After careful deliberation, I’m proud to announce Hillary Younger’s image Kharnak Light is the Grand Prize Photo Contest winner! Hillary is a landscape photographer based in Tasmania whose early years exploring that island’s scenic beauty on horseback and foot sparked a burning desire to portray her connection with the natural world through photography.

As our grand prize winner, Hillary will receive a copy of Perfect Photo Suite 7 Premium Edition, graciously provided by the team at onOne Software, and a mounted print of Kharnak Light, handmade with care in my studio.

The contest’s gallery of over 200 submissions was amazing! How wonderful it has been to see all the entrants’ photographs and watch the conversation and widespread interest of friends and fans as they voted and commented on their favorite images!

The community chose five fantastic finalists, with photos from Seattle, San Diego, Hawaii, Norway, and Kashmir.  Each of the images were wonderful, but as the final judge, my eye kept coming back to Hillary Younger’s image Kharnak Light. The quality of the high-altitude light, the masterful use of slow shutter and narrow aperture kept the landscape crisp and the water velvety. The perspective from dead center of the stream leads us right into the distance.  And what a distance! Leading away to distant peaks and gorgeous, perfectly-toned clouds.  Not surprisingly the entire Facebook community seems to agree, as Hillary’s Kharnak Light received the most votes overall.

In Hillary’s words:

“Landscape photography is an expression of the unique relationship of the photographer with the land. My photography is an attempt to communicate the intimacy of that relationship, its moods and deep connections. The images are reminders not only of the solace of open spaces so essential to the soul  ~ especially when these days we live more and more in virtual worlds where no sun ever shines or birds sing ~ but also that even a silent photograph brings forth landscapes rich with the sounds and subtleties of the mystery unfolding.

The natural world’s wild identity, deep and subtle, speaks to those who venture into its embrace. To know it in all its seasons, its moods and its animals; to communicate a sense of its wild spirit and mystery ~ this motivates my photography.”

My workshop mantra is that a photographer’s ability to connect with their passion is what causes an image to stand out and capture the viewer’s imagination.  A viewer looking into the depths of Kharnak Light can feel Hillary’s passion, and I’m proud to award her our Grand Prize.

-Hudson

Congratulations to the five finalists in our photo contest! We’ve seen so many amazing entries. Many thanks to each and every one of you for participating.

Our finalists, as voted on by the community, will receive their choice of Perfect Effects 4 Premium Edition or Perfect B&W Premium Edition, graciously provided by the awesome team at onOne Software.

Stay tuned to the Facebook page on Tuesday, April 9th at 10 AM Pacific, when I’ll announce one of these 5 finalists as the grand prize winner of onOne Software’s Perfect Photo Suite 7 Premium Edition, a mounted print of their photo, AND a feature here on HudsonHenry.com.

Check out the details on how our finalists got their awesome shots:

Hillary Younger: Kharnak Light
Blend. Sky: 6.0 sec @ f/16, ISO 200, Land & Water: 25.0 sec @ f/16, ISO 200
Nikkon D700, Nikkor 17-35mm @ 17mm, Gitzo mountaineer tripod, Acratech ball head, and Singh Ray Warming Circular Polariser

“The image was taken in the Kharnak region of Ladakh (province of Jammu and Kashmir, India), just over the Yar La pass (4,950 meters) in the Zangskar mountains. I spent 6 weeks with two Ladakhi men (my guide/cook and my ponyman), six ponies (carrying our food, tents, gear – not my camera gear!), trekking in the Indian himalaya. My home was my tent, in a different place each night, each day walking for 8 hours or so over this mountainous, high altitude desert. There was very little photography from the area I planned to traverse, so each night and morning involved heading off in search of images, and chasing light. Kharnak Light was taken about an hour’s walk up from my tent, after a day spent crossing a high pass. I found myself next to this stream of glacial meltwater racing down from the mountains, just as the warm colors of sunset were bathing the sky and land.”

Ken Vensel: Foggy Night at the Seattle Center
8 sec @ f/20, ISO 100
Pentax K-7 @ 10mm

“During our foggy week in mid January I decided to head over to Seattle Center to try and get some photos of the heavy fog we were having and found this tree with spotlights illumnating it so I used my wide angle lens to get a comp of both the tree and Space Needle together.”

Scott Burge: Sunset
1/60 sec @ f/7.1, ISO 100
Lumix GF2, 45-200mm @ 200mm

“It was my last evening in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii sitting on my lanai and eating dinner as the sun set and I was planning on an evening of Salsa and Bachata dancing at the Kona Elks Club.  I had my camera on my tripod as a perfect sunset was occurring.  I snapped many photos and moving the sun around in the frame.  This one just came up awesome.  Helped me relax and enjoy an evening of dancing after the beautiful sunset.”

Bruce Couch: Infrared shot at the San Diego Convention Center
1/400 sec @ f/2.8
Canon G12, modified with  a KolariVision 720nm infrared

“I work on corporate events and am a graphic designer. This work takes me all over the world; on this job I was in San Diego. The shot was made on the top patio deck of the San Diego Convention Center in the smoking section… fortunately there weren’t any smokers. The color was changed in Photoshop CS6 and tweaked in Lightroom 4 and Nik Color EFX 4.”

Rajnish Gupta: Seven Sisters Waterfall
@ f/8.0, ISO 200
Nikon D300, Nikkor 18-200m @ 18mm

“We were taking a ferry boat through the fjord to the town of Geiranger in Norway. I noticed the Seven Sisters Waterfall was being lit up by the sun light causing it to almost glow. I had to run to the back of the ferry boat to get the shot. I shot the series of bracketed exposures quickly as the ferry boat was still moving along. I didn’t have the luxury of a tripod.”

Thanks again to all who submitted!

-Hudson

Buy a Print: 15″ x 10″22″ x 14.7″30″ x 20″
Technical Details: Nikon D200, Nikkor 12-24, ISO 100 at F20 for 2 seconds, 5-stops of Stacked Graduated Neutral Density Filters

Don’t you love when you go out looking for something specific and wind up finding something totally unexpected along the way? That is exactly how I felt after capturing the photograph above one evening on Kauai. I had spent three evenings at Ke’e beach waiting for the right sunset light to strike the island’s Na Pali coast. Na Pali is Hawaiian for “the cliffs,” and this coast is well named.  It’s rugged mountain cliffs, swift rivers, waterfalls, and hanging valleys have kept this spectacular northwestern part of the Island wild and undeveloped.

Print: 15″ x 10″22″ x 14.7″30″ x 20″
Technical Details: Nikon D200, Nikkor 12-24, ISO 100 at F22 for .6 seconds, 2-stops of Graduated Neutral Density

One afternoon while exploring Ke’e beach, I encountered a series of rocky pools stretching far out into the tidal zone. I thought to myself that these pools would make a great reflecting foreground at sunset with the westward facing cliffs of Na Pali stretching into the distance.

Now after spending three nights wading around with my tripod waiting, I finally had that fleeting golden sunset light that I’d been waiting for. I found a pool that was just out of the tide’s reach and framed up the image you see to the right. I used a wide angle lens with a slow shutter speed and narrow aperture to keep the landscape sharp while blurring the moving waves to illustrate the pounding surf. I knew I had the image that I wanted.

That’s when the unexpected happened. As the sun rimmed down on the watery horizon, I looked behind me and saw the rain clouds out to sea starting to turn red. I quickly turned my attention directly into the backlit sunset. The exposure was really complicated and the light was changing fast. First I stacked two graduated neutral density filters to even out the foreground exposure with the brightness of the sky. Then I stopped down to drag the shutter and blur the surf beyond the pool my tripod and I were wading in.

I love the way this resultant image dramatizes blurred edges of the earth, sea and sky. It is one of my most popular prints and has run in national publications including Islands Magazine. The lesson? Never get so focused on a subject that you forget to look behind you.

-Hudson

Post Script: One of my favorite adventures on earth is to backpack the ancient Kalalau Trail down the Na Pali coast from Ke’e beach into the Kalalau Valley and back. This is not a trip to be taken lightly, but if you are are physically and mentally up to the challenge, the rewards are incredible.

Buy a Print: 15″ x 10″22″x14.8″30″ x 20.1″
Technical Details: Nikon D700, Nikkor 17-35mm, ISO 200 at F8 for 1/500th sec.

The shark’s fin crossing. It haunted me despite the beauty of the red clouds above and the warm sunrise light creeping across the endless ridges and peaks beneath me. My friends and I were high on Mount Rainier, inching our way steadily toward the summit crater. The scene was a dreamscape for photographers like me, but that shark’s fin of snow waiting below occupied a large corner of my mind.

Since Hazard Stevens and P.B. Van Trump first climbed Mount Rainier in 1870, the mountain has been popular with climbers — almost as popular as Mount Hood. But Rainier, the fourth highest peak in the Lower 48, is higher by 3,000 feet and is more demanding and more dangerous than Hood. Rangers recorded 58 climbing deaths on Rainier between 1981 and 2010, including 11 who died in a single tragic ice fall in 1981.

Last year, 5,441 people summited the mountain out of the 10,828 who attempted the climb. A success rate of roughly 50 percent is pretty typical for Rainier’s southeast routes above Paradise Ranger Station by far the most popular routes.

Buy a Print: 15″ x 10″22″ x 14.6″30″ x 20″
Technical Details:Nikon D700, Nikkor 17-35, ISO 640 at F5.6 for 1/400th sec.

It was our path, too.

Even late in the season that year, we encountered hundreds of climbers on the route up to Camp Muir, a climbers’ refuge named for the naturalist John Muir who climbed Rainier in 1888. I recalled climbing the Kautz Glacier Route from Camp Hazard some years before and seeing fewer than a dozen other people.

Experts climb Mount Rainier year-round, but the safest time is from late spring through midsummer. Now in early August, small, but dangerous crevasses below Camp Muir were my first indication that we were in for a technically challenging climb — the cumulative snowmelt was opening the crevasses wider than I had anticipated this low on the mountain.

Two days previously we had begun hiking through the wildflower carpeted meadows above the Paradise Ranger Station. Experienced climbers typically ascend the standard 6.5-mile Disappointment Cleaver route with only one night on the mountain to cover the 9,000 feet of elevation gain. But given that neither of my friends had experienced a mountain as big and unforgiving as Rainier, we chose to spend three days on the route to better acclimatize and rest along the way.

My headlamp revealed a sickening gap between my feet and the far side of the crevasse. I was standing at the tip of a shark’s fin shaped remnant of collapsed snow bridge suspended over an enormous crevasse.

Temperatures above Camp Muir rarely reach above freezing and can dip into single digits even on summer nights, and climbers must be prepared for winter conditions on the summit year-round. Warm sleeping bags, a four-season tent for camping on snow, extra fuel to melt snow for water, rope and crevasse rescue equipment swelled our packs to nearly 50 pounds. In addition, my large DSLR camera, three lenses, batteries, a tripod, and panoramic adaptor added at least another 15 pounds to my pack.

The first day we would climb from 5,500 feet to Camp Muir at 10,080 feet. While arduous, the climb up from Paradise was filled with spectacular scenery. Reaching timberline, we rose above the valley cloud cover, exposing the full magnitude of the mountain above us. Soon marmots appeared on rocks around us, sunbathing and blasting their shrill, whistling calls to one another. Mount Adams, Mount Saint Helens, and the peaks of Goat Rocks stood like islands across the sea of clouds beneath us. Above us huge glaciers blanketed the upper slopes.

Buy a Print: 20″ x 6.75″32″ x 10.8″50″ x 17.9″65″ x 22″
 Technical Details: 28 image panoramic merger, Nikon D700, Nikkor 17-35, each image ISO 200 at F8 for 1/40th sec.

Day 2 would be spent practicing safety skills while leisurely moving to our 11,100-foot high camp at Ingraham Flats.

On Day 3, roped together with our crevasse rescue systems deployed on our harnesses, we had been slogging along through the dark on the Ingraham glacier since midnight. Our vision of the world around us was limited to the narrow reach of our L.E.D. headlamps. I led our group along the well-marked route, skirting some crevasses and carefully crossing snow bridges over others.

Around 3 a.m., the shark’s fin caught me by surprise. Suddenly I could sense more than see a cavernous blackness on both sides of the path ahead. Another snow bridge, it seemed. Ice axe in hand, I stepped onto it with darkness falling away to either side. With each step forward the bridge curved to the left and became narrower until my headlamp revealed a sickening gap between my feet and the far side of the crevasse. I was standing at the tip of a shark’s fin shaped remnant of collapsed snow bridge suspended over an enormous crevasse.

Print: 15″ x 10″22″ x 14.6″30″ x 20″
 Technical Details: Nikon D700, Nikkor 17-35, ISO 800 at F3.5 for 13 sec.

The three of us had trained together for a crevasse rescue and I felt confident in my partners’ abilities. I called for slack in the rope, jumped across and set up a boot-axe belay to bring my friends across behind me. Safely on the other side, the three of us wondered what more surprises lay ahead.

Hours later the three of us celebrated at 14,411 feet on the sunny windswept summit.

Along the way we had witnessed a magnificent sunrise, crossed dozens of big crevasses, and linked endless, mind-numbing boot-steps together over rock and ice. Life becomes more elemental in the high mountains. Standing on that summit with my friends, all concerns over work, money, politics, or relationships seemed insignificant. Still, I could not shake ominous thoughts of our upcoming descent over that shark’s fin melting below in the late-summer sun.

Descending as quickly as we safely could, we found the shark’s fin still intact although no less intimidating in daylight. One by one we belayed each other across the gap and took a well-deserved rest before breaking camp for the long descent to the car.

Mt. Rainier Climbing Information

Height: 14,411 feet

Elevation gain: 9,011 feet from Paradise Jackson Visitor Center to summit; eight miles distance

Best time: May to August; two or even three days of good weather are optimal, so summer is preferred; crevasses open and rockfall occurs; by September, glacial ice becomes rock hard, a dangerous condition

Skills: Technical climbing, plus equipment to spend one or more nights, superior fitness due to altitude

-Hudson

Climbers Approach Mt. Rainier

Marmot on Mt. Rainier

Mt. Rainier Crevasse Crossing

Camp Muir

Climbers on Rocky Terrain

Little Tahoma Peak Reflected on Glasses

Climbing at Dawn

Steep climb to Mt. Rainier's Summit

Cascade Sunrise High on Mt. Rainier

Climbers on the Summit of Mt. Rainier

Heading home on Mt. Rainier

Buy a Print: 30″ x 20″22″ x 14.6″15″ x 10″ Technical Details: Nikon D70, Nikkor 12-24, ISO 200 at F9 for 1/20th sec

Death Valley. What a name for a national park. As a child I always imagined a wasteland of sand and bones bleaching in searing sun.  On my first visit I had no idea what to expect.  Having just finished a spring backcountry ski decent of nearby Mount Whitney, I decided to soak up some warm desert air before heading home.  One night I camped in snow at 13,000 feet and the next I cooked dinner in shorts while enjoying a gentle, eighty-degree breeze at the lowest point in the western hemisphere.

Buy a Print: 30″ x 20″22″ x 14.5″15″ x 10″ Technical Details: Nikon D700, Nikkor 14-24, ISO 200 at F16 for 1/40th sec.

Entering the park intending to stay only a couple of nights, I left a week later with a long list of places to explore on my next visit. Amazingly, Death Valley is so big that it contains four distinct mountain ranges each filled with colorful canyons and jaw-dropping vistas.   In spring, desert wildflowers add saturated colors to the marbled earth tones of this wide-open national park.  For photographers Death Valley provides a never-ending playground of dramatic light and landscape.

In the years since that first visit, I have returned to Death Valley many times and always found something new and different to explore.  Even favorite landscapes that draw me back time and again seem reformed by their bare exposure to the ever-changing heat, wind and rain.

Among my favorite landscape subjects in the park are the dunes just outside Stovepipe Wells.  If you hike out into the heart of these dunes and climb to one of their higher ridges, you will see that they stretch far towards the horizon like a sea of sand waves driven by the wind.  Sand dunes’ strong lines and changing patterns always inspire me.  Each windstorm changes them, erasing footprints, creating new patterns and shapes.   What is special about this dune sea is not just its size, but the dizzying array of dramatic skies and landscape backdrops Death Valley provides in every direction.

I created the two images selected to accompany this story nearly a decade apart.  The first image was taken when I was just transitioning to digital from medium format film.  I entered the dunes at dawn after a strong windstorm had just reformed them the night before.  The surreal clouds on the southern horizon  and strong shadows on the dunes were just what I wished for as I tossed and turned in my noisy, flapping tent the night before.  For the second image I found the dunes covered in hikers footprints and no wind in the forecast.  The solution?  Pack a headlamp and extra water and hike farther than the others; pass their footprints.  I left late in the day, found a south-facing composition to catch sidelight from the west and waited for the light and clouds to cooperate just long enough to create this image of the dune sea..

-Hudson

Buy a Print: 37″ x 22″28″ x 16.4″18″ x 10.5″
Technical Details: 20 image panoramic merger, Nikon D800, Nikkor 50mm, each image ISO 100 at F6.3 for 4 sec. (300 megapixels)

The Golden Gate Bridge with San Francisco sparkling behind is one of America’s most iconic cityscapes.  Having spent some years across the Bay  studying at Berkeley, I have photographed this bridge quite a bit. On a recent visit to the city, I asked myself ‘how do I photograph this scene in a different way?’

Crop of above at 1/3 resolution

Staring out from the bluffs northwest of the bridge, I recognized that this view speaks to me of a graceful connection between the West’s wide-open spaces and this city.   Everything in the scene is big: the city, the surrounding hills, the bay, the ocean, the sky and the bridge that connects them all together. To capture this feeling, I decided to create some really huge images. Multiple frame panoramic pictures are my preferred way of going really big. Merging a series of images not only lets me fit more of the scene into a photograph; it also allows me to do it with less distortion and far more resolution. In other words, it gives me really big, beautiful prints. Utilizing a sturdy tripod and panoramic adaptor, I set up my 36.3 megapixel D800 and waited for some color in the evening sky. As if on queue, nature provided a stunning sunset just as a large ship sailed under the bridge. Using careful manual exposure metering to take advantage of my Nikon’s extremely wide dynamic range (or ability to capture bright highlights and dark shadows simultaneously), I triggered a series of eight wide-angle images from the bright western sky, over the headlands all the way past 180 degrees, to the dark eastern sky over the distant Bay Bridge. The resultant image, displayed below, captures that artistic connection between the natural and the urban that this bridge provides.

Buy a Print: 65″ x 20.1″50″ x 15.4″32″ x 10″ 20″ x 6.2″
Technical Details: 8 image panoramic merger, Nikon D800, Nikkor 28mm, each image ISO 100 at F2.8 for 1/40 sec. (160 megapixels)

After the sunset, while the sky was still a lovely shade of blue, the Golden Gate and San Francisco erupted in light. Swapping my wide-angle lens for a normal focal length, I pivoted my camera through two rows of 10 images, to create the 300-megapixel image headlining this story. The ability to enlarge this image is difficult to illustrate on a computer screen. Suffice it say that the smaller square crop from the image, as shown in the close-up above, is still scaled down to one-third of it’s original size!

I can’t wait to print these images BIG!

-Hudson

Buy a Print: 30″x20″22″x14.6″15″x10″
Nikon D700, Nikkor 17-35, ISO 400 at F16 for 1/60th sec.

Perched high above a small, Bavarian-looking village and surrounded by jagged peaks lies an adventuresome backpacker’s dream: a glacier-carved granite valley filled with pristine blue lakes, sparse colorful trees, and abundant wildlife. The Enchantments.

Like all great things, this scenic splendor does not come without sacrifice. There is no easy way into or out of the Enchantments. Each of the two main routes to reach the basin presents challenges. The more commonly recommended Snow Lake trail enters the Enchantments’ lower basin from the east and climbs 6,000 feet over a very long ten miles to get there. The shorter but more grueling route climbs Aasgard Pass above Colchuck Lake to reach the Enchantments’ upper basin from the west.  While the Colchuck route is just under 6 miles long and gains less than 4,500 feet, more than half of that elevation is gained in the final mile ascending Aasgard Pass. Ice, snow and potential sudden storms make the steeps of Aasgard Pass highly treacherous, and of course irresistible to some of us.

Print: 30″x20″22″x14.6″15″x10″
Nikon D700, Nikkor 70-300, ISO 1000 at F5.3 for 1/400th sec.

Today a part of the Alpine Lakes Wilderness area, the Enchantments lie about 15 miles southwest of Leavenworth, Washington, a wonderful town where it always feels a bit like Oktoberfest. Rare among Cascade basins, the lakes of the Enchantments rest above 7,000 feet in glacially carved granite. This makes the basin strikingly different. Here a hiker will not tread muddy forest trails to reach brushy lakeshores.  Instead granite trails connect jewel-like lakes set against the rugged, panoramic backdrop of the Stuart Range. Scattered throughout the valley are mountain goats, waterfalls, and stands of Tamarack trees waiting to turn golden in the fall.

Once inside the basin one quickly forgets the grueling ascent. Find a campsite by one of the many pristine lakes and explore to your heart’s content.  Fish, swim, hike, scramble up one of the surrounding peaks like Little Annapurna, or rope up and follow Fred Beckey’s route to the top of Prusik Peak. Commune with the mountain goats, but be careful to keep a safe distance. Photographers like myself will be overwhelmed by the endless scenic possibilities.

-Hudson

DETAILS:

Access Permit Lottery Information:

The Wenatchee River Ranger District office in Leavenworth strictly controls access to the Enchantments.  Backpackers must obtain permits to camp from mid-June to mid-October. Because demand is so high, the rangers have instituted an online lottery for permit applicants. Approximately fifty percent of lottery applicants receive permits. To apply: search for “Enchantment Permit Area” at www.recreation.gov.

Additionally 25 percent of the permits are given out at the rangers’ Leavenworth office Monday through Saturday at 7:45am. A daily drawing typically determines the recipients of ‘walk-in’ permits.

Time to Go:

Fall brings lovely color to the Enchantments as the larch turn color, but it also brings colder nights, worse weather and more demand for permits. To fully enjoy swimming in the cold lakes and to escape the heat of the lower elevations, consider applying for permits to visit in late July or August.

Buy a Print: 30″ x 20.1″22″ x 14.7″14.9″x10″
Technical Details: Nikon D700, Nikkor 14-24, ISO 200 at F18 for 1/200th sec.

Originally published in The Oregonian, December 17, 2010

Baboo, a tall Zanzibari man in a white linen robe and sandals, found me sitting atop my luggage in an alley examining my guidebook. A reservation error had left me without a place to stay in Zanzibar City.

“Jambo, friend. Do you need help, a ride perhaps?” Baboo asked in perfect English. Within moments, Baboo and I were zooming through Stone Town, the city’s historical center on Unguja, Zanzibar’s largest island.

Stone Town’s rusty-roofed old palaces, narrow shaded streets, churches, mosques and a Hindu temple stretch out to where Unguja’s white sand beaches meet the turquoise of the Indian Ocean. Each doorway in the pitted, coral stone walls seems more intricately carved and mysterious than the last. Handcrafted dhows sail from the harbor, and the sound of children playing blends with the noise of construction work.

But the modern tranquillity of this island paradise belies its long and turbulent history of commerce, conquest and slavery.

Because of their position with relation to the trade winds and the resource-rich coast of East Africa, the islands, once known as the Spice Islands, have been a center of trading since the dawn of civilization. The first non-African visitors to Zanzibar were Sumerians between 2000 and 3000 B.C. Ample evidence shows subsequent trading connections with Phoenicia, Assyria, Parthia, China, Greece, Rome, Egypt, Malaysia, Indonesia and Persia. After ransacking Unguja in 1503, the Portuguese built a garrison at the present-day location of Stone Town. By 1701, soldiers from Oman had burned the garrison at Unguja and erected a high-walled stone fort in its place. The Omanis then established Zanzibar as the epicenter of both the rapidly expanding market for slaves and the lucrative spice trade. Between 1811 and 1871, more than 1 million people were sold in Stone Town’s slave market alone, and Zanzibar’s plantations supplied four-fifths of the world’s cloves.

Ornate palaces and multistory coral stone structures rose to replace the traditional mud buildings around the fort. In 1841, as Zanzibar reached its height of wealth and power, the Sultan of Oman moved his capital to Stone Town. The Omanis lost control of Zanzibar to the British as economic decline followed the abolition of the slave trade. In 1964, after a period of ethnic strife, Zanzibar united with Tanganyika to form the current nation of Tanzania. Today much of Stone Town’s former opulence is tarnished by years of impoverishment and lack of maintenance.

Print: 30″ x 23.4″22″ x 17″15″ x 11.7″Technical Details: Nikon D700, Nikkor 14-24, ISO 400 at F5.6 for 1/100th sec.

From the vantage of my hotel’s rooftop, I could see much of that former glory now in the process of restoration. Increasing tourism and Stone Town’s recent designation as a UNESCO world heritage site have workers on the move hand-restoring this historic city.

That night, I met my new friend Baboo to sample Stone Town’s renowned street food market in the oceanside Forodhani Gardens. Along the way we strolled past the old Omani fort. Even riddled with the scars of antiquity, its massive stone walls, slit windows and turrets seemed impregnable.

The mesmerizing smell of spices, grilled seafood and baked bread lured us around the corner of the fort and into Forodhani Gardens. Barefoot men in pristine white chef’s hats were grilling the day’s catch of kingfish, lobster, tuna, prawns, octopus and scallops.

Other stalls sold bowls of pilau rice, Zanzibar pizza, fresh juice, fruits and vegetables. Local boys entertained the crowd by performing flips and spins while diving into the ocean 20 feet below.

The next morning, we set off to explore Stone Town properly. Two things stood out immediately: the friendly nature of the locals and the splendid hand-carved doors that grace so many of the buildings. A few of these doors appear lovingly restored, but the more interesting ones bear deep scars from generations of use. Some have Indian patterns, others African, still more look distinctly Middle Eastern.This is how the buildings’ original owners announced their origins.

We began the day with tangawizi chai (strong ginger tea) at Jaws Corner. Next came old shops filled with locally made garments, jewelry, art and antique nautical equipment. At the huge indoor market, mangos, passion fruit and blood oranges are on display, and fishermen ferry in the day’s catch. Down one narrow street, I saw a man delivering milk from a tank lashed to the back of his bicycle into a young girl’s container.

After a lunch, Baboo took me to the slave market memorial. Following slavery’s abolition, Anglicans built a church over the old slave market. It felt strange and unsettling to pass from the beauty and warmth of the church’s nave down the cold stone stairs into the tiny, windowless, underground holding cells where so many awaited a fate beyond their control or imagination.

Morning found us bouncing down the road once again listening to Afropop and reggae as we passed bicycles, buses, scooters and cow carts. We were traveling to Kizimkazi on the southern tip of Unguja to snorkel and, we hoped, swim with dolphins.

Print: 30″ x 18.3″22″ x 13.4″15″ x 9″Technical Details: Nikon D700, Nikkor 14-24, ISO 200 at F18 for 1/125th sec.

Aside from the white sand beaches and popular dolphin cruises, Kizimkazi is home to East Africa’s oldest standing mosque, built by Persian settlers in A.D. 1107. Looking completely unremarkable from the outside, this historic structure’s intriguing feature is an interior wall scored by antiquity.

The tide was low at Kizimkazi, its beach littered with listing boats stranded by the sea, their dry anchors resting at the ends of chains. Baboo and I hiked past them across fine white sand to the water’s edge, where two young men helped us board a long, narrow wooden motorboat. Unfortunately we chose a day when the dolphins were elsewhere. I made the best of it by snorkeling in live coral.

Afternoon found us in the shade of massive old-growth hardwoods within Jozani Forest, part of Jozani-Chwaka Bay National Park. At the center of Unguja, the park is a habitat refuge for many native birds and animals, including the highly endangered red colobus monkey.

Our guide, Joseph, led us along a trail pointing out weaverbirds building nests, a tiny forest frog and rare native plants. As we left the cool air of the deep forest and entered a more open grassland savanna, Joseph stopped and put a finger to his lips. From the rustling tree to our right, the most amazing face appeared.

The piercing brown eyes belonged to a red colobus monkey. Soon an entire troupe was happily eating leaves all around us, unperturbed by our presence.

I spent my final day in Zanzibar sailing with Baboo on his family’s dhow. We hoisted the mainsail and leaned into the wind, flying across the turquoise water toward a group of smaller islands.

Anchoring the dhow off Bawe Island, we spent hours snorkeling through its rich, colorful coral reefs, populated by countless curious fish, squid, octopuses, turtles and moray eels.

Looking back, the vivid underwater colors, the pungent spices of street food, the wise-looking monkeys and the friendly people of Zanzibar are engraved in my memory as surely as the carved doorways that make this place unique.

– Hudson

Buy a Print: 30″ x 20.1″22″ x 14.75″14.9″ x 10″
Technical Details: Nikon D200, Nikkor 17-35mm F:2.8, Singh-Ray 3-stop hard graduated neutral density filter, at F11 for 1.3 seconds.

Oneonta Falls is one of my favorite places. To reach them, one has to traverse a massive tumbled logjam and wade through cold, sometimes chest-deep pools in a slot canyon so narrow that it could give a coal miner claustrophobia.

My good friend Baraka was visiting me from Tanzania. He had shown me the best of his country the year before and climbed to the summit of Kilimanjaro at my side. Despite it being a cool fall day, I thought a trip into Oneonta Falls might be the adventure for us.

Before creating this image, I had been to Oneonta falls many times, but never found good quality light to capture its rugged beauty. The canyon is oriented to the north so the sun only reaches inside for a few hours at high noon. Light and shadow at noon are a photographic nightmare of blinding highlights and evil dark shadows. I had used the falls as a backdrop for strobe-lit environmental portraiture, but never found the right light for a pure landscape photograph.

After crossing the log jam and wading the stream, Baraka and I rounded the canyon’s last bend to find an amazing sight. The late fall sun was far enough to the southwest that it was blasting a perfect shaft of light through the waterfall’s spray like a giant stage-light from above. “Hold on Baraka,” I shouted. “I’ve got work to do.”

I quickly set my tripod up low and slotted a graduated neutral density filter diagonally over the lens to reduce the contrast of the blazing sunlight in the upper left portion of my composition. Once I was finished, Baraka and I stood quietly and watched the light play through the mists over the canyon walls.

– Hudson

Buy a Print: 40″ x 20″30″ x 15″20″ x 10″
Technical Details: 5 image panoramic merger, Nikon D200, Nikkor 17-35, each image ISO 100 at F16 for 1 sec.

The Portland Japanese Garden is a source of inspiration for me personally and photographically. Explosions of fall color, falling leaves, reflections in water, and thousands of tiny details reveal themselves to the open observer. Of all the garden’s marvels however, this one maple tree stands out. Every fall I find myself moved at the sight of this tree. Despite being one of the most photographed life forms on the planet, I set out to create a new and iconic image of it. It is always a challenge to photograph the familiar in a new way.

Print: 30″x20″22″ x 14.75″15″ x 10″
Technical Details: Nikon D200, Nikkor 55mm Micro, ISO 320 at F8 for 1/40th sec.

The first step was to examine what it is about this tree that is so moving. Of course the color is dazzling, but the underlying structure is what really captures my imagination. There is something about the way that the strong base supports all those medium branches that lead to the smaller finger-like branches. It reminds me of the nature of life itself on both the macro and micro scales. I see new young productive life supported and nurtured by the older and wiser that came before. I also see nature’s cyclical pattern of life, death, and renewal: the fallen leaves and the strength of that structure to withstand winter and start again in the spring. On the micro level I see all sorts of vascular and neural systems alive within myself reflected in this tree.

I really believe that my ultimate goal as a photographer is to feel something about my subject and find a way to use the tools that I have to capture that feeling. In this case, I was patient for just the right light to silhouette that structure against the color of the leaves with perfect contrast for a digital sensor. Other great photographers have photographed this tree, but my innovation was to use a wide-angle-panoramic technique to show a 180 degree view of its structure using soft overcast light in a crop that is reminiscent of the human field of vision. It just looks natural and captures how this beautiful tree emotionally impacts me.

You may feel something completely different about the image based on your own experience and perception, but viewers universally seem to feel something. A photo is successful when it makes you stop and take notice. A photo fails when it fails to convey a feeling or a story.

– Hudson