A long time ago, in 1991 when I was first starting to do pictures with a Nikon N-90 and a Nikkor 35-70mm f2.8 zoom with Kodachrome film, my buddy Jose Osorio was visiting home from his job as a photojournalist at the Chicago Tribune and we were perusing a bookstore in Emeryville. He pointed to a book by a guy named Galen Rowell and said I should check it out because his voice would speak to me. This was a time long before I ever even thought of becoming a wedding photographer or a portrait photographer.
I can now say with absolute honesty this book changed my life. It started me on the path to becoming a landscape, wedding, and portrait photographer with a 15 year stop in between to work as a newspaper photographer. In the first months of doing photography, mostly landscape photography and party pictures of my friends hanging out in San Francisco, I read and re-read this book maybe twenty times. Along the way taking to heart his lessons on visualization and participating in the creative process of seeing and being part of the landscape. Don’t just stand in one place with a zoom lens, move around and take part in the process of making pictures the way you want to see them. I also memorized his pictures and made them my own in what idea guy Austin Kleon calls “Steal Like An Artist” long before he wrote the book on the idea.
The tree at the top of this post can be found in the pages of Mr. Rowell’s book. I knew this tree well before seeing it on the side of the dirt road cutting across the spine of the White Mountains near Bishop California. He shot it at night looking south because he knew there were more stars to the south and they would stand out better. He shot it with the amazing Fuji Velvia film with its ISO 50 speed and so had to do a long shutter speed. Modern digital cameras can easily go faster on the shutter speeds and freeze the stars in place.
On one of my trips to the White Mountains while driving down this road in the middle of the day I looked up while winding through a curve and saw this tree. It was right there on the side of the road. When I spot the pictures of my favorite photographers and the pictures are within 50 yards of the road I have to be honest in my slight disappointment. Especially Galen Rowell because he always spoke about doing some 10 mile run up the side of a mountain in the predawn cold to catch sunrise in the perfect location. It’s related to one of the ideas I’ve started thinking about that sometimes the best pictures require less effort because a person gets too tired to think properly. True, he got some amazing photos on the predawn runs up the side of a mountain, but I’ll wager most of his best work occurred near a road or near a trail within a mile or two of a road. Most of my best work gets made that way.
After seeing this tree I just had to return and make this picture in tribute to one of my four or five favorite photographers. To get it I set up a Nikon flash with a remote Pocket Wizard trigger attached to camera left and up the hill slightly behind the tree. I set up a headlamp with a warming gel taped to the light on the ground just to the right of the main trunk pointing upwards to light the shadow. Then I had to work fairly fast because the Milky Way was quickly sliding to the right across the background. For doing these technical pictures it really helps to know your gear, to practice all the time, and to be able to work quickly. A standard setup for the camera is ISO 3200 at f2.8 and 30 seconds shutter speed. The 30 seconds only will freeze the stars with a wide angle lens. Anything longer than about 28mm will leave a slight streak.
After seeing this picture I was happy both to have made a nice photo and to have paid tribute to Galen Rowell. He died in an airplane crash in August 2002. When a co-worker at the newspaper told me of his death I had to go for a walk on the Deschutes River with my German Shepherd, Kate, and cry. I had the great opportunity to visit and meet him at his original gallery on Solano Avenue, then at a bigger one in Berkeley, then at his final gallery in Bishop. Plus I got to do a two day lecture at UC Berkeley and see him give lectures a couple times in San Francisco. His website and galleries are all gone now. Along with The New Lab in San Francisco. Some change makes me happy, like the fuel efficient