So I’m sitting here writing the entries and processing photos for the next few blog posts for my recent series “3 National Parks, 3 States, 2 Weeks, 1 Crap Bag,” and ran across a few images that I couldn’t help but think to myself, these would be pretty sweet iPhone backgrounds. So to break up that series of posts, I figured I’d throw these out to everyone if you want ’em both as teasers for the blog posts and just because I’ve had a glass of scotch, the new iPhones just got announced, and I’m in a sharing mood.
I’ll try to post one every other week (if I remember). These are sized for iPhone 5 and iPhone 4, and if I get enough interest and comments, I’ll resize for other mobile devices as well. If you wanna, just simply drag n’ drop or right click and ‘Download Image as…’ or ‘Save As…’ Click the “Read More” button below the image for all the download options… (more…)
Category: Adventures
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Happy iPhone Day! Here’s Some Teasers & iPhone Stuffs
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3 National Parks, 3 States, 2 Weeks, 1 Crap Bag – Part 1- Curing An Extreme Case of Wanderlust
Zion National Park, Utah. Road Trip. Wasim Muklashy Photography So we got the call…our friends were getting married…and they were doing it where? In Colorado?
ROAD (read: PHOTO!) TRIPPP!
It had been quite some time since I’ve taken a trip really worth calling a ‘trip,’ so needless to say, I was hyped! Not only do we get to knock a few things off the proverbial ‘bucket list,’ but it would all culminate in a super celebration with all of our friends in one place…away from everything they knew. It was hard enough to get them together in the same town, but a different state?! I didn’t know what would happen, but what I did know that this was gonna be good.
So a couple of buddies that were able to take the time off before the wedding got together three weeks before and over a 12-pack, decided we’d drive in through Utah where we’d hit up Zion National Park, Bryce Canyon National Park, and then head into Colorado where we’d hit Rocky Mountain National Park before heading into the Loveland / Fort Collins area to visit a friend, then down to Denver to visit another friend, and finally back over the Rockies into Durango, Colorado for the wedding.
And that was the only time we met.
And that was the only plan we had.
And there were no beers left at the end of that meeting.
Next thing you know, it’s 3 days before the trip, one of the trio had to unexpectedly drop out due to pressing family matters, and we’re suddenly scrambling around to put together any logistics, but, if there’s one thing I can count on with my friends, logistics just don’t matter. We knew where we wanted to go, we’ve all done enough camping and backpacking to have an idea of what we’d generally need, so bought a bunch of non-perishables, threw our GSI Dualists and MSR Pocket Rocket into our Osprey packs, chucked it all into the back of the Explorer, and off we went. The 101 to the 134 to the 210 to the 15 through Vegas (can’t tell you how good it felt to go right through Vegas and not stop…) where there’s a whole lotta nada before finally getting into Utah with just enough time and light to secure one of the last 4 campsites, set up, cook up, and rest up just a 1/4 mile from the entrance to Zion National Park.
The next morning, we got up early to hit the Visitor Center to get backcountry permits to hike the Narrows (where a park ranger treated me to my inaugural introduction to my first back country crap bag – yes…a bag for your crap for the overnight trip through the Narrows) and to find a campsite within the park right along the Virgin River, which we’d become MUCH more acquainted with over the next several days. That’s when I got my first daylight peek of what we were in for…insanely ridiculously grand orange and red sandstone peaks and valleys as far as the eye can see in either direction.
Zion National Park, Utah. Wasim Muklashy Photography There’s a moment when you’re traveling when everything you’re so used to thinking about day in and day out, your monotonous and cyclical comfort zone, just washes away within milliseconds, and you realize that, whether you like it or not, you just have to let go…
This was that moment – the ‘ohhhh damn…here we go…’ moment.
Finally!
For Part 2 of this adventure, CLICK HERE.
Zion National Park, Utah Entrance. Wasim Muklashy Photography. -
Rediscovering The Joy Of Photography Prints
I hit a new milestone with my photography last week…I know this might not sound a like a big deal to most, but to me, it was huge:I made my first proper art print from one of my digital images.
When I attended Scott Kelby’s “Shoot Like A Pro” seminar here in Los Angeles a few months back, one of the perks was that we got a coupon code for a free 16×20 print from one of the sponsors, Mpix, on some madness they call Fuji Pearl photo paper. Regardless, I couldn’t bring myself to do it.
Despite the fact that I took photography in high school, my father taught it, we had a darkroom at the school that we’d use on the weekends, he had a darkroom at home that I wasn’t allowed to touch, and hell, my first science fair entry was a shoebox pinhole camera, and from all of this, I spent a good chunk of time developing film and photos, all in black in white, none of which I still have before taking off to college where my time got eaten up by…ahem…studying, I held off for a while because I was nervous about how it would come out – perhaps dealing me a blow if it came back and thought to myself ‘this is shite!’ I had made 8x10s at Costco and they actually turned out fairly well (especially considering the price at $2 per), but twice the size? Never. Will the pixels and my processing hold up?
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My Best Photograph Was A Mistake!
So last week I was hired to photograph a Scion FRS that was completely and insanely modified by Megan Racing’s Race Division. The day started with some closeup detail images from underneath the car of the various modifications they performed for a presentation that the company would be doing to show off what they did with this thing. In effect, they turned an already sweet looking ride into a growling piece of art that I’d be afraid to let out of it’s cage.
But once we finished the close-ups, it was time to get the entire sucker, so they brought it down off the lift and unleashed it into the parking lot. It was like letting a lion out of it’s cage. While they wouldn’t let me take the POV shots I jokingly (not really) suggested, they did let me position it around the buildings and lot adjacent to the shop, so I got to work. The time of day was still about an hour away from optimal, but I had to work with what we had, so just went for it, gambling on the game of numbers, if I shot enough, I was bound to come away with a few keepers. This was another instance in which my Eye-Fi card came in handy…that sucker has yet to leave slot two!
Anyhow, I definitely came away with what I thought were some solid keepers, but what I didn’t expect was that the shot I ended up liking the best was one that, at the time, was a mistake – a painfully obviously underexposed image as I was trying to compensate for a very bright sky, but I went too far on the right side of the dial.
Yet, for some reason, I didn’t delete it.
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The Red A-Frame Cabin at Far Meadow – The Pictures
I’ll keep this one short and sweet…so all that madness I’ve been blabbering on about the past few posts about this Far Meadow business? Well, the whole purpose of that trip was to photograph a new A-Frame cabin as well as their ‘Glamping’ facilities. Well, those pics have finally been published! Below is a gallery of those images.
Enjoy. Book. Go. Trust me.
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Far Meadow – The Photo Trip Comes To A Close (Part 3)
“Our backyard is the National Forest,” she says. Their back-yard…IS THE NATIONAL FOREST!
That part of this whole thing didn’t really hit me until I walked across the gate into the meadow and saw the sign that said, “Property Line – Entering National Forest.”
Literally…I grabbed an iced tea, walked across a mini field of wildflowers that took all of 16 seconds, and there it is – the property border, and the beginning of…the National Forest.
Anyone that knows me has heard me say more than once that if and when I finally do own a home, it needs to be small, low maintenance, and quaint, but I do have a requirement – a lot of natural land around me…and if someone asked to pick two places in California to do that in, they’d be Big Sur and Yosemite. Well, this couple have worked tirelessly to make that happen. That is literally their life. In the time I’ve been here, they haven’t stopped working on this three-year work in progress, the third cabin, and I mean real physical labor – building, carpentry, plumbing, cooking, painting, staining, you name it – all in an effort to have it ready for the tenants, and never once complaining about it, I would imagine because they realize that this life is beautiful. In most cases, a hint of envy might take me over, but for some reason, in this case, it didn’t. Instead, I foudn it encouraging as all hell to know that this is not just a thing of fantasy, this is a very real possibility as a result of work and do. They just do. They don’t complain about it. They just do it – and for the most part, with smiles on their faces.
In any case, here I am, entering my final night of this little pseudo-adventure, and I sit, by candlelight, yet again, writing this communique (sorry, had to do it…), reflecting a bit on the last few days. It takes getting away from everything you’re used to, your monotonous, almost formulaic robotic way of life, to understand and put everything into perspective…life truly is good. Experiences are what remind you of that. Yes, bad shit has happened, and bad shit will happen, that’s just a part of it, but so does good shit. Overall, when you take the initiative to try to pay attention to the life that is around you and the life you’re living, rather than just numbly let it guide you and pass right by you, every single one of those moments that you live in, those moments you truly live in, you realize are good moments. This moment, right here, right now, is beautiful. And the more of those beautiful ones that you pay attention to and accumulate, you can store in your memory for those times when you need them…you can draw on them and remember that there are many incredible moments, come and gone, and, most important (and hardest) to remember, will come again.
So some of the moments that I will continue to draw on for days, weeks, months to come come from these final days here at Far Meadow. Today, while the light was directly above and not quite optimal shooting conditions for property photography, let alone any photography, the owner decided to take me to some ‘amazing pools and waterfalls’ close to the property, so we hopped in the truck and headed on down a grizzly sierra road. We twisted and turned through pine trees and dirt roads and came upon a trailhead that led us through manzanitas and beautiful moss-covered pine groves that soon opened up into a creek, that led into a pool, that led into a wider creek, that led into a bigger pool, that led into…well, you get the picture…
The combination of fresh-flowing alpine water cascading across the warm sun-beaten rocks, snaking it’s way from one natural pool to another, provided for some of the most perfect swimming hole conditions I perhaps have ever encountered (it’s still tough to completely beat Havasu Falls…). The color of the water danced from forest green to platinum to gold, depending on which angle you looked at it, and whatever surroundings that the light was bouncing upon it from. This is where the Eye-Fi came in super handy, for every direction you turned your head provided another frame. Here’s a few of them.
I was so inspired that on the drive back, I instinctively tapped into my inner Van Gogh with this shot (in actuality, it was all an accident stemming from having the camera unintentionally in shutter priority mode rather than the intended aperture priority…but hey, turned out to be one of my favorite images, so, well, yup!):
Silliness aside, we got back in time to snap the final round of shots needed for the rental, and proceeded to make and devour our final meal together in Far Meadow…sausages, artichokes, and soup, all cooked upon that same open fire pit flame. We laughed about the look on the store clerk’s face when they went to buy a wood burning stove on a 109 degree day (for clarification, it was a cabin installation for the winter months…), we conversed on everything from the difference between photography and art to the major differences in compost toilets (don’t ask…), then grabbed a nightcap glass of white wine, walked out into the meadow, and turned our heads upwards for a final time, soaking in the milky way, a couple of shooting stars, and a few more laughs…
…just more of those ‘moments’ to bank away…
— For Part 1 of this Far Meadow Photo Adventure, click here! and for Part 2 of this Far Meadow photo adventure, click here! and find me on Google Plus, where I’m most active on a daily basis or on Twitter @wasimofnazareth for my mobile mayhem (aka: pretty pictures taken by iPhone).
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I Spy With Eye-Fi Lots Of Things That Are NOW IN FOCUS!
Spoiler Alert: Super fan boy mode is about to be engaged. Reader discretion is advised.In a word: frickin’ brilliant!
Ok, that was two words. Well, one real word and one, eh…you get the point.
It was a common frustration for DSLR shooters such as myself that the only means of checking for focus and composition is on the LCD screen on the back of the camera, at least until you get home and look at them on your computer and then want to shoot your computer in the face because that critical point was actually in soft focus! (more…)
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The Giving Lens Gets Focused – Philanthropy and Photography Do Mix!
So I haven’t written a proper article in quite some time, but The Giving Lens, an organization started by serial altruist photographer Colby Brown that mixes philanthropic pursuits with photography, inspired me intensely. For those of you who have known me for a long time, through starting Kotori Magazine back when print magazine were still a ‘thing,’ and whatever other crazy pursuits I’ve delved into over the years, this sort of work is the kind of thing that I hold dear to me and the very reason I wake up every day with a semblance of hope in me, so it was quite a treat to be introduced to The Giving Lens, Colby Brown, Kate Havercroft, and everything that they are doing. Truly inspirational.Anyhow, thanks to Kotori for running the piece, click here to read it. Trust me, this is worth knowing about:
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Far Meadow – Yup. A Photo Trip. (Part 2)
And tonight…I write by candlelight…
So yeah, the power on the trailer went out so I’m left with a few candles and just enough charge to offload today’s photos and jot down today’s haps, so, again, I’ll try to keep it as short and sweet as I can and hopefully let some of the images do the talking…
I must say, waking up to a symphony of birds singing, mist evaporating, and the soft golden sunlight beaming through decades old redwoods, bouncing poetically across wildflowers outside your window…does. not. suck.
I’m not an early riser…at ALL, but when I peeked out the trailer window at first light, I fought the urge to stay in bed and jumped outside to spend a few minutes snapping a bit of the magic. Yeah, I hadn’t had my coffee just yet, so they eyes pressed up against that viewfinder were still a bit foggy…but, hey, what better way to capture the essence of first light than through the eyes of a coffee addicted someone that…well…rolled out of bed directly into first light, walking across the meadows as the grasshoppers scattered and the bumblebees paid no mind, too busy feasting on the flora.
Anyhow, so it was time to walk over to the A-frame and see if I might snap a few shots. After all, that’s what I was here for right? The light was almost directly overhead, but the clouds more than made up for it. Crazy puffy spotted clouds on a perfect blue sky just above the cabin, so we moved all the tools out of the way and I kinda went trigger happy.
When I looked out in the meadow and saw something I had to run out for…I won’t even say anything, but nature has a funny way of displaying an eerie synchronicity in ways you could never imagine. I mean…those rocks…that cloud…really!!??
Yosemite National Forest, California. Wasim Muklashy Photography Towards the end of the day, as last light began to fall, we had all just decided to head down to Jones’ Store for hamburgers to ring in Independence Day, so after sweating our way through several hours of shooting the home, we jumped in our respective showers to wash down and head down. My particular shower just happened to be an outdoor solar shower that, well, wasn’t connected to the solar panels yet, so…well…cold…but hot damn, just went with it…all part of the experience and all parts I’ll remember. It’s been a while since having a chance to let go like this, so figured I had to savor it. As I was pulling up my jeans, the horn honked outside, so I ran to the truck with belt and shoes in hand, jumped in, and not until about 90 seconds later did I realize that I forgot the camera…at last golden hour…in the Sierras. I forgot the camera. Golden hour. Sierras.
Forgot.
Camera.
Sierras.
Less than 4 seconds passed before I accepted it, embraced it, and said, oh well (after a few ‘I’m an idiot I’m an idiot’s escaped while the crew laughed at me)…
Anyhow, that was one thing that seemed to be indicative of something I couldn’t help but notice as the day progressed, the pressures and worries and thoughts and stresses of everyday life just kind of drifted away, and for the first time perhaps ever, I really haven’t fought it. I just kinda accepted it, embraced it, and let it go. Normally it would eat away at me for hours, perhaps days. The creature comforts that we’re so used to that can just be suddenly taken away from you…it can often feel like intense withdrawal from addiction, but perhaps that really is only attitude. Oh, powers out? That’s ok. I have candles. Oh, forgot my camera? Oh, ok, screw it, enjoy the moment, not everything has to be captured. After all, the fact remains, you’re eating a burger – on the 4th of July – as the sun sets – in the high Sierras. I mean…c’mon!
So yeah, those creature comforts really seem to be nothing but luxuries and addictions. Perhaps even vices. And it’s quite remarkable how easy it is to truly let go of something that just days before you figured you’d die if were taken away.
Anyhow, I’ll leave you with a few photos from interestingly charming Jones Store compound by iPhone…
And then a gallery of some of that first set of images.
For Part 3, the final installment of the Far Meadow series, click here.
And in case you missed Part 1 of this Far Meadow Photo Adventure, click here!
Jones Store. Yosemite National Forest, California. Wasim Muklashy Photography 
Jones Store. Beasore Meadows. Yosemite National Forest, California. Wasim Muklashy Photography 
Jones Store. Yosemite National Forest. Wasim Muklashy Photography 
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Far Meadow Yosemite – A photo trip? (Part 1)
The stillness is a tad unnerving at first…but then the fact that there is absolutely no noise coming from anything other than the keyboard and an occasional distant howl, the source of which I’ve yet to determine, begins to quickly become soothing. Once your brain gets past the fact that you’ve decided, on your own will, to drive through the central valley during one of the most scorching heat waves we’ve seen in these parts (I watched my car thermometer climb from 103 and end up at 109 before finally beginning to gain elevation after passing through Oakhurst and winding my way up to the Far Meadow on tires that should have been changed 5000 miles ago), and you catch sight of the foothills of the High Sierras, and you start heading in their direction…everything begins to fall into place.
Sort of…
The truth is, I had no idea what to expect. All I was told was my bosses had built a new rental cabin on their property just outside Yosemite, and they needed photos taken of it for the site, marketing materials, whatever. They’d have it ready by Thursday, and I can stay in it if I snapped some images they can use. How the hell can I say no? How the hell can anyone say no? So I grabbed my camera, packed the car, picked up an Eye-Fi Mobi (that I’m ridiculously excited to play with), and, well, let’s do this thing!
After finagling with trying to find the directions (long story…basically, bad reception, spotty internet, had to track down a pdf from Mexico…the sort that tells you to turn at the stake at about 1.5 miles, watch for the store, turn at the wooden sign on the dirt road…etc etc etc…), I pulled into a grocery store in Oakhurst to grab some supplies/foods/stuffs just in case, and the store was busier than anything I’d ever seen. If you were in the middle of an aisle grabbing a bag of pretzels, forget about it…you’re trapped by at least 5 or 6 other carts until they’ve finished their business. It was beyond ‘excuse me’ at that point. Ohhh…riiighhht…4th of July is tomorrow…thank GOD I wasn’t heading into Yosemite Valley on this trip…
Instead…pass through pure unadulterated Americana as you meander along the 41 to the 222 to the 274 to the Country Store to the sign at the dirt road…and…wow. I mean…wow. Tall pine trees and redwoods surrounded my every move, and once I got off the main road, I had 14 miles of the most spectacularly gorgeous winding Yosemite mountain roads all to myself. Literally, there was one other car I saw the entire way. Saw plenty of meadows, cows, meadows, trees, more cows, more meadows…it’s incredible. Car commercial incredible! Yeah, I said it.
I pull onto the property and track down the bosses/owners of this madness. After being carted into an insanely charming solar powered vintage Silver Stream trailer that I get to call home for the night, they walk me to the newest addition to their property, an A-frame cabin that they’re currently putting the final touches on. I fell in love with it immediately. Nothing spectacular, nothing fancy, nothing gaudy at all. It’s simplicity at its absolute finest. And just off to the right of it, a gorgeous unspoiled open meadow caught my eye…I happened upon it just as the sun was beginning to set behind the hills there for the night. I ran out there, the dog followed. Below is a gallery of those first few glorious hours.
Yup, this oughtta be a pretty neato few days.
I made my way back to the cabin where the boss couple were cooking up T-bones and potatoes over an open fire, we sat down and feasted, had a few glasses of wine, rubbed olive oil all over the table (don’t ask…but believe you me, I will steal that trick one day…), and now here I sit. Retired to my trailer for the evening. Trying not to get too caught up and just be with it as it happens. Anywho…can’t wait to see what the days ahead bring…
For Part 2 of this Far Meadow photo adventure, click here! And for Part 3, the final installment of the Far Meadow series, click here.
