Snatching Defeat From The Jaws of Victory - A Blog Story

Thinking Thin

Thu, 3 Feb 2011 08:20:02 -0800

Well, it’s been almost a year since I’ve updated this blog. The lengthy delay is not indicative of a sloth-like existence, I’ve had plenty of hapless adventures in the past year, but I tend to write them out on my Flickr site, which requires much less effort than trying to remember how to format a page for this blog. It would be hard not to notice the verbal yawns that are sneaking into my comments however, so I figured I might as well resurrect my website to ensure that I make at least one entry in 2011.

The lure of Pele is strong in the Morgan family. My father, the Hankster, married Karen at 8800’ on Mauna Loa, and I’ve long considered the Big Island of Hawaii to be my favorite place on earth. Several times over the years, I’ve been out to see the lava flow. The notion that you are watching the newest land on earth being formed is a fascinating concept. Since I started shooting landscape pictures a year and change ago, I’ve been frustrated by the realization that my past experiences would not lend themselves to interesting images. I could tell you with confidence that lava is very hot when approached, and looks magnificent from behind the plexiglass of a helicopter window, but what I knew of lava entering the ocean is that the plume it creates looks impressive from several miles away. Jordan sweetly offered to book me a sunrise boat tour, but doing the math on the length of exposure and wave action made it apparent that any resulting images would look as much like a big glowing orange polar bear as actual lava flowing. Sadly, it would be impossible to catch an image of lava entering the ocean.

Enter my friend Justin, who returned from Hawaii with news that he had found a pair of photographers who had a gallery of volcano images in Hilo that simply could not be believed. Better still, they had permission to access the lava flow, which is on private property, and could be hired as guides. I booked our trip that afternoon.

1:15am would normally be a difficult time to hear the alarm go off, but a mixture of anxiety, trepidation, and adrenaline is a rather refreshing morning cocktail. Making my way over to Hilo on the Saddle Road at that time of morning, I marveled at the snow sparkling in the moonlight on Mauna Kea, the 36 degree temperature at the top of the road, the occasional random wild donkey by the side of the road, and the astonishing gutlessness of my Chrysler Sebring rental car that we were “upgraded” to.

Bruce Omori of Extreme Exposure is one of those rare individuals who you know you will like even before they begin to greet you. Bruce and Tom Kuali’i are native Hawaiian, and have been shooting the lava flow from Kilauea for years. After looking at the work in their gallery, I don’t think it would be a stretch to call them the finest volcano photographers on the planet. The drive to the parking area was probably enlightening for Bruce about what he was in for, as I peppered him with questions about what to expect, what settings to use for my photographs, and (still scarred from a trip to Montana this summer), if there were any bears.

Hiking in and out of the typical passing rain showers, we made our way to where the relentless flow brought the road we were on to an abrupt end. Skeletons of houses taken in the past few months were close by, and within seconds of stepping out onto the lava field, it began to get very, very hot. Crossing that first finger of lava was jolting, and watching the earth glow beneath the cracks under your feet brings the concept of lava very concretely home. Passing through the hot zone quickly, endless waves of heaving cooled lava stretch out for a mile or so to where the latest bench has been growing out into the ocean. About 200 yards from the edge, I started to pick up the glowing red curtains of steam rising into the night sky. It was here that Bruce stopped me for a little chat.

I am an exaggerator. I love a good story. Speaking with Bruce, you get the sense that you need to listen to what he says. When he tells me that the risks are significant, and proceeding out from this point means that we are definitely going to be in harms way; the only safe course of action being a return to the truck, I know with absolutely no degree of uncertainty that he is not just being dramatic. I answer his question about whether I want to go any closer with a request that if I go in, to please try to get hold of my camera’s memory card and process my best image. It sounded funny at the time, but I was also wondering if my life insurance policy had a “death by lava” exclusion.

There are three basic risks on the delta. The first we arrived at while scouting for the image you see above. As the lava flows into the ocean, it cools, and expands the bench out into the sea. The tubes that carry the lava down the mountain are hollow, and relentless waves pounding on them will eventually cause them to collapse. The cracks and fissures in the lava bench that you are standing on out over the ocean are indicative of the instability of the area. At one point in the not too distant past, a 20-30 ACRE section of the delta collapsed into the sea. I’ve never been that fast on my best day, so I felt pretty confident that I wouldn’t be able to cover 20 acres in the time it took for my perch to plunge into the sea. I definitely kept senses tuned for the indicative signs of a bench collapse that Bruce had instructed me to consider.

The second nastiness that can befall you is the inhalation of toxic gasses. I haven’t taken chemistry in a few decades, but sulphuric acid is the bi-product of something and something, and apparently it is bad for you. In discussing this hazard, Bruce passed on a story of a few men that come down to the entry, get fully nude, and cleanse themselves in the lava steam. Okay......... On our third day of shooting, the little ledge we were standing on started to emit a fair face full of gas, and I learned that it is entirely self critiquing if you are in a bad area. I scrambled out of there fast, choking and gasping for air.

The final, and most intriguing danger is the lava itself. There are several ocean entries, and getting to them requires crossing the fingers in areas that cooled only hours, or even minutes before. “Cooled” is a relative term when you are talking about 2000 degree molten rock. The general idea is to transit these areas quickly, but accurately, tapping the end of an umbrella ahead of you to see if it is firm enough to walk on. I instantly began to regret every snack that I’d eaten in the past year. Getting in tight for some of the shots cost me about 1/2” inch of my rubber tripod feet, and the soles of my shoes melted down to about half their normal size. Bruce’s umbrella basically caught fire and sort of liquified into a blob. I get the sense that he goes through a lot of umbrellas. The day after I left, one of Bruce’s friend’s broke through the roof of a 20’ tube and broke his leg. I imagine he feels lucky. If it has been filled with lava.....

And so it went. For three incredible mornings, I followed Bruce around to various views, shooting thousands of images, and feeling more alive than I can ever remember. The technical challenges of photographing lava well are significant, and I’ve come to realize that getting a truly great shot is a rare occurrence. While I didn’t manage to produce any high quality images, I have enough to play with to at least give you a sense of what its like out there. I’ll post a few in my “Favorites” section, and a few more in my “Other Images”. Photographing lava is extremely addicting, and I can’t wait to go back and see my buddy Bruce again. Hopefully I’ll get to meet Tom next time I’m there, as he had to work during the week I was out shooting. If any of you find yourself looking for an adventure, whether you do photography or not, I could not recommend anything, or anybody more highly. My time out there ranks in the top 5 all time favorite memories. Despite the risks, it is truly the experience of a lifetime.

My favorite quote from the my time on the wild side:

Bruce, surveying the scene that looked like the best viewing angle:
“That looks kind of sketchy down there. Do you want to shoot it?”

Me:
“Is it safe?”

Bruce:
Pause.....
“Do you want to shoot it, or do you want to stay safe?”

We shot it.

Desolation

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 16:05:29 -0800

Let me start by saying that no one has every accused me of being terribly bright. It should come as no surprise then, that this particular day of shooting was filled with poor choices and typical beginner mistakes.

Speaking of mistakes, allow me to introduce you to Sheldon. Sheldon contacted me through Flickr and suggested we go shooting sometime. At this point in my fledgling photography experience, I had never heard of doing such a thing, but Sheldon makes TREMENDOUS images, so I figured it would be a chance to learn something. It did occur to me, however, that I was heading into the woods with a guy who I did not know, who may have found something charming about the movie “Deliverance”. It turned out that Sheldon is a really terrific guy ; full of wit (usually the barbed kind launched in my general direction), wickedly smart, and with a GPS for a brain. If you need to know where a location is, you need only call out to Sheldon “Birddog it”, and within 3-5 hours, you’ll be looking at a color map with arrows and directions. It was obvious then, that when pictures of this old house inspired me to want to see it for myself, Sheldon would be the guy to call. Naturally, he knew exactly where it is.

Mistake #1. It wasn’t until after we were on the road that Sheldon informed me that this house is on private land, and the owner was none too pleased that his abandoned house was becoming a photographic icon. Had I known this in advance, I would have dressed in military grade camo , not the neon shirt that I was actually wearing. We arrived on scene as the sun was setting, and parked the car about a mile down the road so as not to be too blatant about the fact that we were trespassing.

We got incredibly lucky with the sunset that particular night. Soft early evening pastels changed into glowing sky-fire that actually looked like flames licking the roof of this incredible old house. The routine went as follows: Set up camera. Focus. Get ready to shoot. Hear car. Grab gear and hide behind house. Wait for car to pass. Repeat. Our plan was to stay until night fell and shoot some stars, figuring the cover of darkness would make it easier not to be discovered despite my electric shirt.

Mistake #2. I’m pretty sure that I could put up a good defense against a lone coyote. The 50+ that were so obviously surrounding our location didn’t seem interested in making this a fair fight, however. The howling got closer and louder, and a request for some re-assurance from Sheldon was met with a look that clearly said “I don’t have to outrun them.... I only have to outrun YOU”. For the record, I’m pretty sure my tripod could outrun me.

Mistake #3. As night fell, we decided to try our hand at light-painting the old house. I brought a couple of spotlights that I acquired just for the occasion, and Sheldon had a strobe with some gels that he figured we could use to light up a few rooms on the inside. He decided to start on the upper floor. This sounded like a bad enough idea that I made him give me the car keys. It’s probably been a century since someone last climbed those old stairs, and I was SURE that Sheldon was going to break through them, crash through the first floor, and end up in the basement. I was just hoping he would do it on the way BACK so at least I’d have a shot. With the first FLASH of the strobe, our lack of forethought became abundantly clear. The Bat-Signal in Gotham city doesn’t throw as much light as Sheldon’s strobes. How we survived that without being caught I’ll never know, so we decided to use my spotlights and press our luck. I’m pretty sure these are used by the Coast Guard to locate victims at sea. If we knew morse code, we could have signaled our location back to Portland.

As a new photographer, one of the things I learned from processing the images from this outing is that your most popular images may not be your favorite. When I presented the three shots that I’ve kept from this evening of shooting to my friends and family, asking for opinions on which is the strongest, the one above came in a distant third behind the other two that you can find in my “Other Images” Gallery. Over the ensuing months I’ve returned to these three images to see whether my own perception of this shoot would change as I improve, but so far I continue to like the one in this blog post the best. Clearly its the least dramatic, but there is something about it that makes it one of my favorite images that I’ve made. Perhaps its because the mood of the photo best matches the experience of being there. It’s a desolate area, yet absolutely beautiful in its simplicity. I’ll be interested to see how my opinion changes with time. Thank you Sheldon, for not chopping me up and feeding me to the coyotes.

Serpent

Wed, 20 Jan 2010 13:06:06 -0800

I didn't start out wanting to focus on Landscape Photography. Other avenues were explored first, and ultimately the decision to take my camera outdoors was born more out of desperation than of any sort of unearthed, innate talent behind the lens. Much more logical would have been some sort of conglomeration of portrait, street, and photojournalistic photography. After all, Hank Morgan - or "Dad" as a few of us with wildly scattered ages call him - had phenomenal success in those areas for many years. Dutifully I purchased a few flashes, gels, and triggers; supplemented by some solid 1970's gear from the repository of Hank Morgan Photography. It just so happens that a colleague of my Dad's has become one of the premier experts on small flash, or "strobist", photography. Armed with some basic gear and enough old stories to blackmail my way to success if necessary, I delved deep into the teachings of the great Joe McNally. Anxious to apply all my new knowledge, and armed with bags of gear, I presented myself at the door of my close friend Matt Lesher and announced that we would be making photographic history in mere minutes. With setup complete, test shots fired, and "model" in place, I drew a long breath and pulled the camera to my eye. I waited patiently for Matt to do something. Matt waited patiently for me to tell him what to do, and it became apocalyptically clear that the three frames I shot would be the first, second and last portraits I would ever make.

Not wanting to shame the Morgan name, and needing to justify the money I had misappropriated from the family coffer for camera gear, I began to look through thousands of images in order to come up with something... anything... that I thought I could do successfully. In time I stumbled upon some insanely beautiful images of the Pacific Northwest which held particular appeal due to the close proximity of the subject matter. It just so happened that the two photographers who's work I was salivating over had a business called NWPhotoTours, and ran landscape photography workshops aimed at a wide variety of skill levels (or lack thereof in my case). I instantly knew I wanted to learn how to do what Adrian Klein and Kevin McNeal do; translate jaw-dropping scenery into images that I could enjoy making, viewing, and sharing.

The image presented at the top of this entry is the first that I was ever truly proud of. For several days I had been photographically terrorizing the Columbia River Gorge during my first workshop with Kevin and Adrian. I had inundated them with questions, become thoroughly wet, hungry, and exhausted, and couldn't have been happier. As the day drew towards a close, we arrived at the astonishing Rowena Crest to shoot sunset images of the wild and colorful balsam root and lupine that carpet the eastern Gorge in April. Typical of Oregon in spring, there were alternating periods of torrential rain and piercing sunshine. With workshop participants spread out across the Crest looking for particularly photogenic flower clumps, I found myself out of earshot of Kevin and Adrian but noticed a rather hasty retreat to the parking lot by my fellow workshop attendees in the face of a particularly nasty-looking storm. I arrived at my car at the same time as the downpour, and after launching my gear into the back seat, peered through the driving rain to see Kevin and Adrian in a car facing me, some 30 yards away. Settling into the car waiting for the storm to pass accentuated the fatigue of early morning/late evening shooting, and I was rather numb in the mind when I saw the car doors in front of me fling open.

As long as I live I will never forget seeing Adrian emerge from the passenger seat in a full, fluid sprint towards the meadow, camera bag already on his back. I had absolutely no idea what he was running to, or from, but it slowly penetrated my foggy brain that I should probably be doing the same thing. I ripped my bag out of the back seat, and thundered off into the gloom in search of whatever fantastic light Adrian had seen from his car. Running on 90% adrenaline and 10% common sense, I raced to the edge of the crest and hastily set up my camera and tripod, scanning desperately for the opportunity that was surely going to present itself at any moment. Much like my portrait session with Matt, I waited. After waiting, i continued to wait. Finally it dawned on me that I was by myself on the precipice of the Crest, and began to wonder why no one else was setting up yet... it's not like I'm so fast that they wouldn't have caught up to me. Turning around, I saw it. An explosion of light and color filled the sky, in exactly the opposite direction from which I was facing. Worse, Adrian, Kevin, and a collection of workshop participants were all busy filling their memory cards with magazine-worthy images. By the time I rumbled over to the other side of the Crest, the moment had passed.

Luckily the story does not end there. All that waiting and confusion had actually presented me with an opportunity that I'm sure I would otherwise not have recognized. Through the gloom I had noticed a car slowly winding down the serpentine ribbon of road on the backside of the Rowena Crest. Due to the heavy clouds and late hour, it's lights were on, slicing an arc of light across the rock face. Even my untrained eye recognized the potential, and after reuniting with the group, I guilted my new friend Tiju into staying after sunset to help me try to recreate what I had seen. It was cold, hellaciously windy and wet up on that ridge, but I was able to coordinate with Tiju for two passes up and down the Crest before his desire for sleep trumped his genuinely kind personality and he headed for home. Walking back to the car, I reviewed the images on the LCD of my camera, and for the first time in my life, I was truly excited by what I saw.

Death Valley Dunes

Sat, 26 Dec 2009 16:50:57 -0800

Welcome to my inaugural blog entry. That makes it sound like I’m christening a cruise ship, but I’m really just sharing a few of the experiences I’ve had while out shooting that might make you laugh...and make me cry. You will find as more and more entries get added that there is a rather distinguished cast of supporting characters. Today I will introduce you to Steve Turner. An exceptional photographer, and a remarkable gentleman, it is a distinct privilege to call him my friend. Affectionally known within our little photographic posse as “Le Suck”, Steve has an incredible talent for obliterating any sunset/sunrise he comes into contact with. If Steve is on your shooting expedition, you can almost bank on the fact that any good light and color that you are expecting will evaporate upon removal of the camera from your bag. Only recently was it discovered that Steve is also “Le Blow”, which means that if you and Steve decide NOT to follow through on your planned outing because of the foul weather conditions, magically the clouds will blow off your subject at the appropriate time leaving an epic sunrise/sunset that surely would have landed you on the cover of National Geographic. Much more on Steve to come.

When I decided that I wanted to expand my portfolio to include images from outside of Oregon, I knew Steve was the guy to call. First because he would be a tremendously fun traveling companion, and second because he has been to most of the places I want to go, so I wouldn’t be flying blind when arriving on scene. Luckily, it didn’t take much sweet talking to convince him to go, and before I knew it, we were off on a 10 day excursion shooting in locations from Oregon to Utah. Death Valley is some prime photographic real estate that we fully intended to explore.

I guess I should have known that things were going to be a tad more complicated than we had anticipated when the route that I chose for us to follow to “The Racetrack” (a dry lakebed in the heart of Death Valley) turned out to be impassible for motorcycles, much less Jeeves, (Steve’s LandRover) three miles from our destination. This was after two hours of traveling roads so rough that I lost my appetite for Famous Amos cookies. In other words, this situation was SERIOUS. Although I was disappointed not to get to shoot The Racetrack at sunset, our primary destination lay ahead. Turning back onto the highway, Steve promptly ran over a tarantula the size of my hand, ending my dream of having the cover of “Arachnophobic Weekly”. I was still undaunted; focused very sharply on my mission of getting a shot of the Dunes at sunrise. I correctly figured that the long shadows these monstrous serpents cast in that magic dawn light would form fantastic patterns in front of my eyes.

The next morning, we parked Jeeves and headed out to find the dune we had scouted the night before with bright headlamps and high hopes. Upon arrival at our designated spot, I set up my gear along a beautiful little ridge line and watched as the sky started to turn from blue, to purple, to pink, with vast swaths of cloud burning with fiery reds. That is when things started to go horribly, horribly wrong. I was facing the wrong way. Looking a little further down my dune, I saw the ridge turning towards the sunrise, so I moved forward only to find that the line I envisioned was a total bust. I retreated back to my original composition, which I had now destroyed with footprints. I searched frantically for something to position in the foreground, but nothing was working. Behind me, Steve was perched majestically on the highest dune, probably making photographic history. In a panic, I grabbed my gear, stuffed it in my bag, and took off in a full waddle to find a more appealing dune. It was not lost on me that a sunrise this epic is a rarity in Death Valley, and I was blowing it. I’m not sure I can adequately describe how exhausting it is scaling one dune, then another, then another in search of something that remains just out of reach. The color in the sky all but gone, I realized I had blown my one opportunity to get an iconic dunes shot, and slumped into a heap of sweat, camera gear, and sand.

And then I saw him. A lone figure had scaled a dune behind me to watch the remaining minutes of the sunrise, and as luck would have it, I happened to notice that there was a pretty strong line in the sand leading up to the summit. In an absolute panic, I grabbed my camera, changed lenses, and sprinted to the top of the small ridge above me... only to discover that I had the wrong lens. I stumbled back down to my bag, grabbed a longer lens, dropping the one I had been using off the side of the camera bag and watched it roll across the sand and into a valley. Grabbing my water bottle (I was getting dangerously thirsty at this point), I ran back up the hill with my camera, appropriate lens, tripod, and water. The light was changing fast, and I figured my Dunes Savior was probably not going to be much longer on his perch, so I tossed the tripod aside and started shooting. In a perfectly choreographed ballet, my tripod rolled down one side of the ridge, and my water bottle rolled down the other. Steve estimates it took me 30 minutes to collect my randomly scattered gear, a processional he watched with amusement and probably pity. Exhausted, but exceptionally relieved and happy, I met up with my friend, and we made the push to our ultimate destination.... Zion.