Here, at the picture of the week page at the Cado Gallery, you will get to see…a picture of the week that comes from my camera. The photo could be of climbing, or an animal, or it could just be a landscape. What’s cool is that there will be 52 pictures a year any number of pictures. So enjoy! Also, check out my flickr portfolio of images I want to sell you.
Smith Rock Evening:
Photo Essay on Textures from the Desert:
Week 16:
Oneonta Creek gurgles and rushes towards Triple Falls where it leaps and dives 120 feet and then runs away to the Columbia River. Green hues whirl and even the trunks of trees stand green, dyed by moss and lichen, and rise upwards for relief – towards the deep blue and greys that stretch out above.
Week 15:
Sometimes you just like a picture. Here MJ Sneaks looks out at dusk from the west face cave of Monkey Face at Smith Rock. It had been cold and cloudy and drizzling but at this moment it cleared up and revealed an amazing scene.
Week 14:
Being around horses is freeing, one of the most uplifting feelings I’ve ever had. I don’t know why. This horse stood on the edge of US Highway 26 and watched the world pass by, seemingly unafraid. May be it knew something that we don’t, had some understanding of the moments that flash by.
Week 12 & 13:
At the Trophy Wall red oxidized sandstone contrasts against the deep blue of the desert sky. The steep climbs will make you dizzy and you find yourself feeling afloat (or is it just blood loss?). Here M.Stamplis goes for it.
The evening sun always sets last on Cathedral Peak in Tuolumne…the quintasential high alpine peak. The salt and pepper granite criss-crosses streaks of golden runs and culminates atop a pillar barely 5′x5′. The view from here will be with you even after you close your eyes.
Week 11:
Many climbers never make it into the canyons of Red Rocks but some of the best climbing is within them. Faces, cracks, chimneys, dihedrals extend for hundreds of feet. Sometimes thousands. The iron oxide weeps down the canyon walls and across boulder strewn gullies and into the lighter colored sandstone and images like pictographs that only a palm reader could understand swirl and storm and beckon.
Week 10:
The road rises and rises through Lassen National Forrest. Huge, Towering trees fence US 395. You turn a corner and nothing. An expanse of satin, dove white, a perfect plane. Beyond Lassen National Forrest continues, enormous. Here, an open eternity, an in between. You walk out in to it and everything else but you ceases. A wonderful feeling.
Week 8 & Week 9:
There are ghost highways that take you into the heart of America. From Bishop to Benton US Highway 6 traces the base of the White Mountains, a place where wild horses run and the road rises like the mountains. Crisp, cold, clean. Brown hills ebb outwards and become Montgomery Peak and Mustang Point and Pinyon Hill. Bare and desolate formations. Ancient dolomite jetting out, scarring quartzitic sandstone and granite bedrock. Gnarled Bristlecone pines and yellow and brown sedge and green juniper. Dry, white mountains looking out upon desert and wild mustangs racing. And then nothing. From the town of Basalt to Mina. A dead highway takes you farther into America and becomes highway 360 and reveals something more.
Week 7:
The Keystone Thrust pushed and the La Madre Mountains heaved upwards and brown and red husks of rock and earth folded over each other and at times sheered 3,000 feet under a sky which oxidizes or becomes colored acidic or alkaline nightly. Lithified sand dunes compressing and burning and aging and the sky watching all the while. What is eternal? The cliffs rust, fill with gypsum and salt and desert air, the night sky watching yet another day.
Week 6:
The Oregon Coast is one of MJ Sneaks favorite places. It’s far different from the mountains and cliffs we visit so often – in some ways. the beautiful Oregon Coast is mesmerizing and captivates you and you always want to return. There’s something very mysterious about it and you’re never certain what you will find here.
Week 5:
The Real Hidden Valley Campground is set within a heaping mass of boulders and small domes and holds an amazing aura. But there are a few camp sites that go beyond that great feeling of “good camping.” Certain sites lie completely isolated behind large boulders; in the morning the Joshua Trees extend endlessly under pure, beautiful skies; in the evening the stars spread out above and go on and on into the blackness, illuminating everything.
Week 4:
The Athabasca Glacier sweeps down and extends almost to the highway connecting Banff with Jasper. Runnels of water and deep chasms and water falls illustrate its surface. Over the past 40 years you can see how far it has receded away from the highway by following signs that read certain dates. Global warming has many effects and here is one of the most obvious.
I have included an extra photo because I could not decide on just one! Here MJ Sneaks documents the floating rocks of Death Valley’s secretive Racetrack.
Week 3:
The Canadian Rockies are spectacular. The craggy, glaciated peaks rise abruptly and sharply and the immensity of them goes on for hundreds of miles.
Week 2:
On our way back from Yosemite Michelle and I drove highway 1 all the way up to the Redwoods; we arrived hours into the night, but what else would you expect from driving Highway 1? We slept in our car through the eerie, foggy night, listening to the moaning forest – uncanny sounds from an unfamiliar world – and awoke the next day.
Week 1:
M. Stamplis pulls his way through Sweet Pain in Red Rocks Nevada. On this attempt, his second, he got the route.
PS click on the image to get the full quality. For some reason it is a bit blurry here.
