Snow Covered Trees, Vail Backcountry © Jay Goodrich

We are proud to announce that Jay is now writing for Singh-Ray Filters. He has been using their products for almost two decades, so he is extremely excited to begin sharing images, stories, and how-to articles about their usage on the Singh-Ray blog site.

driftwood ©jay goodrich

Recently, I taught a workshop with Art Wolfe, John Greengo, and Libby Pfeiffer. We had a wonderful time running and hiding under a sitka spruce as it rained like never before on Second Beach just outside of La Push, Washington. At times, the grand landscape is not always available and instead of focusing on what it should be, we need to focus on what is available to us in every given moment. Nature is fleeting, changing, and always moving.

Art and I walked up to a pool of standing water that was covered with sea foam that was creating swirling patterns that looked like a Van Gogh painting. In the time it took Art to remove his camera from his back pack the image was gone, completely dispersed by our wind driven rain. Looking around for something else, I managed to find a similar patterning in a pile of drift wood. I captured a few images before it started to rain in sheets and drove even the heartiest of soles to cover.

About an hour later, in an attempt to redeem herself, mother nature turned off the rain. This led to all of the workshop participants cautiously proceeding out from hiding to shoot more imagery. What she failed to tell us in the memo is that this was going to become one of the most amazing sunsets myself, Art, John and Libby have seen in close to a hundred combined years of experiences.

The moral of the story is: never ever talk about fight club. Wait, sorry, never ever walk away bummed that there is nothing for you to shoot. Look around you, even at your feet, possibly under the tree you are hiding, and if even that fails wait and give it time. Your reward could be worth more than a thousand words.

Blackbrush and sandstone © Jay Goodrich

Thanks to the wonderful on-time record of DIA I sat waiting to catch the second flight (after I missed the first by mere seconds) that I was put on to Seattle last night. And then I sat, and then again, some more sitting, the second flight only managed to leave an hour behind schedule. In the meantime, in order to not hang myself with that fake seatbelt the flight attendants use, I decided to work on some images. Here is another image from Saturday at Arches National Park in Utah. I just love the color and texture of this location that I found. It pretty much sums up the life of the desert to me, ever eroding, with life clinging to the junctions, where water collects and lingers, for a bit longer than everywhere else.

Turret Arch, Arches National Park, Utah, © Jay Goodrich

Yesterday I was in Arches National Park photographing locations and compositions that I see less frequently than some of the most obvious. I sat at Turret Arch waiting for the sun to rise for what seemed like an eternity. The pink through red sandstone sat dull and mediocre at best until close to 30 minutes past when the sun was supposed to come up. Unfortunately, some cloud cover over the Lasal Range made me wait until the sun breeched the dense barrier before any light would shine. Once it did though there was that classic desert light that this area of the United States is so famous for. Our national parks are amazing places of preserved natural history and traveling to them to capture more than just the iconic or known images allows the photographer to visit these locations indefinitely.

I am now headed home from Aspen to Denver to Seattle. I have slept in different beds every night of the last four and it will be great to see my kids and Heather again after five days of missing them.

Goblin Valley at Night © Jay Goodrich

Last night I was in Goblin Valley State Park shooting the afternoon light, sunset, and then stars and star trails as day became night. The night before when Brendan and I were shooting the residence in Colorado we were talking about how to shoot star trails, so I have decided to post an image and explain how.

In the past, during the film days, this very image would have been impossible due to the grain generated with a high speed film in the realm of ISO 3200. Now all we have to due is ramp our ISO up to 3200, and capture. The unfortunate sacrifice with digital is that we cannot shoot a single eight hour exposure to get those amazing star trails that photographers like Art Wolfe used to capture. This is due largely impart to the noise that is generated with such an action in digital. We can however, take many exposures and fuse them together in Photoshop though. Floris van Breugel has a great article on NPN that explains how to do just that.

This image was taken at 8:05pm in complete darkness. I needed to use my camping head lamp to light up the formation so I could compose my frame and line the feature up with the Milky Way above. The formation itself was illuminated by the waxing crescent moon that was out last night. The camera was of course on a tripod, with an interval timer and 16-35mm lens attached. The lens was zoomed out at 16mm and set to f2.8. My ISO was at 3200 and I captured the image with a calculated 30 second shutter speed. Other than that nothing else was used. I did process the image through Nik’s Dfine software for noise and then mastered it in Photoshop.

I spent the day in Arches National Park and I am planning on making another post tomorrow, stay tuned.

Canon 1D Mark IV

Today was a crazy day of announcements. First, Canon announced a replacement for my current 1D Mark III-the 1D Mark IV. Rob Galbraith has added a post here that goes through all of that detailed technical stuff. Vincent Laforet has added a new movie similar to Reverie, only this time he used the brand new 1D, check out Nocturne on his blog. There will be a new Wi-Fi transmitter available for this camera that can be controlled with an iPhone, now my two favorite gadgets can unite and rule my world.

Then along came Apple…and a new iMac. Not that this is a “stop the presses” announcement, but it is looking like a stepping stone to a brand new 30 inch monitor from them. In addition to the iMac, Apple announced their new Magic Mouse a product that will allow me to have the functionality of my laptop’s touch pad on my desktop. Geeky Jay very happy today.

And the final announcement, I received word from Nature’s Best Magazine that I am a Highly Honored Photographer in the 2009 Nature’s Best Photography Windland Smith Rice International Awards. I made it through the finals and to the finish line. The image they selected has a pretty funny story attached to it, so you will have to buy the issue when it comes out this fall for more information. I will post more info after the publication is released.

Grand Teton at Sunset, Jackson, WY © Jay Goodrich

Tomorrow we are off to Yellowstone. If I manage to find some WI-FI to steal, I will post some progress reports. If not you will just have to wait until next week!