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Dune Layers by Wiggum03

Dune Layers

Another shot of the Mesquite Sand Dunes at Death Valley National Park.

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Uploaded on Dec 10, 2009

56 comments

Singing Dunes by Wiggum03

Singing Dunes

I’ve always been fascinated by sand dunes, even before I heard them sing.

It had been too long since I’d made a Death Valley trip, so I got in the car early Saturday morning and arrived at Stovepipe Wells at about 2pm. That gave me a few hours of daylight to photograph the Mesquite Flat Dunes. I camped at Furnace Creek that night and headed back to the dunes before dawn on Sunday. A few other photographers were wandering around at sunrise, but just afterwards they left and I had the entire dune field to myself.

Usually nature makes a lot of noise, but when the wind died down that morning it was totally, completely silent. I could literally hear my own heart beating. And something else, too – barely audible, faint enough that I wondered if I was imagining it, a low hum. What was that? A long time ago I read the book The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho and I vaguely remembered it saying something about sand dunes making noise, but maybe that was just part of the story. And yet if I concentrated I could really hear, and almost feel, a buzz in the air – similar to the sound you hear near a power station.

Back home, thinking maybe I’d just imagined it, I typed “sand dunes buzzing sound” into Google and the first result was a great National Geographic article, Why Sand Dunes Go Boom. If you ever have a field of sand dunes all to yourself, stop for a minute and listen closely...

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Uploaded on Dec 8, 2009

1 note / 65 comments

Bay Bridge and SF from YB by Wiggum03

Bay Bridge and SF from YB

Now that the Embarcadero Center holiday lights are on I couldn't resist making another trip to this spot on Yerba Buena Island.

This is the Bay Bridge, with downtown San Francisco in the background, taken at sunset.

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Uploaded on Dec 4, 2009

55 comments

Last Light at Natural Bridges State Beach by Wiggum03

Last Light at Natural Bridges State Beach

Stephen Oachs' quest to get a great shot of this rock formation at Natural Bridges State Beach in Santa Cruz inspired me to drive down there one afternoon and try my hand at it too. No luck with clouds or much color in the sky, so this was the best I could do.

I should also point out that as I wandered around the nearby tide pools waiting for the sun to drop I wiped out in a way that was both stupid (because I stepped right on a slippery green patch despite thinking to myself just before I stepped on it, "That green patch looks really slippery...") and clumsy (because if I had better balance I wouldn't have wobbled awkwardly and might even have caught myself before falling backwards in front of several amused witnesses). All in all, I've managed to take impressive spills at some pretty nice places this year - Yosemite, Indonesia, the Inca Trail in Peru, and now Natural Bridges State Beach, just to name a few.

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Uploaded on Dec 2, 2009

45 comments

SF November Sunset from Treasure Island by Wiggum03

SF November Sunset from Treasure Island

A couple days ago MattGranz posted this really cool photo of the clouds we had here in the Bay Area when the sun set on Friday. I happened to be on Treasure Island that night trying to capture the same clouds over the San Francisco skyline. It’s kind of interesting to compare my photo here with Matt’s much more original composition, taken about a half hour before this one. The colors are completely different.

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Uploaded on Nov 30, 2009

18 comments


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