I’ve looked at clouds

On the flight from Coron back to Cebu City on December 14th
I sat next to a window and took pictures of clouds that interested me.

At one point I saw a rainbow by looking down, as I had on land earlier in the year.

© 2020 Steven Schwartzman

Still more from Coron’s island-hopping tour on December 13

© 2020 Steven Schwartzman

 

More from our Coron island-hopping tour

As you’ve heard, on December 13 we went on what’s known as a Coron island-hopping tour.

It showed off the area’s rock formations, cliffs, trees, and colorful tropical water.

© 2020 Steven Schwartzman

The Philippines

On December 7th Eve and I flew from Austin to Seattle, then changed planes for Taipei, and finally changed once more to get to Cebu City, whose metropolitan area has the second largest population in the Philippines. While much of our 19-day trip went for family matters on the island of Cebu, including a wedding, I’d brought along a reduced version of my usual photo kit and hoped to get in some nature photography.

One Philippine province Eve (and therefore I) had never visited was Palawan, and so on the morning of December 12th we flew to the island of Busuanga in the very northern part of Palawan. That afternoon we joined a tour of the main town, Coron. The last place the tour took us was the base of Mount Tapyas, whose heights we reached by climbing 724* steps (and by enduring sore leg muscles when we had to climb more steps the next day). I see on the internet that Mount Tapyas is known for its sunsets, and it didn’t let us down.

In the first photograph the sun was still so bright that I underexposed by 3, 4, and even 5 f/stops to keep from blowing out the highlights in the solar disk. By the time of the second picture, which came 13 minutes later, I got away with an underexposure of only 1.33 f/stops, though you’ll notice some flaring on the hills beneath the sun. Just chalk it up to my usual flair as a photographer.

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* When our tour guide told us that there are 724 steps my immediate reaction was to think that 7 and 24 happen to be the lengths of the legs of a right triangle with a hypotenuse of 25 (you can do the arithmetic to verify that 7 squared plus 24 squared equals 25 squared).

© 2020 Steven Schwartzman

Enchanted Rock, part 4

Artists in general and photographers in particular sometimes like to depict the same person or thing in various ways. The Cubists got excited about showing multiple views of a subject simultaneously, as in Marcel Duchamp’s famous “Nude Descending a Staircase.” At Enchanted Rock on November 1st I took a more-conventional approach, making separate photographs showing different aspects of an intriguing boulder formation that looked like huge jugs or flasks with short hoodoos in lieu of stoppers. The first photograph gives you an overview of the formation.

The second view isolates part of the formation that was central in the first image.

I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t include some closer and more-abstract takes on these formations,
the first of which gives you a better look at the orange and yellow lichens on the boulder above.

The two abstractions below continue playing up the rough texture of the weather-sculpted rocks.

You might think you’re looking at the ruins of some ancient civilization in a desert.

The wispy clouds that stayed with us the whole time made for excellent backdrops.

© 2019 Steven Schwartzman

Enchanted Rock, part 2

We hadn’t been to Enchanted Rock in years, and on our previous visits we always worked our way to the top of the main dome. That wasn’t the case this time: instead we headed out clockwise along the Loop Trail, which rises and falls modestly as it circles the park’s higher and more prominent geological features.

Boulders of various sizes abound at Enchanted Rock.

In the previous picture and the next one, notice the markings on the rocks.

I played some of the boulders off against the day’s fleecy clouds, as you see below.

The bottom of the picture above hints that you can see interesting things
by looking down. For example, take the textures and white vein in the rock below.

© 2019 Steven Schwartzman

Enchanted Rock, part 1

Our goal on November 1st was Enchanted Rock, the largest pink granite monadnock in the United States.
Look at the size of the trees in the first picture to get a sense of how large the dome is.

Enchanted Rock is also home to rougher and more-irregular mounds of rock:

© 2019 Steven Schwartzman