This image, made in 2016 at Point Lobos, is from our Still Motion project. The exposure was approximately 2 minutes in the middle of the afternoon through filtered sunlight. What caught our attention was the way the surf was breaking, filling and swirling into the gap in these rocks in the mid intertidal zone. The goal being to represent all that motion in a still image rather than a video or time-lapse.

We are please to announce the Aiello Studios' Photographic Expeditionary Group and you are invited to participate! The expeditions will essentially be meet-ups at various locations throughout the West that we wish to photograph. The concept is very simple. If you would like to photograph any of the same areas and are available you are invited to join us.

This image is of traffic at the corner of J and 21st Streets in Sacramento, CA. It was made by compositing 200 images from a longer time-lapse sequence. We will be providing a tutorial on the technique soon. Sign-up for our mail list to stay tuned.

We recently visited Hornitos, a small gold rush era town located on county road J-16 in Mariposa County, Hornitos has largely been bypassed by the modern world. There are no gas stations, fast food outlets, or shopping centers. It may seem like a ghost town but there are 75 inhabitants, a Post Office, bar, and a gift shop.

Can you imagine doing this twice a month during the winter? Travel 90 miles from Placerville, California to Genoa, Nevada; crossing the Sierra Nevada mountains carrying a bag between 50 to 100 pounds in weight strapped to your back. And you would make this trip no matter the depth of snow or how bad the weather. That was the job that John A. Thompson, better known as Snowshoe Thompson, undertook to deliver the mail every winter from 1856 to 1876. 

In the southern part of the Mother Lode region lies Bear Valley, a once busy mining town 12 miles northwest of Mariposa on Highway 49. It was headquarters for John C. Fremont's gold mining empire in the mid-1850s. At its peak, approximately 3000 people lived here.