Taken at Little Lakes Valley, Sierra Nevada, California on July 9th, 2014
“Oh how the heart leaps and beats when you choose a course of action that nourishes the soul.” – Socrates Johnson.
Taken at Death Valley National Park , March 5th, 2016
During Death Valley’s 2016 super bloom I was driving somewhat aimlessly around the park looking for patches of flowers. Spying a good clump about 1,000 feet from the road I popped on my flip flops and padded out into the sand to check them out. Needless to say I was stoked to discover a large playa shot through with fractured chunks of mud adjacent to the flowers. After sunset the wind whipped the blue hour clouds into a fury of undulating textures and shapes and it was all I could to keep the drool from pouring out of my mouth onto the camera.
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Taken at Carson Peak, June Lake, Sierra Nevada, California, January 23rd, 2016
In all honesty I’ve never been a cold weather person. Give me shorts and a t-shirt over boots and a parka any day. So when I moved to Mammoth Lakes late last year I decided I was going to embrace the cold or die trying. And I have to say, so far things are pretty alright.
This shot taken on my first ice climbing excursion near June Lake. Late afternoon sunlight catching the spindrift coming off snow-covered Carson Peak. Yeah, I think I’ll learn to like this.
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Taken at Mono Lake, Sierra Nevada, California, October 12th, 2015
Mono Lake is one of my absolute favorite places for stargazing and astrophotography.
For starters, there’s very little light pollution in the area and on a moonless night the skies are extraordinarily dark. Second, Mono Lake sits at 7,000 feet, high in the arid semi-desert, which means elevated atmospheric clarity. And third, there are all these wonderful tufa formations stretching up toward the sky. With the brilliance of the stars and the vertical reach of the tufa it often seems like the Earth and the sky are within touching distance.
About this photo specifically, this is a composition I had scouted in October a few years ago but hadn’t had the opportunity to shoot since then. But my recent move to Mammoth gave me all the proximity to Mono Lake I could ask for and when the forecast showed a clear night sky a few weeks back I took the chance to make this image. The orange glow on the horizon is from some haze in the air catching the very very faint light of deep twilight, and the green in the sky is an atmospheric phenomenon called airglow.
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Taken in Gillespies Beach, New Zealand, March 22nd, 2015
I can find no peace as deep as that which comes from marveling at the beauty of our planet, feeling the last rays of the day on my face, breathing in the fresh salt air of the sea, and crushing hundreds of sandflies into a slimy pulp.
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Taken in Lake Wanaka, New Zealand, April 18th, 2015
Well so much for relaxing. After completing two somewhat intense circuits of the southern South Island of New Zealand I was feeling jazzed up to wind down. I arrived in Wanaka with the plan to do absolutely nothing for a few days -not even any photography- to recover a bit. But as afternoon slipped into evening the clouds began to sing an irresistible siren song that lured me down to the lake shore. And when the sun slipped below the horizon the sky lit up in a chorus of color. Deep blue basses, purple tenors, salmon altos, and ruby sopranos in their lilting voices high on top. One of the finest displays of visual harmony I’ve ever had the privilege of watching and I’m deeply grateful for the invitation to see the show.
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Taken at Milford Sound, Fiordland National Park, New Zealand, May 15th, 2015
Any time you’re in Milford Sound it’s already a good day. But when it’s warm, calm, there are no sandflies, and the clouds open up to let this kind of light in, it’s a great one. Mt. Pembroke at sunrise, Fiordland National Park.
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Taken at Mt Sefton, New Zealand, April 12th, 2015
When life gives you glacier-capped mountains make glacier-capped mountainade.
Taken at Cerro Castillo National Reserve, Patagonia, Chile on February 14th, 2016
UFO = Unbelievable Flying Object
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Taken at Campamento Elefante, Cordillera Huayhuash, Peru on September 6th, 2014
I didn’t want to take this picture. I really didn’t. I had caught a cold and that, combined with hiking 10 miles a day at 15,000 feet in the Peruvian Andes, was taking its toll on my system. As we rolled into our camp on day 6 of this 10 day trek all I could think about was how much I wanted a piping hot cup of tea and then to curl up and go to sleep. But halfway through the tea I peered out of my tent flap and saw a slit in the clouds letting some sun peek through. SUNUVA!!! Sleep or shoot, sleep or shoot? Thankfully the photographer in me was stronger than the sloth and I wearily managed to plop my camera down by this stream just as a laser of sunlight struck the base of Cuyoc, a 18,000-ft mountain in the Cordillera Huayhuash.
Special note for climbers: you’re looking at about a 3,500 foot face composed almost entirely of columnar basalt.
Taken at Lake Tekapo on the South Island of New Zealand on May 9th, 2015
Being a photographer often means chasing the weather. But there are the rare occasions that the weather chases you. Midway through my 2015 New Zealand Photography Workshop my group was heading toward Mt. Cook Village. But arriving at the Mt. Cook viewpoint at the head of Lake Pukaki we could see it would be a fool’s errand to push on any further: huge storm clouds and walls of rain obscured the mountains. Driving up into the village would simply mean a boring afternoon spent inside keeping our cameras out of the torrential rainfall. Instead, we headed farther to the north where we could see that beautiful Lake Tekapo was likely enjoying decent weather.
And sure enough when we arrived at Lake Tekapo the sun was blissfully shining. And yet the swaying of the bus told us something else was happening as well: the wind was huffing and puffing. We jumped off the coach for a quick lunch break to the sound of signs blowing over, tree branches whipping, and jackets flapping. And unbeknownst to us while we were inside cafes scarfing down sandwiches and pastries, the wind was also carrying along with it some ominous clouds.
A fact that soon became clear once we stepped outside and saw a wall of deep gray marching down upon us at a speed I didn’t know clouds could move. We made our way to the Church of the Good Shepherd just as the wall of rain hit, splattering the landscape with a deluge of fat drops. But as quickly as it came in the downpour subsided. Grabbing our cameras the group began to shoot the beautiful church. And then, almost without warning, another bombast of rain came down, scattering us like ants. But this one too quickly subsided and those of us who weren’t too waterlogged and frazzled by the weather ended up down at the lake shore.
The wind was roaring across the open expanse of Lake Tekapo, whipping up ocean-size rollers cresting with foamy whitewater. And the storm clouds behind the lake began to close in, forcing the sunlight to struggle through in bits and pieces. I loved the extraordinary drama of the scene and in between wiping my wind-whipped eyes dry I captured this photo of the stormy display.
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Taken at Lake Matheson in the Fox Glacier township on the South Island of New Zealand on March 24th, 2015
Lake Matheson is an iconic New Zealand photo location, and from the main view point on Reflection Island surely millions of beautiful photos have been created. When I find myself in a situation like that I often approach things from out of left field by thinking “what would Josh NOT do here?” If I’d normally grab my wide angle lens, instead I’ll reach for a telephoto. If I’d normally include the sky I’ll try keeping it out. With this approach I find my mind starts working in unexpected ways and seeing unexpected things. And before I know it I’m beginning to craft I photo I otherwise wouldn’t have taken.
This was the exact case this particular morning at Lake Matheson: there were beautiful clouds, the gargantuan, snow-covered forms of Mounts Tasman and Cook were clearly visible, and the lake itself was as still as pooled silver. My instincts were screaming to grab the wide angle classic shot, and of course I did. But then I started thinking about what other smaller scenes could create powerful photos. The symmetric lines of the Fox Glacier canyon had been catching my eye all morning, and as the sun cleared the mountains to the east it lit up one of the canyon’s richly forested walls. The spot-lighting created a vivid contrast against the darkness of the opposing wall and lent the scene a simple, graphical quality. With the two slanting canyon walls reflected in Matheson’s surface my eyes were drawn to the X they created and I knew I had found my “Left Field” shot.
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