We are just back from a grand adventure on the Colorado Plateau and I'll be showing a lot of great images from the trip here on the blog in the next several days. Until then, enjoy this time lapse I made over 8 hours the other night on Hunt's Mesa, Navajo Nation, Arizona.
If you see a Joshua Tree, you are in the Mojave Desert. They don't grow in any other desert. In remote places, they can grow to impressive sizes.
Clearing storm on Mount Rubidoux.
We spent an evening at Saddleback Butte in the Mojave Desert. The weather was beautiful, so I took about 600 pictures and strung them together into a high-definition time lapse movie. It's a short one, though it compresses a half a day into only 30 seconds. I hope you enjoy it! (Be sure to change the resolution to 720p or 1080p if you want to see it in HD! It's at the bottom of the video in a little slide up control bar.)
An observation I made very early in life: the closer you live to the beach, the less likely you are to want to visit it. Of course it's not always true for everyone, but I have noticed that visitors from inland places are always keen to visit the ocean, while I and my friends and family, growing up four miles from Los Angeles' Venice Beach, rarely bothered to go.
I think this was a mistake. The shore is bursting with poetry, drama, and beauty. It often very rewarding for photography and for the spirit as a whole. It certainly was last weekend, when my wife and I took an impromptu camping trip to Point Mugu State Park, where after a rousing thunder storm, I managed to capture some of the ocean's drama and poetry in a couple of images at sunset as the storm began to clear. It had been storming for hours and I didn't expect to get any pictures at all that day. But traveling back to our camp site after eating dinner out, I happened to have my Canon 6D and 17-40mm f/4L with me--just in case. (I'm very glad I brought it!)
Two faces of Los Angeles
Some time ago I was approached by a book publisher called Heyday who wished to license one of my images for a book on Los Angeles they were planning to publish. Along with the royalty, they promised a copy of the book when it was eventually printed. That was an extra delight -- normally I don't see how my images are used unless I get lucky and find one in the wild on my own; this is how it works with my agency Getty Images. But LAtitudes was a direct sale.
The book was recently published, and as promised, Heyday sent me a copy. I'm thrilled to be a part of this... the book is very interesting.
It was a little damaged in transit. This is what 4th class mail does to a book.
Nice big half-pager. Credits are never guaranteed; in this case they are in a graphic index in the back.
The book contains relatively few images, so I'm all the more honored to have been included, and I'm grateful that Heyday recognizes the value of photography and offers a fair royalty rather than picking up free or almost free images from the internet.
It has been several years since Steph and I first stumbled on our favorite place at the Salton Sea. It was quite by accident. We just, for some reason, never bothered to turn back when we meant to. We kept going forward into the unknown until we found this place. On that day I took this picture of Steph and wrote this:
"This is the most strange and beautiful place I can imagine.
Steph inspects a forsaken nest on the dry sea floor. In the background, perfectly frozen a mile away across the desert, is a power plant. We have walked a mile from the other direction over this lovely brutal land to get here, not really knowing what we'd find. There is nothing anywhere around us. Nothing at all but this desolate tree released from worry, this wild empty eagle's place, and the wind tugging hard and bittersweet at all our senses to show us that we are still on earth. And on the ground, not snow: Salt.
This is what I mean when I take you aside, a wild light in my eyes, and try to persuade you how important serendipity is. This picture right here *is* serendipity, and it represents a day we will never, ever forget. I will always remember that when I have no plans, I keep walking."
It was a life-affecting instance of serendipity, and I'm grateful for it and all the times serendipity delights, informs, and improves life.
Volunteering today to photograph a charity event at Santa Anita racetrack for Variety, the Children's Charity, I got a chance to make a few images away from the event, just for fun. Here they are.
I'll leave publishing pictures of the event itself up to Variety.
Hard off the 210 freeway in Sylmar lies a small gem of an animal refuge called the Wildlife Learning Center. During their 2014 fund raising efforts, my lovely sister purchased for me, at a silent auction, a special one-on-one photographic tour there. It was a delightful gift; I had never heard of the place so I'm glad my sister was hip to it. If you live in the vicinity of Los angeles, you really should take the time to visit.
The WLC isn't a zoo or a curated collection of animals, it's a rescue center, so their assortment of creatures is a bit serendipitous... the animals here have literally been rescued from grim circumstances and given refuge. So alongside a fascinating two-toed sloth and a group of adorable fennec foxes, you'll find a moist little alligator and a couple of striking bald eagles.
I've processed a few images from the visit and put them below, but these are not all the animals you'll find there. There are probably a couple dozen other interesting species which you'll get a chance to visit with up close.
Our time at WLC was made comfortable and engaging by friendly and knowledgeable staff who bent over backwards to make sure we learned lot, got good pictures, and had a great time. Truly, if you like animals, you should visit. Since The Wildlife Learning Center is a non-profit with enormous expenses (I heard somewhere it costs $1,000 a day to keep these animals safe and fed), they provide a lot of opportunities to help them out with donations. Amazon Smile is one way (I added WLC as my Amazon Smile selection), and special events and private tours like the one I got are another.
If you have any questions, I've linked to their website above; check them out! Or feel free to drop me a line in the comments section or e-mail me eric@mojavemorning.com
On to the pictures!
A bald eagle. I resisted the temptation to add blue to the red and white.
Zeus is a blind screech owl. From the WLC website: "Specifically, Zeus was diagnosed with conjunctivitis, corneal degeneration, endotheliopathy, anterior uveitis, most likely caused by a traumatic event like flying into something or being attacked by a predator." Less specifically, it looks like his eyes are filled with stars.
Did you know screech owls are cute as buttons? Not so cute to field mice, I'm sure. The speckles in his eyes are not reflections of something outside, this is how his eyes appear, and part of the symptoms of his blindness.
Lola hanging around. She was actually pretty active for a sloth. I had to keep the aperture all the way open to completely freeze action in the dark open shade where we visited together.
My approach when photographing captive wild animals is usually to isolate the animal as completely as possible from the environment. The context is not the interesting part of the scene unless the story being told is about the captivity itself. Plus, I keep all my photos as simple as possible anyway. Complicated pictures don't grab.
A fennec fox. Normally adorable, I caught him in a tense moment.
A heart-melting porcupine.
Arctic fox. Rescued from a fur farm.
Nom nom nom
