All images © 2007-2013 Aaron Meyers
The Ancient Bristlecones are some of the oldest living organisms on the earth and they almost look dead. They just have gnarled, twisted, barely leafed branches all over. I’ve always wanted to visit their forest in the Eastern Sierras and in July I finally got to see them with my own eyes! After driving all day, Willie and I arrived at the Patriarch Grove knowing from experience that most likely sunset was going to go from really hopeful to a total dud. Sure enough, it did, the clouds fizzled and we switched into Milky Way mode. The tree we had initially found wasn’t facing the right direction for the Milky Way and Willie went off to explore. That’s when he had the idea that the Milky Way might fit perfectly between its branches. I pulled up the “Sky Guide” app on my iPhone and sure enough, at 1am, the Milky Way lined up, almost as if the branches were spearing the Milky Way. I also loved how a little bit of clouds stuck around to catch the glow from the city of Bishop, hiding in the background. Nikon D800 w/Bower 24mm f/1.4 ED UMC: 24mm f/2.2, 20 sec, ISO 1600
“If you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.” -Roald Dahl I’ve always loved sunflowers, ever since I was a kid, and photographing them was towards the top of my list. Last year was filled with beautiful sunflower plants but no sunsets to go with them. This year, despite a severe drought in CA, we’ve had a whole slew of nice sunsets. A week earlier I witnessed a stunning sunset at a different, slightly less alive, sunflower patch. I had visited this field a few weeks earlier and arrived to find no sunflowers — we were a few weeks early! Hoping that the sunflowers would be in their prime, Willie and I found the sunflowers exactly as we had hoped — alive, perky, and lookin’ good! The hardest part? ... deciding which patch of flowers we wanted to shoot! When we arrived the clouds looked fairly thin to the west but sure enough, just as the sun began to set, the clouds (and Ryan Engstrom) showed up! I loved how the orange sky mimicked the yellow sunflowers. This patch of flowers also had little yellow “noses”, which I thought made the flowers look like smiling faces! What do you see when you look at the sunflowers? Nikon D800 w/Nikkor 17-35mm f/2.8 ED-IF AF-S: 18mm, f/9, 1/25 sec, ISO 500
It’s a little bit crazy to think how much I’ve learned about a small area around Page, Arizona in the last 3 years. My first visit was in 2011 and I knew so little that the only places Willie and I photographed were Horseshoe Bend and Antelope Canyon before we high-tailed it out to shoot other places. “There’s not much else around” we thought. It always amazes me how I drove by so many stunning scenes without even noticing! Take the Hoodoo Forest, here, for example. It’s not far from the road. It’s not a hard hike. Heck, it’s not even far from a few really well known spots, yet, most people don’t even know it’s here! The place is a bit creepy at first. You get to the edge of a cliff, look down, see the hoodoo’s and think “there is no way I can get there.” With some bravery you find yourself standing in front of these amazing rock formations! Lesson learned: cairn the way down so you can get yourself back up. It’s not so easy when the sun has gone down and it’s almost dark! Willie and I almost didn’t make it down here in time for sunset. In fact, it took us so long to figure out how to get here that we were running around like crazy chickens trying to find good compositions. I loved the way that this spot showcased a number of the hoodoo’s and how they all seemed to face Turret Rock (I’m naming this guy cuz he’s so awesome). I needed the 14mm lens to fit it all in! Nikon D800 w/Rokinon 14mm f/2.8 IF ED UMC: 14mm, f/11, 1/13 sec, ISO 100
