Grant Nakamura’s Photography Blog

My flight to Billings was late, but Doug was there waiting for me, and, since I didn’t have any checked bags, we were able to leave the airport quickly.  Doug and I both sat up for awhile before heading to bed.  I still had to unpack my gear that I had previously shipped to Doug’s office and organize it and pack it in my backpack.  I probably didn’t get to sleep until 1:30 am.

Morning wakeup was too soon!  We were on the road by 6 am to meet Chris and Tyler at Big Timber.  Then, on the road again to the trailhead on the Boulder River.  It was a slow and bumpy drive after we got past the small town of Mcleod.  The trailhead parking area was full of trucks and horse trailers.  I was expecting to see a lot of people and stock on the trail but that didn’t happen.

The first order of business was to get water (I had forgotten to fill my hydration system before we left). The Platypus gravity filtration was put to its first test in Montana, and passed.

The next two to three hours past on the trail without much notice.  The trail winds through tall forests of subalpine and Douglas fir with the sound, but not the sight of the creek in the distance.  We meet one party coming out of the wilderness and were past by a group of young men as they entered.  We eventually past them as they rested on the side of the trail.

There was a trail maintenance group of eating their lunch at Lake Kathleen.  We talked with the USFS ranger who was leading the group.  She was impressed that we were heading to Pentad Lake.  We decided to have lunch there, too.  It is a pretty little lake surrounded by high walls.  It looked a bit too shallow to support fish and we didn’t see any sign of fish feeding.

This first section of the trail was a relatively gentle uphill climb, but after lunch it seemed to increase in grade steadily.  We met a group of horseback riders and pack horses on their way out.  It offered me a good chance to rest.  I was definitely starting to feel the effects of the sudden altitude change (living at 300 meters and arriving less than 13 hours later at 2030 meters at the trailhead).  By the time we reached the Rainbow Creek trail I was in tough shape.  My legs and feet were fine, but the heart and lungs just couldn’t keep up.  We still had 4-5 kilometers (and 400+ meters) to go just to Lake Columbine.  I started to realize that I was not going to make it to Lake Pentad today.  There was just no way.  I was feeling disappointed and really felt like I had let the others down.  But they were understanding and decided to make camp at Lake Columbine.

I knew I had trained hard, but I hoped that it was just the lack of acclimatization. I really didn’t want to let them down, but I knew they were disappointed in not making it to Lake Pentad.

Doug and I did get out to photograph the creek out of Lake Columbine:

An hour or so after we set up camp, our decision to stop was validated as a huge lightning and hail storm suddenly erupted over the pass and then descended on our camp.  We had just started eating our dinner when dime sized hail fell for what seemed to be an hour leaving the ground covered with about 5 cm of hail.  And it rained and we got soaked.  Fortunately, Chris and Tyler are quite the firebugs and got a good fire going and warmed us up.

After that excitement, my energy level drained quickly and I headed off to bed and the dryness of our tent.  Before I was settled in my sleeping bag it started to rain again.  Doug called it quits, too.

I was invited to go on a backpacking photo/fishing trip in the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness of Montana by a fellow Rocky Mountain School of Photography student.

It has been a time consuming obsession over the last two months trying to mix work and training in preparation for this great adventure.

I’ve spent many a night in northern Minnesota’s Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, but always relied on a canoe and plentiful water to provide the bulk the carriage of my gear.

While the portages require you to unload your canoe and carry everything (including the canoe) over land, the portages are generally short (less than a mile in most cases) and not too steep.

This trip will be a new experience for this flat land, stubby legged adventurer. Our trip leader has set out a first day trek of over 11 miles (18 km) with a vertical ascent of more than 3700 ft (1100+ meters). The following day will be challenging too.

I’ve been obsessing on the weight of my kit. I’ve purchased a lightweight pack, sleeping bag and pad. I’ve really tried to go as minimalist as possible, except for my camera gear, although I did buy a new Gitzo tripod that is much lighter than my older carbon-fiber tripod. It’s not as sturdy, but I am planning on using rocks to help weigh down the tripod when I’m using it.

The weight limitation has been painful. What parts of my photo kit do I leave behind?

I settled on the following items:

Nikon D700 — got to have the FX sensor for this:
Nikon 14-24mm lens
Nikon 24-120mm lens
Nikon 60mm micro lens
CPL filters
ND and VariND filters
Step up ring for 60mm lens
Grad ND filters and holder for the 14-24mm lens (probably a mistake)
Lens cleaning supplies
Gitzo GT0541 tripod
Kirk Photo BH-3 ballhead with L-bracket mount for the D700
4 8GB CompactFlash cards
2 extra batteries
Cases for lenses, camera, and gear

It’s a heavy kit (more than 6 kg). Oh well, I better get some great pictures.

More details tomorrow from Montana before we hit the trail head, then it will be a black out until we get off trail on Aug 10.

You can check on our progress via my friends SPOT Messenger web page.

I was totally flattered when the Emergency Department’s Clinical Manager asked if I’d be interested in having my photographs considered for display in the new Department’s lobby and hallways.

Well, they’ve selected 6 photographs, 4 that I’ve printed.

The other 2 will require an outside lab to process and print them due to the size.

This is very exciting and I can’t wait till they’re framed and displayed.

UPDATE: They purchased 4 prints and they have been framed and are now displayed in multiple areas within the Department.

Here are links to the prints that were purchased and now on display:

Aspens – Pebble Creek – Lamar Valley – “Colors of Yellowstone” Gallery

Leaves – Going to the Sun Road – Glacier National Park Gallery

Moonrise – Lower Pauness Lake – Canoe Country Gallery

Skalkaho Falls – Montana Gallery

Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy celebrated their 35th anniversary with a Gala Event at the William Mitchell School of Law on Saturday night, July 31.

Several of my photographs were in the silent auction. The largest print of Kawishiwi Lake in Minnesota’s Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness sold quickly, or so I’m told.

Lake Kawishiwi Photograph Finds New Home

Individual images from the slideshow (plus a few extras that I didn’t use) are available here.

The slideshow is on-line here.

Thanks for a great week!!!

This tablet is awesome!!!

I was looking for a way to increase my monitor/editing space while not increasing the size of my traveling “kit.” I usually bring my Wacom Intuos3 9×12 tablet with me on my photo adventures, so when I saw the Cintiq I was curious, but a little leery. I had heard that using it was a little difficult: the pen would get in the way of seeing the underlying image. The reviews on the B&H Photo website were, instead, “glowing.”

I set it up with my MacBook Air (MBA) at home to make sure it worked before leaving for Montana.

It does require a lot of cabling and a DisplayPort to DVI adapter. But once set up it is cool.

Using it with Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.6 is a breeze and quite helpful. I set the Cintiq as the main display in the System Preferences > Displays dialog and then in Lightroom set the MBA’s display up in Window > Seconday Display > Loupe – Normal.

This setup lets me do all my editing on the Cintiq and then see the changes on the MBA in full screen. The extra information that can be displayed simplifies working in the Library module.

The set up in Adobe Photoshop CS4 is similar, but a little more labor intensive. Once I’ve opened a file in PS, I use Window > Arrange > New window for … to create a new window that is an active copy of the original file.

I have to move the window to the MBA display and press cmd-0 and the ‘F’ key to create a full screen copy of the image. I can now zoom in on the first window on the Cintiq and do my editing while seeing the full screen image on the MBA’s screen.

The transition from the Intuos3 to the Cintiq has been painless. The pens work the same and “mousing” around with the tablet is the same. The only shortcoming (and I knew this from the reviews) is at the edges of the screen/tablet. It can be stubborn to get the Dock to appear when I have it set to Auto Hide. There is the inconvenience of re-calibrating of the tablet since different viewing angles will cause misalignment of the cursor and the pen tip.

All in all, I really like this tablet.

I made my way back to Whitefish and the Shaws after parting with all my old and new friends at the workshop. I did stop at Parks Fly Shop to complete my list of errands for Claron. Then, it was off to the Flathead Valley. George suggested going up Hwy 89 toward White Sulphur Springs. I decided to try it.

I headed towards Great Falls through the Belt Mountains and then through Choteau and Browning. Night fell quite abruptly, it seemed, and the short sleep the night before made it imperative that I not continue on past East Glacier. Due to the weather and nightfall I didn’t get to see the Front Range, which I hear is breathtaking.

I found a cozy little spot in East Glacier to spend the night at the Dancing Bears Inn. A PBJ sandwich, a brief check of the NHL Network, and I was soon asleep.

I awoke early planning on twilight in Glacier Park, but the weather in West Glacier looked bad: snow and fog. I didn’t want to attempt Marias Pass in that kind of weather and in the dark. I went back to bed and arose a bit later and worked on my blog.

After a continental breakfast and a conversation with one of the owners, I was back on the road. The weather was beginning to clear on the east side of the continental divide and I stopped a couple of times for some picture taking.

Mounts Thompson and Stimson and the Nyack Flats

The weather in West Glacier was better than expected when I arrived and the multitude of opportunities to shoot was overwhelming. I stopped many times along the Going to the Sun road until I made it to the Lake MacDonald Lodge and the seasonal road closure.

Reflections -- MacDonald Creek

The View from Apgar Village

The End of the Road at Lake MacDonald Lodge

I reluctantly got back into my car and went back to the West Entrance and left the park behind. I had too many things to do at my storage unit and get ready for my flight home.

I definitely will be back to Glacier for another, hopefully longer, winter experience.

More images here.

Our Last Gasp

Mammoth Hot Springs

My alarm went off at 5:45 am!!! Great!! But the excitement of another dawn twilight shoot overcame my sleepiness. Of course, the two large cups of coffee helped as well. We gathered in front of the Best Western for the last time as a group and “democratically” chose our destination: Mammoth Hot Springs. Opposed to going up the road to Jardine.

A not so quick trip back up the entrance road (behind a fuel truck) brought us to the lower terrace. Some of the group continued up to the road to the upper terrace just as the sky began to color with the sunrise. I was distracted by a tree in the middle of the second parking lot just up the road from the Liberty Cap parking lot.

Silhouette -- Lower Terrace Parking Lot

The distraction caused me to miss the very short interval of color in the eastern sky. Oh well, I think my photographs of the tree are pretty interesting.

It was just as well that we didn’t go up toward Jardine as the weather closed in a bit and it looked like the road was enveloped in clouds. This weather and flat light created a huge soft box and made shooting both very interesting and challenging.

Lone Tree - Minerva Terrace

Deadwood -- Minerva Terrace

Some humor broke the seriousness of our efforts, though:

Snowman on Bench -- Minerva Terrace

Kate had found this snowman on the trail and had placed it on the bench. What a riot!!!

Back to Gardiner to shower, ingest (breakfast for me, images for Lightroom), ranking, and editing. Six images, at least one with a person or people in it, one to encapsulate our feelings about the workshop, and four others.

I packed up my car and said farewell to the Absaroka Lodge. It was a very nice place and a good buy. I just wish the wireless network had worked for me.

In room 301, we met for the last time. We gave our images to Dave and as he compiled the final slideshow, we reminisced about all that had occurred over the week and I showed off my Wacom Cintiq 12wx tablet

The slideshow was awesome!!! What talent was sitting in that room. Again, I was inspired, but so sad to leave this group that I had grown so close to. I hope to see them all again!!!

Our Last Day at Old Faithful and Back to Mammoth and Gardiner

Firehole River -- Old Faithful Geyser Basin

I awoke early again after what seemed like a very brief sleep. This time I was resolved to go out with the group that joined Dave at 6:45 am. I left the group just we crossed the footbridge over the Firehole River and made the climb up to Observation Point. The way was guided by the footprints of a coyote. He did not continue all the way up to the point, but continued on the trail toward Solitary Geyser.

I turned away from his trail and continued my climb to the point. The view from the last switchback seemed quite expansive, but I kept on going to the end of the trail. The view from Observation Point was partial obscured by two small Lodgepole pines. I think I took one or two record shots and quickly left the point to re-check the switchback.

I found the switchback to be a much better spot for a panorama despite the flat light.

There also laid a snag with interesting patterns. I struggled to get a composition and exposure of the snag that interested me.

Snag -- Trail to Observation Point

I descended back to the point where the coyote’s tracks and mine parted. I resumed following his tracks to Solitary Geyser. The light was still fairly flat and the geyser was not active. I took a few pictures and the started back down to the Geyser Hill Trail to find the rest of the group, again, following my newfound friend’s tracks.

Solitary Geyser

The light was rapidly improving as I climbed down the trail and arrived at the main trail. Our group was scattered about the basin, so I started looking for places to shoot.

Photographing Geyser Hill

There were so many interesting things, but time would not permit a thorough recording of all the marvelous thermal features.

Hot Spring and Photographer -- Geyser Hill

One last crossing of the footbridge on our way back to the Snow Lodge for a very quick breakfast and then to our meeting with Dave and George.

George gave a more complete lecture on form and composition using many of his photographs of places around the world. It was captivating and inspirational. Then, it was off to complete, at least in part, my critique assignment.

I explored the environs around the Snow Lodge shooting several different scenes around the exterior. I obviously overlooked the interior features as would be evident when my classmates showed their work that evening.

Ski Rack -- Snow Lodge

Leading Lines -- Snow Lodge

Lanterns -- Snow Lodge

I completed my packing and headed back to the Lodge for some relaxation and camaraderie. I was enlisted as a human “Go-Bo” (short for Go Between) to block some extraneous light interfering with one of my classmate’s attempt to photograph a subject in the lodge’s lobby. It was actually quite humorous watching the antics of Fred and me as we both tried in vain to create a single light source for the photographer. He eventually found the same subject in a different part of the lobby with much more even lighting.

Our noon lecture with Dave was an introduction to Lightroom. It was fairly basic for me, but I did learn some good tactics and techniques in its use.

Then, it was time to gather our gear and head for our snowcoaches that would take us back to Mammoth. For some reason, we weren’t put together as a group and were spread across three different coaches.

Bill and I were the only ones from the group on our coach. We made the best of it and met three sisters vacationing in the park. They were very nice and quite entertaining as they had been to the park many times since their childhood. They even had Trivial Pursuit cards to help past the time.

Bill -- Inside the Snowcoach

We did stop at Fountain Paint Pots for what was to be a 30 minute tour of the thermal features found there. I rushed off as soon as I got out of the coach to try to see how many different subjects I could photograph well in those 30 minutes. You can be the judge on how I did.

We piled back into the coach and proceeded down the road and finally made it back to the snowmobile base at Mammoth just as the most beautiful sunset colors dimmed to grey. There had been no opportunity to stop and try to capture the colors. Bummer. I was quite disappointed.

We boarded the motorcoach for a short trip to the Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel and our cars. Brian and I collected our baggage and returned to the Best Western and Absaroka Lodge, respectively. A quick shower while my memory cards were ingested by Lightroom and then to sorting, ranking, and editing images for the evening’s critique.

We were surprised to find out that the conference room was reserved by another group and we were to meet in Room 301. A room!!! For sixteen students, two instructors, and a couple of spouses? Well, it turned out to be a suite with a HD TV that we used in place of the projector and bed sheet we had been using for a screen. It was cozy, but by then our group had really bonded and it was very fun.

Again, the images created by this group was outstanding. I just can’t describe how impressed and inspired I am by these men and women. Here are my images.

After the critique, I told Brian I was planning on heading back up the road to Jardine to take some starscapes. He wanted to accompany me and so did Doug. So I sped off to my motel to change into some warmer clothes and footware and went to meet them outside the Best Western.

We found a small bench overlooking Gardiner with multiple glacial erratics and started to figure out what we were trying to do. I had attempted a few star trails before, but never thought of how to create a starscape, i.e., using the night sky to complement a landscape/foreground.

Well, after multiple trials and a lot of error with extended ISOs, long shutter openings, light painting with our LED headlamps, and exposure blending, I came up with a couple of photographs that I’m quite proud of.

We headed back to Gardiner at 12:20 am to go to bed, but, of course, I was curious about my images so I had to get them into Lightroom and check them out. It was 2 am before I finally hit the pillow. Great, we’re off at 6:45 am for a morning twilight shoot. Ouch!!! It was the end of a very, very long day.

The Mini-Grand Tour

Snowcoaches Awaiting Their Guests

Bill and I were up early hoping for an opportunity for some shots at a colorful sunrise, but an overcast sky greeted us. We opted instead for working on images in Lightroom and Photoshop and, finally, a good, hot breakfast in the Firehole Grill at the Snow Lodge.

The snowcoaches arrived just before 9 am and soon we were off to Canyon via West Thumb and Lake, a long distance and our drivers had to do some rethinking of how they were going to manage the refueling.

Our drivers/guides were Scott and Dave, both from West Yellowstone are passionate about keeping the park as pristine as possible. Both are extremely knowledgeable about early aspect of the park, but they were impressed by George’s years of experience in the Yellowstone ecosystem.

Dave was our driver through most of the trip and is very interested in the science of the park and the indirect benefits that the microbiology of the thermal features are and, potentially will be, providing.

Scott is a prototypical outdoor adventurer, who has climbed many of the peaks around the park and has backpacked all over.

Our first stop was Shoshone Point on the section of road to West Thumb between the two crossings of the Continental Divide. From the pullout you can see a small section of Shoshone Lake and, if the weather’s clear enough, the Grand Tetons on the horizon.

Shoshone Point

At West Thumb, I discovered a surreal place of snow and steam and color. It was so beautiful. I can’t believe I haven’t visited it before. We only had about 30 minutes to shoot, while the coaches were refueled at Grant Village.

Cat Hair and Good Photos Don't Mix

Fumerole and Trees -- West Thumb Geyser Basin

West Thumb Geyser Basin

Our drive to Lake and its famous hotel took us along the northwest shore of Yellowstone Lake. The Absorka Mountains to the east and the Red mountain range including Mount Sheridan to the south provide a beautiful back drop to the lake.

At Lake, I was so intent on talk to our drivers, I actually forgot to take any pictures, even record shots. The light was incredibly intense, so I wasn’t that anxious to do any serious photography (but after seeing what the others in the group showed at the evening’s critique I’m learning that impressive images can be taken in that situation).

The Mud Volcano was our next stop on our way to Canyon. I took “the road less travelled” and headed across the road from the parking lot to the Yellowstone River.

Yellowstone River

Our transit across the Hayden Valley uncovered signs of wolves, but no animals. Need I say we say bison?

As we turned onto the South Rim access road to Artist Point, there was one other coach there on the Chittenden Bridge who had observed a family of river otters. We looked and looked, but no sightings.

View from Chittenden Bridge

Photographing the Lower Falls

It was off to Artist Point and the Upper Falls on the South Rim, then to Lookout Point on the North Rim.

Photographers -- Lookout Point

We took a rest break and the Canyon Warming Hut/Rest Rooms while the coaches were refueled. When changed coaches so the other half of the group could be with Dave and we could listen to George and Scott as we completed our loop Tour.

By then we had already traversed over half of the 98 mile loop and most of us just wanted to get back to Old Faithful. The sun set without any significant color, so we didn’t stop at any points on our way. The road was extremely rough and the coaches need so new shocks. Those of us in the back seats had to stay in a “ducked” position to not keep hitting our heads on the ceiling.

On our return, we rushed off to download our images and prepare them for the evening’s critique session. Dinner at the Firehole Grill was great again.

The critique was assuming as there were so many beautiful images. These were mine.

Tomorrow’s assignment for critique: Three images with one of some aspect of Snow Lodge itself or of our experience in and around it.