Tag Archives: high

ROAD TO HALEAKALA SUMMIT

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While living here on Maui, I try and get up to the Haleakala Crater National Park every chance I get.  One of my favorite things to do is to head up on the afternoon of a full moon, hike down the Sliding Sands trail at sunset, loop around the cinder cone a few miles down, and head back up the trail to the rising moon and the darkening sky.  This is what I was doing a year back when I captured Stillness Speaks, and what Rebecca and I were planning on doing yesterday.  With Haleakala being over 10,000 feet tall, it is often engulfed in weather.  From the sea-level perspective, you can never tell for certain whether or not you’ll be able to get above the weather, so I generally just go for it and hope for the best.  If it’s socked in, as was the case yesterday, then it’s a chance to enjoy a drive.

The University of Hawaii has a live webcam looking into the crater from the summit, but it hasn’t been working for quite some time.  Can we get someone on this, please?

AN IMMORTAL MOMENT

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AN IMMORTAL MOMENT  Mono Lake, Eastern Sierra, California

This is why you have to set the alarm to 4-something and get up out of your warm sleeping bag and get out there!  It’s called Sweet Light and it is always a sight for the eyes and makes the heart giddy – or is that the  sleep deprivation?  Either way, it’s well worth waking for, even after a late night of cold-adult-beverages and the company of good friends.  Hell, you can sleep during the day when the light sucks! and if you’re a little slow (a.k.a. hungover), there’s nothing like the Sweet Light to lift you up.

We camped at Oh Ridge Campground for a couple nights which is the perfect place to stay to shoot at Mono Lake.  It overlooks the scenic June Lake and is a 20 minute drive from the campsite to the parking area at the State Natural Reserve along the north shore of Mono Lake.

I went down three times to this area over the couple days and walked away every time with shots I was happy with.  Sure, I was lucky with the stormy skies, but even with clear skies, I think you could make some compositions work here – it’s just that interesting of a place!  This image is looking west with the sunrise at my back.  Most of my efforts during this spell were with a black and white aesthetic, but for this 10 minute period, it was impossible to ignore the color version of this amazing scene.

TIME EXPOSED = 30 SECONDS