streaming by

Taylors Falls, MN.  This is a neat little park on the St. Croix river along the Minnesota/Wisconsin border with rock formations you don’t find anywhere else in the area.  It almost reminds me of some parts of the Columbia River Gorge.  There are sharp craggy rocks with trees growing out of them and these cool depressions and potholes you can walk through, in, and around with some so deep there are staircases going down in them. If you live in Minneapolis and haven’t been here, this is one place you have to visit less than an hour away.  The streaky yellow/white is a riverboat that you can take a ride on down river to see some of the rock formations along the way.

This is another cool geotag photo too, the link below goes to a satellite map where you can actually see this tree’s shadow! :)

Find it here:  45°23’55” N;   92°39’7” W

the fog rolls in

This was my first trip to Oregon and the Pacific Northwest.  I had always wanted to visit but never made the time and never thought I’d ever live here.  But a great opportunity came up at Target and I was offered a position based out of Portland, OR so we were here in late September for the first time trying to get familiar with the city and find places to live.  It has been about a year since then, and living in the PNW has been nothign short of amazing!

On this trip, we took a couple days to do some travel to Mt. St. Helens then down the coast through Astoria to arrive at Ecola State Park and this great view overlooking Cannon Beach just as the sunset.

I just visited this location again over the past weekend which prompted me to pull this photo out from the archive to process and post.  It was really foggy this weekend, some neat photos from in the surrounding rain forest are stil to come.

Find it here:  45°55’11”;   N 123°58’31” W

tree, fog, field

Isn’t GPS technology awesome?! I use a GPS to geotag all my photos and post the coordinates and a link to a map for each photo I publish. It’s amazing how accurate these things are and it is really awesome when you can zoom in on a satellite map and see the tree/thing you photographed!

I took this near Ames, IA on the last hundred miles of a spring roadtrip from Minneapolis to Denver, and Death Valley. I didn’t expect to take any more photos and was just focused on getting home but as I got into Iowa there was this really neat bluish fog around this tree in a farm field along I-35.

Find it here: 42°2’33” N; 93°34’9” W

let the sun shine through

This was a fun morning. My boss and his boss @CaspersDave were in town to spend some time visiting the area I’m responsible for (in my real job). Dave is into photography too so we headed out into downtown Portland at sunrise to shoot some photos one morning before “real” work started. Walking along the Willamette River, the shadows behind this tree caught my eye.

As we walked back to the hotel, some guy across the street waiting for a free breakfast at a mission started yelling “Hey camera guys, F*ck You! F*ck You!” then followed that up with “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”. At least he was sorry…

Find it here: 45°31’36” N; 122°40’13” W

pray for rain

i like photographing trees that seem to be out there all by themselves doing their own thing (i’m sure you could psychoanalyze that) so when i got to Arches National Park, this tree on the shoulder of Balanced Rock caught my eye.  i only had one day to spend in this park but it was a great day with moody clouds and rain passing through.  this place is definately on my list to get back to again, hopefully for a few days and at least one overnight in the park to photograph the stars.

Find it here:  38°42’4” N;  109°33’53” W

spread your wings

Have you been to the 17 Mile Drive on the California coast just south of the Monterey/Carmel area?  It’s quite beautiful and everyone should go there if they have the chance.  The drive starts just south of Monterey and winds it’s way through the golf resort of Pebble Beach.  There are neat pull outs all along the drive but you have to pay $12 for the privilege of entering the private road but in return you get a map that calls out the pull out and scenic areas which humorously sometimes tries a little too hard to be creative in comeing up with a description for the pull outs.

This stand of trees is just south of the Lone Cypress.  Have you seen the Lone Cypress?  If you are a fan of golf (I’m not), you would recognize it as the tree logo for the Pebble Beach golf course.  Well, leave it to the wonderful lawyers to try to take people to court to stop them from photographing, painting, drawing, whatever of this beautiful landmark.  Ha, read more about that here and here.

Find it here:  36°33’44” N;  121°57’19” W

are you with me

A lone pair of trees near Benton Crossing Rd in the Eastern Sierras.

Find it here:  37°38’7” N;  118°48’38” W

alone...

I was driving down Benton Crossing Road in Mono County exploring the valleys of the Eastern Sierras when I saw this lone tree on a snowy hill side.

Find it here:  37°38’7” N;  118°48’38” W

a tree at the plateau

Went for a 12mi trail run in the Santa Rosa Plateau park in the Temecula/Murrieta area and it was one of the most beautiful days that I have been there for. The grass was green and there were cool grey clouds and light rain on and off. I was on Monument Hill trail when I saw this tree and couldn’t pass up the chance to take a picture. If you live in the area and have never been here, you’re missing out!

On a side note, this was the longest run I gone for in my Vibram Five Finger shoes and after three weeks, I’m really liking them.  The transition from regular shoes wasn’t bad at all and I only got a small blister under one toe which is long gone.  Running on the trail is more fun and it is really cool to feel the roll and curves under your feet.  These are the only shoes I’ve been running in for the past three weeks and I really don’t feel the need to go back for either road or trail running.  I’m registered to run the La Jolla Half Marathon in April and plan to race in these too.

taken with my iPhone.

Find it here:   33°31’35” N;  117°15’1” W

Get Bent!

Is this one crazy tree or what?  While driving in to Coulter Bay to see Jackson Lake in Wyoming, this tree caught my eye a ways down an empty parking lot.  It was so unique that I had to stop and take a picture.  I’ve seen trees bent before for landscaping reasons (with cables, etc) but this one was just in some random part of a parking lot in the middle of the “island” strip that ran between two lanes.  I took this shot from a very low angle and the lens I used is so wide, it lets you get up real close.

Find this here:  43°54’15” N 110°38’39” W

Lone Tree in Teton National Park

After spending two days at Grand Teton National Park this lone tree caught my eye just as we were leaving the park.  We had just finished a great trail run around Jenny Lake and went back to take a few more pictures.  While the Tetons are beautiful, I think this might be my favorite picture from the trip.

What is really cool is the ability to geotag your photos.  If you click here, you’ll see a green arrow  on Google Maps where I was standing and just to the east is the tree and its shadow.  Even cooler, is if you go into Street View, you can pan to the right and see the tree from the road.  Technology is amazing!!

To do this, I added a diGPS Pro to my Nikon D700 which stays connected all the time.  It’s just a small dongle that hangs from the neckstrap on a custom little 1” strap I made.  I haven’t noticed a drop in battery life and it only turns on when my camera is on.  There are other solutions to geotag photos, but they all either require you to find the location on a map after (on your computer) or the dongle records the location constantly then you have to match that up to your pictures afterwards (based on time) on your computer using special software.  With the diGPS, it writes the GPS data into the EXIF info of the picture when you take it so there is no fussing around afterwards.

Find this here:  43° 42’ 21” N;  110° 43’ 28” W