I also try to frame the shot through leaves or rocks whatever I can find. The way you frame the shot is what will set your shots apart from everyone elses.
I hope you like my photos as much as I like shooting them. My photography became an instant passion but more importantly it started a healing process that helped me through a difficult time and I was able to start living my life again I strongly encorage anyone with camera laying around to use it. You’ll be suprised, not only do they take great pictures. They may open doors you thought couldn’t be opened. I’ve got many doors left to try and pry open and my camera keeps my mind in a place that allows me to do it.
Here is a link to my wonderful week with my wife – Fall Colors Album and here is a link to my home page . If I can help you with your photography contact me throgh my website and I’ll be happy to help. There are going to a couple of tough days starting out but if I can do it anyone can! Good luck and keep me posted! I hope you will share your photos with me.

Wild WoodsPhotography
Todd Whetstine

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A Photographer With a Bird’s-Eye View of the Economy

“Happy Friday, Everyone!
I found this interesting article about Corporate-jet photographer Charles Tack and wanted to share it. He makes around $300,000 a year photographing corporate jets for sale. What a great niche to be in! Tack, 57, photographs the jets for brokers, who use his work in sales portfolios and for advertisements in trade journals. You can read the full article and see his work by clicking on the link below:”

A Photographer With a Bird’s-Eye View of the Economy

Gobi Desert Landscapes – Mongolia

Mongolian Horizon

“We all live under the same sky but we don’t have the same horizon” – Konrad Adenauer

Isolation
I have been to about 90% of Asia and there’s one things that hold constant among all Asian countries; population density. There are so many people in Asia, it’s mind boggling. This population density contributes to why Asians aren’t as protective of their personal space as westerners, and they don’t like to queue. However when arriving in Mongolia I was stunned at the emptiness. The country of Mongolia has the lowest population density in the world. I had never experience emptiness like this before. We’d drive for 100km in the desert and you wouldn’t see another human being; nor a truck or car or motorcycle. However, we were never really alone as we were surrounded by the animals; camels, horses, goats, sheep, and yaks. We’d see packs of random camels grazing in the seemingly barren desert. I honestly have no idea what they were grazing on!

Kaleidoscope of Colors and Texture
As we left Ulanbatar the terrain changes from rolling green hills with gers puffing out fairy tale smoke to the pebbly brown hills of the Gobi. I saw the last tree I would see in days, and soon the desert colors and landscape seemingly changed as quickly as the turn of a kaleidoscope. I’d look at the jeep window and see a flat, brown rocky landscape. I’d look up again and see mountains in the distance and then the landscape would be greener with little blades of young grass sprouting up from the parched earth. Next my eyes would be greeted with a pebbly landscape that looked steely and gray with no sign of life. Finally I would stare out my window wondering if I had missed us shoot into orbit somehow; it looked as though we had landed on the moon. This unearthly surface was one of my favorite. Strangely the desert was more colorful than I ever would have imagined.

View Mongolian Landscape photography

No Sand in the Desert?
When you think of the desert, you think of sand – right? Not so fast, the Gobi isn’t a sandy desert. In fact, in my 12 days there, I saw very little sand (even though my camera sensor would say otherwise evidenced by all the dust particles on my photos that I had to edit!) Instead there were boulders, rocks, pebbles and dirt.

Uush Sand Dunes

There are some large sand dunes, however you had to travel to find them, they were more or a rarity than the norm. We luckily did travel to the Uush sand dunes; the dunes known for their amazing healing sand (according to the locals who would bury their bodies in it). After a long drive through the flat dusty terrain, we finally saw the dunes raise up out of the nothingness. We climbed to the top of the dune and sat down in the fine sand and took inventory of our surroundings. It was an amazing view from the top; looking down on the flat, hard desert floor. As I looked out into the distance I noticed that the brilliant blue sky disappearing into a brown haze. I asked our local host about the strange sky; a sandstorm he said. I’ve been in a lot of weather conditions all over the world, but never a sandstorm. I decided to take on the emotion of our host and stay calm and watch it get closer and closer as our sun disappeared and the wind picked up. Seemingly at the last minute he looked at us and said “We go now”, and we all proceeded to race down the huge dune to safety! It was invigorating as we ran into the ger and the sand started whistling past the door and we all took a safe cover. The desert was full of surprises!

Mongolian Safari

Desert Safari
I felt as if we were on safari at times; I had memory flashbacks to my time in Kenya, driving a bumpy jeep through barren land in search of animals. In the Gobi, it seemed as if the animals would come look at us, and we in turn would look at them as if the idea of a shared heartbeat in this empty landscape drew us together. At one point we came over a small rise in the landscape and suddenly saw a herd of lightening fast Ibex dart across the vast desert. I yelped in delight as if I had just seen a cheetah! The only thing you could see was little puffs of dust following their trails as they disappeared out of sight as fast they came into our sight. In addition to the unique Ibex sighting, there was another unusual animal in the desert; the camel. It’s important to note that camels in the Gobi desert are actually unique, I was told the Gobi is the only place you’ll find two hump camels in the world which makes them even rarer than elephants!

Nothing survives here!

The Desert Effect
As if I were on a movie set, we drive and bump our way past rotting animal carcasses, skulls, and various bones scattered on the desert floor. The bones would be so white from the sun that they seemed unreal. In fact, my first reaction to going by what looked to be a yak skull was ‘Is that for real?” As if I thought some movie director had decided to put a fake skull out in the middle of nowhere to create a ‘desert effect’. These are the times when realize that maybe there has been too much television influence on my life and not enough real life experiences! Real life in the desert is hard; especially for the animals. These were the animals that didn’t make it for one reason or another. But you can be sure that in the great ‘circle of life’ the other animals benefited from the death as evidenced by the cleanly picked skeletons. One animal’s death was another’s feast.

A few lone trees were a pleasant surprise

Mirage of Trees
After driving for miles and miles towards the sand dunes, I saw something off in the distance. The little black formations were unusual, but I assumed they were camels or horses milling together in solidarity against the elements. I kept my eye on the dark odd-shaped spots as we continued to drive closer to them. I rubbed my eyes, still fixated on the spots, realizing that these weren’t animals, nor were they people; they were trees. A strange little clump of trees had sprung up out of the dry, cracked desert floor! I wondered if I was seeing things; was this indeed a mirage? I had gone days without seeing trees and my brain was surprised to see this one time familiar image again. The unexplainable bunch of hearty trees appeared to be growing next to a dried out river bed; I imagined these tree roots sucking every last ounce of water out of the river until it was gone and only a slurping sound remained; certainly the heat was getting to me!

Distant Storms

Stormy Weather

One great thing about a desert is that you can see for miles and miles; the horizon surrounding you like a halo. However, sometime that pure horizon would be disrupted by a strange site; rain. Never once did it rain on us, however it seemed to be quite often raining around us. I felt like we existed with a giant forcefield around us ensuring the rain clouds stayed always in the distance. However, this rain forcefield did provide many fabulous opportunities to watch as the storm took on a life of its own and slowly moved across the desert gathering darkness and power.

Endless Sky
I stared out the window trying to figure out why the Mongolian sky seemed so different; unique and larger than life. After much thought I came to the conclusion that in NYC or Saigon or most of the places I’ve ever lived, you have to look up to see the sky. You have to make a special effort to view it as it’s normally such a small percentage of our overall view. However in the flat, treeless Gobi, the sky was now about 70% of my view and it was straight in front of me. I felt as if I were in one of those round-about theatres where everywhere you looked was clouds. When the sky is constantly within your line of sight, it takes on this vastness that you could feel; and this is what I’ll remember most about the Mongolian landscape.