Long Range Photography

  • Portfolio
  • About
  • Blog
  • Contact
Show Navigation
Cart Lightbox Client Area

Search Results

Refine Search
Match all words
Match any word
Prints
Personal Use
Royalty-Free
Rights-Managed
(leave unchecked to
search all images)
{ 11 images found }

Loading ()...

  • Midnight rules at Chasm View, not far from the summit of Longs Peak. Invisible by day, distant cities light the horizon like false dawns. You know it’s summer by the cigarette glow of forest fires. It can be war and peace up here, with hurricane winds or wild lightning striking so quickly your ears ring. A confession, not so manly: in this very spot, I’ve pissed my pants more than once from terror.  Nietzche once said that What does not kill me makes me stronger. (Or was that Conan the Barbarian?) Stronger, I don’t know. Wetter, yeah.<br />
<br />
In the distant future, when someone writes the inevitable guidebook to the top twenty most scenic vistas in the Solar System, I hope they omit Chasm View on Longs Peak. Let me suggest, instead, Mons Olympus on Mars, at 72,000-feet (three Everests tall) the highest mountain in the known universe. Or Moretus, rumored to be the most beautiful real estate on the Moon, (though the Romanian astronomer Lupu Victor makes a strong case for a neighboring crater, Gruemberger.)  With their sharp vertical relief and the possibility of including a very blue Earth in the frame, one or more of these lunar craters would make dandy substitutes for Chasm View.  (For more of my astro-geophysical advice about great photo locations on other planets, see my post, “Photography Guide to Best Off-Earth Landscape Locations”)<br />
<br />
Perched at 13,000′ on the ridge connecting Mount Lady Washington and the East Face of Longs Peak, Chasm View requires a stiff 5 or 6 mile hike that includes some fancy boulder hopping and a bit of scrambling, with a good chance of altitude headaches or nausea and foul weather.  Factor in the distance from the parking lot in relation to either of the Golden Hours (sunrise and sunset,) plus the summit fever that may suddenly infect you before detouring up to the ridge, and Chasm View seems pretty safe from big crowds.  (see my post “Feeding Frenzy at Mesa Arch)
    THE DIAMOND AND DENVER
  • We see what our stories tell us to see, and bury the mute. Take the man eating Eiger: fueled by  Hollywood and books (swapping Nordwand, or North Wall, for Mordwand, or Murder Wall,) we focus our cameras on its cavernous mouth.  In fact the infamous face is just the mouth of a giant, crouching dragon.  Though the Eiger is the shortest in a chain of three mountains, its legends have all but erased the dragon's body. Oddly, photography - that arbiter of the real reality - has played a major role in creating the illusion.
    THE OGRE, THE MONK, AND THE VIRGIN
  • GOLD DIAMOND
  • PILGRIMS
  • "Dead Horse Dream" Dead Horse Poin..Utah
  • DEAD HORSE DREAMS
  • Climbers approaching the East Face of Longs Peak wend among boulders lit by their headlamps.  Longmont casts a false dawn to the east.
    ELECTRIC GHOSTS
  • FALSE KIVA FACING THE COMING BLIZZARD
  • THE VALLEY
  • LANDSCAPE ARCH
  • Like an abandoned satellite, the chorten outside Rongbuk Monastery's gate seems to drift in Everest's orbit. The moon is especially vulnerable,  governed by the immovable mountain. By morning that lovely, silent plume - a raging hurricane up in the summit zone - will tack 180-degrees, from dead west to dead east.  Light will slowly climb down the immense pyramid.  .   befits Buddha's teachings about impermanence, <br />
<br />
This was Galen Rowell's spot back in 1981, slightly to the left and at dawn not midnight.
    EVEREST FROM RONGBUK MONASTERY