Posts Tagged ‘Sierra Nevada’

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Martin Litton: David Brower’s Conservation Conscience 2

October 7th, 2011

Martin Litton: Environmentalist, Conservationist, Sierra Club Director, Bush Pilot, River Guide, Hiker, Writer, Journalist, Visionary and Landscape Photographer

Continued from the blog post, “Martin Litton: David Brower’s Conservation Conscience 1.”

Chiaroscurro, Sun Through Fog, Avenue Of The Giants, Humboldt Redwoods State Park, California, copyright 1964 by Philip Hyde. First published in "The Last Redwoods: Photographs And Story Of A Vanishing Scenic Resource," by Francois Leydet with photographs by Philip Hyde and Martin Litton, in the Sierra Club Exhibit Format Series.

See the photograph larger here: “Avenue Of The Giants, Humboldt Redwoods State Park, California.”

After seeing Martin Litton’s feature articles in The Los Angeles Times protesting proposed dams in Dinosaur National Monument, David Brower recruited the young journalist to join the Sierra Club and continue the fight against dam building and other wilderness degradation in earnest.

Martin Litton and Philip Hyde made the landscape photographs of Dinosaur National Monument that became the Sierra Club book, This Is Dinosaur: Echo Park Country And Its Magic Rivers with introduction and chapter one by Pulitzer Prize novelist Wallace Stegner. The controversy over the dams in Dinosaur National Monument, along with the first quality images of the area brought home by Philip Hyde and eloquent arguments by Martin Litton in Sierra Club Board Meetings, prodded the Sierra Club Board of Directors to decide to expand the interests of the Sierra Club beyond California and the Sierra Nevada.

The battle over Dinosaur not only made the Sierra Club a national organization, but also brought the cause of conservation national recognition. A number of conservation groups including the Wilderness Society and others formed a coalition of organizations opposing the Dinosaur National Monument dams. The conservation ideals exemplified by visionaries such as Henry David Thoreau, Aldo Leopold, and John Muir, were combined with new lobbying efforts, grassroots on location campaigning, full-page ads in national newspapers and other methods that became modern environmentalism.

The Dam Builders Reach For The Grand Canyon

“Post-War industrialists in league with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation found their high water mark when they reached for the Grand Canyon,” Philip Hyde explained in a 2004 interview. “World wide citizen action prevented Big Dam Foolishness from getting a foothold in the Grand Canyon. Dam builder’s influence declined from then on.” Today, there is a world-wide movement to remove dams on major rivers, but in the 1950s and 1960s, conservation groups did not yet have much power. David Brower, leader of the new environmental movement and Executive Director of the Sierra Club, and Martin Litton hatched a plan to stop the Grand Canyon dams. They organized a river trip down the Colorado River through Grand Canyon National Park. The river trip participants included the who’s who of the day in landscape photography, geology, ecology and other sciences and disciplines. Martin Litton acted as lead boatman, Francois Leydet joined the trip as a writer, Eliot Porter and Philip Hyde as photographers, David Brower as filmmaker, to mention only a few. Their creative efforts and scientific observations became the Sierra Club Books Exhibit Format Series book, Time And The River Flowing: Grand Canyon. The book went out to every member of Congress and with other written material circled the globe and caused a worldwide outpouring of support for saving the Grand Canyon.

Also on Martin Litton’s list of conservation successes was the making of Redwood National Park. The centerpiece of the redwoods campaign, the Sierra Club Books Exhibit Format Series book The Last Redwoods: Photographs And Story Of A Vanishing Scenic Resource with text by Francois Leydet and photographs again by Philip Hyde and Martin Litton, helped the Sierra Club establish its argument for a Redwood National Park between the California state parks along Redwood Creek where the largest redwoods remained rather than a Redwood National Park proposed by Save The Redwoods League that merely combined existing state parks. Read more on the Redwoods campaign and the making of The Last Redwoods with Martin Litton and Philip Hyde in future blog posts.

Martin Litton was the 185th known person to float down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon in 1955 and founded the company Grand Canyon Dories in 1971. He ran commercial river trips using small oar-powered wooden boats originally used for fishing in Oregon and known as drift boats, but adapted by Martin Litton for use in whitewater and renamed Grand Canyon Dories. Martin Litton wrote the introduction to a number of noted books on the Grand Canyon and other environmentally sensitive wilderness areas and national parks, as well as working as managing editor for Sunset Magazine. During his work for Sunset Magazine, Martin Litton used various made up names in print for his photo credits because Sunset Magazine did not want him to actively participate in controversial environmental campaigns.

At Age 94 Martin Litton Is Still Fighting For Redwoods

Though history has not given Martin Litton as much credit as others, at the present age of 94 he continues to work on various environmental campaigns and fly his Cessna 195. He even rowed a Dory through the Grand Canyon at age 90. Martin Litton held a seat on the Sierra Club Board of Directors from 1964 to 1973. He helped found the American Land Conservancy and served on its executive committee for 10 years. In 2005 he ran as a write-in candidate for the Sierra Club Board of Directors, but he did not win the election. His current focus is preventing the logging of Giant Sequoia Redwood Trees in Sequoia National Monument. See an excerpt from the recent film on Martin Litton. He still speaks regularly on conservation, often with outrage at the logging of the Giant Sequoia Trees:

The mission of the Forest Service is to get rid of all the nation’s forests so they can start over. Under the guise of removing hazardous trees, they are taking out all the dead trees that are serving as homes for woodpeckers and owls. Their credo is to remove trees that are dead, dying, or in danger of dying. That’s every tree in the world… I feel sorry for my grandchildren. The only true optimist is a pessimist. You have to realize how bad things are before you can improve them.

Stay tuned for excerpts from my fiery interview of Martin Litton in the next blog post in this series, “Martin Litton: David Brower’s Conservation Conscience 3.” Also in future blog posts read more stories of Philip Hyde and Martin Litton working or traveling together: a river trip up the Klamath River, down the Colorado river, flying over the California Coastal Redwoods, through Grand Canyon National Park.

8 comments »

Posted in Conservation History

Tags:

Telephone Fun With Al Weber

September 20th, 2011

Aerial, Commercial and Landscape Photographer Al Weber With Some Observations About The Telephone

About Al Weber…

Aerial Of San Rafael Swell, Utah copyright Al Weber.

Al Weber taught photography at the Ansel Adams Gallery workshops for many years. He also taught photography through the University of California Santa Cruz Extension along with Philip Hyde, Wynn Bullock, Dick Arentz, Dave Bohn, Wynn Hutchings and many others. Al Weber also ran his own popular photography workshops for many decades, the reunions of which are now called the Photographer’s Rendezvous and are well attended. The Center for Photographic Art in Carmel, California, recently held an exhibition of Al Weber’s aerial photography and published a 56 page catalog of the event. Al Weber has been exhibited in over 200 prominent venues world wide. He fondly recalls when his friend Philip Hyde attended the Rendezvous or when he ran into Philip Hyde in the field in some lonely place like the East Side of the Sierra Nevada, maybe somewhere near Bishop, Lee Vining or Mono Lake. Al Weber was one of the instigators of the photographic element of the Save Mono Lake Project called At Mono Lake. Al Weber’s biography on the Lumiere Gallery website gives more particulars:

 Al Weber was born in Denver Colorado in 1930. He received an A.A. in photography and a B.A. in Eduction from the University of Denver and served as a Captain in the Marines during the Korean Conflict. After his military service he moved to the Monterey Peninsula and established himself as a commercial photograph. Weber’s career spans six decades. He is internationally recognized for the breadth of his work and contributions as a teacher and mentor. Weber’s images have been shown in over 200 exhibitions. An accomplished commercial photographer, his commissions include work for Time-Life, Fortune and Holiday magazines. Corporate clients include Dupont, Kaiser, International Harvester, Eastman Kodak, Polaroid and Hasselblad. His photographs are in the permanent collections of The Art Institute of Chicago, M. H. de Young Museum, UCLA, Utah Museum of Fine Arts and the Ansel Adams Collection.

With a wry sense of humor, Al Weber is not a big talker, but he knows how to sip a good drink and tell a story. In his newsletter that he calls the “Stare Network,” Al Weber is also good at poking fun at what needs poking fun at. Here’s an original piece by Al Weber originally published in his newsletter:

The Telephone

By Al Weber

 My daughter-in-law, Sara, was talking on her cell phone as I walked into the living room. From there into the dining room, a distance of 20 feet, was my son, Robert, sitting at the table and also talking on his phone. They were talking to each other.

At the airport in El Paso, a group of teenagers sat nearby in the waiting area. They were talking to each other on their cell phones.

Approaching Winnemucca, Nevada on Interstate 80, already driving substantially above the speed limit, a car passed me. They were really hauling. The driver was on his cell phone.

In line at the post office, John Livingstone was talking on his phone. He didn’t really need a phone as everyone in the building could hear him.

Cruising the aisles in Safeway, a man blocked others as he got instructions, via his phone, on which brand of tomatoes to buy.

On TV, a man dressed in blue jeans with no belt and wearing a T-shirt introduced a new electronic gadget at a San Francisco trade show. I’m told he is a genius. His name is Jobs. Now I’m told his gadget is faulty. What do you expect from someone who dresses like that? Twelve weeks at Parris Island might straighten him out (Marine boot camp).

Growing up in Denver, I remember our telephone. It quietly sat there on a recessed shelf by the front door. It rang a few times each week. Someone always answered it. Today, rarely do I reach a real person when I place a call. Push this or push that. They’re always out or on the other line. “Your call is very important to us…..” If it’s so important, why don’t you just answer the phone?

Of all the people who should be competent with a telephone, AT&T seems obvious. My darkroom phone quit and Suzie called for service. The Keystone Cops or maybe the Marx Brothers couldn’t be funnier. Almost an hour of press this or press that, then several hang-ups and finally a recording offering a repair man in 5 days, who would arrive somewhere between 8AM and 8PM.

No one, it seems has one telephone. They’re all over the house. And then there is ‘Call Waiting’ and blocked numbers and on and on.

We live in a frenzy dominated by telephones. The time wasted, just waiting for that call back, is maddening. The advertisement says, “Just ask your doctor”. Who are they kidding? The cardiologist I go to may be very smart when it comes to fixing my body, but he can’t seem to figure out how to use a telephone. Neither can his receptionist.

The only people skilled in telephone use are the marketers, always at mealtime of course.

It appears this man Jobs contributes mightily to our plight, our uncontrollable attraction to a complicated, expensive device that has become more of a toy than a tool. But it’s so magnetic, and the colors are so cool. There are so many functions and it makes us feel so hip. I’d like to suggest one more function to Mr. Jobs. Bring back the reliability of the old telephones.

Learn More…

Listen to excerpts of Al Weber’s Gallery Talk. For more Al Weber images, view his Lumiere Gallery Artist’s Page. To read more about Ansel Adams Gallery Workshops see the blog post, “Photography Workshops Taught By Philip Hyde.”

9 comments »

Posted in Living Lightly

Tags:

New Portfolio: Yosemite And Sierra Black And White Prints

August 30th, 2011

New Portfolio Added To PhilipHyde.com: Yosemite, Kings Canyon And Sierra Nevada Vintage Black and White Prints

Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.  –John Muir

McClure Meadow, Evolution Valley, Kings Canyon National Park, Sierra Nevada, California, copyright 1970 by Philip Hyde. Deardorff 5X7 Large Format Camera. Widely exhibited and published including in "The Range of Light" with quotes by John Muir. Still available as an original vintage darkroom black and white print. Three 8X10 vintage prints left available for sale at this time. Other original vintage black and white prints in the "Yosemite, Kings Canyon and Sierra Portfolio" also available in limited quantities. Please inquire for details.

(See the photograph larger: “McClure Meadow, Evolution Valley, Kings Canyon.”)

In his preface to The Range of Light, with Selections from the Writings of John Muir, my father pioneer landscape photographer Philip Hyde wrote about choosing photographs and John Muir quotes for his book. To read more about The Range of Light see the blog post, “Philip Hyde’s Tribute To John Muir.” Philip Hyde described his process in the Preface to The Range of Light:

It was a labor of love rereading John Muir some fifty years after my first reading. In searching for quotations to use with my photographs, I found the same inspiration and delight I recall feeling in the past—more, really, since my love for the mountains has only increased with the familiarity experience has given me… I wanted to go out again, to go in further, to explore all the places I had missed, and I wanted to improve on the pictures I had made to illustrate the heightened savor I was finding in his words. In nearly a lifetime of returning again and again, I began to feel I had barely scratched the surface. But over the life of the project, my view began to shift from unfulfilled desire to gratitude. I was coming to see that I would never satisfy my thirst for wildness and mountains. I could never make all the definitive photographs of them. But hadn’t I already had more than most men’s share of them? In general, the matching of quotations with pictures should be understood as equivalents—some descriptive, some expressing an experience of feeling that seems to parallel in some way one which John Muir describes. Others are visual equivalents of the words in less direct, more personal ways. There was a basic purpose in all this: my hope to somehow discharge a little of my debt to John Muir for his keen observation that informed and sharpened my own; for his words that amplified my feeling and experience, and colored them both brighter; for his boundless enthusiasm for Nature; for his clear vision that it would not be enough, living in an exploitive culture just to love Nature, but essential for Nature’s continued existence unimpaired, that one work to carry those “good tidings” to others who would, in their turn, work to protect Nature.

In 1938, just before he turned 17, Philip Hyde first visited Yosemite National Park and the Sierra Nevada. On that trip he made his first photographs with a Kodak Readyset 120 camera that he borrowed from his sister. He brought the camera along thinking he would photograph his Boy Scout friends, but when he had the film developed, he discovered that most of the photographs were of nature rather than people, a tendency that stayed with him throughout his career. For more on Philip Hyde’s early trips to Yosemite National Park, see the blog post, “Lake Tenaya And Yosemite National Park.” His wilderness photographs participated in more environmental campaigns than any other photographer of his time and helped to establish the genre of landscape photography as a recognized art form while his photographs served as the backbone of the groundbreaking Sierra Club Books Exhibit Format Series. The Exhibit Format Series, invented by Ansel Adams, David Brower and Nancy Newhall, became known for popularizing the coffee table photography book and helping to establish many national parks and wilderness areas of the Western U. S. Beginning with participation in the first book in the Sierra Club Books Exhibit Format Series, This Is The American Earth, Philip Hyde went on to publish more photographs in more volumes in the series than any of the other photographers, including Eliot Porter, who was known for illustrating the best selling book of the series, In Wildness Is the Preservation of the World with quotes by Henry David Thoreau. To read more about these photographers and the development of the Sierra Club Books Exhibit Format Series see the blog post, “How Color Came To Landscape Photography.”

Though the various book projects influenced a generation of photographers and brought his work acclaim, Philip Hyde himself said, “I didn’t want to be distracted by fame.” He was more apt to spend his time working on any of many local environmental campaigns around the West, rather than talking to photography galleries, museum curators or photography agents. Although the best art museums and collectors did take interest in his work, often through recommendations from mentors such as Ansel Adams, Edward Weston and Minor White; Philip Hyde, until recently has been less well-known than some other leading landscape photographers. Now for the first time in more than a decade, Philip Hyde’s vintage black and white prints, as well as his original dye transfer and Cibachrome prints are offered by a select number of the world’s best photography galleries. To read more about the galleries who carry Philip Hyde’s work see the blog posts in the category “Galleries for Philip Hyde” or go to “About Vintage And Black And White Prints.” A limited number of his vintage and original prints are still available for viewing and acquisition on the Philip Hyde Photography website. As we scan Philip Hyde’s original vintage black and white prints and film, a few new images, and on a few rare occasions a whole new portfolio is added to PhilipHyde.com. The selection of photographs chosen for the new “Yosemite, Kings Canyon and Sierra Black and White Portfolio” were carefully reviewed by many experts in the art world, in photography galleries and by other professional photographers. Please enjoy and write me as you have questions.

What writers, artists or other influences helped you connect to a place?

18 comments »

Posted in Events-Releases

Tags:

Happy 4th Of July!

July 4th, 2011

Please Have A Happy And Safe July 4 Independence Day…

The Taylorsville Tavern or "T" Room, July 4, Northern Sierra Nevada, California, copyright 2009 by David Leland Hyde. Nikon D90.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with inherent and inalienable Rights; that among these, are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness; that to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

Robert Watson's Barbeque At The Wastson's Walking "G" Camp, July 4, Northern Sierra Nevada, California, copyright 2009 David Leland Hyde. Nikon D90.

Thomas Jefferson

The Declaration of Independence

3 comments »

Posted in Events-Releases

Tags:

Interview Of Gary Crabbe Part 2

June 27th, 2011

Landscape Photography Blogger Interviews Photographer Gary Crabbe

Part Two of a Three Part Series

(Continued from the blog post, “Interview Of Gary Crabbe Part 1.”)

On Personal Style, Book Projects, Photo Editing And Working With Galen Rowell

Interview Conducted By Phone May 25, 2011

Rural Highway Below Mount Shasta, Northern California, copyright 2009 by Gary Crabbe.

(View photograph large: “Mt. Shasta.”)

HYDE: You also said that one important lesson in landscape photography you learned from Galen Rowell had to do primarily with responding to the light.

GARY CRABBE: That lesson originated with Galen Rowell and ever since I’ve become hyper-sensitive and in tune with what the light is doing and what the light is hitting, versus the subject I set out to photograph. Now I say to my student’s, “A boring subject in great light will always make a better photo than a great subject in boring light.” I may have a subject in mind, but if I see the light happening somewhere else, I am willing at a moment’s notice to drop any preconceived idea.

HYDE: That flexibility strikes me as not only the similarity between you and Galen Rowell, but also between Galen Rowell and my father, Philip Hyde. Many landscape photographers have this philosophy that they go out, scout out a location, then literally set up camp and wait for the right light, sometimes for as long as several days. My dad never did that. He would photograph in the middle of the day rather than wait. Part of it had to do with limitations of budget and time. He had to cover certain territory because he had his itinerary planned. He had obligations. He was often on assignment and someone else was paying his expenses. Certain landscape photographers like Jack Dykinga, for example, take the exact opposite approach. Jack Dykinga is sometimes on a loose assignment from a group like the iLCP, International League of Conservation Photographers. He may be setting the direction and parameters of the assignment, maybe he picks his own. He’ll wait days for the right light or weather conditions. Do you do that?

GARY CRABBE: No, I wish I could. I know a friend who does and he returns with some gorgeous images. He also has the patience to wait for something better. I don’t get it. (Laughter) I make the best of what I can because I can’t wait with my book projects. Plus I’m also a stay at home Dad. I’m the one that drops my kids off at school and picks them up in the afternoon. When I’m out photographing, I have to turn tail and get back. My time is limited. I did double back one time on my way to Lava Beds National Monument up in Northern California on my last book project. I cut from Weed over to the Lower Klamath National Wildlife Refuge and then on to Lava Beds. I looked in my rear view mirror and said, “Wow, there’s a great shot of Mount Shasta,” making a note to come back for sunrise. I circled around through Alturas into Susanville, back over to Lassen Volcanic National Park and then up again toward Mt. Shasta, making a 500 mile loop. I can’t recall many occasions where I’ve made that choice, but it was my time to make something work. That’s why I’m here.

HYDE: So looping back 500 miles was more the exception than the rule for you?

GARY CRABBE: Absolutely, and it was one nice sunrise morning. Sure, I could have said, “I wanted more clouds in the sky, or the moon setting,” but I didn’t have the luxury to do that. In that regard I’m more of an editorial photojournalist. I’m out there to document the place. I need to get this, this, this and this for my book project. I work myself to max out a set schedule. Landscape photography art does not always happen like it did at Lava Beds National Monument. Two mornings later I also shot a wonderful sunrise in Susanville, but, the morning in between was crap. (Laughter) Nothing came out. It wasn’t the right weather. I couldn’t just stay there and hope that the next day was going to get better and miss all the other photographs I needed. In that regard, it sounds trite, but it’s a job. My work dictates my schedule and then my creative instincts guide what I do within the confines of that schedule. I just spent two days in Yosemite National Park. I had to get Vernal Falls for my next book project, Where to Photograph in Northern California. I’ve rarely ever tried to take, for lack of a better word, cheesy, iconic photos like the rainbow and Vernal Falls. But it’s the kind of photograph that provides the reason to go up to Yosemite National Park and face the crowds. It’s ironic to dread Yosemite Valley, but that’s summertime. In the text I’ll explain that to photograph the rainbow your best chance of seeing it is at ‘this time’ and ‘this time.’ Sure, my photograph was of Vernal Falls from the Mist Trail, but I am always happier as in this case when I came back with my own personal vision of the scene as opposed to the same image that has been on a post card for the last 35 years in every gift shop in Yosemite National Park.

HYDE: Speaking of waterfalls, I really like your “Sunlight on Berry Creek Falls.” You know my dad made a well-known photograph of Berry Creek Falls. Your photograph makes it look even more picturesque now. Berry Creek is a really nice waterfall. The way you framed it, that’s one of the best waterfall photographs I’ve ever seen.

GARY CRABBE: Wow, I’m beyond flattered. I just wrote about it. I put up an article at a place called Pro Photo Resource. It was called, “Seeking Out Definitive Moments In Outdoor, Nature And Travel Photography.” Berry Creek Falls was one of my examples.

HYDE: I want to talk to you about each of your book projects, maybe a spattering of what was interesting about each project. It’s important for people to know that you have illustrated six coffee table books. Also, there is one more question about your experience with Galen and Barbara Rowell that I want to ask you. It is personal to me because of my process working with my father’s photographs. Carr Clifton helped me all along in choosing images and many other people helped too, various gallery owners and other experts. I had consulting work by Ryan Baldwin, who at one point ran Galen Rowell’s Mountain Light Gallery in Emeryville. Did you work there when he did?

GARY CRABBE: Yes. I know him very well.

HYDE: OK. He actually did a little consulting with me in the very beginning when I really didn’t know anything about anything. He helped me start choosing images. I feel like my vision and my ability to choose photographs grew exponentially over the years since then. Ryan Baldwin’s good advice was to choose images of my dad’s at first that no other photographer could have done. He suggested that later I could mix in some that my dad did first and everybody else has done since. My question to you is, in managing Galen Rowell’s stock department of 300,000 images, you must have learned a lot about photo selection from Galen and also from editors. You stepped into it with no idea of what makes a good photograph. Tell me a little about your learning curve, what was that like?

Stormy Sunrise Over Lava Beds National Monument, Siskiyou County, California, copyright 2009 by Gary Crabbe.

(View the photograph large: “Lava Beds.”)

GARY CRABBE: Interesting question. I feel bad that at one point I fibbed to Galen, some people might call it a lie. I was so green, that when I first started working at Mountain Light and he asked me, “You know what a dupe is, right?” I said, “Sure.” (Laughter) I asked another employee later, “What is a dupe?” He said, “Oh, you know, a duplicate slide.” “Oh yeah,” I said. That’s how green I was. First I learned the basic technical points of what editors need. For a magazine cover, you need to have some negative space where your text can go, your subject needs to be centered in this area, you need to have space at the bottom of the frame where they can add the mailing label and bar code and so on. When you’re selecting a double page spread, be sure the most important part of the subject is not in the middle of the frame where the seam of the paper goes. I would go through slides and pull out what I thought might be appropriate and Galen would tell me what was good for what reason, “Yes this is good, this is good, no this one wouldn’t work.” Galen obviously had his own preferences. As part of the interview process, we started having people do light test submissions. You were put in a situation where an editor called you from National Audubon or National Wildlife Federation and you needed to send 20 images of polar bears or penguins. We would give the applicant the entire penguin folder or the entire polar bear folder and we’d see what they would choose to send. It was a great litmus test to see how people responded to what a photo editor wanted and how they responded to Galen’s images as well. Over time I got to where I could usually look at a sheet of 20 slides in approximately one second and know whether there were any images on that page worth taking a second look at for any given project. We’re dealing with hundreds of thousands of images. For example: you know you need a shot of the Marin County Coast. Galen didn’t have separate organized folders other than every shot from Marin County going into one folder. So I’d be looking at images of Point Reyes next to Mount Tamalpais next to Bolinas next to Fairfax, somewhere in that jumble of 35 mm frames was the photograph you needed. It always seemed that there was one or two images that would stand out. Those were the ones I found where the story and the light came together in the best way possible. That’s what I use to guide the editing of my own images. (For more about how Gary Crabbe edits photographs see his post on Jim M. Goldstein’s Blog, “Pro Tips: Photo Editing With Gary Crabbe.”) You want the viewer to instantly know what your photograph is about, if there is confusion, you’ve lost them. If something in the composition creates an emotional or bio-physiological hiccup, you’ve lost them. And this is what I said in this recent article I wrote is, you want every photograph you take to be a headline and an exclamation point for whatever you are photographing. You want the story to come across that quick, with no ambiguity whatsoever.

HYDE: Of course that is for editorial stock photography, but to play devil’s advocate, Paul Strand and my father even, at times, made images that when you look at them at first you have no idea what you are looking at, you can’t figure out what it is. (Find out more about the history of abstract photography and Paul Strand in the blog post, “Straight Photography And Abstraction.”)

GARY CRABBE: That’s true. That is where art photography is different. I love doing abstract photography myself, but that wasn’t the sort of work that Galen did. I used to judge local camera clubs. And they’d have a category that was called “Contemporary,” which meant it had to be some kind of abstract or manipulated photo. I would stand in front of 30 or 40 amateur photographers and say, “The faster I can figure out what you did the less I like it.”

HYDE: But it’s the opposite for magazine submissions or other types of stock photography, correct?

GARY CRABBE: Yes, but you are still trying to generate instant emotional impact, even from an abstract. You are trying to create some kind of subconscious emotional reaction. You don’t have to know what it’s about, but you need to know how it feels. And that’s where art becomes personal and subjective. Some people say, “That doesn’t do anything for me.” Others say, “I could spend a week looking at all the detail in that photograph.” All you can do as an artist is put out what you find interesting.

HYDE: When you first started working for Galen Rowell, your article said something like you had seen only two photography exhibitions, but was there an educational process for learning about the work of other landscape photographers?

GARY CRABBE: Looking through photography magazines, who pays attention to photographer credit lines? Other photographers. That’s how you learn. Every time I saw an image that made me say, “Wow,” I noticed the name. I began to recognize the names Galen’s work was published with right up through the evolution of outdoor photography. I certainly have developed my own personal preferences for the sort of work I like seeing.

HYDE: I’d like to hear how each of your book projects came about.  So how did Backroads of the California Coast: Your Guide to Scenic Getaways & Adventures published in 2001, which won Book of the Year 2002 from the California Outdoor Travel Writers Association, how did that book come about?

GARY CRABBE: Way back when, trying to get your work in front of people, you would buy these source book ads and they would be like $1000 or $2000 a page. And the publisher would send these big books out to all the advertising agencies and publishers and whatever. I went into one of those books my first year as an independent photographer. One of the images I put in was of a twisting road below the Grand Tetons. One day a publisher sent me a note, “Do you have more good road shots like that? We’re doing a book called, ‘The Back Roads of Northern California.’ We would like you to submit some photographs for the cover.” They already had the whole book photographed and written, they were just looking for a different cover. They went through my submission and they didn’t choose any of my photographs. They went with a photo by the photographer for the book, but the quality of the images I submitted stuck in their mind. From that one failed submission, when a well-published travel writer approached them to do a book on the California Coast, they asked, “We need a photographer for this project, are you interested?” That’s how it started. Voyager Press has been the publisher for five out of my six published books.

HYDE: So were Our San Francisco and Yosemite & The Eastern Sierra, similar books?

GARY CRABBE: All of them except for Yosemite & The Eastern Sierra, that’s the one that was published by a different publisher as its own stand-alone project. The editor for that book was Peter Beren, the foremost publisher for Sierra Club books. Peter knew me from Mountain Light. I worked with him as kind of a liaison. I had also done some freelance projects for him as a photo editor. I remember this vividly, it was my daughter’s first birthday, a Saturday afternoon, the house was packed with friends and relatives. My office phone rang. I was thinking I’m not going to bother answering. The phone rang once, twice, a third time, “Oh I can’t stand it.” I raced back to my office as fast as I could go, grabbed the phone, and I hear, “Gary, this is Peter Beren. You’ve got a bunch of Yosemite images, right?” I said, “Hi Peter, yeah.” “Great. I’m going to recommend your photos for a book project.” “OK, thanks.” “Alright, bye.” That was the entire extent of the conversation. A couple weeks later, the publisher called me from her office in New York, “Can you have images to us by next Wednesday?” “Sure.” I never needed to take another picture for that book. Every image came from my existing slides. I sent them 300. They did a beautiful job. Unfortunately the book is out of print now, but I remember approving all the color proofs. On their third or fourth go around, I said it was great, but they still went two more rounds with some of the images. They did an impeccable job with the printing. Peter did the editing of the book. He gathered quotes from Ansel Adams, John Muir and others, which they matched up with my images and boom, the book was done that fast.

Continued in the blog post, “Interview Of Gary Crabbe Part 3.”

21 comments »

Posted in Photography Masters

Tags:

Martin Litton: David Brower’s Conservation Conscience 1

June 6th, 2011

Martin Litton, “Father of Redwood National Park,” “Grand Old Man of the Colorado River” and David Brower’s “Conservation Conscience.”

Martin Litton, Palo Alto, California, September 2009, Wikipedia. Martin Litton was 93 years old and still speaking on behalf of the Sequoia Redwoods.

The environmental organization, Save America’s Forests, on its website referred to Martin Litton as the “Father of Redwood National Park.” The Los Angeles Times called Martin Litton, “The Grand Old Man of the Colorado River.” The Sierra Club’s first Executive Director, David Brower called Martin Litton his “conservation conscience.” In the groundbreaking Sierra Club Books Exhibit Format Series, Martin Litton used several different names for his photograph credits because as Senior Editor of Sunset Magazine, Sunset did not want him involved in controversial conservation campaigns. Regardless of what he’s referred to as, Martin Litton has proved to be what Voice of the Environment called him, “The great American conservationist of the 20th century.”

In addition to being an environmental activist and conservationist, Sierra Club Board member, bush pilot, river guide, hiker, writer, journalist and landscape photographer, Martin Litton today at age 94 has held leadership titles with many environmental groups including Save America’s Forests, Lighthawk, Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, and Glen Canyon Institute.

Shortly after the Sierra Club Board made David Brower the first Executive Director in 1952, David Brower saw articles Martin Litton wrote in the Los Angeles Times about proposed dams in Dinosaur National Monument. David Brower invited Martin Litton to join the Sierra Club and thus a powerful alliance began. To learn more about David Brower see the blog post, “David Brower: Photographer and Environmentalist 1.”

David Brower wrote in his 1982 introduction to Martin Litton’s University of California, Berkeley, Bancroft Library Oral History: “Some people get the kudos and others, out of inequity, don’t. Martin Litton is due most of those addressed to me in error: More years than I will ever admit, he has been my conservation conscience.” In the same introduction, David Brower added:

If you look over the illustrations in the battle to save Dinosaur National Monument, you will find Charles Eggert’s color films, “This Is Dinosaur” and “Wilderness River Trail,” Philip Hyde’s beautiful work in black and white, and Martin Litton’s 16mm color, 4X5 color, and black and white photographs from cameras he happened to be carrying in battery, along with an eye and ear that missed nothing. That was the beginning, but only the beginning. The proper photo history of Martin Litton , with accompanying legends, could occupy many volumes… If there was a piece of American environment that had problems, Martin found out about it, wrote about it, photographed it from the surface or, with a hand on the stick, from the air. Sometimes he could use his own name. At other times, he was Clyde Thomas or Homer Gasquez. So you have to go through numberless publications and add all three names up to appreciate the aggregate retrospective of Martin Litton.

One year the Sierra Club directors, having voted for Grand Canyon dams and a year later reversed themselves, were ready to re-reverse. Martin’s knowledge and eloquence stopped them. They were ready to go for the wrong Redwood National Park. It was Martin who knew where the best Redwoods were, who had the creativity to propose a comprehensive Redwood National Park that would have been a monument to conservation genius. We didn’t get it because organizational jealousies within the conservation movement—one of the major threats to environment—got in the way. It was Martin who knew where the gentle wilderness was on the Kern Plateau—wilderness that should have been added to Sequoia National Park. “Old-boy” conservation trades got in the way. It was Martin, alas, who happened to be in Bagdad when the Sierra Club directors voted, without seeing it, to accept Diablo Canyon as an alternate site for the reactor proposed to be built at Nipomo Dunes. Had he been in San Francisco instead, a different history would have been written… When the Sierra Club Board was discussing what to do at Mineral King with respect to Walt Disney’s proposed ski development, and when I myself had wobbled and was about to go along, it was Martin who got me to reverse myself right there on the spot, in front of everybody.

More on Martin Litton, David Brower and Martin Litton’s travels and projects with Philip Hyde in the next and other future blog posts in this series, “Martin Litton: David Brower’s Conservation Conscience 2.”

10 comments »

Posted in Conservation History

Tags:

Monday Blog Blog: Greg Boyer

May 16th, 2011

Monday Blog Blog: Greg Boyer Photography

Raised on ranches as a boy and now living in Bishop, California in the shadow of the Eastern Sierra Nevada, Greg Boyer first became serious about photography in the early 1970s. He first began making landscape photographs at age 12 when his father gave him an Argus C3. In 1960, a trip to Yosemite National Park helped spark his creative inspiration. By the time he reached age 13, he had been to 18 states.

Moonrise Over Mono Lake, Eastern Sierra Nevada, California, copyright 2008 by Greg Boyer.

(View the photograph larger Click Here.)

(What in the world is Monday Blog Blog? To find out more read the blog post, “Monday Blog Blog Celebration.”)

Greg Boyer’s father was in the Army Air Corp which became the US Air Force. He later became a safety engineer for a the U.S. government and in the Missile Industry. The family began ranching in California and then moved to Idaho north of Boise along the Payette River. Greg Boyer worked on his father’s ranch while also photographing and hiking the mountains and back country of Idaho.

In the mid 1970s and early 1980s, Greg Boyer worked as a well driller and did construction work building irrigation pumping plants along the Sacramento river in California. At the zenith of Greg Boyer’s early photography life, he recently explained, he dove in more deeply and then faded after a camera catastrophe and other life changes:

I was about the same age as Galen Rowell. He was in all the magazines. He was an outdoor hero. I was doing mountain climbing and some of the same things he was but on a smaller scale. I was always an explorer as a kid. The last year I was very serious about photography was 1975 when I was photographing on the Middle Fork of the Salmon River in Idaho, a wild and wooly place. I was using a Nikon F2. I had a 500 mm lens on and I was getting ready to change the focusing screen. I set the camera down and it fell off the rock perch I set it on at the edge of a deep gorge. I was rummaging in my camera bag trying to find the focusing screen and all I heard was the first clunk of my camera bouncing several times down in the ravine. I turned around and the camera was gone. On the second bounce I saw the body go one direction and the lens go the other. Soon after that my ex wife and I moved back to California in 1975. I was drilling wells and the work was demanding. I didn’t have the time to devote to photography that I wanted to. I was raising a family. I still made snapshots of my kids and family vacations.

Greg Boyer worked for Campbell Soup for 14 years as a maintenance planner. When an opportunity to go back to school came, he took it. He attended UC Davis in Multi-Media Design, where he learned about video production and Photoshop, which he had originally started to learn in 1992. He worked in Video Production from 1997 to 2005. Around that time the video business began to change. The video company he worked for and many others were casualties.

In 2004 Greg Boyer bought a Nikon D2X digital camera. With his extensive knowledge of Photoshop, he also began digital printing. Thus began a whole new experience with photography:

With digital photography I found out how to express the way I saw a scene. I couldn’t do that with film. Digital landscape photography was everything film photography could have been to me but that I never had with film. I never had the tools to do what I really wanted to do until digital came along.  It’s the immediacy of the digital image. You can see right away what you have. You can look at the image and at the histogram and then do something different if it doesn’t work. In the film era you didn’t know what you had until you had the rolls processed. Then you might never make it back to the same place, or you had to get back there in the same conditions.

In late 2005, Greg Boyer was diagnosed with Emphysema. When he told his son, his son said, “Well, you better quit wasting time.” After thinking about it, Greg Boyer realized his son was right. He decided to change his lifestyle and do what he really loved, which meant getting back in touch with nature and taking up photography again. Soon afterwards he moved to Bishop, California to be near the Sierra Nevada in a small-town atmosphere and clean air. Greg Boyer described his experience of connecting with nature and the philosophy behind it:

Krishnamurti was an influence on the way I look at what I’m doing in landscape photography. I go out and get absorbed by my surroundings. When I’m out taking photographs it is a spiritual experience of that moment in time and space when it is all yours. You are it and it is you. Krishnamurti wrote about seeing and not categorizing. His philosophy was that by defining something you separate yourself from it. He gave me a new way of being out and connected to nature. Civilization’s mistake is in separating from the natural world.

In the Eastern Sierra Nevada Greg Boyer now goes backpacking at least twice a year. He still carries 50-60 pounds of gear on backpacks including cameras and lenses. Greg Boyer said he is ‘living the dream,’ but he is glad he doesn’t have to rely on photography for a living in today’s conditions. He has the freedom to pursue landscape photography as he likes:

I’m enjoying life and having a good time. This is the way life was meant to be. I’m blessed to be doing what I love in a beautiful place. At Campbell Soup some people had been working there for 35-40 years and hated every minute of it. I feel bad for people who are stuck doing something they have no idea they can get out of. Many people are not doing what they love to do. I like sharing what I’m doing in photography. I like the interaction with other photographers in the photo blogosphere. Besides, I live a few blocks from Galen Rowell’s Mountain Light Gallery.

Take a close look at Greg Boyer Photography and his blog, which offer an inspirational perspective on landscape photography. His blog posts about Photoshop and other post-processing tools and techniques provide an experienced presentation of simple and advanced methods.

11 comments »

Posted in Recommendations

Tags:

Earth Day Celebration Of Ardis And Philip Hyde And Canyonlands

April 29th, 2011

Happy Belated Earth Day 2011:

From The Archives…

Offering a Blessing for Future Generations and Tossing a Pinch Of Ardis and Philip Hyde’s Ashes in The Needles, Canyonlands National Park, Utah

Ardis, David and Philip Hyde In The Maze, Canyonlands National Park, Utah, 1968 by Parker "Ham" Hamilton. David Leland Hyde at age three was the youngest child to ride horseback into The Maze for many years, perhaps even to this day. The Hydes and Hamiltons were guided into The Maze, Canyonlands National Park, Utah by Art Ekker and his son A. C. Ekker, who later hosted and became friends with Robert Redford when he rode into their Robbers Roost Ranch in search of the real Outlaw Trail. Robert Redford wrote a book called, "The Outlaw Trail" and a National Geographic Article in 1976 that depicted A. C. Ekker on the cover.

(To see the photograph full screen Click Here.)

This was the 50th blog post of Landscape Photography Blogger. Originally published April 22, 2010.

(This year [2011] I was traveling on the days around Earth Day and in airports and airplanes most of Earth Day itself. Not so Earth-friendly, but it was for a good cause.)

Back to 2010…. To celebrate this milestone and Earth Day, I have posted a journal entry from July 30, 2008, that I wrote in Canyonlands National Park. I originally planned to start Landscape Photography Blogger with this post.

A Mission And Pilgrimage

A few months before my father, landscape photographer Philip Hyde passed on, he and I talked about taking a small amount of my mother Ardis Hyde’s ashes and his ashes, mixing them together and sprinkling just a pinch in some of their favorite places they helped preserve like Canyonlands National Park, Grand Canyon National Park and other monuments and wilderness areas of the Southwestern Desert Landscape, the California Mountains and elsewhere. This is of course not legal, but a small pinch would not hurt anything. It would merely nourish the sage and primrose.

Most of their ashes are sprinkled around in the woods and gardens of the home I grew up in that they built in the wilderness of the northern Sierra Nevada in Northeastern California. I would begin to distribute the rest from a small pouch on my way from Boulder, Colorado back to the family home in California. I planned to visit Canyonlands National Park, Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park, The North Rim of The Grand Canyon, Valley of Fire State Park and Death Valley National Park to throw a pinch of ashes and say a word of tribute in each.

The Needles, Canyonlands National Park, Utah

I arrived at the Needles, Canyonlands National Park, in Southeastern Utah, at 2:00 A.M. after driving 450 miles from Boulder, Colorado. I found the campground and backed into a site nestled between house-sized rock domes and the stars. A brief stop in Moab, Utah at the City Market for some area guides confirmed what I remembered from the National Park Service website. Canyonlands is Utah’s largest national park, 35 miles Southwest of Moab, downstream from where the mighty Colorado River meets the Green River. The Green River and the Colorado River divide Canyonlands National Park into three districts: Island in the Sky, The Maze and The Needles. The meanders of the two rivers come to confluence and form essentially the shape of a giant lower case “y.” Moab and Arches National Park are on the tip of the right branch of the “y” and the center of the “y” where the rivers meet is the heart of Canyonlands. Island in the Sky, to the North between the branches of the “y,” is the easiest part of the Canyonlands National Park to access by car, with plenty of paved roads, parking lots, turnouts and scenic overlooks.

The Maze, Canyonlands National Park, Utah

The Maze, to the West of the confluence of the two rivers, is the most wild and remote of the districts of Canyonlands National Park. Art and his son A. C. Ekker guided Dad, Mom, photographers Parker “Ham” Hamilton and Dilly Hamilton and myself at age 2 1/2 into The Maze in 1968. For many years, I was the youngest person to ever ride horseback into The Maze and may be still. I rode in front of my mother in the saddle. Art and A. C. Ekker also ran the nearby Robber’s Roost Ranch that had been a stronghold for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’s Wild Bunch in the late 1800’s.  Today there are even hiking trails into The Maze but it takes a full day in a 4X4 vehicle just to get into this remotest part of Canyonlands National Park, The Maze proper. The literature and websites all recommend allowing an average of five to seven days for a trip even by vehicle. They also caution to go in well provisioned.

The Needles district to the South and East of the confluence of the two mighty rivers is partially accessible by car, but it is farther from the main highway on a half pavement, half dirt road. Dad made photographs in all three districts, but the Needles looked the most promising for a compromise between accessibility and being, as my dad would play on words, “Picture Skew.”

I crawled into my sleeping bag in my pickup camper shell at the campground in The Needles, Canyonlands National Park at around 3 a. m. after gazing at the stars and brushing my teeth at the water spicket. There were no campsites across the road from me and those on either side were empty. I was alone in the smell of sagebrush and wrapped in the dark desert night.

Nature’s Morning Show At Canyonlands

The next morning, or rather, later that morning just barely at first light, I awoke at 6:15 a.m., ready to go, not even tired. I noted that this or earlier was the time Dad would have awakened to photograph if he was still with me in body. As I rolled out of the camper shell, a panorama of red, brown, tan, orange and all colors in between splashed in horizontal bands across a collection of mesas, spires, hoodoos, domes and rock columns, stretching out before me in every direction. The glow of pre-sunrise dawn made me wish I had a camera. I woke up inside a Needles postcard. As I drove to the end of the campground, the sun crested the horizon. Nature’s show was on. It also dawned on me that this was the time Dad passed away.

As I drove with eyes taking in the splendor, knowing Dad and Mom would love this moment, I thought back to the morning of Dad’s passing two years prior, at the end of March in 2006. He was in the desert then too, but in very different surroundings. He was in a room on the Neurosciences Wing of Washoe Medical Center, now Renown Medical Center, in Reno, Nevada. I remember the overnight nurse assured me that if Dad died on her shift, she would see him start to take agonal breaths and call me. I had already been by his side a week and had read to him late into the night, but decided to get some sleep. He had already lasted a week in his post-massive stroke state, and I didn’t know when he might go.

Philip Hyde Climbs The Mountains For Their Good Tidings One Last Time

The nurse did call me but she said he had already slipped away without so much as a single agonal breath. He went easy in the very end. Perhaps he wanted to get out of that hospital bed and that body that didn’t work like it had so well most of his life. I imagined at the time that perhaps he left his body behind early in the morning to take a few last mental exposures of the beautiful snow-covered Sierra Nevada Mountains visible in the distance outside the hospital window.

Until he died, Dad often recited by heart two appropriate quotes by John Muir, “Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.” Dad also had memorized this quote by John Muir, “I want immortality to read this terrestrial language. This good and tough mountain-climbing flesh is not my final home, and I’ll creep out of it, and fly free and grow.” I thought of those two favorites of Dad’s that he also published in his last book, The Range of Light, the name John Muir called the Sierra Nevada. Dad intended The Range of Light as a tribute to John Muir, Dad’s life-long inspiration, and to the Sierra Nevada, particularly Yosemite National Park, Dad’s spiritual home since age 16.

A quiet man slipped out of life softly. I was sad that I had missed the moment of death and that I had not been there for him. Though that was his way, he never called attention to himself or asked others to trouble about him. By the time I arrived at his bedside, about 15 minutes from getting the call in bed in my hotel room on the far end of the huge hospital campus, his face was already turning an off shade. As I sobbed, the nurses were reassuring that he went without any pain. Then I felt him. I felt something, maybe it was my imagination, but it felt like something more. I felt his joy at being free of that worn-out shell. I realized that he had left to “Climb the mountains and get their good tidings,” one last time. He flew free to see the sunrise and I found him gone just like I had 1,000 times before.

On dozens, perhaps hundreds of trips with him, throughout my life, I woke up and found him gone. He was typically gone out in the field taking photographs, starting much earlier than I usually awakened.  I woke up often to the smell of my mother’s breakfast cooking and her coffee brewing. That morning in Reno, I woke up and found Dad gone for the last time, probably carrying a 4X5 baby Deardorff camera as he soared over canyons and mountaintops, just like the famous Cartoon of Ansel Adams in heaven looking down on Half Dome and Yosemite Valley.

In The Needles, Canyonlands National Park, On The Slickrock Nature Trail

In Canyonlands National Park two years later, I woke up about the same time, at photography hour. How fitting, here I was in the heart of Canyonlands, at a short trailhead called Slickrock, no less. That was the name of Dad’s now collectible book with Edward Abbey in the renowned Sierra Club Exhibit Format Series that helped to expand Canyonlands National Park in 1971. For more on Edward Abbey, read the blog post, “Who Was Edward Abbey?”

“Slickrock, a general term for any bare rock surface,” the trail brochure said, “dominates much of the landscape in Canyonlands.” I remember Dad saying that there are dozens of places named Slickrock in Southern Utah and Northern Arizona. The slickrock my dad photographed Mom and me standing on for the title page of the book Slickrock, could be anywhere in this country but was near the entrance of Capitol Reef National Park, also in Utah. At the end of this Slickrock Trail in the Needles, I will be only a little over a mile from pavement, not much by Dad’s standards, but at least off the road.

Whew, it was already hot at 8 a. m. Fortunately, I found enough shade under an overhanging rock wall to stop and write more. I see the mesas of Island in the Sky to the North in the distance to the left of the La Sal Mountains on the horizon. The smell of Pinon pine, Juniper, sage and dust fill my nose, while the sandpaper of sandstone under foot catches the soles of my cross-trainers. The trail brochure map indicates that the trail ends out on a point where canyons on either side narrow the mesa. Once I made it out there, I ventured out on a side arm of the mesa. I scrambled out to the end where there is a stair-step down from the rim. I stood on the rim looking down probably 1,000 or more feet, though the next ledge of the stair-step jutted into space just three stories distance below.

Above Big Springs Canyon, In The Heart of Canyonlands

I sat near the edge to write more of this. This place was perfect for tossing my parent’s ashes—in the heart of Canyonlands—within sight of Grandview Point and Junction Butte to the North. Near the end of the sandstone mesa top, to my right, stood an ancient dead Juniper tree skeleton that looked like it belonged in a Philip Hyde photograph. I opened the ornate little pouch from India and the sealed plastic bag of ashes inside. It was quite still for the edge of a canyon, just a faint breeze. I reached into the bag, took a three-fingered pinch of ashes and flung them into the air over Big Springs Canyon.

“For all the generations to come,” I said, “a blessing and prayer for Ardis And Philip Hyde. Here’s to Canyonlands, birthplace of many beautiful photographs and memories.” As I sat down on the very edge with just my feet, not my legs dangling, part of my pinch of ashes must have caught an updraft and drifted high, far out over the canyon. Some of it may drift over the Southwest still; while a moment later I heard the heavier bone fragments hit the ledge below.

To read more about my personal experiences with my father see the blog post, “Memories Of Finally Working With Dad.”

27 comments »

Posted in Excerpts of New Book

Tags:

Glen Canyon Portfolio 3

April 14th, 2011

Glen Canyon Portfolio 3

Photographer’s Comment From The Original Vintage Black And White Glen Canyon Portfolio

Continued from the blog post, “Glen Canyon Portfolio 2.”

By Philip Hyde

Cathedral In The Desert (Horizontal), Glen Canyon, Utah, 1964 by Philip Hyde.

(See the photograph full screen Click Here.)

My involvement with the Colorado Plateau province and its centerpiece, the Colorado River, began in 1951 when I was commissioned by the Sierra Club to find out and to photographically document what was in Dinosaur National Monument, particularly along the Yampa River and Green River, that would be impacted by the dams proposed in the Upper Colorado River Storage Project.

It was a tough assignment for a fledgling photographer whose only other exposure to the landscape of the Colorado Plateau province had been as a boy on a visit to Grand Canyon. My work up to that time had been in the well-watered forests and mountains of the Pacific Coast, and I was at first a victim of the landscape shock Dutton speaks of in his Tertiary History of the Grand Canyon Region. I had to learn how to cope, both physically and photographically, with the heat, haze, and dryness that dulled the mind, fogged the shadow, and made the distances disappear.

I needed more time to digest what I saw in the arid lands, and besides I still had a love affair going with mountains. It wasn’t until 1955 that I went back to accompany a Sierra Club group that floated the length of Glen Canyon from Hite to Lees Ferry. One of the high points of this trip, oddly enough, was the prelude, a two-day school bus ride around the canyon overland from Lees Ferry to the start of the river trip at Hite. The frustration of being imprisoned on a bus going through such radically different and beautiful country was so great that it etched that country in my mind and programmed me to spend the next twenty-plus years trying to find some of those retinal images that had rushed past too fast, unfixed on film. Leaving Lees Ferry we scanned the Vermillion Cliffs while climbing up the edge of the Kaibab, then the White Cliffs while climbing the Southern Utah plateaus; we then made the long descent down the slopes of Thousand Lake Mountain through Capitol Reef, past the soft gray shales of Caineville, into the deepening, sinuous White Canyon to Hite and the Colorado River.

In my memory of the river trip, nights on rocks radiating too much heat for sleeping are mingled with days of growing awe of the strange forms of this stone country. My awareness of water as a miracle was born in the shining trickles in canyon bottoms and the sudden springs that gushed out of rock as though piped through the water bearing Navajo Sandstone. These imprints went deep. This landscape took hold of me, in spite of physical discomforts and the initial visual strangeness.

An opportunity for a closer look at a piece of Glen came in the spring of 1962, when I joined a backpack expedition into Rainbow Bridge whose purpose was to study the possibility of building a small dam to prevent the reservoir’s waters from undermining Rainbow Bridge’s sandstone base.

Later, in June, I joined another float trip, this time with fewer people and a slower pace that provided better opportunities for making photographs. The collection made on this trip provided a majority of the photographs in this portfolio. A high point was climbing to the top of Rainbow Bridge at David Brower’s urging, with his climbing expertise to assure success.

Glen Canyon Dam was nearly finished at this point; a short time after the trip, the gates of the diversion tunnels were closed to begin the filling of “Lake” Powell.

Two years later, in 1964, I participated in a wake for Glen Canyon. Starting near the dam on two hundred feet of water, we floated over Music Temple and passed over the Great Overhang in Moki Canyon well known to river travelers, but now barely traceable by the top of its great curve. We boated through the narrows of Aztec Creek, floating over what had been a most beautiful stream junction, with small, sculptured pools in lovely curves linked by a trickle of water. Landing a short distance below Rainbow Bridge, we walked past groups of people in yachting clothes to pay our respects to the now domesticated bridge. We then returned to our raft to push out of the narrows past some small boats in a cove cowering from the howling gale roaring across the reservoir’s open water; such gales were unknown on the river with its high, sheltering walls. Oh, there were some healthy winds on the river, but they gave you a choice: if blowing downstream, you could continue; if blowing upstream, you found the nearest sandbar, made camp, and hoped the wind would abate after sundown.

Continuing up the stormy “lake,” we entered the Escalante arm, crossed its flooded lower reaches to Clear Creek while marveling at the sheer height of the canyon walls, and walked the remaining mile of canyon above slack water into the Cathedral in the Desert. This place was not drowned yet, but later that summer we learned that the water had come in for the first time and flushed out the floor, destroying the lovely rich green moss carpet the ages had furnished.

Investigating half-drowned Davis Gulch and Soda Gulch, we floated past half-submerged entrances, straining to imagine their lost beauty, up to the point where the boat grated on sand at water’s edge; then we walked up canyon as far as we could. In Soda we found the water lapping at the base of Gregory Natural Bridge, a named glory among uncounted, unnamed glories flickering out.

In subsequent trips to the Colorado Plateau province, I have passed the remnants of Glen Canyon to go on to happier places to walk and photograph. Somehow, the passing of Glen Canyon gave me a better reason to see as much of the province as I could, before all of it changed. These trips took me to the Grand Canyon, Navajoland, slickrock country – Escalante, Waterpocket Fold, Canyonlands – from the edge of the Great Basin to the feet of the Rocky Mountains.  Subconsciously I always kept looking for something as fine as Glen Canyon, holding my memories of Glen Canyon up to new country as a standard for color, sculpture, and fineness of detail.

My search confirms an early belief that Glen Canyon was one of the two grand climaxes of the land of the sediments, both born of the river. The other, kindred though quite different, but not less glorious, is Grand Canyon. One is flooded. The other, owing its life to the sacrifice of the flooded one, still lives.

To read an impassioned essay by Philip Hyde on the failings of the Glen Canyon Dam project see the blog post, “Lament For Glen Canyon By Philip Hyde 1.” To read about Canyonlands National Park and other areas of the land of sediments see the blog post, “Earth Day Celebration Of Ardis And Philip Hyde And Canyonlands.”

13 comments »

Posted in Other P. H. Writings

Tags:

Monday Blog Blog: Lumiere Gallery Virtual Photography Fair

April 11th, 2011

Lumiere Gallery Of Atlanta, Georgia Features The Pioneer Western Photography Of Philip Hyde In A Virtual Photography Fair

Mt. McKinley/Mt. Denali, Reflection Pond, Denali National Park, Alaska, 1971 by Philip Hyde.

Lumiere Gallery began representing Philip Hyde just this year. Besides prominently displaying Philip Hyde’s images in online galleries and special shows, posting Philip Hyde’s biography online and showing original vintage black and white prints in the gallery, as well as offering color archival fine art digital prints, Lumiere Gallery also advocates for photography and helps to educate the photography collecting community through lecture sponsorship and other educational venues both online and off. To its further credit, Lumiere is already selling a significant number of Philip Hyde prints. Lumiere offers Philip Hyde’s original vintage black and white prints and color archival fine art digital prints as a special feature of the gallery’s Virtual Photography Fair.

See a selection of Philip Hyde photographs in Lumiere’s Virtual Photography Fair or visit Lumiere’s online lectures for collectors.

7 comments »

Posted in Events-Releases

Tags: