Focal Points Magazine March 2022 Final by John Nilsson

Focal Points Sierra Club Camera Committee Magazine March 2022

Death Valley Days

Focal Points Magazine

Contents 18. Meetings and Outings 22. Joe's How-To 28. Member Photos 76. Black and White Pages 88. Contributors' Bios 102. Notes and Announcements

Cover Photo Credit:

108. Photo of the Month

Paul Reinstein

109. Parting Shot

Zabriskie Point is probably the de facto top spot for photography in the valley. It’s an easy hike up couple of hundred yards to get shots like this from the paved viewing area at the top of the point.

Focal Points Magazine Published monthly by the Angeles Chapter Sierra Club Camera Committee, John Nilsson, Editor. Questions and comments can be directed to John at 213-266-2224 or FocalPoints.sccc@gmail.com 2

Notes from the Chairman I want to talk about environmental justice. I played little league baseball in a park that was surrounded on three sides by Portrero Canyon in Pacific Palisades. When I was about 10 years old the adults started a campaign called “No Oil!” to prevent Occidental Petroleum from drilling near the entrance to Portrero Canyon. I didn’t understand the issues, but I remember that heavy equipment had already been moved into a gated area where I used to hike down to the beach. We were fortunate that the people in our neighborhood had the resources, the education, and the political clout to keep an oil rig out of a slide zone on PCH. They could fight in the courts and city hall to protect the environment in our little slice of heaven. That was my first experience of environmental justice, though I didn’t know it at the time.

Leave nothing but footprints, Take nothing but pictures, Kill nothing but time.

Years later I was formally introduced to environmental justice at UCLA Law School, where I headed a research center. The concept is simple. Everyone, regardless of race, creed, gender, or income, should have a say about the environmental impacts to their neighborhood by development and industry, just like the “No Oil!” people did in my youth. Environmental justice has become one of the organizing principles of the Sierra Club in the last few years. The successful campaign to shut down the Baldwin Hills oil field is a case in point. What does that have to do with us? I’m not that interested in photographing environmental degradation, and sometimes I avoid places that I assume will be ugly. On closer inspection, though, I often find pockets of beauty amongst the ugliness. As photographers we are unique in our ability to show others what we see. We can show others what we find in those places, and maybe we can help the people who live there to protect it. 3

Death Valley Days

In January, I visited Death Valley as part of a workshop with Denise Ippolito. The first few mornings we had a few clouds, but for the rest of the trip it was mostly the boring blues above, so I made due trying to shoot more abstract shots with no sky. I think it worked out well, I forced myself to work harder on composition and it was a fun and very productive trip. In the blue and golden hours, even on blue sky days, the valley is brilliantly colored. If you’re considering a trip yourself, bring food, as the local provisions are meh, at best.

Cover Story:

Or, you can hike down into the hills and valleys below. I rushed to grab this shot of the two hikers on the trail below to provide some scale. In general, all the ridges have trails, and photographers and hikers line many of the ridges, so you may have to do some photoshopping to remove them, if you prefer.

This is another view from Zabriski Point, this being a little more striking with the diagonals.

Looking north from the observation area, I snapped this abstract of the red rock cliffs in which I see some faces in profile. It’s a little out of focus because the perfect light didn’t last very long, and I was so excited and intent of finding a good composition fast, that I neglected to focus! Oops.

Even the parking lot at Zabriskie Point had it’s merits. I think I may have been the first to capitalize on this view of the wash, twenty feet south of the parking lot. This was shot is a focus stacked HDR composite. The walls of the canyon are about one foot tall, although it’s hard to tell of those are 6” bushes in the foreground or trees in a much grander scene. If you look carefully, that’s the road on the left, and there’s even a car in the distance.

Another famous area for photography is B water Basin, which normally has white salt crus a vast cracked mudflat of polygonal shapes form jigsaw puzzle to the horizon. Such was not the year, as the rains and ensuing weather have to b thing other than whatever weather we followed. 8

Badsted on ming a case this be some.

Dante’s Point is another famous spot for the view, and it was nice. This shot of the valley floor was probably my most abstract shot of the trip.

A lesser known spot is Aguereberry Point where the main view is a range of mountains to the south with a white layer running through the middle of it, extending off into the distant peaks and ridges. But looking the other way, I had some fun with this shot, which I title “X marks the spot.” It harkens me back to my youth, watching westerns and road runner cartoons, as I can easily envision a bandit’s chest of gold hidden under the X. I lightened the valley floor above to draw the eye, and lead me to the red mountains just above that, and the textured gray skies above.

I think some people in the group were disappointed by not getting the white salt crust at Badwater, so Denise and her assistant Michael, kept an eye open for something reminiscent of that. This shot of a dry stream was my favorite, as I was able to snap a bright shot of the cracked mud, with a nice leading line out of the corner. It’s also somewhat reminiscent of the Race Track site, which we did not visit. My Prius was appreciative of that.

This scene was shot about 1/2 mile from the [nicer] hotel at an unmarked spot along the highway. I just liked the green and the abstract scaleless group of columns. They’re each about 20-30’ tall.

Manly Point is a prominent feature at Zabriskie Point, but this is the view from th clear blue skies, I had low photographic expectations, but one of the guys in the group B&Ws. Wow! Great idea, so I turned my rig and shot these two shots. Note the hikers

Sony a1, Sigma 24-70@38mm, f/11, ISO 100, 1/200

he other side of Manly Point, near the upper end of Golden Canyon. With the was shooting away, so I asked what he was seeing, and he said he was shooting s in the 2nd shot.

Sony a1, Sony 100-400@100, f/11, ISO 100, 1/250

Meetings and Meetings and Outings Outings

Sierra Club Camera Committee --

Thursday, April 14, 2022 Meeting David Swindler specializes in landscape, wildlife, and night photography. He currently resides in Kanab, UT and runs guided photography tours to some of the most spectacular destinations in the Desert Southwest. Visit his tour website at http://www.ActionPhotoTours.com for more information. Always an avid outdoorsman, Mr Swindler has spent countless hours in the field. He first picked up photography as a way to share his outdoor adventures with others. Due to his background as an optics engineer in the semiconductor industry, photography came very easily to him. Since that time he has been passionate in capturing the beauties of the natural world in the best possible light. We hope you enjoy viewing the online gallery. If you have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Zoom Link

Where:

In the comfort of your own home via Zoom

Provided before the presentation. See you there!

When: 7:00 PM

What:

The Zoom platform has recently been upgraded to provide high security and ease of operation. Be certain to download or upgrade to the latest vesion before the presentation!

A presentation by David Swindler 18

Joe’s How-to

Joe’s How-To

ley. My 1978 shot was an unmitigated bore. I placed the icon dead center in the top half of a horizontal frame at noon on a cloudless day in May: no leading lines, no balance, no tension, no color, no contrast. I didn’t shoot Half Dome again for more than thirty years.

What is the Subject? By Joe Doherty

On a recent podcast the host asked his guest where she places the subject of the photograph within her frame. That got me thinking about that word -- subject. What is the subject in my photographs?

Thirty years is how long it took me to think I might have something to say about Half Dome. I wanted to make a photo in which the emotional impact of the icon would be amplified by the decisions I made. It didn’t need to be great, but it needed to be mine. And it needed to be about Half Dome.

I spent years as an academic thinking about this question, but we didn’t use the word “subject.” We called it the “dependent variable.” A big part of our work was defining it, not just to say what it is but also what it isn’t. We’d start simple, and then build up to something more complicated. And if we got lucky, the subject had legs and became more interesting the longer we looked at it. I find the same is true in photography. Simple subjects are the beginning, often something that’s been photographed before. Then we mix things up, by changing the exposure or the time of day or the season, or we choose different but similar subjects. And then we complicate our photography in other ways. Sometimes these complications pay off. So when the podcast host asked where his guest placed her subject, I thought about my own work. Do all of my photos have a subject? What does it mean if my photo has a whole lot of objects in the frame, but none of them are the subject? In breaking down my own work over time, I think I can distill the subject into three categories: simple, complex, and inferred. Simple Subject

Fig. 1

So let’s start simple. I first photographed Half Dome in 1978. It is one of the most iconic subjects in all of landscape photography. It’s easy to define as the big granite monolith that dominates the eastern end of Yosemite Val22

On one February evening, in a snowy field near Curry Camp, at the edge of an intermittent stream, I took a picture. That’s my Half Dome shot. It is clear what the subject is by its placement in the frame, which draws the eye upward, and is supported by leading lines and the reflection in the water. That’s a fairly straightforward composition. I’ve used it dozens of times on other simple subjects, like a sunrise or a brilliant aspen tree or even a portrait. There is no doubt where I placed the subject within the frame. But not all scenes lend themselves to a single subject like this one. There may be no specific object in the frame that you want the viewer to see. Instead you want the viewer to see the process that created the scene.

Fig. 2 - “After the Wolsey Fire”

Complex Subject

It’s difficult to make sense of a scarred landscape. Looking at the bank of a creek in Malibu Creek State Park after the Woolsey Fire I saw chaos. It reminded me of photographs from World War I, where artillery and flames twisted the trees and scorched the fields. Although there were no people in those images, their suffering was palpable. That’s what I tried to capture (Figure 2).

A photograph in which the subject is the process falls into the complex category. There are many different processes – erosion, combustion, oxidation, etc. – that create interesting and photogenic landscapes. For these photographs the challenge is not placing the subject in a particular place within the frame, it is arranging all of the objects so that the subject is unmistakable. For example, if a forest is on fire you show trees on fire; the dynamic nature and color of the flames is the subject. If a forest has been burned, though, the subject is the aftermath of the process.

I made some decisions here. The first was to orient the scene around the tree in the center, which leans in the opposite direction from the rest and creates tension in the image. The second was to stand at a distance from the scene, in order to flatten the perspective. The third was to move around (a lot) to get separation between the burned snags in order to isolate each figure. The fourth was the choice of palette, which adds to the unsettling feeling of it all. The result is not a photograph of burntout snags or charred earth. Those things are within the frame, but they aren’t the subject. It’s a photograph of victims of devastation pleading for help.

Capturing the aftermath of a process is tricky (for me, at least). I’ve made photographs of details like burned bark and rusted metal, but unlike Half Dome (which stands by itself) these single subjects aren’t enough to hold attention. Their placement within a frame doesn’t by itself make the picture any better. Photographing a process requires more design, more storytelling, more sensitivity to color and light. It’s more complicated, but it can also be liberating.

tating the vase and changing the attitude and position of the stems and heads. The flower on the right is leaning in, its bloom facing the one on the left, but at a respectful distance. The flower on the left has turned its head away, indifferent. If you cover either of these flowers in the second frame, you would have a nice shot of a flower. Together, they can tell a story about what’s between them.

Inferred Subject The third type of subject is an inferred one. You cannot see it, but you can figure out what it is by the attitudes and positions of other objects in the photograph. It is two people making eye contact and leaning towards each other, or one person leaning towards another who expresses indifference. The link between them is the subject. There are three ways we can characterize the link, which can exist alone or in combination. These are the strength of the link, the content of the link, and the direction of the link. The strength of the link can be signaled by the distance between the objects relative to the entire image. If we see two trees standing together and alone in a field we can infer that they are more strongly linked than two isolated trees at opposite ends of the field. The content of the link can be inferred by the similarity of the trees. Two aspens at a distance will have more in common than an aspen and a lodgepole pine in close proximity. Finally, the direction of the link can be inferred by how the objects relate to each other. It can be one-way or multi-directional, or even linked together in a cascade.

It’s very common that I’ll arrive at a location and look around and say, “What am I shooting here?” In the absence of a simple subject, like Half Dome or El Capitan, I start looking around for something else. That something else isn’t always obvious, and may not be something that occurs to me immediately. It’s only by spending time with it, by trying to understand the processes that created the scene or the relationships within the scene, that I can begin to photograph the subject.

We can use these in combination to tell a story about the relationships between objects. A murmuration of blackbirds is an extraordinary thing to witness because of the invisible links among the birds. With every turn of the flock we can see the strength, content, and direction of whatever it is that connects them. We can also see links at a distance. Two identical plants separated by a canyon illustrate the links within the ecosystem without being able to see them directly. I’ve asked Velda to use two of her photographs to illustrate the concept. These are the same two ranunculus in each photo, on the same tabletop. One is a beauty shot of two simple subjects. It looks like they are sharing a stage but are not linked together. In the second photograph Velda created a link by ro24

www.joedohertyphotography.com

Uninvolved

Involved 25

This Month’s Member Photos

Larry Miller

One can find flowers to photograph even during winter in Southern California.

Above: Alabama Hills Left: Dinner with the Stars Right: In the Cleft of the Rock

California Ramblings

Golden Canyon Pano

Race Track Sunrise 32

Spring Death Valley

All Hail Tufa 33

Hillside figure

Winter Mist, Yosemite

Super Bloom, Joshua Tree 35

Ballona Wetlands and Creek The Ballona Wetlands Ecological Reserve is one of the last significant coastal wetlands in the Los Angeles basin, and at one time was part of 14,000 acres of wetlands in the watershed. It is home to 1,700 species of wildlife and flora, including threatened and endangered species. The wetlands is bordered by the Playa Vista residential complex, the subject of many skirmishes between developers and environmental organizations, and the recently constructed Silicon Beach, home to major and smaller tech companies. Ballona Creek, once a natural stream, now a concreted flood channel, carries tons of trash, plastic and other toxins downstream and into the ocean especially after the first big rainstorm of the season. There is currently a plan to bulldoze the reserve under the premise of restoring it, a nine year plan costing 250 million dollars. If it is carried out it would destroy native plant species and displace untold numbers of animals. There is also an alternative plan that has been proposed that would upgrade and restore what already exists without the need for permanent and irrevocable destruction. Governor Newsom will be making a decision shortly on how to proceed.

Peter Bennett

www.citizenoftheplanet.com

Half Dome, Yosemite

Friends invited us to join them at a favorite spot, 30+ miles down an unpaved road towards the rim of Marble Canyon. It was a rough 4x4 road, and much of the contents of our rig was tossed around, but the result was a campsite a short distance away from this view of the Colorado River. 44

We spent three weeks in January and early February touring the Southwest in our Four Wheel Camper. Our rig got us into some places we might not normally go, like Chaco Culture National Historical Park and an undisclosed location on the rim of the Grand Canyon NP. On the way home we spent nights in Zion and Valley of Fire.

“B Sunrise looking down the Colorado River. Wotan’s Throne is visible in the distance.

“The Fly-Out” Hundres of snow geese fly out of the main pond at Bosque del Apache as the Sun Above: The Atlatl Petroglyphs in Valley of Fire State Park in Nevada are about 20 feet off the ground. Metal stairs lead to a viewing platform that is separated from the petroglyphs by about 3 feet and a wire mesh. And still people find a way to reach out and deface the drawings Above Right: Chaco is an amazing place. The size and complexity of the individual buildings is overwhelming, as is the history of the place. Since it was very cold at sunrise (about 9 degrees F) we were alone and able to walk around the ruins without interference from other visitors. “Sunset in the Dunes” A spectacular sunset at White Sands National Park. Right: This is part of Pueblo Bonito in Chaco. It is the largest intact Pueblo, and is situated near the northern sandstone cliff of the valley. One part of the cliff collapsed last century, burying a number of rooms that had already been excavated. 46

A Trip to the Central Coast