Paul Gardner

While I was in Hawaii I spent a lot of my time up in a Twin Otter twin turbo prop airplane flying around the big Island. One view that was prominent no matter where you were on the island was that of the volcanos Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa. Both volcanos are right up around 14,000ft and there can be snow on both of them anytime of the year. I was lucky enough to see both of them completely capped with snow. Seeing these two monster volcanos from the air is a sight that I will never forget. Everyday for several months I got to see both from the air; a view that most people will never get to see.

Around New Years I was in between traveling for work and had a few days to try to get some windsurfing photos.  I had been waiting for the perfect day of good waves and strong offshore winds from the Santa Ana Winds so myself and a few other windsurfers had set a date that I would be in town and sat around and crossed our fingers that that one day would see the perfect combination of wind and waves. That was a really tall order that in the end didn't really come together. The conditions were close to what we were looking for but not quite the right wind or waves for windsurfing. Regardless I took a few photos of what looked like perfect waves rolling in early in the morning at Port Hueneme. I really enjoy these photos; they really capture the feeling of the morning; cold, crisp and windy. One of my favorite things about waves is when you have a stiff offshore wind and the top of the wave gets blown off and spray arches back over the wave.  Mother nature is hard to get to work with you on your schedule and this day wasn't meant to be but I still got some nice photos.

This past weekend I made a quick weekend trip out to Joshua Tree to do some climbing and take advantage of the incredible weather we were having in Southern California. I spent most of the trip climbing but managed to sneak in a few photos at the end of the second day in the park. On every climbing trip I always manage to meet lots of interesting people. My buddy Marc came with me on the trip and we met two other guys Jeff and Scott who were camped next to us and were kind enough to climb a pretty difficult route just so I could get a few shots at sunset.

Back in October I was at my house in Hatteras and working on photos with my friends from REAL Kiteboarding in Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. We loaded up a 21 foot skiff with a big generator and 1500W of studio lights and headed off into the sunset to get some cool shots. These are some leftovers from the shoot for kiteboarding magazine. The two riders are Brandon Scheid and Dimitri Maramenides. Dimitri likes to push things really hard and was clearing the 15 foot tower on the boat by a solid 30 feet on his jumps. He was starting his jumps about 5-10 feet from the bow of the boat and just BARELY clearing the tower. He almost hit our strobes that were strapped to the tower a few times. We had 4 photographers and a HD video man on board. It was a wild shoot.

These are some shots of Matt Pritchard and Kevin Mcgilvry at Jalama Beach Park at the start of the Central California Coast. Surf was around 8-12 feet, Wind 15-25 knots sideshore to sideoff, Water Temperature was around 50-53 degrees F. Camera is a Nikon D200 with a 10.5mm in a Del Mar Projects custom housing.

Last night I went up on the volcano Mauna Kea on the Big Island of Hawaii to shoot some star trails. Originally I had hoped to get to the summit to include the observatories in my photos but the park ranger there chased us down on the way up and told us that we were not allowed to go to the summit at night. So we settled for a spot right at 12,000 where we had a nice view over the saddle between Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa. The skies were incredibly dark and clear last night. The main reason I wanted to go up to shoot star trails was to test out my new camera and see how well it performed under low light astronomy conditions at higher ISO settings. To make a long story short it performed really well. These were all taken at ISO's between 1600 and 25,600. I wish I had had more time and more warm clothes so that I could have stayed out there longer and done some 20-30 minute star trails. The longest exposure I played with was 5 minutes. One suprise that I got up there was a chance to see the new lava flow down near Kilauea. From up on he volcano I could see glowing red clouds coming up through the inversion layer and when the inversion layer cleared momentarily I could actually see the lava on the ground. The scene made for some very apocalyptic photos.

The past few days I have been up on the Outer Banks of North Carolina running a photography workshop for ISOfifty and we have been doing a lot of experimenting with strobe lighting. I don't do much in the way of lighting for portraits so this has been a great challenge for me. We have a 500 watt power pack and two small strobes, one with a small softbox. Most of the setups I was using used one light with a softbox and one light just bare bulb. I used some heavy processing to get a lot of shine and glare in the highlights. Here are the results from several sessions.

This weekend I was up in the Sacramento area for a magazine photo shoot. The photo shoot ended much earlier than I had expected so I was left with the rest of my weekend free. I decided that I would take a quick trip to Yosemite National Park on my way back to Los Angeles. The sun was going to set around 6:45 so I hit the road to try to get to the park before sunset. On my previous trips to Yosemite I had either visited the valley floor or been hiking and not had all my camera gear with me. This trip I decided to go for a few unique shots; something more than a photo of Half Dome or El Capitan. I had never been up to Glacier Point so I chose that for my sunset photo even though it is a very classic photo that has been taken many times. I got to the North Entrance to the park at 5 PM and drove as fast as possible through the park to get up to Glacier Point in time for the sunset at 6:45 PM. The park ranger said the drive would take an hour and a half so I wasn't too optimistic I would make it with all the tour buses and slow drivers on the road. Luck had it that the drive only took me 50 minutes and I was able to make it to the point just as the light started to reach the Golden Hour. The view is amazing from Glacier Point but I think that Tunnel View is more dramatic with both Half Dome and El Capitan in the shot. Regardless, I stayed well past sunset and left when it was too dark to see anything. I tried as hard as I could to make such a well photographed scene unique and included as many elements in the foreground as possible although I know I am not the first to do so.



One technique I used in my attempt at a unique shot was to use my remote lighting equipment. My Nikon D200 has the great capability of being able to remotely control several Nikon SB800 flash heads at the same time. I used the flashes later in the evening to light the foreground elements in the images with dramatic side lighting effects. The resultant images almost didn't look real, as if they were shot in a studio with a backdrop.



On Sunday I went back into the park in the morning. I had originally intended to go into the valley floor very early in the morning to catch sunrise but previous trips had shown me that it really wasn't worth getting up well before sunrise to drive into the park. The Valley Floor is pretty well backlit in the morning. Despite not wanting to be in the park exactly for sunrise I still managed to be in the Valley around 7am. As with the night before I did not want to take a typical Valley View shot of the big ticket scenes. With that in mind I set out on a very leisure drive around around the Valley Floor looking for smaller details to take photos of; thinking on a much smaller scale. When I went to Yosemite for the first time earlier this year I was overwhelmed with the scenery; everything is unbelievably big. It is really hard to get over the scale of the place and get into a different mind set that would allow you to capture the smaller details that really make the park unique. On this trip I was able to do exactly that. Knowing that I can drive up to the park any weekend I want really let me not care about not getting a great shot of the big scenes and let me focus on a new vision of the park.

The rest of the day took me all around the Valley Floor several times and then up Tioga Pass through Tuolumne Meadows and out to Lee Vining. From there I went out to Mono Lake to see what that area was like. I only took one photo at Mono Lake. I was there in the late afternoon and the lighting was no good and treated the visit as a used the visit to scout for a future visit. After Mono Lake I drove a little farther south to the Mammoth Lakes area to go see the Devil's Postpile. I took a huge mosaic image and a couple of other shots and then hit the road to head back to Los Angeles. In three days I managed to cover some serious ground and get some unique photos from a lot of different areas. Photographically speaking I was ON! There are some days when the photos just don't seem to happen and nothing seems to look good or work out the way you had hoped, but this weekend my vision was crystal clear and I was in the right mindset to see past some big obstacles to getting a unique photograph.

I have spent almost every summer of my life on the Outer Banks of North Carolina in the town of Kitty Hawk. About a mile North of my family's beach house is the Kitty Hawk Fishing Pier. This pier has been an icon symbol in my life. I have seen this pier for as long as I can remember, had countless breakfasts in the restaurant and watched as waves rolled under the pier threatening to take us down with it. The Outer Banks sees some really wild weather year round; Winter Nor'easters and Summer Hurricanes. Through it all this pier has stayed strong (for the most part, Hurricane Isabel a few years back took down the very end of the pier). Over the years I have photographed this pier over and over again. In the foggy mornings, during and after hurricanes, in the middle of the night and during the height of the summer crowds. The pier is never the same on any given day.

This Sunday I was on my way back from Warner Springs Ranch a few hours south of Los Angeles when I got a call from one of my windsurfing buddies. Kevin was calling to tell me that Jalama Beach was going to be going off all day long. I have been trying to get out there on a good day for the past several months but the conditions and timing have always been off. When I finally made it home around noon I quickly packed up my Jeep with all my kitesurfing and camera gear, downloaded photos from the previous day at Warner Springs, made lunch, changed clothes and set out for a 3 hour drive to Jalama Beach. After sitting in stop and go traffic for several hours on the way out of LA I finally arrived at the beach around 4pm. With sunset around 7:30pm there was still plenty of time to scout some shots and watch the action. I was going to sail but decided to work on some photos instead. The conditions were marginal and the water is still chilly. Over the past couple of months I have been trying to take action shots from the beach using my 200mm lens and a 2X teleconverter. This setup is basically a poor man's super-telephoto lens and typically results in poor results. The teleconverter adds too much glass into the lens system and softens up the image. I don't have the big lenses to do the tight shots from the beach so I thought might as well not pretend that I do. I was frustrated with the results I was getting and decided to change tactics. The most recent issue of Climbing Magazine was a huge photo issue and I was inspired by the photos in that magazine that showed great action in a nice scenic landscape shot. Instead of tight, close in action shots, the photos were wide, pulled out views showing everything around the climber. As a reader you almost had to search around the image to even find the climber. I wanted to do the same thing with my windsurfing and kitesurfing photos. Landscapes are my specialty, now I just have to add someone sailing to them. With a new vision courtesy of a rock climbing magazine and armed with my 17-55mm and 70-200mm lenses I set out to capture some great scenic shots with great action in them. In every photo I took I tried to incorporate some element of the surroundings; a lifeguard stand, seaweed on the beach, the huge cliffs, people and gear laying around the beach. Anything that would compliment the action on the water and help the person who would eventually see the photo understand what was going on there. There are so many other emotions that a rider feels on the water that are a result of their surroundings. Hopefully these photos convey some of those feelings to a non-rider. Another tip in the climbing magazine related to getting the angle you want and not letting anything get in your way of producing your vision. In climbing photography this is a much bigger challenge but I applied the same principle to my shoot this day. The cliffs at Jalama are what set it apart and make the beach instantly recognizable to people in the windsurfing world. I wanted to get a shot with those cliffs in the background. To get the angle I needed I really needed to be in the water. My best bet was a cliff a half mile down the beach that jutted out into the ocean. I climbed up the cliff with my gear and walked about a quarter of a mile along the edge to a spot that stuck out farther into the ocean than the rest of the cliff. This provided me with the angle I needed to look back onto the beach without having to actually get in the 50 degree water. Being up on the cliff gave me the added bonus of an aerial perspective which always produces unique photos. A cliff is the next best thing to having a helicopter. Getting to vantage points like this aren't without risk. On the hike down I ended up slipping and falling down a steep section of the cliff with my camera hanging on my shoulder. I fell backwards onto the camera and ended up dragging it in the sand on my way down the cliff. I ended up with a few scratches and bruises but more importantly there was no harm done to the camera gear even though it had been submerged in the sand. The photos that I took were the best windsurfing shots that I have taken in a while. I was very pleased with my final batch of photos. It took a completely different sport to get me to see my two favorite sports in a new way.

These photos have been a very long time coming. Last October, well before I moved out west, I took up a short trip up to Virginia Tech to visit my younger sister who was just starting college up there. I timed the trip to line up with the changing of the leaves in the Fall on the East Coast. The timing for these trips has to be perfect in order to catch the peak of the colors. I usually block off two weeks in October as potential trip dates and I don't plan any other events in my life. This way I can leave on a moments notice and head north. I had my two weekends lined up and the first weekend had bad reports for Fall Foliage so I called that weekend off and stayed home. The following week showed a really good trend in the colors changing and the reports were saying the upcoming weekend would be the peak. I packed up my gear and started the long drive up to Virginia. I got up to the foggy mountains of Blacksburg, Virginia pretty much in the middle of the night and couldn't see a thing. Pretty scary drive in the mountains and zero visibility fog. I always find it great to drive up on a Fall Foliage trip at night. By the time you get up to where there are colors it is dark and you can't really see any of the trees. Then, when you wake up the next morning you are surrounded by bright colors everywhere. Going from bland Central Florida and then waking up to bright colors is incredible. Instead of a gradual transition to the color you are instantly immersed in it. The past couple of years that transition has been overwhelming at times. The purpose of this trip was more to go visit my sister with the hopes that I would get a few good photos around the Virginia Tech area. While my sister was in class the first day I was up there I took off on a short day hike to some waterfalls that one of her friends had tipped me off to. There were supposedly a few waterfalls along a 1 mile long trail at a small park. After a couple of hours driving through amazing Western Virginia Countryside and Farmland I found the small road that led up into the mountains and to the park I wanted to hike in. The day was pretty cold and overcast, the later being perfect for photographing fall colors. Overcast skies above a thick forrest canopy allow for nice long exposures to saturate the colors and allow for the "soft water" effect from the water moving in the exposure. Always a classic technique for water shots. I started my hike and immediately saw the potential for great panoramic photos. The stream that flowed alongside the trail was the perfect stream with perfect boulders. It was exactly what I was looking for that weekend. Every bend in the stream that I came to provided me with a great photo. It took me several hours to hike 1 mile to the main waterfall. There were several small waterfalls along the trail but I was not prepared for the large one at the end of the trail. I was not expecting such a beautiful waterfall in this area. The main falls emptied into a small lagoon type of area and then trickled down granite slabs back down the trail I had just come up. Photographing the Main Fall was very difficult. The force of the falling water was creating a huge amount of spray. I had to frame up my photo, clean the lens and then take the shot very quickly to avoid water spots showing up on the lens in the image. This waterfall was beautiful but I enjoyed the little stream tumbling over the rocks much more so after taking the photos I wanted at the end of the trail I started back down a different trail that was higher above the stream that lead back to my car. I stopped a few times to take photos of light streaming down through the forrest canopy and lighting up the yellow leaves on the ground. Everything about this small hike was perfectly picturesque. I finished up the hike knowing I had some winners in the photos I took and could have gone home and been happy. Having that afternoon really let me enjoy the rest of the weekend with my sister because I was not constantly thinking about taking photos at every tree we came across. Luckily the photos didn't stop at that park. On the drive home I came across several picturesque curves in the road lined with bright yellow and red trees. There were no other cars around, the asphalt was new and had a freshly painted yellow line down the middle. The rich black and asphalt provided a great contrast with the yellow trees and the freshly painted centerline on the road matched the trees perfectly, tying everything together. The road shot is my favorite from the trip. On the second day there my sister and I and hike up to a valley overlook and were treated to one of the most spectacular displays of Fall Foliage I have ever witnessed. The entire valley below us was red as far as the eye could see. Rolling hills of red, orange, yellow and colors that defy description. God's artistry at its best. I took some photos from the valley overlook and that ended the photographic side of my trip. I had some incredible photos, got to hike up in the Blacksburg Mountains and spend some fun times with my sister Christine. The trip was hit and run, which is my specialty and all my planning paid off and I hit the absolute peak of the colors in the area.

Last week I was up in San Francisco taking an engineering class for work for a few days. On the last day I was there I had some time after the class was finished to go visit the Golden Gate Bridge and take a few classic shots. I wanted to try to recreate some shots I had taken on Baker Beach near the base of the bridge several years earlier. I have a new camera and new lenses and wanted to see if I could produce a sharper image. The shots I was trying to recreate are good as is so it was hard to improve on something that wasn't really broken. I got the same shots with nearly the same lighting but they were not as good as the first inspired shot. I was able to shoot a few new panoramics that turned out nicely. The trip was never meant to be a photo trip and I enjoyed the afternoon and evening hiking to the base of the Golden Gate with the added bonus of a few really classic shots of a wonder of engineering. I was also fortunate to catch some guys kitesurfing under the bridge. I shot a few scenic shots in hopes that maybe something would be good enough to send to Kiteboarding Magazine. We will see if they find any of the shots interesting enough to publish.

I have been rock climbing on and off for as long as I can remember. At some points I am really into and then some other activity comes around and I give whatever is new more attention. Moving out to California has brought climbing back into my life in a big way. The past several weeks have been spent climbing every chance that comes around. Several other people at work climb and we have already been on some great trips to the crags around southern California. Our first big trip was to the famed cracks and boulders of Joshua Tree National Park. Myself and several other friends from work spent two days out there camping, climbing and having a great time. I only took a few photos at Joshua Tree because I was having too much fun climbing. It is great knowing I can be back at one of the best climbing locations on Earth in only 2.5 hours. The other place we have been climbing is called Stoney Point Park and is located 25 minutes from work and home in the middle of LA suburbia. Stoney Point makes for a great climb after work. As usual I have brought my camera on our climbing trips near and far. The last time I was really serious about climbing I did not have a nice camera and did not really take many photos, especially not digital ones. This go around is different and shooting climbing is a learning experience. These photos are just a start. As I get more into the mindset of climbing the photos will improve. I am still figuring out what makes a great climbing action photo and what just doesn't work, like butt shots from below. The shots in this gallery are a mix of Joshua Tree and Stoney Point. Keep Checking this gallery because its sure to get better.

With great surf breaks in the Malibu area only a half an hour from where I live and work, I was able to jet out after work to catch a sunset photo session at Topanga. It was not an epic evening of surfing with both the waves and action being mediocre. Fun to shoot and to get some good practice in for when there is an epic session.

I was browsing through some fairly recent photos from the summer of 2006 and found a group of photos that are some of my favorite watersports shots but always get forgotten about when I go to build up a gallery of images. On previous incarnations of my website I had no way of presenting a group of images together. There was only one gallery and I didnt want to fill it with similar images. But now with this blog I can showcase a set of images in its entirety. This particular set was from an evening in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina about a mile south of my beach house. I originally tried shooting from the beach level with the skimboarders but was not happy with the shots. They were typical frontal beach shots. I decided to take the high road, literally, and went up on the Kitty Hawk Fishing Pier. This gave me a much more unique perspective. I was able to be "in the water" with the skimboarders. Instead of being on the beach looking out I was out in the water looking back at the beach and into the sunset. This angle provided some dramatic lighting and color as the sun went down. With the light fading fast I decided to play around with a slightly slower shutter speed to get a different looking shot and capture the motion and energy of the riders. I feel that the shots capture the feeling of the session much better than freeze frame frontal beach shots. Overall it was one of my best sessions shooting watersports and turned out some of my most original shots to date. I am hoping to take the ideas learned from that session and apply them towards the other watersports that I enjoy shooting.