El Cap and the Guads

El Capitan rises from the deserts of west Texas in dramatic fashion.  The sheer end of the Guadalupe Mountains is a sight to see and a frequent subject of my cameras.  I find the views varied and all of them superb   I often wonder why other photographers do not make the trek to photograph this park.  Then I remember, its here in Texas and for some reason people think all the good parks are in California or Utah.

Too bad for them.  Great for me.

On a fine fall afternoon, I arrived south of El Cap by one of my favorite roadside views of the mountains to find that fall rains had brought on some wildflowers and I instantly knew I had my image for the day.

Set up low.  Go wide to take it all in.  Use a grad filter to hold back the sky.  Stop down to f/45. Wait for the wind to slow enough to hopefully get the flowers sharp.  Then wait four weeks to see if you got the image.  You gotta love large format.

I mostly got the shot.  Trying not to blow out the yellow in the flowers it does get kinda dark in the shadows, but as Galen Rowell always said-expose for the most important highlight.

Salt Flats and Guadalupes

The view of the Guadalupes rising above the salt flats is one of the classic west Texas desert sights. The basin and range geology of the west is at work here.  The western side of the Guadalupes has a dramatic cliff and the peaks themselves rise over 5000' from the salt flats.

I have always liked the two and often try to photograph the two together.  So after photographing just the flats, I turned my attention to putting together an image with both the Guadalupes and the dry lake bed.  

I am really surprised this is not more of a common image.  The view is dramatic and a fairly busy US highway passes right by the salt flats.  I guess most people are in too much of a hurry to get someplace else.  That's ok by me as it leaves most of west Texas to a few photographers.

To try to make it a clutter free of an image I walked far out on the salt flats, but I still found some tire tracks.  Rather than try to find a composition that precluded them-a tough proposition- I just ran with them in the image.  I tried to use them as leading lines the way folks use the rock paths in Death Valley at the Racetrack.  Hope it works.  Salt Flats, tracks, distant mountains in the morning light.

After making images in both color and black and white, I realized the morning was running on and it was time to head to Dell City and a plate of huevos rancheros.  So I packed up and drove west for some good eating.

El Capitan

El Capitan is one of the signature mountains of west Texas.  It might even be THE signature mountain of all of Texas.  It is a beacon visible for many miles across the desert and the views of it from above and below are spectacular.


El Capitan marks the end of the Guadalupe Mountains.  The mountians end here in a vertical cliff that is "V" shaped with the pint of the "V" being El Capitan.  See from above  it is like the prow of a ship, hence the name.  It is impressive.  It's neighbor is Guadalupe Peak, the highest point in the state of Texas.  Today both are part of Guadalupe Mountains National Park.

The mountain and the park are a hidden gem of the park system and a favorite photograph destination.


The Guadalupes, or Guads as we call them, rise up out of the desert and reach an elevation of just under 9,000 feet.  From the salt basin to its west that is over a mile of elevation gain.  Dramatic vistas, desert canyons, sand dunes, salt flats, and hidden in the mountains, aspen, pines and maples. 
  
Here is what I would call the normal view of El Cap.  This is taken from the second rest area in Guadalupe Pass and right beneath the peak.  I arrived at the park on a very clear sky morning and decided to go with this location as I could fill most of the frame with the mountain and not have too much sky.


It helped that the winds were calm too as this location is often far too windy for large format work.


I went with the longer lens (210mm I think-I don't make notes he says sheepishly......) and tried to get that first light on the peak.

The light was warm but not that awesome orange glow I was hoping for.  I shot a couple of sheets but but the time the cliffs were all lit, I knew the best was already over.

I packed up and started down the mountain toward the salt flats and my mind was already on a plate of huevos rancheros in Dell City.........

Salt Flats of West Texas

On the salt flats of west Texas.


Here is another shot taken on the salt flats west of the Guadalupe Mountains.  Here I tried to capture the full shadow of the camera as well as the mountains.


Taken with my Panasonic LX3.  Small Format taking a picture of my Large Format.

The Salt Flats and Guadalupes

On a clear October morning I arrived at the Guadalupe Mountains in far west Texas.  Not a cloud was to be seen in the sky, however the early light had a crisp brightness to it.  So I made my way west of the park to the salt flats there and took the 4x5 far out across them and started to photographing in black and white to see if I could capture the flat white slat plain and the distant peaks.


As usual I could not resist photographing the camera on location and think the images of the camera on the salt flats might be better than the images I made with it.

The Rim

The rim of the Guadalupe Escarpment looking south. On a long weekend I visited the Guadalupe Mountains or the Guads as we sometimes call them. The range reaches it most dramatic heights in Guadalupe Mountains National Park, but if one goes north into New Mexico the range is not as high but still has a dramatic drop off on the west.

Here is a view from my campsite along the rim. This is looking south up Dog Canyon toward Texas and the national park.

This is really a dramatic and steep drop although I do not think this image really conveys that. Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words, but here I think it actually falls short.

Rock House Ruin

A rock ruin east of El Paso. I saw this ruin from the road and had to stop. It is literally in the middle of no-where. There is nothing around it either naturally or man-made except a modern blacktop road. But this structure looks older than the road. Or at least it looks from the early days of automobile travel.

I am not even sure what the building was. The two rooms look too small to be much of anything. It is such a long way to EL Paso or Van Horn that I wonder what it could have been.

For me on this day though, I liked the view it had toward the distant Guadalupe Mountains. I lined up an image where I could frame the house and the distant Guadalupes into the frame. Made a couple of images to be sure to get the exposure right and not have hot spots on the rocks.

Then it was back on the road looking for that next location.

Across the Salt Flats

The salt flats stretch for several miles in long narrow fingers in a north-south direction. They are a great place to stop on the roadside but they look pretty neat from the air too. If you ever fly into El Paso you will be on your descent into the airport and fly right over them. They also look pretty neat on a satellite map like Google Earth.

Standing on them in the middle of the night still might be the best way to experience them. The Guadalupes rise over a mile above you to the east with much of the western side of the range being a sheer 1'000 cliff.

It is quite a view day or night.

As the night was slowly fading into the twilight of morning there was just some color on the eastern horizon. I thought that perhaps I could capture that red glow, the light on the salt, and some stars in the sky. I compose a scene with a view across the salt toward the Guadalupes and the dawn.

This was a time when a good grad filter helped the scene. Even this early, the light from the east was much brighter than the salt or somewhat brighter than the sky. I used a couple of graduated neutral density filters over the brighter spots of the sky so that the image will turn more like I see it.

I get a few last images in and then the night is gone, slowly color appears across the sky, and later the sun rises over the mountains. It is another great morning and a neat location and I consider myself pretty lucky.

On the Rocks

The Guadalupe Mountains and rocks go hand in hand. They are such a good example of rocks that they have series of certain aged rocks named for them by geologists. That implies importance. But I don't need a geologist to tell me how important, unique, and awesome this place is. I just hope I can sometimes capture all of that in an image.

One morning I awoke to find the campground socked in with heavy overcast and little chance for a sunrise. It would be easy to think that the morning was a bust, but out here the mountains can trick you. I have seen days where it was 40 degrees and foggy on one side and 70 and sunny on the other just a short drive away. So, I drove down around El Capitan toward the boulder fields and saw that the clouds were indeed only on one side of the mountain.

I got to the classic boulder field as the stars were fading from the sky. I watched the clouds pile up and spill across the mountains. I thought was a morning that an interesting image could be made. I sat up my tripod and began to see how I could line up rocks, mountains, and clouds into a composition. I started taking images in the cold gray light and waited to see what would happen in the clouds. The was subtle. Because of all the clouds stacked up in the east we did not get strong directional light at all. The gray faded into morning with no orange light

Still, the clouds looked so neat that I still was taking one slow image after another. I wondered if the film was picking up any soft colors, I wondered if this was a scene that would come into it's own on the light table back home

I watched the morning happen around me. I stayed for a while. I took a few more images

Some people like their morning with coffee, I'll take my morning on the rocks.

Like a Rock

The Guadalupe Mountains are hidden treasure. Yes, they are visually scenic, but they also have a great variety of different types of scenery to photograph. All that variety make for many different locations to set up your tripod. The eastern flanks of the Guadalupes are grassy but the south side of the mountains drop off into a lower elevation where it is much more rocky.

Many photographers have made images in the boulder field right near Highway US 180. There used to be a wonderful balanced rock in there that was a highlight of anyone trip. However, sometime in the last couple of years the rock fell or maybe was tipped. Rocks change in geologic time measured in millions of years so one has to wonder what happened.

Since I have photographed near the boulders there several times, I have been on the lookout for other rock fields that fewer people knew of. After some exploration and hiking on a few different trips, I have found a couple such areas that I thought would be great locations to make an image.

I drove around the mountain one afternoon, parked the vehicle, and started walking to the rocks. I sat my camera bag down at the rocks and started looking around. I wanted to find the best way to frame up these big boulders. Did I want to step back and frame them all? Maybe get very close and have just one rock to make the image? How about finding some flowers to put into the mix?

In the end I went with both a pattern of a fractured stone and a more distant grouping. Two compositions in an evening is a good day with a view camera. You can take hundreds of digital snaps in one night but I usually only expose a couple of sheets unless the light is dramatic. At the rocks I went to work on cracked and fractured rock pieces. A neat feature of the view camera is the ability to get right on top of an object and to put a very close and very far object into focus. I was able to place the camera lens a mere 6” from a fractured rock pattern and also get the distant peaks both in focus. It sounds complex but just took a little bit of tilt on the camera lens.

I made a couple images and kept waiting for the right light to make the perfect image. I waited, I watched, but the right light never really happened. It was a nice view an all but the light did not make the image what I hoped it could. So I enjoyed the view and planned to make it back here again sometime. After all, these are rocks and they aint going anywhere anytime fast.

West of the Pecos

West of the Pecos River is my favorite part of Texas. The land changes. After miles of plains, hills, mesas, basins, and prairies the land starts to climb. Mountain peaks start to appear out of the distant haze. There are something like 29 different mountain ranges in west Texas. These are main desert mountains but a few peaks reach into a high mountain environment. The tallest of these peaks are in the Guadalupe Mountains.

The peaks of the Guadalupes push into the sky and some approach 9,000 ft. They contain Ponderosa pines, aspens, and hidden in sheltered canyons-maple trees.

I made a get away to the Guadalupes in late August. I know people are thinking that camping in Texas, and in the desert at that, is insane. However, because of the higher elevation of the range it was actually quite tolerable as the days were warm with nights that dipped into the 50’s.

The late summer even brings a fifth season here and I was there at it’s peak. All the tropical hurricane activity pushes rain into the southwest and it is actually the wettest season in the desert. As such it is sometimes referred to as the “monsoon season”. It is basically a second spring and 2007 was a very wet year. The Guadalupes normally receive about 2” of rain in July and 3” in August but in 2007 they received 15” of rain between Independence Day and Labor Day. As such, the flowers, grasses, and trees were in great shape.

On the eastern edge of the range are some nice high grasslands at about a 5700’ elevation. They are a welcome sight as the elevation rises after crossing the Pecos in the Permian Basin.

On fine morning I waited in the grasslands for the sunrise and watch the stars over the distant peak. Slowly the night gave way to morning and the grass began to take on a yellow glow. Light began to fill the sky. The clouds picked up a pinkish hue. I had two tripods set up that morning. I had both the view camera and my little digital SLR set up to wait for the light. I started in the dark, trying to capture star trails across the blackness of the peaks. I photographed the distant orange glow of the earliest light. I turned my camera on the pink clouds above the mountains. I got the first light striking the mountains as the sun appear in the sky.

And then the sun rose and another day broke across the land west of the Pecos.

The start of a new journey

They say life is a journey. Life is also full of different journeys. Mine is photography. As I travel I photograph. Sometimes I think I travel just to photograph. I am rarely without a camera (or three).

This blog will follow my travels and my camera. Why the camera? One day I was photographing and stepped back from the tripod and snapped a quick picture of the scene with the tripod and camera in it. I liked the image. I started taking images of my camera in different locations on a regular basis. Soon after that those became the images I would occasionally email to my photographer friends. That evolved to emails with images and stories of where I was at. Now that has evolved to this blog.

Think of this as a photographers travelogue. I hope to share words and images of where I am and where I have been.

This image was taken in far west Texas at Guadalupe Mountains National Park. This isolated park is a hidden gem of the park system and a favorite destination. The camera is a 4x5 view camera, and my favorite.

Welcome and enjoy.