Showing posts with label guidebook. Show all posts
Showing posts with label guidebook. Show all posts

Monday, July 27, 2015

New California Landscape Photography Guidebook Coming Soon

Photographing California - South, landscape photography travel guidebook
Photographing California - South, my new landscape photography guidebook
I'm one step closer to being able to ship you a copy of my new guidebook to the best landscape photography locations in California, from Yosemite National Park south.  I received the first sample copy, express-shipped ahead of the boxes and boxes of copies which will ship to retailers.

In the next few days I'll set up a purchasing link for pre-orders and author-signed copies, so I've set up a mailing list with a sign-up form below, where you can opt in to hear about its availability:

Notify me when the book is available

* indicates required


California landscape photography guidebook by Jeff Sullivan

The book covers a lot of what you'd expect, including Yosemite National Park, Death Valley National Park, Joshua Tree National Park, Kings Canyon/Sequoia National Park, Channel Island National Park, Pinnacles National Park, Mojave National Preserve, Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, Devil's Postpile National Monument, and the California Coast from Santa Cruz to San Diego.  It includes many state parks and beaches, sites on land managed by the U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, and National Natural Landmarks.  I weighted coverage by scenic and photographic value, so the Eastern Sierra gets separate chapters for the Mono Basin, Mammoth Lakes area, Bishop Area, and Lone Pine to Mojave.

Most of the locations covered can be reached easily by car or via a short walk, but also included are a few stunning destinations best reached using high clearance or 4WD vehicles, overnight backpacking, or horses.  In all, over 350 photos are provided to illustrate over 300 locations, and many site entries reference additional nearby areas worthy of additional exploration.

Mammoth Lakes chapter
The photographic potential of a site can vary by season and by time of day, so I advise readers on both seasonal timing and when the light is best.  Where there are special technical photographic considerations such as optimal focal lengths or filters to use, I describe those as well.  Seasonal considerations can include the angle of the sun, wildflowers, fall colors, peak waterfall flows and special events such as lunar rainbows. Somehow I packed this all into 320 pages!

The book is the latest volume in the publisher's series covering many Western states, and an ebook version will be available as well.  This project was a massive undertaking, taking twice as much time as I expected, about 5 years.  To complete the book I drove a distance roughly equivalent to halfway to the moon.  Death Valley alone warranted approximately 20 visits to explore new locations, even after having already visited the park that many times already over the prior 5 years as well.  I'm crazy about nature, landscapes and photography, so I'd do it over again in a heartbeat.  Completing this book was the experience of a lifetime!

California landscape photography guidebook by Jeff Sullivan
I'll recoup my travel expenses slowly and it may be years before I get anything extra to cover my time, but I keep the retail markup on the author-signed copies, so your direct purchases through me provide maximum support for this project.

If you prefer free shipping copies from an online book retailer, no problem, I'll have a link for ordering it through my "astore" there, and even the few dimes more in commission I'll receive from using that link will help greatly towards making this project viable (compared to ordering it directly there without my affiliate link).  You can also order it alongside other books in the series, once the listing for my book goes live.

I'm generally fairly shy and not really comfortable asking for things, but if you tell your photographer friends about this book, it you buy copies for birthday or Christmas gifts, or even just "Like", comment on, or share my social media posts to help spread the word on it, you'll be doing me a huge favor.  Thanks in advance for your support, in any form it might take!

California landscape photography guidebook by Jeff Sullivan
Based on the success of this book release, I'll decide whether to move right into another travel guide.  If I do, what would you like me to cover next, Nevada, the High Sierra, Wyoming or Montana?  Drill down in more detailed regional guides (Yosemite, Death Valley, Eastern Sierra)?  Something international, perhaps Patagonia or Iceland, or more developed travel destinations like Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey?  Tell me in the comments.  If I can pick my next project now, I can set it up on  Kickstarter and use this first book as one of the rewards for your support on my next one.

Last but not least, thanks to everyone who cheered me along over the years, on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Instagram, Google+, 500px, YouTube, Vimeo, PInterest, Wordpress, Tumblr, and here on Blogger,  You kept me going on this long road (looong road).  Thanks also to my photography workshop customers, you kept food on the table, a camera in my bag, a computer on my desk, and my car in working order.  I have a few more Bodie night photography and interior access dates left in 2015, and as the book sales go into autopilot as retailers pick it up, I hope to resume the Yosemite, Death Valley and Eastern Sierra workshops that I've offered in the past, and add dates to my calendar shortly.

Monday, June 01, 2015

The Top 10 Parks in California

www.CaliParks.org
I've photographed dozens of parks in California over the past 30 years.  As digital cameras enabled sharing photos from my California travels, I've been putting them online for over 10 years, on sites like MyParkPhotos.com, operated by the +California State Parks Foundation.

More recently, the popularity of photo-sharing and social media sites has led to a new approach to enabling you to browse photos from California's parks.  A new Web site Caliparks.org automatically detects photos mapped to any one of over 11,800 parks in California, on +Instagram,  +Flickr and +Twitter,  and lets you browse them by name, or by type of outdoor activity that you're interested in.  When you navigate to their page for a particular park, you see the latest photos from those parks.

For examples, see this list of some of my favorite California parks that they've published, and when you click on the park, you'll see the latest Instagram photos taken there:

Jeff Sullivan's Top Ten Parks
http://www.caliparks.org/parks/story/jeff-sullivan-picks#6/35.92067835412144/-117.849665820702

My Top Ten California Parks on www.Caliparks.org
The site is developing quickly; it currently displays photos by most recent uploads.  It doesn't currently allow sorting and browsing by photographer or quality (such as Flickr's "interestingness").

If you'd like to see my photos from these parks, here are links to my Flickr photos from them:

  1. Anza-Borrego State Park
  2. Bodie State Historic Park
  3. Death Valley National Park
  4. Joshua Tree National Park
  5. Kings Canyon National Park
  6. Inyo National Forest
  7. Mono Lake Tufa State Reserve
  8. Sequoia National Park
  9. Toiyabe National Forest
  10. Yosemite National Park
To help you find the best photography locations in California’s parks, later this summer I’ll share hundreds of great landscape photography locations in my new 320-page guidebook: Photographing California - Vol. 2: South - A Guide to the Natural landmarks of the Golden State.

Connect with me on social media sites for updates on its release, or check my blog at JeffSullivanPhotography.com.

Friday, September 19, 2014

California Landscape Photography Guide Book

Draft cover for my upcoming guide book to Southern California landscape photography
This is the draft cover for my upcoming guide book to landscape photography from Yosemite to San Diego.I started this journey in September 2006, putting whatever belongings I could fit in my SUV and dropping them off at a storage locker, before going on the road with a copy of "Photographing Southwest, Volume 1 - A guide to the natural landmarks of Southern Utah" by +Laurent Martres.  I went on the road full time as my divorce started. Landscape photography, and that book, got me through a lot of rough times in the next few years. In a sense you could say that they saved my life. Imagine my surprise when I started a Mono Lake and Yosemite regional guide, contacted Laurent since he didn't have a California book, and by coincidence he was just about to hire someone to write a book to cover those locations through San Diego!

I spent the next few years living out of the back of my car, returning to spend weeks with my kids, and to bring them out to explore America's incredible landscapes with me.  On one hand it killed me to be separated from them sometimes for weeks at at time, but on the other hand it was crystal clear that the days with them were precious, so I went out of my way to dedicate those days to them, and engage them in the exploration of places of unique geology and geography and almost overwhelming beauty.  I'm very fortunate that they seem to have developed some of the same curiosity and thirst for exploration and adventure that I enjoy.

All my life I've been drawn to nature and landscapes, growing up exploring the woods, ponds, mountains and coast of New England.  Our family hiked the peaks of Colorado and the boardwalks around Yellowstone's geyser basins curing our move to California, where the grand scale of the High Sierra, Mojave Desert and Pacific Ocean begged for attention.  In a sense my explorations over the years leading up to this project mirrored that legacy, as I shared with my children many of the same discoveries that my parents had led me to.  Custody days for me aren't a burden, they're a priceless privilege.  Gaining perspective on what's important in life is something that can never come too soon.  


I could travel the world in search of soaring mountains, searing deserts with massive sand dunes, wave-pounded seashores or forests with astonishingly massive trees, but that's all within a day's drive.  You can search the world or Oz to fill some perceived need, but for anyone lucky enough to have both family and Southern California nearby, there's truly no place like home.