Andrew Jones Photography Blog

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[arejonesphoto]

Palouse from Steptoe Butte

I have visited Steptoe Butte once before and posted photos from there, but I wasn't satisfied with results.

Thus I went back, hoping to get some photos I was happier with and hopefully something good enough to print as a memory of my 3 years in the Palouse.

The first 4 photos are photos from Steptoe Butte looking out over the rolling hills just before sunset. I'm much happier with my photos this time, I got much nicer textures and colours in the hills compared with before. Shortly before sunset, there was an amazing glow in the sky, which you can see in the last of those 4 pictures.

The next day I went out again to get a couple more pictures of the green fields, as it was starting to get hot enough that they'll scorch soon. One of the pictures shows a farmer's tracks up a hill with nice green fields and a nice blue sky. Then the last photo is reminiscent of the Windows XP default background, which was actually taken by a Microsoft employee of the Palouse hills. I love how simple my picture like that is, with the single small cloud in the sky and again beatufitful colours.

I'm leaving the Palouse very soon, but at least I'm satisfied I got the pictures I wanted before I left. Not of all of Washington mind you as there are a lot of incredible places I've still not even been to, let alone photographed (e.g. the Cascades or Mt. Rainier national park), but at least the area around me is done.

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Alki Beach

Alki Beach is an area in West Seattle, where on one side you can see downtown Seattle and on the other the Olympic mountains. I've been meaning to go there for a little while, however the last time it was heavily raining, so I postponed until now.

Started off taking some pictures of the cityscape and doing a timelapse of that. There were some nice clouds to the right of the picture of the city and although it looked like they were moving in, they never made it over the city. Then moved to the beach on the west side of the area, facing the mountains. We were there for sunset, but unfortunately the cloud coverage wasn't looking like the best to see the sun go down. The third photo down of this set came out much better than I expected though, I really like it and the colours are great.

After a few more photos and experiments, we went for dinner and afterwards stopped back on the east side to take some night cityscapes across the water. I love taking pictures like this, with the light streaks across the water and also Seattle is so recognisable with the Space Needle.

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Alki beach timelapse

I did a timelapse for the first time in a while, when I visited Alki Beach. In the 40-50 timelapses I've probably done in my life, I've never had someone walk in front of the camera, let alone about 10 different people like they did in the second clip of this video; extremely frustrating. But Alki Beach was a good location to try as I had some time and could do a shot of downtown Seattle as well as on the beach looking towards the Olympic mountains. I definitely want to get back into doing some more timelapses.

Tumblr videos aren't the best, but better to watch this fullscreen with HD on to try to improve the quality as much as possible.

Photos from the day to come soon...

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Home in England - Places Part 2

After spending some time in Whitby we drove down the coast to Robin Hood's Bay and the Scarborough. The next day we drove from Helmsley through the North York Moors to Osmotherly (rainbow photo). We took some very remote single track roads (the B1257 and Hall Lane among others I think) between the 2 places that were absolutely breathtaking. Photos don't do it justice, but I was blown away by the Yorkshire countryside. Also, I don't think I've ever seen so many pheasants in my life! There's some beautiful places to live - nice stone houses and cottages with fires. I think Hovingham was my favourite town that we drove through.

The last picture is of Hazlewood castle; it's actually an iPhone photo as I didn't have my camera on me and I just took it quickly while leaving a CPD event I was attending there. I just wish the cars weren't in front of the castle and I had a bit more time to take some photos.

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Home in England - Places Part 1

During my time at home, I had enough time to do some photogrpahy of some beautiful places on my travels. The first main time was during a walk through the grounds of Blenheim Palace, with some nice autumnal trees. It was a lovely place to walk around, even in October, and there's a nice visitor centre and place to eat.

Then a couple of weeks later, during my first trip to Yorkshire, we visited Whitby. Here we walked around the Abbey and the visitor centre surrounding area. At one point on the walk, there was a nice view over Whitby and the sea, which is the last photo.

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Grand Teton National Park

This is one of the most stunning places in the world. There's some special places around it (Yellowstone is only about 50 miles down the road and some beautiful places in Montana too), but this takes the biscuit. The way the mountains rise out of the groud surrounded by flat land all around it make them more impressive. That combined with some great photography locations made for a special trip.

The first photo is a photo while driving as we were so excited to see the mountains and they were so impressive. We would be spending a lot of time photographing the mountains, so getting the first glimpse while driving was not necessary particularly but it turned out to be a good picture.

The first morning there was spent at a conference in Jackson Hole (aka Teton Village), which is a nice ski resort town near the Tetons. In the summer you can access it via a 9 mile back road to avoid the town of Jackson and is a fun twisty little road. I'm not surprised it's closed in the winter as it must be trecherous. In the afternoon, we left for some photography and when we started the weather was terrible, cold, grey, rainy, miserable and extremely overcast. Undeterred we went to all of the places I planned and thankfully the clouds cleared and it turned out to become a nice afternoon. This meant that we returned to a couple of the first places to get the nicer weather. Schwabacher's landing was one of these places and it was worth it as I got a nice photo of the clouds reflecting in the water. The water was very still due to a dam that was built in the stream, presumably by some beavers, although I didn't see any unfortunately.

Cunningham Cabin was a cabin built in the late 1800s and has a great view out of it towards the Tetons. There are quite a few houses and cabins built with a perfect view towards the mountains - a view that would be hard to get tired of. It would be a great place to live and have the Tetons in your back garden. There's a picture from the outside of the cabin, but I'm really pleased with the picture from the inside. The picture had to be made up of a couple of different exposures, one exposed for the inside to get light on the wood and then a separate exposure for the bright mountains outside. I'm very proud of how the final product turned out, which is hard to predict when you just have one chance to get the photos you need when you are out there. From there, the next photo is of Oxbow bend, where you can see some of the flat grey cloud rejoined us, but that the nice blue skies were hanging in there. There's a little bit of a reflection of the mountains in the water too. The picture after that is taken from a man-made dam with a road crossing Jackson Lake, which I hadn't planned to stop out but there was a nice view so we did. Even though it looks extremely sunny in that picture, I was being rained on heavily from my side of the lake! I had planned on stopping at Jenny Lake where I thought there'd be better photography views. Unfortunately, the path down to the lakeside was closed (for construction I think) and the time that we got there, the sun, as you can see from the photo, was directly in front of us - not ideal. It was a nice warm afternoon at that point and a nice place to take a quick break, but perhaps sunrise or sunset would have made for better pictures.

The final picture is one of the best photos I've ever taken and it is of T. A. Moulton Barn. This barn might be one of the most photographed barns in the world, but with good reason I think! We got up at 5am to drive and arrive there before sunrise and to our surprise we weren't the only people with that thought. Unfortunately, a photography class had been taken there by their instructor so there was a little crowd forming, fighting for tripod space. I managed to snag the last spot, before encroaching on other people who were spread around the area and I'm actually very happy with where I ended up. I don't think I'd have actually liked to be further around to the right where all of the others were. The first amazing sight was when the sun was rising and just lighting up the peaks of the mountains, which I thought would be a great photo in itself. Then the sun rose a little further and the barn lit up like magic and produced the breathtaking scene in the photo above. The sky, the barn, the mountains and the light all just lined up perfectly for me and produced what I think is a wonderful photo that is one of my best. Well worth waking up early for!

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Yellowstone National Park

This was my first time travelling into and through Montana and Wyoming, as well as to the oldest National Park in the world

Yellowstone National Park is a pretty amazing place and even the drive to get there is surrounded by some impressive scenery. Following a hiccup in the morning leading to a couple of hour delay (puncture and tyre replacement), we made it to the North entrance of the park. These photos are arranged in the order we visited through the day in an approximatly north to south direction.

I was excited to see some wildlife, which we saw within minutes of entering - there was an elk lying down on the other side of a river. Then we made it Mammoth Hot Springs, the first town (which I didn't realise they had within national parks), and there were elk casually wondering around the houses and turns out there are lots of them everywhere. Then we got out and walked around the many terraces of Mammoth Hot Springs itself, which was our first sight of the geothermal activity. There was some amazing colours and spring pools. The next two most exciting things we saw were bison and a bear. There was a herd of a few bison grazing just close enough to get a good picture and just far away enough across a creek to not feel too unsafe. The bear was a little bit too far to get a great photo, but still great to see a black bear in the wild.

From there we headed to the Lower Falls of Yellowstone, where there are mutliple outlook areas. We first went down to the head of the waterfall, where there was a big water flow, which was very impressive and powerful. The photo is looking down the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone from this point. Then we went to Lookout Point, which is where the photo looking at the waterfall was taken from. Due to time and unclear mapping, we never made it to Artist Point, which was the place I had most wanted to go based on my pre-trip planning.

Next visit was to Norris Geyser Basin, which is a group of hot springs and geysers that you can walk around. Walking off track is not recommended as a week before our visit a guy walked 200m off track and fell into a hot spring and boiled to death. Needless to say, we stayed on track and saw the very pretty pastel blue spring pools and small geysers and holes in the ground that were bubbling away and giving off steam.

Grand Prismatic Spring was the number one thing I wanted to see in Yellowstone, however weather conditions were not in my favour. Unfortunatley it was too cold and wet, which caused the hot spring to give off a large amount of steam. The problem with that, is that it obscured the view of most of the spring and all of its amazing colours. I was very disappointed by this, but all it means is that I'll have to go back again in the future. There is one photo here where you can see lots of colours and get an idea of what it's like, but it's not what I was hoping for and excited about.

The final photo is of Old Faithful, a large erupting geyser that gets its name due to the regularity with which it erupts. It erupts every 30-120 minutes reportedly and can reach 50m in height, which is much higher and impressive than I was expecting. Unfornately, the weather was very grey so I didn't have the best background for my photo, but you can see the water eruption coming from the ground and the huge warm steam cloud coming from it.

From Yellowstone, we travelled south to Jackson Hole and the surrounding Grand Teton National Park. I will upload a gallery from there next.

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Washington & Oregon roadtrip...not my camera.

My sister came to visit and we went on a roadtrip stopping in Seattle, Portland, Leavenworth and the Pullman area. Above are some pictures from along the way, with her camera, taken by both of us.

The first couple of photos are from the Space Needle area, one from the base of the Space Needle and then we took a trip up it, which was good, to get a photo of the rest of Downtown and Mt Baker in the background. After looking at some museums in that area, one of which being the EMP, which we'd highly recommend, we went to Pike's Place Market, which is a market with many things, but is known for it's fresh seafood, which looks amazing.

After a few days in Seattle, we drove down to Portland in Oregon and enjoyed staying in the 'Mississippi' area, where lots of the quirky houses and shops are located. From Portland, we spent one day travelling to some beautiful sites, including Multnomah falls - the large double waterfall picture above and Mt Hood. I really wanted to visit Mt Hood, to try to get a photo with the mountain reflected in the lake. We walked nearly 2 miles from where we could park to get down to the lake, but then I probably walked another mile around the edge of the lake to find an area where there was still enough water to get a good reflection. I am extremely happy with how this photo turned out and have ordered the photo on a large canvas for my wall!

Oregon is an absolutely beautiful state - we very much enjoyed driving and walking around the scenic areas and were blown away by some of the amazing views, especially along the Columbia river, of which there is a picture above. There is a nice Vista House (also pictured), which is a nice place to park up and gives you great views along the river. This was on the way to Multnomah Falls too.

After Oregon, we drove up to Leavenworth, a Bavarian town in Washington and stayed in a stone cabin, which was fun. Unfortnately, as the snowfall was so poor this year, Leavenworth town had kind of shut down as there were not many visitors there to ski, which was a little disappointing. I'd like to go back for Oktoberfest or to ski at some point, and the drive up and between the mountains was very pretty too.

On the way back to the Pullman area, we stopped of at Palouse Falls, which I had really wanted to go to. It's a huge waterfall in the middle of nowhere. We were driving around the huge 'desert-y' area and the weather was extremely hot and there were so many hills, it was hard to believe anybody ever found this. You'd think that such a large waterfall would be visible from a long way away, but it is not until you get out of your car at the designated parking area and walk towards it that you can see it. It is a very impressive waterfall, but unforunately the time of day we were there, was not the best for photo taking and that was the best I could get. I'd like to go back at some point and take some more pictures, perhaps at sunset or at night.

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Buttes

After having not used my own camera for a very long time, the last couple of weekends, I've made trips out to Kamiak Butte and Steptoe Butte for some sunset photography.

First was Kamiak Butte, which I tried to drive up, however it turned out that the road to the top was a communications tower only private drive. This meant I had to go back to the normal parking area and hike up. Pine Ridge trail is the main trail, which in theory is 0.5 mile to the top and a 3.5 mile loop. I ended up walking along the top of the ridge quite a way to find a gap in the trees, to try and get a good sunset picture and must have walked at least 3 miles when all was said and done. The second two photos are of Steptoe Butte from Kamiak Butte, right after sunet.

Then this weekend, I drove to Steptoe Butte an hour before sunset. This one you can drive all the way to the top - the road spirals up around the hill to the top. I went there to try and get a good picture of the rolling hills of the Palouse at sunset. All of the rest of the pictures are from Steptoe. There’s one picture where you can see the shadows of the hills as the sun was going down, which was the best shot I got and it was taken soon after I arrived. I was hoping to get some more pictures with more of an orange sunset glow on the hills, but as the sun gets lower the shadows are lost. Sunrise might be a better time to get a photo like that, or in the autumn as there will be more of a haze at sunrise. The problem right now, is that sunrise is at about 5am!

After sunset, I was just going to drive down and leave Steptoe when I saw some flashes of lightning in the distance. As such, I decided to stay longer and set up a timelapse of the thunderstorm. I stayed on the hill for about 40 minutes longer and the photo above is 25 minutes of my camera taking a 2 second exposures every 3 seconds to try to catch as much lightning as possible. Then I drove home and got back to Pullman right as the storm hit Pullman. It was the most violent thunderstorm I have ever experienced, with lightning flashes every 3-5 seconds and seriously loud thunder, that shook the walls and the floors of my house! Once I was home, I processed the timelapse, to merge all of the exposures over the 25 minutes, into 1 single image with all of the lightning bolts and out came the image above, which I am extremely pleased with.

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Scripps Pier

I went to La Jolla for the day and thought I would just travel up the coast a short way to take sunset photos at Scripps Pier. I was hoping to get a photo of the sun setting inside the pier as you look along underneath it. Unfortunately it was just a couple of degrees away from achieving that, which means I was just a day or two off having it perfect! The pier is very photogenic for sunsets though, so it was definitely still worth going!

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Corona Del Mar

I hadn't taken my camera on an outing for a while, so I thought it was about time. A place I had been planning on going for a while, was Corona Del Mar, a 'suburb' of Newport Beach. I'd seen photos of this place with all of it's rock formation at sunset, and wanted to give it a try myself.

There are 2 beaches, just about connected by all of the rocks - Corona Del Mar state beach and Little Corona Beach. Both are very picturesque and nice places to spend the day. Californian sunsets don't disappoint either - the picture with the moon is completely unedited, the colours after sunset were incredibly vivid!

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Grand Canyon by helicopter

There is no shortage of things to do in Vegas, but one thing that is really good, is a helicopter tour of the Grand Canyon.

The helicopter leaves the airport, flies over Lake Mead formed by the Hoover Dam, then over the Grand Canyon and descending to land in the canyon. 

I really enjoyed the trip and above are a few of the photos I took, the panoramic being, the bend in the river where we stopped for a picnic within the canyon. There are also pictures of Lake Mead and the Hoover Dam, which were very impressive to see from above; Lake Mead is vast.

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Arch Rock Milky Way

I returned to Joshua Tree determined to get the photo I never managed to previously.

With plenty of preparation, knowing exactly where I was going, I set off for the 2.5h drive again. I arrived at White Tank campground, which is a nice campsite surrounded by huge boulders.

At around 1.45am, I got out of my car and walked along the Arch Rock trail, which is very short and thankfully I managed to find the rock in the dark.

My plan was to take a panoramic photo showing the galactic core of the Milky Way arching at the same angle over the rock, almost 180° across the sky. It actually took a lot of planning, as the Milky Way changes angle and rises above the horizon at different times throughout the year. The correct angle also had to coincide with clear skies and my day off! 

As can be seen from the first picture here, everything came together and I took the best photo I have ever taken in my life. Needless to say, I am thrilled with how it came out. Incidentally, it is the first time I have managed to really photograph the Milky Way and it couldn't have come out better. There are a couple of other photos of the Milky Way next to a cactus and Joshua Tree as well as a couple of pictures at sunrise.

The only negative experience of this trip, was a group of six or seven photographers that turned up while I was taking pictures at 3am, shining their torches all over the scene. This is very bad photography etiquette as they saw I was there and still continued. They then spent an hour shining their torches all over Arch Rock, which ruined plenty of my photos. Luckily for me, they turned up after I had completed the first picture here and the Milky Way had risen away from the rock, so I had the best photo in the end. Only as I was leaving, did one of them ask if it was OK if he turned his torch on. Apart from that, it was an extremely successful trip.

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Jurassic Park

It's taken me a while to get around to posting this, but a couple of weeks ago, I went to Anza Borrego Desert State Park.

It is an incredible area of desert circled by mountains, with a small town in the middle. Getting there, requires driving down an incredible mountain road with plenty of switchbacks. I had to take it easy as I got close to the bottom of the mountain as there was a rather pungent smell coming from my brakes!

One reason I visited was in hope of seeing fields of desert wildflowers. I went during the best week of this year, but was unlucky and didn't see any. Although wildflowers were present; fields of them are much less common sights in recent years. 

A rich businessman owns a large area of land within Anza Borrego, named Galleta Meadows. In these 'meadows' he has commissioned huge scrap metal sculptures. These huge sculptures, a small number of which I photographed, include a large range of creatures - dinosaurs, eagles, elephants and almost anything else you can imagine! There are actually 129 sculptures hidden around Anza Borrego. The largest is a 350 foot serpent/dragon which spans the road (photo above).

Most of the sculptures can be found just off Palm Canyon Drive or Borrego Springs Road. Some of them require either a long walk or some off-roading. I recommend choosing a suitable car before going off road as I decided to drive up the T Rex and some other dinosaurs and when I returned to my car (that I parked up on the sand bank to not block off the track), I got stuck with my wheels spinning! Luckily I managed to get up before I fried in the desert sun!

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Broken Hill

My first main photography trip since the winter was to Torrey Pines State Reserve, with the main objective being to photograph a location known as Broken Hill. 

I arrived very early at Torrey Pines so that I could scout out the location, walk on some of the trails I'd not been on before and relax on the beach. Having walked around the whole Broken Hill area, I decided where I'd be taking the photos from and waited for sunset.

I wasn't the only photographer who decided this would be a good location as somebody else turned up, but luckily they picked somewhere different and not in my picture to take their shots.

When I got home and looked at the photos, I was amazed at how well they had come out. Broken Hill is a stunning bit of coastline and I ended up taking one of the best pictures I've ever taken there; managing to include the sunset in the shot. The hill can be seen by satellite, as shown on the map below.

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Hummingbird

After a winter hiatus off photography for a number of reasons, I've started picking up my camera and going on trips once again. 

I don't see hummingbirds very regularly and they certainly aren't easy to photograph. I've only once successfully taken a photo of one before which was a lucky shot with a compact camera.

I recently found a hummingbird's nest outside the front of my house, with what looked like a pregnant hummingbird (by the size of her belly and the appearance of egg shapes inside her) flitting back and forth around it. Seizing the opportunity, I got my camera and starting attempting to get pictures of it. Unfortunately they move so quickly, it is hard to track them and by the time you've found the spot where they are hovering the bird has flitted to another spot. Another difficulty for me, was that the nest was within a thick tree, which made focussing very difficult as there were lots of branches to focus on and miss the bird. This also made it difficult to isolate the bird from the surroundings (or camouflage!), so I'm still yet to get a hummingbird shot I'm really happy with.

Out of 135 photos I took, less than 10 contained an in-focus hummingbird! The first picture above is the fluke shot from before and the rest are from my recent photoshoot of my hummingbird neighbour.

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Salton Sea Part 2: Burrowing Owls

The main reason I went to Salton Sea was to find burrowing owls. They are the reason I went to the San Jacinto Wildlife Area as reportedly some have been seen there, although I did not see any.

I find birds of prey fascinating and beautiful animals, but they are difficult to see in the wild or up close. Burrowing owls are interesting as they are not completely nocturnal like most owls and live on the ground in burrows. Conveniently they are mostly found in California as well as Florida and areas of South America. Conservation attempts are being made in various places to help protect them such as artificial burrows being created at Salton Sea - a buried nest box with a black corrugated entrance tube and a white plastic vent tube.

http://burrowingowlconservation.org/

Having searched around for some in places I noticed that others had seen them on the internet, I asked the old man who appears to run the visitor centre at the Sonny Bono Wildlife Refuge. He said my best chance was walker road, not far from the reserve, and to look out for the burrows.

I went down to walker road and drove along, surprised by how small the entrance tubes were (5-6" diameter), looking for any signs of burrowing owls. At the point of thinking that my trip was wasted, I think a bit of movement caught my eye, so I looked round and saw the yellow eyes staring at me!

I took some photos of it peeking over the rocks at me but struggled to get much more than that. With new found hope, I continued along the road but found no more birds. I debated driving back towards the refuge a different way but luckily decided to go back along the road and at the site I'd seen one bird, there were now two sets of eyes staring at me! I got some better photos and when one of them flew off, I got some pictures of them standing up, rather than crouching in their little hollow by their burrow.

All in all a very successful trip and I finally saw the burrowing owls after much planning. I would like to return at some point (with a longer lens) to get some more pictures and to spend some more time watching them.

The map below shows walker road where I found the birds but the refuge is not one I visited and is not the Sonny Bono refuge.