Photography - Sierra Nevada, California
I got my start in photography in 1999 while living and working at Rock Creek Lodge along the eastside of the range inbetween Bishop and Mammoth. I'd been living there for a couple seasons, plus a winter in Telluride, CO, but hadn't made any photos I would actually deem as quality photographs. I used mostly disposable cameras. In 1999 my Dad passed down his old Canon Rebel SLR, and I started shooting slide film. My mind was blown once I figured out a few things, and started seeing the results. I was so incredible to be able to get a box of slides back, and have the colors be so rich and sharp and pop them into the slide projector and blow them up on the wall. I would spend the next 15 years living and photographing the Sierra Nevada mountains and surrounding desert country (Death Valley, White / Inyo Range) pretty intensively, branching out to yearly trips to Baja in 2003, and beginning to tour nationally and photograph things I saw out on the road starting in 2010. Even though the black and white film that this image was shot on, with the flawed EOS Rebel camera I was using, lead to less than desirable clarity, I just love this picture. It's a place that is just stunningly beautiful, a reasonably long distance from any road, and this particular morning the light was just spectacular. The extensive log jam is likely the result of numerous avalanches in the winter clearing swaths of forest.