Jingmin Photography and IT Consulting
Fine Art Landscape Photography, Family & Children Photography, Event Photography, IT Consulting
Travel photography
Olmsted Point is one of our favorite places in Yosemite. It offers an opposite side view of Half Dome from Yosemite Valley, and a close profile of Clouds Rest, a 9,000 feet dazzling ridge. Sunsets at Olmsted Point are often accompanied by spectacular clouds. In this evening, we were welcome by glorious light from the setting sun.
It is not a common experience to witness the live volcanic eruption and lava flows. Fortunately, during our trip to Hawaii Big Island at the end of year 2021, we caught it on our camera. To be precise, the eruption has been a continuous event happening on the island for many years. Sometimes it carried out more lavas from underneath the Earth, sometimes it was just quiet for a few days. During day time, it could be difficult to see the lava flows because they were just thin red lines between the black volcanic rocks. So evening is generally the best time to observe this incredible phenomenon.
The volcano was in a quiet period till the fifth day we were on the island. So we headed out in the evening. To our surprise, there was a traffic jam in the Hawaii Volcano National Park! We waited patiently for a while till the park rangers allowed us to drive to the parking lot. There was a one mile hike from the parking lot to the observation point. A few hundred yards from it, we could already see the red light in the sky. What an exciting walk!
There was a quite large crowd at the observation point. Head after head, tripod after tripod, wow after wow. It was an exciting moment to appreciate the power of Mother Nature.
We arrived a bit late after a winter storm, and thus missed the best time to photograph the snowy Yosemite valley. However, we ran into a rare low fog that blanketed the valley floor. Due to code temperature, the fog was retreating at a very fast pace. In the end, we only got time for two photos.
This is our second time to visit Santa Cruz Island, the largest island of Channel Islands National Park. A few years ago, we planned to visit Anacapa Island. However, strong wind forced us to change the plan, and we ended up on Santa Cruz Island instead. It was a short tour of only a few hours. This year, we decided to camp on the island for two nights and explore it more throughly.
By the sunset of our second night, we were on the west side hill next to the boat landing dock. It offered a beautiful view of the sea stacks near the dock. We set up our Intrepid 4×5 camera, and made a 15 second long exposure of this view on a sheet of Kodak TMAX 100 black and white film.
