A busy summer night at the Sunrise visitor center parking lot in Mount Rainier National ParkStars and wispy clouds over Casa Grande in Big Bend National ParkMoonlight over the Window in Big Bend National Park
It’s International Dark Sky Week, April 22 – 30, 2022. How many of you have ever visited a unit within the National Park System and viewed the starry sky overhead? I admit I am an early-to-bed kind of gal, but when visiting a national park, I do try to stay up late at least one clear night to try and photograph the night sky.
If you go over to the National Parks Traveler and run a search using the key words “night sky,” you can pull up all sorts of articles. To see what you can pull up on a search, click on any of the images above.
Copyright Rebecca L. Latson, all rights reserved.
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The Start Of Sunrise At Sunrise Point, Bryce Canyon National Park
99.9% of my images are captured in national parks. I contribute photos and articles about National Park System units to the National Parks Traveler. So the latest Traveler’s View is definitely worth a read.
Click on the image above to go to this article.
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The unedited version of Mount Rainier towering over Reflection Lakes, Mount Rainier National ParkThe edited version of Mount Rainier towering over Reflection Lakes, Mount Rainier National Park
Ok, before I get into the details of these images, I have to get this off my chest: Facebook sucks! I have a FB photography page Where The Trails Take You Photography, LLC . I posted these two images and an explanation that I will repost here. For whatever reason, FB decided that the post and photos “violated community standards” and my photo page has thus been restricted for 29 days. I’m not certain where those photos and post involve bullying, bigotry, abuse, and all the other things that really do violate FB’s community standards, but they decided this post did just that. I’ve filed an appeal explaining all of this. They may just get pissy and keep me restricted. Hell, I might even have my photo page deleted by them. No huge loss, although I do have over 7,000 people liking that page but who probably never ever even look at my images – once they like a page, they go on about their business because FB’s algorithms – plus the fact that I don’t shell out money to “boost” my posts – keep followers from seeing many if not most of my posts. Sigh.
Anyway, about these two images. It’s always been my belief that every photo you capture can stand to use a little editing tweak here and there – sometimes quite a bit of editing, if you have sensor spots you need to clone out and blown out highlights to fix, etc. The camera captures all of the data within a scene, but sometimes it needs to be teased out to bring forth the scene as you saw it.
The unedited version looks a little muddy and dull and blah. The overall scene is not very bright and the colors need more than a little saturating. Maybe my settings were wrong to begin with. Who knows! I remedied the situation in the edited version, which looks much better, don’t you think?
So, here’s the takeaway:
Don’t delete images that look too dark, too light, too blah. Your camera captured all the data and you just need to spend a little time bringing forth those hidden details. I spent maybe 5-7 minutes working on the edited version. No need to spend an hour or longer (like some photographers tell their audience they do). If you spend that much time on each image, no wonder you don’t like editing your photos! The only reason you may need to delete an image is if it is obviously blurred from camera shake or it was never in focus to begin with. Just save that image and come back to it later, after you’ve gotten more editing experience and learned new techniques.
Crashing Waves At Cape Disappointment Along The Lewis And Clark National Historic Trail
It’s National Park Week and Trivia Tuesday! Wanna know what a king tide is and where to see one? Then check out my latest photography article published in the National Parks Traveler to find out the answers, in addition to tips and techniques for photographing king tides and other sights you’ll see if you travel along the Washington state portion of the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail.
To read the article, click on the image above.
Copyright Rebecca L. Latson, all rights reserved.
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Bumpass Hell, Lassen Volcanic National Park / courtesy of the National Park Service
Lassen Volcanic, Pinnacles, and Theodore Roosevelt national parks were just a few of the overlooked gems within the National Park System that were discussed during the National Parks Traveler’s first-ever webinar.
You missed it? Well, you can watch the recorded webinar on your own time by clicking on the image above.
Who knows – maybe at some point in time ahead, I and my national parks photography will be featured on one of these monthly webinars.
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Red Spouter fumerole at Fountain Paint Pots, Yellowstone National Park during summer 2018A close-up view of Red Spouter as a fumerole during summer 2018Red Spouter as a hot spring (or really wet mud pot – take your pick) in the winter (February) of 2022
Geology is such a cool science. I have degrees in geology (which meant, at the time, diddly squat in terms of getting a job, but it was a cool branch of science to study, anyway). Yellowstone National Park is a great place to see geology, past and present. Take Red Spouter, for example.
Before August 1959, Red Spouter did not even exist. In its place was a small grassy hill in the Fountain Paint Pots area. Then, on August 17, 1959, the Hebgen Lake earthquake occurred about 25 miles northwest of Fountain Paint Pots with a magnitude of 7.3. It was quite a shaker and “rippled through Yellowstone,” creating Red Spouter.
The interesting thing about Red Spouter is, depending upon the season, it can be a hot spring, a mudpot, or a fumerole. Back in the summer of 2018, as I was moving from TX to central WA, I stopped for a brief visit to Yellowstone. At the time I explored the Fountain Paint Pots area, Red Spouter was a fumerole (steam vent). During my recent February 2022 visit, I toured the same area while on a snowcoach trip, and Red Spouter was a splashing, muddy red, hot spring (well, maybe you’d call it a mud pot, although it seemed really watery to me).
Why is this? Well, it all depends upon the water table just beneath the surface. If the water table is high, like when snow melts and in the spring, then it’s either a splashing hot spring or a bubbling mudpot. If the water table is low, which it can be during the height of a dry summer (and it’s pretty dry out in Yellowstone, anyway), then Red Spouter is a steam vent.
Geology is cool, and it’s even cooler when you can get nicely-composed photos of that geology, right?
Copyright Rebecca L. Latson, all rights reserved.
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Sunrise at the Mather Overlook area, Great Basin National Park, Nevada
Ok, I’m not certain that Great Basin National Park in Nevada is an overlooked jewel or not, but I can tell you from personal experience that it is out in the middle of nowhere, and during my late summer visit, while the park was busy, the crowds were definitely fewer than, say, Yosemite or Yellowstone or any of the other of the most-visited park units back in 2021. The infrastructure at Great Basin is small, and the town of Baker has a population of about 98 people, so lodging there is pretty sparse. The closest town of any real size is Ely, Nevada, about 1-1/2 hours’ drive from the park. This national park is located in basin-and-range country, so getting there means your vehicle had best be in good shape, because a breakdown out there would definitely ruin your day.
That said, there are definitely other places within the National Park System with fewer summer crowds that can offer great park experiences, and the National Parks Traveler will be hosting a webinar on April 12, 2022, to discuss those park units.
To read more and register for the webinar, click on the image above.
Copyright Rebecca L. Latson, all rights reserved.
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All images on these posts are the exclusive property of Rebecca L. Latson and Where The Trails Take You Photography. Please respect my copyright and do not use these images on Pinterest, Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram, Snapchat or any other business, personal or social website, blog site, or other media without my written permission. Thank you.
You can reach me at rebeccalatson@wherethetrailstakeyou.com
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