Category: National Parks

Great Smoky Mountains – Fog

June 8, 2022
CanoncloudsenvironmenteveningExpectationsGreat Smoky Mountains BookGreat Smoky Mountains NPLandscapesNational ParksRichard Mack PhotographySmoky Mountain National ParkSmoky MountainsSmoky Mountains Book

This year we need to do a third printing of my book on the park, Great Smoky Mountains National Park; Thirty Years of American Landscapes. I headed down in January for new snow images and went back last week to see about getting the synchronized fireflies and some star images. Sadly, not many synchronized fireflies had come out yet, a few but not many, and the weather was cloudy every night. What happens then? You change strategy and get images of the streams – which were running full because of the rain – and details of the mountains and the vistas with the fog lifting.

Foggy days in Great Smoky Mountains NP

Here is the first set of images of the rain and fog. I’ll do a second posting of the rivers and streams later.

It may not be what you envisioned as the images you wanted to capture but you must quickly decide that is simply fine, I can make images of other subjects. I shot video as well as we will probably have a eBook version with some of the video clips.

I have never had a bad trip to the smokies in my 40+ years of going to one of my favorite places. Always feels like a place I know even though there are parts of the park I have not been to as of yet. Hope you enjoy the images. Stay tuned for more!

Cheers, Richard

Monument Valley Time-lapse

April 22, 2022
CanonLandscapesMonument ValleyNational ParksNight sky time-lapseRichard Mack Photographytime-lapseTimelapse+
Images from Monument Valley, Arizona

On my recent trip to the Southwest, we stopped in Monument Valley for one night, too short of a time but that’s all the time we had. We stayed at The View Hotel on the Navajo Reservation which overlooks the Mitten and valley. Perfect location and many rooms have open porches for sky watching. Perfect! I set up two cameras for time-lapse. The main camera, a Canon 5D IV with the 16-35mm lens and another 5D IV with the 28-105 lens. I used the Pulse intervalometer by Alpine Labs for the timelapse.

The technical side. The camera with the 16-35mm lens was the main camera which did both nighttime star timelapses. It was set at ISO 2000 and f2.8 at 20 second exposures. The exposures were done every 30 seconds. The first timelapse in the film took 2 hours and 56 minutes to produce. I’ve seen people using higher ISO’s but haven’t done that yet to se how much noise there might be in the shots. These exposures were about 1 stop too dark. I lightened them among other adjustments in Lightroom. I also adjusted the kelvin temperature from 5500, down to 4500, to bring out the blue and blackness of the sky.

The timelapse of sunrise was done on the second camera with shots every 2 seconds with the settings ISO 100, F11 and shutter ranging from 1/13th to 1/40th of a second. If you look closely, you can see the wind blowing dust and a few small dust devils across the ground. By the time we had to leave there was a dust storm a brewing and it was hard to see the valley.

In post processing the timelapse I use the plugin from Timelapse+ Studio in Lightroom to create the key exposures and then make adjustments to these images and have the plugin adjust the images evenly across the length of each timelapse video.

Images from Monument Valley, Arizona
Images from Monument Valley, Arizona
Images from Monument Valley, Arizona
Images from Monument Valley, Arizona
Images from Monument Valley, Arizona

One great thing with timelapse is if you are shooting from a hotel balcony you can fall asleep while it is playing out! OK, I woke up several times to check things which was good as the Milky Way was rising farther south than I thought even with the star apps I have to calculate it before a shoot. When I started the clouds looked like it could either get overcast or stay partly cloudy. One of those times it will work or not – but if you don’t go ahead and shoot it you can’t get it back!

Images from Monument Valley, Arizona

I hope you enjoy the still images and the video! If you have any questions just ask!

Cheers,

Richard

#monumentvalley #richardmackphoto #nature #timelapse #timelapseplus #astrophotography #Canon5D4 #canon #natgeoyourshot #natgeo #stars #nightsky #milkyway #milkywayphotography #alpinelabs #alpinepulse

Happy 100th Birthday Grand Canyon National Park!

February 26, 2019
environmentGeneralLandscapesnational parksNational Parksnature photographyRichard MackRichard Mack PhotographyRichard Mack's BlogSunrisetravelTravel Photography

Today marks the 100th Birthday of Grand Canyon National Park! It has been 19 years since I was last at the Grand Canyon. As anyone knows who has seen this magical place it is awe inspiring when you see it for the very first time. Breathtaking, spectacular, unbelievable, remarkable, enormous, spiritual are just some of the words used to describe this place. I have only been to the South Rim nineteen years ago for New Year’s Day 2000 with the family. We enjoyed the momentous passing of the millennium sitting on the hood of the car (to stay a bit warmer) watching a starlit sky filled with more stars than the kids had ever seen before. It was a magical night knowing the passage of time was marked on the calendar, used by most of us today, by a millennium.

It is the second most visited national park (behind Great Smoky Mountains National Park – which yes I have a book on…) and because of these massive numbers of people at the park, it faces challenges of over use, management of the Colorado River system that fails to adequately adopt strategies for the protection and restoration of native animals, as well as cultural resources and wildlife habitat, sound and air pollution, mining just outside the park, and yes the effects of climate change are already apparent in the park.

I have not been to the north rim or even down below the rim more than a few hundred yards. It is on my list of things to do, along with visiting some of the Native American sites along the canyon. Here are four images from my last trip there for New Year’s Eve and New Year’s sunrise back on Jan 1, 2000. Yes, before digital.

Enjoy,

Richard

The Sweetwater Seas Fine Art Posters

May 9, 2018
Black & White PhotographsCanadaenvironmentFine Art Printsfineart printsGalleryGreat Lakes ProjectLake MichiganLake MichiganLake SuperiorLighthouse BeachLighthouse Beach PierNational Parksnational parksnature photographyPrintsProvincial ParksRichard MackRichard Mack PhotographyRichard Mack's BlogThe Sweetwater SeasThe Sweetwater SeasThe Sweetwater Seaswaterwater

I am proud to be partnering with Quiet Light Publishing and The Sweetwater Seas documentary team to offer these Fine Art Posters from our film on all five of the Great Lakes. We currently have 24 Fine Art Posters for sale on the Quiet Light Publishing storefront. They are available in two sizes – 24″x36″ and 20″x24″. Each is printed on Fine Art Archival paper to our exacting standards. You can see and purchase any of them using this link: The Sweetwater Seas Fine Art Posters.