Photography Gallery

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This gallery includes pictures I have taken while traveling and attending special events, as well as photos of some of my rock/mineral/fossil collection and scanned images of some of my drawings/artwork.

Jordan's Favorite Photos

My favorite pictures...

Plants
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Animals
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Scenery
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Other
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This includes photos not easily placed into the previous categories.

Travel Photography

Pictures from my travels...

Beaver's Bend State Park 2009
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Pictures taken while camping in Beaver's Bend State Park, Oklahoma with the Gourley family.

Ethiopia 2009
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Pictures taken while in Addis Abeba, Ethiopia while conducting paleobotanical research (for my graduate research project).

Caribbean Cruise 2009

Pictures taken during my honeymoon with my wife, Robin. Note: this gallery was moved from my website to our wedding website here.

Colorado Vacation 2008
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This gallery exhibits pictures from a vacation that Robin and I took in August 2008.

Geology Field Camp 2008
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Click here to show/hide a detailed description of this trip.

Summary

In partial fulfillment of my Bachelor of Science degree in geology, I attended Texas A&M University's geology field camp from May 14th - June 24th (2008) in order to develop the necessary skills to conduct field work for geological study. This included field projects in Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah and was organized and taught by Dr. Michael Heaney (TAMU faculty). We travelled by van and camped near our project locations so that we could spend as much time as possible looking at geological features, mapping them, and interpreting them. However, we had plenty of time to relax and enjoy the amazing scenery, as shown by the photography I have published on this website.

Texas
May 14th - May 19th

White's City RV Park - For the first 2 nights of the trip, we stayed in Carlsbad, New Mexico (within walking distance of Carlbad Caverns!) and hiked the nearby Permian Reef Trail in McKittrick Canyon inside Guadalupe Mountains National Park. This trail exhibits the Capitan Reef that formed more than 200 million years ago when this part of North America was covered by the Delaware Sea. Franklin Mountains State Park - On May 16th, we left Carlsbad and drove south to El Paso where we stayed for 3 nights. Our campground was situated directly above a very large fault that juxtaposed Precambrian rocks with Permian rocks (>250 million years of difference). This is where we did our first mapping project. We hiked around the area mainly using Mundy's Gap Trail and mapped the Precambrian igneous and Paleozoic sedimentary rocks of the area.

New Mexico
May 19th - May 22nd

Lower Fir Campground - On May 19th we left the Franklin Mountains and drove north to Cloudcroft, New Mexico, just outside of Alamogordo. Our campground was in Lincoln National Forest, which was actually closed due to extremely high fire danger. While staying in Cloudcroft, we visited White Sands National Monument and several Carboniferous-age phylloid algal mounds, or bioherms. The most notable was Muleshoe Mound, which several of us hiked up to and broke off some souvenirs with our hammers. We left Cloudcroft on May 21st and drove north to Jemez where we set up camp at the first vacant campground. Along the way we stopped at the Valley of Fires, a large lava flow that formed only about 5,000 years ago, and the Valles Caldera. This caldera, 14 miles in diameter, formed when a supervolcano erupted about 1 million years ago.

Moab, UT
May 22nd - May 30th

Moab KOA - On May 22nd we drove to Moab and then began our next mapping project the next day. This project was located in Cache Valley which is in Arches National Park. After 3 days of mapping, we had our first day off during which most people went into town and found things to do there. The next day we had a mapping quiz (we had several hours to map a small area) that was also in Cache Valley but adjacent to our previous mapping area.

Henry Mtns, UT
May 30th - June 6th

Starr Springs Campground - On May 30th we left Moab and drove south of Hanksville to the Starr Springs Recreation Area near Mt. Hillers (in the Henry Mountains) where we stayed for 8 nights. During this time we did 2 mapping projects, one involved mapping the southern part of Mt. Hillers and was focused on the relationship between the igneous intrusion and the country rock. The second project involved using a GPS and tablet computer system to map a volcanic sill/dike system near Trachyte Mesa. In between these projects we drove south to Lake Powell for a day of relaxation.

Glenwood Springs, CO
June 6th - June 8th

Ami's Acres Campground - On June 6th, we left Utah and traveled to Colorado. Our first stop was in Glenwood Springs where we camped for 2 nights. On June 7th we visited the Maroon Bells where we mapped a recent debris flow using only our compasses and pacing the distances between points of interest. After mapping was completed, we hiked up to Maroon Lake which is arguably the most beautiful place in Colorado.

South Fork, CO
June 8th - June 12th

Upper Beaver Creek Campground - We left Glenwood Springs on June 8th and drove through Independence Pass to South Fork, where we camped in the Rio Grande National Forest for 4 nights. This was the coldest place that we stayed - one night the temperature dropped below 20 degrees (F). For the next three days we mapped a small region (relatively that is) of the San Juan volcanic field. This was perhaps the most frustrating project in that the rocks were mostly indistinguishable from one another except for very minor differences in mineral content.

Salida, CO
June 12th - June 20th

Monarch Spur RV Park and Campground - On June 12th we traveled to our final destination in Colorado - in the vicinity of Salida and Poncha Springs. We camped here for 8 nights. During our first day here we used the GPS and tablet computers again to make a basic geological map of Ruby Mountain just outside of Salida along the Arkansas River. The day after that was a day off during which some people went to town and relaxed while others did more adventurous things such as skiing at Monarch Mountain and white water rafting down the Arkansas River. During the next 5 days we worked on the biggest project of the course, a geologic map and cross section of Calumet Mountain in San Isabel National Forest.

New Mexico
June 20th - June 24th

Deerhead Campground - We left Colorado on June 20th and returned to Cloudcroft, New Mexico for our final project. We camped in the Lincoln National Forest for 4 nights. Our project consisted of mapping a small area in the Sacramento Mountains near the Fresnal Fault.

Special Events

Events I've photographed...

Plano Balloon Festival 2009
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Every fall, the city of Plano hosts a hot air balloon festival. The official website can be viewed here.

Manticora, Circle II Circle, and Jon Oliva's Pain - Live in St. Louis, 2008
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The pictures in this category are from a concert at Pop's in St.Louis on September, 29th 2008. Manticora played first and were followed by Circle II Circle and Jon Oliva's Pain. I also took many videos of this concert, which can be viewed here. This was the first time I had really used my new camera, a Canon S5 IS, so the pictures and videos did not turn out as well as I expected.

Art & Drawing

Some of my drawings...

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This gallery exhibits some of my personal drawings and other art.

Rock, Mineral, and Fossil Collection

Some of my geology collection...

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This gallery consists of images of rocks, minerals, and fossils that I have collected over the years.

Photography Gallery

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Jordan's Favorite Photos

Travel Photography

Summary

Texas May 14th - May 19th

New Mexico May 19th - May 22nd

Moab, UT May 22nd - May 30th

Henry Mtns, UT May 30th - June 6th

Glenwood Springs, CO June 6th - June 8th

South Fork, CO June 8th - June 12th

Salida, CO June 12th - June 20th

New Mexico June 20th - June 24th