Thanks Oliver, and it sure is such a wonderful place with so many surprises hidden around each corner. I'm glad you were able to explore that wash!

That's awesome and so cool to hear! And perhaps kicking over a cairn or two while you're at it. Thanks for watching!

Yup, the golf umbrella does a fantastic job. I have two umbrellas I take with me, a compact one (as see in the avatar next to my name here), and also a much larger golf umbrella. I bring those on every trip, and frequently have to use them in Death Valley. Usually in Zion, my issue with wind isn't the camera itself getting jostled in the wind, but more so the leaves themselves dancing in the breeze when I need to use a long exposure. Their movement isn't significant enough to look intentionally and purposeful, only as a distraction. Thanks for watching and commenting!

Thanks Emanuel! It sure is fun to see how these places change so much as the light changes. Thanks for watching and commenting!

Thank you Pappu! I hope you have a fantastic New Year!

Thanks Mitch! It sure was a wonderful place to spend some time, and I'm glad the conditions were perfect that day!

Thanks so much, and I hope you have a fantastic New Year as well!!

Thanks as always Craig! It sure was a fun scene to compose, and it'll be interesting to see how it changes in the years to come. Thanks for watching and commenting!

Thanks Tremain! I hope you had a wonderful Christmas as well! Perhaps at some point we should meet up at some point for coffee and catch up. Time sure flies.

Thanks as always Christopher! When it comes to loading film in the field, I honestly haven't had an issue with dust. This isn't to say that my film is 100% dust free, but I don't notice a difference between the film I've loaded in the field and the stuff I've loaded at home. I bring along a rocket air blower and blow out my film changing tent from time to time, but that's about it. Most of the time when reversing my dark slides before loading new film, I just blow on the empty film holders with my breath to get any big flecks of dust out of there. I load film using a Harrison Film Changing tent that has very good elastic on it's double sealed sleeves, and twice this year I've loaded film during a legitimate dust storms (you'll see one of those incidents later in this trip). And even in those conditions, none of that dust makes it to the film. Thanks as always for watching and commenting Christopher!

Thanks for coming along for the ride Paul!

Thanks Mark! I hope you had a wonderful Christmas as well!

Thanks Larry! It sure would be interesting to go back and time and to view that scene before the tree died and fell down. I've fascinated with how these locations change with time, and seeing those changes really gives a better understanding of the location itself. Thanks as always for watching and commenting!

Thanks Frank! I hope you and your wife and a wonderful Christmas, and a fantastic New Year!

Thanks Prashant, and I hope you had a wonderful Christmas as well! That scene with the ponderosa is one I've hiked past countless times through the years, but it sure was nice to find a composition for it on this visit.

Thank you Alan! I'm glad to hear you've enjoyed the videos, and I hope you have a fantastic New Year!

Merry Christmas to you as well Carl! Hope you had a great one!

Merry Christmas to you as well Xi!

Thanks James! I hope you have a fantastic New Year!

Merry Christmas to you as well Robert, and I hope you have a fantastic New Year!

Thanks Daniel! When it comes to youtube, those that are dramatic and loud will always get more views, but often at the expense of long term growth. I relate more to the tortoise from the tortoise and the hare, and I've found that those who do watch, including yourself, are a higher quality audience. Thanks for watching Daniel!

I couldn't have planned it better. :-) Thanks as always for watching and commenting, and I hope you had a wonderful Christmas with a fantastic New Year ahead!

Thanks Vishwas! Quite ironic isn't it? :-) Thanks as always for watching and commenting!

@@BenHorne Very true!

Thanks Sander! I'm sure I'll stare at that subject again next year and see if I can find a different solution. I'm convinced there's a photo there, but it sure is tough to find. Thanks as always for watching and commenting, and I hope you have a fantastic new year!

Thanks Larry! The gray card is my definite go-to method for most shots. After reading off the gray card and evaluating the meter reading against various tones throughout the subject, I'd say I use that initial meter reading perhaps 60% of the time. For the remaining 40% of the time when it doesn't quite seem right, I'll average the brightest and darkest subjects and see how that works. Thanks as always for watching and commenting Larry, and I hope you have a wonderful New Year!

Thanks Brian, and that's a great idea about a pano crop of the lower portion. It would conveniently avoid the problematic shadow areas toward the top of the composition. Thanks as always for watching and commenting!

The colors and shapes of that bush are wonderful, but it sure is a challenge to compose since there are some dominant branches that break up the calmness of the subject. We'll have to see what I can come up with on future visits. Thanks as always for watching and commenting!

Thanks David! When it comes down to it, it's all about subject, light, and composition, and in that sense it's all the same regardless of the camera used. Thanks for watching and commenting, and I hope you have a wonderful new year!

Thanks Chad! Merry Christmas to you as well, and I hope you have a wonderful near year ahead! I only saw a handful of mountain lion tracks on this visit-much less than usual. I suspect this was because the past several years were quite dry, and with limited access to fresh water both for the lions and for their prey, the limited areas with fresh water served as bottlenecks for both predators and prey. This year, there were pockets of water all over, perhaps allowing the animals to spread out a bit more. This is just my best guess based on what I've witnessed. Thanks as always for watching and commenting Chad!

Thanks Danny! The scan of that photo is pretty decent overall, but just can't get over how the middle shadow tones just fall into a black hole in an awkward way. The low contrast of the video camera helps disguise this a bit, but it looks stranger in reality. Oh well at least I learned the limits of expired film on this trip.

@@BenHorne Learning is always a good thing. It's definitely harder to properly judge resolution on KZfaq or Facebook. Both squish everything so tightly, it rarely comes close to the original look posted.

Thanks Trevor! Your idea of backing up a bit and gaining some more distance and thus DOF would indeed work, and I suspect this is a trick some photographers have up their sleeve. I know would struggle with that technique though. I love being able to see my composition all at once with a defined rectangle around it so I can see how well balanced it is. When taking a step back, even with knowledge I could crop in to exactly what I need, I would have difficulty knowing what the end result would be and if it would match the feeling of what I felt when standing there. In some ways, having a bit of a shallower DOF than required isn't such a bad thing. Just so long as the most important things are in focus, the out of focus areas give that bit of imperfection that makes the resulting photo seem more real. Thanks for watching and commenting Trevor!

Hi Tarun! I can't say I'm much of an expert when it comes to movies. I admire good cinematography when I see it, and I can appreciate unique camera shots and viewpoints, but I 'm honestly not very knowledgable on the topic. Are there any movies in particular that you admire the cinematography of? Thanks for watching, and I hope you have a wonderful new year!

@@BenHorne by cinematography , i mean more about lighting and coloring then shot angels . And there are some movies with great lighting. Like blade runner, the batman , blade runner 2049 , taxi driver. But since you are landscape photographer , you should check some movies which make use of natural light like Lawrence of arabia Days of heaven Dances with the wolves Lord of the rings trilogy The revenant These are the must watch for a landscape photographer.....

Thanks Daniel! We'll see about the snow. :-)

That's a tough one since there are so many wonderful areas throughout the park. In general, I prefer the areas away from people where I can wander where I wish and experience the park in peace and solitude. Thankfully the crowds don't often venture far from the road, which means there are countless areas to explore and experience, resulting in far too many favorite locations to choose from.

Hi Dave! That's a good question about the expired film. It's important to take into consideration how the film is stored, and how long past the expiration date the film is. All of my film is stored in a chest freezer, which preserves it beyond the expiration date. Think of it like a food item that can be thrown in the freezer and then thawed for later use. In most cases, the film I used is expired, though often by 1 or 2 years. There are people who shoot film that's 10 years old and find it to be just fine if stored properly, though it often requires some additional exposure time. The film I used on this trip expired 4.5 years ago, but was stored frozen. For most people, it probably would have looked just fine, but for the type of photography I do and how critical I am of my own work, I began to notice the impact of the expired film. Of the 4 portfolio photos I've showed from this trip thus far, 3 are affected by the expired film, but only minimally so and it's something people won't notice. That being said, I now know my threshold for how far the film can be expired before I start to notice it. In a perfect world, I would purchase fresh film before heading out on my trips, but it isn't always that simple. There are times when the film is available, and other times that it isn't. As an example, for most of 2022, my favorite film Provia 100F was completely unavailable. When it is available, I stock up on it and put it in my freezer. As a result, I have large batches of film with a certain expiration date, and I don't often use it all by that date, resulting in the use of film that's expired by a year or two. It's a balancing act of ensuring I have enough in my freezer while also making sure it doesn't get too old by the time I need it. Hopefully this all makes sense. Thanks for watching and commenting Dave!

It affects the dark parts of the transparency film. Those dark areas which are usually very rich with micro-contrast and detail end up looking muddy and strange. Before I figured out what was going on, I noticed that the black border around the edge of the film was less black on the expired film than it was with the fresh film. When you try and work with the film scan, those dark areas fall apart quickly and when you adjust the curves/levels to produce a naturally dark shadow, a bunch of other detail gets lost in those shadows. It's difficult to describe, but essentially any dark areas become problematic and unnatural.