Mormon Rocks

Also known as the Latter Day Saints Rocks, it has been said that these rocks were the site of a trip and fall that slightly inconvenienced Jules Verne during a hiking expedition in Southern California, supposedly leading him to criticize the Mormon religion in a small part of his book Around the World in 80 Days.  These rocks are also where a group of Mormons passed through the mountains on their way to Los Angeles in the 1850’s, after fleeing Utah and a homicidal Mormon Militia.

OK, so I may or may not have made parts of that up.  These rocks really are called Mormon Rocks, apparently because some Mormons Manifested Destiny through the Cajon Pass, between the San Bernardino and San Gabriel Mountains, where these rocks are located.

I don’t have much experience with black and white photography, but I think this one looks pretty good in black and white.  I converted it to look like Kodak Professional T-MAX 100 black and white film.  Generally I like color photographs more because of, well, all the pretty colors.  Like I said though, I think this looks pretty good in black and white, and I wanted to try something different.  I will probably eventually post the color version as well, because I like it a lot too.

Exif information
Model	Canon EOS 20D
Original date	2009:11:07 17:53
Exposure time	1/100 sec
Focal length	50mm
F-Stop	f/10
ISO speed	ISO-100
Exposure Bias	0

Arbitrary Gate

I’ve gone into the Angeles National Forest in the San Bernardino Mountains a few times now and I’ve found some really pretty areas. A major part of this forest was recently involved in some wild fires, possibly set by arson, and as you can see, this part of the forest and mountains is pretty burned out. All of the plants are charred, and there is a ton of ash on the ground. So this area is maybe not the prettiest around, but does offer some interesting features, such as this gate I found. I couldn’t imagine why this gate was necessary; directly in front of the gate was a large berm that was pretty established. As you can see, directly under the gate is a large hole, with some strange rock formations. I can’t speculate as to what these rocks mean, but I’m pretty sure it’s some sort of Wiccan thing. Yeah, that’s probably what it is. 

Regardless, this gate is ridiculous. There isn’t a road, or even a trail, in front of it or behind it, and there is no fence on the sides of it. Even if there was a road, any vehicle that first made it over the large berm would then get stopped by this big hole under the fence. Any person wanting to walk into the property could just simply walk around the gate. On top of its general uselessness, the gate is actually locked; just in case someone wanted to prove me wrong and open the gate and drive a dirt bike through there or something.

Technically speaking, this is a single exposure, with (naturally) some post-processing work. This was such a gray and dull scene I was worried I wouldn’t be able to get something that I liked, but I enjoy this photo.

Edit: Wait a minute; this isn't just a single exposure.  I did this one like I did the Mountain Sun photo.  I used one exposure of the sky and one exposure of the rest of the scene.

Mountain Sun

As I alluded to in my previous post, there was a huge change in my life recently.  That change was that I have moved to the Los Angeles area.  I moved for work to help out on a project out here, and although it is a great opportunity career-wise (I’m actually managing others instead of doing all the work myself), I think the biggest bonus to moving out here is the opportunity for photography!

Take this picture for example; this was just a short drive out of town!  Any direction I go I can see opportunity for great pictures; beaches, the ocean, deserts, mountains, and urban environments.

I took this picture in the Angeles National Forest in the San Bernardino Mountains.  This is an interesting picture because of the way I put it together.  Technically, this is two exposures that I manually combined in Photoshop.  I took one photograph to properly expose the foreground and the mountains, and I took one photograph to properly expose the sky, and get the cool rays of light from the setting sun.  This was really the first time I’ve tried this technique.  I had originally planned on trying an HDR of this scene, but I didn’t really like the results, so I opted to try something new.