The Elephants Perch is the unusual name given to a 1200-foot wall of pink granite in the Sawtooth Mountains of Idaho. It is a magnificent backpacking destination, and the quality rock climbing on the Perch is hard to beat in Idaho. We had just set up our tent on the rocky shores of the lake when a summer storm descended on the tiny valley. These mammatus clouds formed as the sun was setting, boiling under a heavy black cloud that hung over the mountain walls. Cloud formations like these typically precede a midwest tornado and are quite rare in these mountains. They lasted for only two or three minutes before turning into a draining sweep of hail and rain that threatened to destroy the tents. Thunder and lightning ripped the air and shook the trees – and the sun shone on through it all. Thirty minutes later, the sky was clear and the sun set , casting the mountains in their pink and orange light – just as nothing had ever happened. Nikon D2x, 12-24mm, f 6.3, 1/250, ISO 100

I wanted to get some good images of Kathryn Lake, deep in the Sawtooth Mountains, before winter set in hard. So, at 3am, I drove from Boise to Redfish Lake and took the early boat across (boats would only be running one more day – as it was mid October – so I had only 48 hours). This simple boat ride saved me 6 miles of hiking. Once on the far shore, the boatman said, “It looks like snow”, turned the boat around, and raced back to the Redfish Lodge, hunched down low in his down coat. Bo (the border collie - and my wife’s prized possession) and I hiked up the trail as fast as we could go. In about 2 hours we were at Alpine Lake, sweating like pigs and watching storm clouds sprint past the mountain faces. Rain and snowflakes followed us on our trek, but I was determined to get to Kathryn Lake. As we rounded the southern shore of Alpine Lake, and started our cross-country adventure into the high alpine basins beyond, I stumbled across the scene you see here. The low growing foliage was crimson red, and the grass surrounding the lake was wheat yellow. I had never hiked the Sawtooths this late in the season, so all of this color struck me as totally unexpected. I set up the tripod and carefully took a few shots, until the snow was creating small white streaks in the image. From here Bo and I hiked another 3 hours to Kathryn lakes, where it proceeded to dump 6 inches of snow in just an hour. Photography was not going to happen. Visibility was 10 feet. At 1:30 pm, I kicked the wet dog out into the snowstorm, tore down the tent, and we busted our asses back to Redfish Lake. We took a more direct line back to Redfish Lake - one I would never recommend. We arrived at the Lake at 5pm, just in time to catch the last boat across. It was a very long day for just a few images – but sometimes that is just the way it goes. Nikon D2x, Nikkor 12-24mm, f-8.0, 1/50, ISO 200

In the fall of 2007 I was in Nepal, trekking to Everest and then over to Gokyo. While hiking around the catacombs of Namche, a village at roughly 11,000 feet, you eventually have no choice but to ascend a great irregular staircase that rises up hundreds of feet through the hillside town – it is their Main Street. I had my camera in hand and was just taking pictures of interesting odd subjects; yak dung patties thrown against the walls of homes to dry, Tibetan rugs be scrubbed on top of corrugated roofs, a mangy cat or two – and then this small girl walked by with her grandmother. I was leaning against a wall that was quite a distance from her (perhaps that’s why she didn’t ham for the camera) and with my 70-200mm lens captured this image in a single lucky shot. In the spring of 2012, I was again in Namche. But this time I brought copies of this image on postcards, asking the local shop owners if they knew this girl. Namche is very small – perhaps only a few hundred residents – and I thought someone would know her name and point me to her home. I wanted to get another picture of her as she had grown. Nobody knew her, and I never did see her again. I later learned of a great problem in Nepal that pertains to the trafficking of young girls for the sex slave industry in India and Saudi Arabia, that they are often sold to child brokers for as little as $10 with the false promises that the girls will be married off to a rich man or work in a good factory and send money home to their families. These are lies. They end up in the HIV infected brothels of Mumbai or as slaves/servants in the wealthy Middle East nations. I like to think that she is just in another village, or that she was shipped to Kathmandu for school. It is also why I support the Himalayan Foundations Stop Girl Trafficking program. It is a simple way to ensure girls are not used as commodities and instead educated through high school. Nikon D2x, Nikkor 70-200mm, f 2.8, 1/125, ISO 100 www.stopgirltrafficking.org

Starry Night, Sawtooth Mountains - Idaho Here, at 9200 feet in the Sawtooths, the clouds vanished, the silvery sickle of the new moon slipped below the horizon, and I woke up at midnight - the trifecta of night photography. My new Nikon D800 - with its 36 megapixel full-frame sensor, coupled with the Nikon 14-24mm lens - with its huge dome of light-gathering glass, records even the faintest of light at long exposures. I set up on a tripod, changed the ISO to 2000, opened the lens to f2.8, and began taking images at various shutter speeds - deciding here on 20 seconds as the best, with the least amount of star movement (earth rotation). While the shutter was open, I illuminated the old whitebark pine snag in the foreground. Initially I did this so I could then review the image on the camera LCD screen, zoom in tight, and check my focus, as it was so black out I really couldn't tell by looking through the viewfinder, and autofocus was like, "No way". After I got the focus correct, I decided that I liked the light on the tree in the foreground - although un-natural - it made the image more lively. It was the magical third element (stars, black silhouette, and lighted tree) of interest which is so good to have for an effective image. I shot many images with differing amounts of light on the tree (illuminated with my headlamp), finally choosing this one - which had the least amount of light. The sheer volume of stars, and color of the milky way, was truly astounding once I had the image opened in Photoshop. I guess I wasn't really preppared for such a busy sky, as the naked eye could only register a fraction of these faint points of light. Ahhh, the wonders of technology! Nikon D800, 14-24mm lens (14mm), F 2.8, ISO 2000, shutter speed of 20 seconds, white balance of 5350 K (changed in camera, on location).

The Rotton Monolith, Sawtooth Mountains - Idaho This small cove of lakes is not far from Redfish Lodge, and they can been seen from the rock climbs on the backside of Mt Heyburn, which towers over Redfish Lake. I have seen these tiny lakes for years, but always from a distance - the summit of Heyburn and Horstman, and from the graveled summit of Braxon Peak. It appeared to me that in late summer or early fall the sunrise would be unobstructed on the peaks in this basin - beams of morning light would pour right up the northeast facing valley. If, that is, there was no cloud cover. In late September, I left the car at 9am and got to this location at 1pm. It was a brutal journey through mist, intermittent snow squalls, beaver swaps, frosted fields of scree, loose boulders, and dense brush and downed trees. I was soaked through at the end point - and my toes were cold, very cold. I took this image with my tripod buried into the marble-sized gravel slope to get the autumn colored ground cover in the foreground. This was the first time I had stopped since I left the car, and, at 38 degrees, the cold began to set in quickly. Just after this image, I realized how cold my toes had become, that I had no sensation in any of my toes. I headed to my tiny tent and got into my wholly underrated 32 degree down bag, rubbing my feet and wiggling my toes for the next 45 minutes. It wasn't until then that I began to get the feeling back. And just as I did, the sun popped out. I quickly pulled on the frozen stiff socks and shoes and went back out for some evening photography. It's all part of the deal really. Pretty pictures are often obtained in terribly uncomfortable locations, and without a little bit of sacrifice, we would be without many of the most famous photographs - Ansel Adams' "Moon over Half Dome" comes to mind. Nikon D800, 14-24mm lens, f-16, 1/40, ISO 100,