Mono County Tourism Scores Magazine Cover at 2015 Cannes Film Festival!

When the Mono County Economic Development, Tourism, and Film Commission wanted to put its best foot forward with a publisher designing a magazine for global film location scouts, they turned to Eastern Sierra photographer Jeff Sullivan.  A landscape photographer and guidebook author living at Topaz Lake, Jeff has led dozens of photography workshops for night photography at the local ghost town of Bodie, as well as landscape photography workshops in the broader Eastern Sierra region of California, especially in the Mono Lake to Tioga Pass to Mammoth Lakes area of Mono County.  

The publisher, Boutique Editions, liked forwarded samples of Jeff's work so much, they selected the Bodie image above for the cover of Location International 2015!  The magazine is launched each year at the Festival de Cannes in May.  The publicity enjoyed by Mono County continued from there:
"The magazine is distributed to 15,000 movie professionals worldwide, and is also available at Locations Trade Show in LA; Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity; Berlinale; MIPTV and MIPCOM; Sundance Film Festival, Utah and at AFM in Los Angeles." 


Producing stunning photos of locations is nothing new to Jeff.  He wrote a 320-page guidebook to the best photography locations in California from Mono County and Yosemite to San Diego: "Photographing California Vol. 2 - South".  Locations, and great photos of them, are exactly what he focuses on.  Using the proceeds from the sale of this book to fund the creation of in-depth regional guides, he's on a mission to help you discover "the best of the West"!


The popularity of photo sharing and social media sites in recent years had given him excellent opportunities to showcase his work.  Participating on Flickr since 2006, he is one of the most-followed photographers on this site popular with serious photographers, with over 45,000 contacts and an average of about 10,000 views per day.

Posting his images on the new Google+ social media site in 2011 as he worked on his guidebook earned him a Top 100 ranking on the site in the site's first two years, amassing nearly 2 million contacts.  At least one of the common beliefs about social media post success id true: competent photos really do give social media posts a huge boost!  This helped Jeff succeed with his photography workshop business, since a post's reception on Google+ has been determined by Internet marketing consultants to be the #1 factor in helping a site achieving favorable placement in Google searches.*

* It's puzzling that many organizations invest in maintaining social media activity, but don't pay more attention to the quality of the photography in their posts!  That's like entering an auto race at Laguna Seca Racetrack in a Honda Accord.  Unless you drive a track-ready Porsche, your family car has no business running with race cars.  Similarly, investing in online marketing activity but using consumer-quality photography will cause your investment in marketing on the Internet to under-perform against the competition as well.  If you're going to compete with the best in the world at anything, including getting your social media posts noticed with the lowest possible investment of time, put your best foot forward and don't skimp on high quality, eye-catching images! 

Mono County and Boutique Editions weren't the only organizations noticing Jeff's work in 2015.  A travel company in the U.K. noticed his work and named him a "Top 100 Travel Photographer in the World 2015".   Upon his book release in late 2015 he took a celebration lap of the Western U.S. and Canada, and one of his photos from Yellowstone National Park won an Outdoor Photographer Magazine "iPhone and Instagram" contest.

To see Jeff's work from 2015, both new images and reworked images from past years, see his blog: "Top 10 Favorite Travel and Landscape Images From 2015".

Late Fall Colors on Conway Summit

Sunset Rainbow at Topaz Lake

Rainbow Over Bodie's Standard Mill

Award-winning landscape photographer and astrophotographer Jeff Sullivan has been exploring the American West for four decades.  Honing his DSLR photography since he took a 35mm darkroom photography class in eighth grade, Jeff started his freelance photography business in 2006.  He has led dozens of photography workshops in Yosemite, Death Valley, the Eastern Sierra and the historic Wild West ghost town of Bodie, California.

New California Landscape Photography Guidebook Coming Soon

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:

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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.

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!

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!

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.

Finding Serendipity in Turkey

Rock tombs on the shore of Lake Bafa, Turkey

During a nearly month-long trip to Turkey, Lori Hibbett and I drove a car across the countryside to see ancient historic sites. We left a few days free in our itinerary to have the flexibility to follow whatever interesting side trips came up along the way.

While visiting Selçuk to visit the ancient city of Ephesus, our hosts at Hotel Bella recommended that we visit Lake Bafa. We had no idea what we would find when we get there, but we booked a couple of nights at the pension that they recommended, Agora Pansiyon.

Lake Bafa is a large saltwater lake, formed when the mouth of a bay field with silt. Hills covered with decomposing granite boulders and olive trees lead up to nearby Mount Latmos. The formation of the lake land-locked the ancient port of Heracleia, also known as Heracleia under Latmos.

Monastery of St. Mary on an island in Lake Bafa

Ancient fortifications dot the hillsides and the lake shore, and many tombs cut into solid stone still have their heavy rock lids askew on top. An island just offshore holds the ruins of the Monastery of St. Mary, dating back to the Byzantine era.

We explored the shore at sunset, then returned to our pension for dinner of fresh fish caught in the lake.  After dinner we returned to the lake for some night photography.


The nearby town of Kapikiri offers hiking trails which lead onto the mountain through small olive orchards, tended by local families and passed down for generations.  One of our hosts at Agora Pansiyon, Mithat Serçin, drove us over to Kapikiri to lead us on a hike.  One of the trails leads to the ruins of the Yedilir Monastery, which has an overhanging rock which housed a small chapel.  The walls which enclosed the chapel are gone, but various bible stories are still painted on the underside of the rock overhang.  A pile of rocks nearby was used to house beehives, for gathering honey.

Rock overhang near Yedilir Monastery ruins

On the way up we stopped to see ancient cave paintings, at one of nearly 200 sites cataloged on this mountain.  The area has been occupied by people for thousands of years.  On the way back down the mountain, we found a baby tortoise on the trail, smaller than a walnut!

It definitely can be productive to leave some portion of your trip to chance, to serendipity, and see what unexpected bonuses pop up along the way.

I don't have room for many photos in this blog post, so I'll post more to the new DripThat app, currently available on IOS devices (coming soon for Android).  Like a cross between messaging and social media, DripThat is perfect for travelers, for telling stories through pictures and video clips.

Lake Bafa at sunset

This information is on behalf of dripthat.