wcbeanphoto

5 photo gizmos/accessories I'll never (again) leave home without

2011-10-01T16:51:00.000-07:00

Hello, my name is Bill and I'm addicted to photo gizmos. Well, not just photo gizmos but gizmos in general. Things that make life and photography more convenient and easier to deal with. Maybe it's a genetic thing, maybe it's a Guy thing, and maybe it's just me. I just know I like gadgets and gizmos.

We've all got them...that gizmo hanging out in the deep dark recesses of your camera bag. Maybe it's an inflatable reflector or mini-softbox for your flash. It might be some sort of filter that will make your images amazing with no extra work on your part..or at least that's what the ad said. Regardless, we've all got gadgets and gizmos we use or intended to use in our photography and some are much more valuable than others.

I have some that never leave the house and some that are buried in one of the many camera bags I have hanging around my office.(If someone finds the "perfect" camera bag, let me know) But there are 5 gizmos/accessories that I absolutely refuse to leave the house without, all depicted in the photo above. Here's the lowdown on my favorite gizmos.

1. Field tool kit. Assorted jewelers screwdrivers, metric allen wrenches, and a multi-tool. I've used the multi-tool for everything from bending the barbs on fishing lures to installing a belt on a 97 Nissan Pickup. These tools live in a ditty bag in an outside pocket of my photo backpack. Just don't forget and try to get them through security at an airport. I've had to mail them to myself a couple of times.

2. Bubble level. A couple of years ago I noticed that a lot of my images had to be rotated a little bit in post processing. I shoot everything on a tripod so it had to be an issue with my eyes. The bubble level lives on the hot shoe of my camera body and this one has bubbles for 3 axis use. No more downhill horizons.

3. Really Right Stuff L-bracket. This is by far one of the most treasured photo gizmos. It allows me to quickly switch from horizontal to vertical and keep the center of the lens on axis without having to flop the tripod head over on it's side. Last time I upgraded my camera body I had to wait about a week for the new L-bracket to arrive. Shooting without it was like working with only 1 hand. You can have my L-bracket when you pry it out of my cold dead hands!

4. Laptop screen angle gauge. Ever been on a shooting trip, edit some images on a laptop and post them somewhere only to discover they're much too dark or light when viewed on your main computer at home? All because the screen on your laptop was a bit off the proper angle. Grrrrrrrrr...well this little device is the cure. Simply velcro it to the side of your laptop screen and tilt the screen till the pointer lines up with the mark. It works no matter what the height of your computer. If you continue to post ugly images you can't blame it on the laptop any more. PS: I've only been using this a couple of days and the difference is remarkable. We're all searching for repeatable processing and this let's me do it with a laptop.

5. Headlamp. My new passion is night sky shooting. I'm working hard to learn the techniques to produce terrific images showing the Milky Way. This thing is great for helping illuminate things when you're shooting in the dark. Every try to achieve critical focus in the dark? How bout setting exposure dials on your camera by touch? Not much fun in either case. I have a couple of different headlamps and one of them has both a white light and red light setting on it. The red light supposedly doesn't destroy your night vision.

So there you have it, the 5 gizmos I won't leave home without. They all live in my camera backpack except the laptop angle gauge which resides (go figure) in my computer case. I know there are a lot of other things you need to have on any photo trip but not having any one of these makes photo life almost unbearable for me.

How bout you? What are your favorite gizmos? Leave a comment and we'll see what comes along.

Take....Me Out To the Ballgame

2011-09-28T19:17:00.000-07:00

Let me set the record straight right off the bat..(pun intended) I am a Sports Geek. I grew up playing baseball in the spring and summer, football in the fall, and basketball in the winter. I love the NFL and College Basketball. But baseball is my passion. I am a Seamhead through and through.

Problem is, most of the guys and some gals that I work with are football fans and couldn't care less about baseball. Me being me, I often stir the pot, poke the bear, whatever phrase you want to use by professing that I believe baseball is better than football. We spend time going through all the old tired arguments...baseball is boring, it's too slow, there's no time clock, yada yada yada! I often have to remind them that was created first and football was just invented so baseball players would have something to do in the 3 month period between the last game of the World Series and the first day of Spring Training. Most of the time the argument is never settled because we both have only what we believe and as you know belief is knowledge that can't be proven.

Today, though, I can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that baseball is better than football and here's why:

The regular season of the NFL is only 16 games while a season of Major League Baseball lasts 162 games. Today is the last day of Baseball's regular season, game #162 and as I write this blog there are 4 teams, 2 in each league, that are tied for the Wild Card slot in the playoffs that begin on Friday. The Boston Red Sox and Tampa Bay Rays in the American League, and the St. Louis Cardinals and Atlanta Braves in the National League.

None of the teams are playing each other so today there are 3 possible scenarios. If one of the tied teams wins and the other loses, the winner moves on to the playoffs which begin on Friday. If both tied teams win or if both lose, there will be a "play in" game tomorrow and the winner goes on in the playoffs. I don't have a dog in this hunt so I don't really care which teams win or lose though I have two very close friends that do. Tom is a Cardinals fan and Rebecca is a Red Sox fan. For their sake I suppose I hope those teams move on in the playoffs. We'll know later this evening what will happen since the games are still going on.

But how is that better than the NFL? Well, if 2 NFL teams end up tied for a division title or a wild card spot you begin to go through a ponderous "tiebreaker" system. I think the first tiebreaker is head to head competition between the two tied teams but don't quote me. The first few tiebreakers are pretty definitive like that and they usually don't get past the first or second tiebreaker before deciding which team moves on in the playoffs. There are, however, about 16 or 18 tiebreaker scenarios or so I'm told. I suspect they will probably never get past 4 or 5 on the list but in a worst possible case scenario we could see a playoff team decided by "which team scored more points on windy afternoons in October against a team who's coach's brother is named Fred" or something equally byzantine.

STOP THE MADNESS! Just have a play in game like baseball has. If 2 teams tie it's head to head. If 3 teams tie it's Round Robin. Just play the flippin' game. Let the players decide who moves on, not some statistician.

Yep, Baseball is better than the NFL. They get it. Let the players decide.

The Ultimate Spring Photo road trip #1

2011-09-24T18:06:00.000-07:00

A few days ago I posted The Ultimate Photo road trip (Fall) and it was kind of fun detailing some of the things I need to visit or revisit during the fall. Now it's time for Spring. This will be a bit more difficult because there are 2 completely different trips that come to mind so you'll have to indulge me with #1 and #1A which will come in a day or two. For now, though, on with #1.

It's no secret that I'm a fan of the Pacific Northwest (or Pacific Southwest if you include British Columbia) and I try to visit there every chance I get. I didn't live there for a very long time, only about 3 years total, but they were some of the best 3 years of my life. I made some lifelong friends and spent some glorious summers there. Some consider it a tragedy that while I lived there I didn't even own a camera much less have any intention of becoming a photographer. So strap in and here we go.

It's a comfortable day's drive from Denver to the Yellowstone/Grand Teton area. I've become quite enamored with the Signal Mountain Lodge when I stay in the Tetons. It's a 5 minute walk from your cabin to the beach and a sunrise reflection of Mt Moran and the Tetons in Jackson Lake. It's also a 5 minute drive to the Oxbow Bend and an easy 20 or 30 minute drive to Moulton's Barn or Schwabacher Landing. The photo ops here are limitless. I've got some pretty nice sunrise images from the beach so I'd have to flip a coin between the other 3 locations. Might even have to spend 2 days and nights here and hope I'm lucky enough to catch a glimpse of Grizzly #399 and whatever collection of cubs she has.

Leaving the Tetons is always tough for me but I have a long ways to go and a short time to get there so once I've sated my Jones for the Tetons it's north into Yellowstone. I usually spend most of my Yellowstone time in the Lamar Valley and sleep somewhere in Cooke City but this time I'm going to stay either in West Yellowstone, Mammoth, or possibly Canyon. If Heather is with me it will be West since she wants to see the captive wolves and grizzlies there. Who knows...maybe a night in West and then choose between Mammoth and Canyon or Roosevelt Cabins and spend a day or two in the Lamar.

Leaving Yellowstone it gets a little tricky and my next destination will depend on how early in the Spring this trip is taken. In a perfect world I'd be taking this trip the first or second week of June and while I'd love to spend some time in Glacier, I think that deserves a week in and of itself so that's for a later trip. Next on the location I'm headed for the Palouse region of Eastern Washington. I've never photographed there so it's definitely on my bucket list and a strong candidate for a June trip. Base of ops is Pullman with Steptoe Butte definitely on the list for sunrise. 1 maybe 2 days here then north again.

From Pullman I'm headed north for another long driving day. I'm headed north and will spend 2 or 3 days in the Banff area. Last time here I split my time between Banff and Jasper and really didn't have time to do justice to either one. So this time it's Banff and the other Canadian parks that are on the Trans Canada Highway.

From Banff and Yoho I'm headed to Vancouver. Have I mentioned that I love Vancouver? It's probably one of my top 3 favorite cities on the planet. The photo ops here are limitless but I'm only spending 1 night because I need to get down to Mt Vernon and Anacortes. The image at the top of this blog is from the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival. That happens in April so I've missed it. That will allow me to head into the Cascades and visit some of my old haunts. Concrete, Darrington, Rockport, and other small towns along the Skagit and Sauk rivers. I'll also be coordinating with my college roommates to spend some time drinking beer, telling lies, and generally catching up with old friends. Next time I'm here I'll head out into the San Juans for a whale watching cruise and hopefully see some Orcas...next time.

From Anacortes I'm headed south across the bridge at Deception Pass and down Whidbey Island to catch a ferry to the Olympic Penninsula. I'm going to take 2 days to work my way down the coast with some time spent in the Ho Rain Forest as well as some of the ocean beaches, maybe even keeping on down the coast to Oregon.

About this time I need to start heading home. With any luck I've photographed everything I wanted to see on this trip so it's just a matter of heading home. Lots of driving, at least 2 weeks on the road, and some marvelous images and memories. What a trip. Stay tuned for Spring 1A.

A tale of Lemons and Lemonade

2011-09-22T19:33:00.000-07:00

Here's the dilemma...you step outside to see a beautifully colored sky at sunset but you are surrounded by houses and power lines with no acceptable foreground for an exposure. What will you do...what WILL you do? Answer: Look for a reflection.

I was headed outside to get some things out of my car and was lamenting my failure to be in a suitable location to photograph the sunset. When I walked to the back of the Nitro I saw the reflection out of the corner of my eye. As quickly as I could I dug the G10 out of the Nitro's console, grabbed a tripod from inside the house and set up a shot. What you see is the result. Moral of the story? If life gives you lemons, make lemonade. If life gives you limes, find someone that life has given tequila and make margaritas.

Inspiration

2011-09-21T21:28:00.000-07:00

I've been giving a lot of thought lately to what inspires me photographically. Why do I see things the way I see them? Some painters go through "periods" and I guess photographically I do too. For many years I shot large format film and by necessity I tended to concentrate on the Grand Landscape. Large format forces you to be very deliberate and methodical and it's very difficult to shoot objects that are close to the camera.

After a while I kept the large format but shifted most of my photography to 35mm and though I was able to shoot more close up and macro things I showed a preference to long lenses. I was photographing a lot of wildlife at that time and also used the teles to do "extractions." I really loved the way telephoto lenses compress the perspective. I still shot landscapes with the large format but was obsessed with teles.

In the mid 90's I was managing a photo equipment rental company and we started stocking cameras designed to shoot panoramic images. It was about that time I started seeing things panoramically. I went back to the large format and went so far as to cut out a panoramic opening in a dark slide to expose things in a narrow format. At that time digital was still very primitive and stitching software was not all that great so skinny 4X5's were my solution.

Not long after that I found pleasure in getting back to my roots and for a few months I shot everything in Black and White. From my point of view, B&W requires you to see in a special way to create really effective images. You have to look for patterns and contrast. B&W forces you to see light and how it delineates your subject from a whole different perspective. Just because an image looks nice in color doesn't mean it will make a nice Black and White image. With the advent of new conversion software like Nik SilverEfex Pro2 and Topaz Black and White, I've been bitten by the B&W bug and am working more and more in this media recently.

Right now it's details. When I was in Photography School one of my assignments was to find a photograph of a large scene that was successful and then find 5 more images within that shot. It forced us to look not at just the big picture but to also observe details within. And that's where I'm at now. I've taken 2 photo trips this year so far. In May I spent a long weekend hanging out with some photographer friends in Moab, Ut where just about everywhere you look there is a Grand Landscape just begging to be photographed. This month I've just come back from 10 days in Sedona, AZ, again, lots of Grand Landscapes waiting to be put on a memory card. Both times I've struggled to make exposures that I like. These days the Grand Landscape doesn't move me...it's all in the details.

How long will this phase last? I have no idea...might be a month, might be a year, might be longer. What I do know is that I'm in detail mode right now and those are the images that please me. The image accompanying this blog is one I ran across in Sedona. A juniper tree outside our condo was dropping berries every day and I liked how some of them were lined up in a gap between 2 sections of sidewalk. Imagine that...here I am in one of the most photogenic areas in the US and I'm looking at the sidewalk for images. Go figure.

Razing Arizona: Musings on 10 days in the Southwest

2011-09-18T19:16:00.000-07:00

We've just returned from a 10 day trip to Arizona spent primarily in Sedona but also we had some time in the Phoenix area and a brief visit to Tombstone. During the trip our daughter Erin got married, we spent a brief time at the Grand Canyon, and got to spend some time palling around with my sisters. The following are some observations from that trip.

The place we stayed in Sedona was very nice. High end...but they charge for internet. During our trip to Sedona and the trip home we stayed at Super 8, Springhill Suites, and Marriott Courtyard and every one of them offered free internet. Why is it that high end hotels and resorts all charge up to $10 a day for wifi?

Speaking of high end, my sisters stayed at a high end resort owned by the same company that owned our place. During their week in Sedona they had to change rooms 4 times. Dirty furniture, leaky roof, plugged toilet, you name it. Just goes to show you that in some cases price has very little to do with pleasant accomodations.

It rained every day we were in Sedona mostly in the late afternoon or evening. It kept the temperatures very pleasant but totally ruined my plans for night shots. I thought the monsoon season was over!

The weather for Erin and Sean's wedding was marvelous. Granted, it rained like crazy about 2 hours after the ceremony but we were inside at the reception dinner and dance by then so no harm, no foul.

As for the wedding, it was very special. Erin was a beautiful bride, the ceremony was great, and a good time was had by all. Erin did all the planning and everything she did was perfect. I'm very proud of my little girl.

While in Sedona we toook a day trip to the Grand Canyon. On the highway between Flagstaff and Tusayn we ran through a severe thunderstorm and some hail. The road got slick and the car in front of us did a couple of 360's but didn't hit the ditch. A few hundred yards farther down the road we came a cross a vehicle that wasn't so lucky. I repeat, isn't monsoon season supposed to be over?

I've been wanting to visit Tombstone and got a chance on this trip. To say the least I was underwhelmed and disappointed. Not only were all the attractions walled in and charging admission. Basically, anything you want to do or see in Tombstone costs a minimum of $6 ($10 if you stay for the gunfight) I don't know what I was expecting but this certainly wasn't it.

There are a lot of areas along the highways in Arizona and New Mexico that I would like to photograph. It just requires being in the right place at the right time, not driving past during the middle of the day. Always have a reason to make another trip.

By my count there are 12 roundabouts between Oak Creek where the wedding was held, and our condo in West Sedona. I always thought the Pilgrims came here to escape European oppression. Now we're trying to copy their traffic systems? Just pay the extra money and install traffic lights for crying out loud.

Sedona Golf Resort did a great job on the wedding. The location was perfect, the food was fantastic, and everything went off without a hitch. Given the mad cash I dropped on this wedding, wouldn't you think they could show a brother some love and comp greens fees for me? They were willing to comp the groom but not the father of the bride. Unbelievable...he didn't pay them a cent!

You would think that by September the sun would have warmed up the waters at Slide Rock State Park but no....it was freakin cold! And I really need to lose some weight. After sliding down the chutes a couple times I was sitting in the sun warming up and everyone wanted to roll me back into the water. They were all shouting "Free Willy!"

All in all, it was a wonderful trip. Erin and Sean had a beautiful wedding, we got to spend some time with friends and family, and I was able to spend some time in one of my favorite areas. Definitely a success.

The Ultimate Photo Road Trip (Fall)

2011-09-17T19:41:00.000-07:00

I've just returned home after 12 days out of town. Essentially it was a 2 day trip followed by a weekend wedding of my daughter, followed by a week of hanging out with family and friends in Sedona, AZ, then the trip home via the southern route. (Phoenix to Tombstone to Albuquerque to Denver) Nothing out of the ordinary except that our route took me through some areas I'd never seen before. Over and over again I found myself saying "I need to come back and photograph that..." which started my mind working and thus, the Ultimate Photo Road Trip (Fall version) Keep in mind, this trip would require quite a lot of time so it may not occur for a year or two but here's how it goes.

Sometime in late September:

Parker to Walsenburg, CO. Spend a night in Walsenburg and head down the Highway of Legends from LaVeta to Trinidad, CO. I've driven over Cuchara Pass before and the display of changing aspens can in some years rival Kebler Pass near Crested Butte. Spend a sunrise and mid-morning shooting aspens before heading down to Trinidad and back onto I-25.

Trinidad, CO to Santa Fe, NM: Driving north on I-25 today I was impressed by the poofy white clouds and the patterns they make on the prairies just north of Las Vegas, NM. Given the right conditions and spending some time to find a suitable foreground subject, this could make a powerful image. On to Santa Fe and spend a night here. Great food and wonderful galleries to kill some time.

Santa Fe, NM to ????: Here is the first option. From Santa Fe head south either straight down I-25 to Socorro, NM for a sunset and sunrise at Bosque Del Apache or take Hwy 285 south to Alamagordo, NM and spend a sunset and sunrise at White Sands. I'm not sure if it's too early in the year for cranes to be at Bosque and currently my longest lens is a 70-200mm so I'd probably opt for White Sands. Of course there's the possibility of driving to Bosque after the sunset at White Sands. Time to choose!

Alamagordo, NM to Dragoon Mountains, AZ: Whether it's Bosque or White Sands, after shooting the sunrise I'd head south and hit I-10 somewhere around Las Cruces, NM. For the most part this is a pretty boring drive heading west into AZ but there are some areas where the right sky and clouds might make an interesting image looking across the basins. Mostly I'd be concerned with getting to the Dragoons by late afternoon. When we drove through there a few days ago the rock formations near I-10 would be amazing in the right light. Head on into Benson, AZ for the night.

Benson AZ to Tombstone to Tucson, AZ: We spent some time in Tombstone but due to a late start from Phoenix and hotel reservations in Albuquerque we didn't have nearly enough time to spend there. I'd like to spend at least 3 or 4 hours in Tombstone but that's another blog for another time. On to Tucson for late afternoon shooting of San Xavier del Bac mission in Tucson and sunset at Saguaro National Park. From here it's a short drive to Erin and Sean's house in Queen Creek to spend the night.

Phoenix to Tuba City, AZ: No real sunrise shoot in mind here so have a leisurely breakfast with the kids before heading north towards Flagstaff and on to Tuba City. From Tuba it's not too far to Coal Mine Canyon which I've seen images of from other shooters and would like to see for myself. Then there's another secret location near Marble Canyon that requires a campout to appreciate sunset and sunrise light.

Marble Canyon, AZ to Farmington, NM: Here's another choice depending on how the mood hits me. Leave the Marble Canyon area and head to Page, AZ for some time in Antelope Canyon. I haven't been there in a few years and could use some new digital files from Lower Antelope. From there head to Kayenta and make a decision: north to Monument Valley or southeast to Farmington and Bisti Badlands. I've been to MV several times and while it's definitely not old hat, this time I'm headed for Bisti. Hopefully I'll get there in time to hike into the Badlands for sunset. Definitely I'll spend a sunrise there.

Farmington, NM to ???: Here's another tricky spot and this one depends on the weather. If there's snow or the possibility of it I'm headed southeast towards Taos. I've never driven that route and have no idea of the photographic possibilities but I'm sure it would be wonderful. If we have nice weather I'm going up through the San Juans for more changing aspens. Durango to Silverton, Dallas Divide, then over Kebler Pass to Crested Butte. This will most likely be my last night on the road as it's a short 4 hour drive home from CB.

So there you have it. 10 nights, probably 2000 miles or more, and numerous photo possibilities. If I were to take this trip I'd probably play tourist or spend an extra night or two at Erin and Sean's making it into a 14 day trip. What do you think? What's your Ultimate photo road trip?

Breakfast Follies

2011-09-07T21:17:00.000-07:00

Okay, I admit 2 things about this blog. First, this image has nothing to do with the blog...I just like it. Second and more importantly, I am blatantly stealing this idea from a blog written by Todd "Cloudman" Caudle, one of the best Nature Photographers around. I read a similar entry on his blog and it made me laugh out loud so I feel compelled to relate my similar experience.

Once in a while, probably way too often, I stop in at Jack in the Box near my home to pick up breakfast. It's the same time of day, about 6:30 am and I always order the same things: Grilled Breakfast Sandwich and a medium Diet Dr. Pepper. Always the same, and I always order it the same way. Problem is, the folks at Jack's place are tasked with selling up. And the conversation usually goes like this:

JITB: Welcome to Jack In the Box..my name is (fill in the blank), would you like to try our Jumbo Breakfast Platter (this changes based on what new stuff they have on the menu) today?

Me: No thank you. I'd like a Grilled Breakfast Sandwich and a medium Diet Dr Pepper and that's all.

JITB: Would you like to add hash browns and make that a meal?

Me: No thank you. Grilled Breakfast Sandwich and medium Diet Dr Pepper and that's all.

JITB: Do I have your order correct on the screen?

Me: Yes.

Then I pull around to the window to pay and get my stuff.

JITB: How has your visit been today?

Me: Just fine thanks.

That's how it usually goes. Sometimes, though, I have a tendency to be a bit grumpy in the morning and there's a whole new dynamic. After the same conversation every time I go in there, one day I was a bit cranky.

JITB: Welcome to Jack in the Box, my name is (fill in the blank) would you like to try our new Uber Hyper Mega Breakfast Platter today?

Me: No thank you, I'd like a Grilled Breakfast Sandwich and a medium Diet Dr Pepper and THAT'S ALL!

JITB: Would you like to add hash browns and make that a meal?

Me: No...when I say That's all, it means that's all...I don't want hash browns. If I wanted hash browns I'd order the #7 meal.

JITB: Is your order correct on the screen?

Me: No...I said DIET Dr Pepper, not Dr Pepper.

JITB: Is your order correct on the screen now?

Me: Yes, thank you.

I pull around to the window to get my food.

JITB: How has your visit been today?

Me: I'm a little tired of 20 questions and when I order and say "That's All" I mean that's all. Can I just get my order and move on?

Yes, I am quite aware that I'm a jerk sometimes and this is one of those times. But sometimes I wonder what part of "That's All" they have problems with? Maybe it's just me.

Thanks Todd, for the laughs and the inspiration.

Just Cloning Around

2011-08-14T14:11:00.000-07:00

A friend recently asked me what I use in my Digital Darkrooom and when I started listing all the software I was a bit overwhelmed. Adobe Lightroom, Adobe Photoshop Elements, Nik SilverEfex, Nik HDR Pro...those are the software products I've purchased. I've also tried several other demo products such as Helicon Focus, Topaz Adjust, and others too numerous to mention. To say the least, it's a bit intimidating to think of having to learn all this stuff.

It's tempered, though, by my minimalist approach to software. I don't do a lot of "gee whiz" alteration of my images, preferring to stick mainly to techniques similar to what I used to do in a chemical darkroom. Of course I try to get things as nearly perfect in the camera as I can. I use the histograms for exposure control and I'm not yet really proficient with the gradient filter feature in Lightroom so I carry filters with me to even out the exposure. This may change once I get more acquainted with HDR Pro but that remains to be seen. Once I get an image file in the computer I limit myself to cropping, exposure control, contrast control, a bit of color control, and selective burning and dodging. I shoot all my images in RAW format so there is also some sharpening involved. Mostly, though, I don't do a lot of unusual stuff with software...yet.

About a year ago I posted a blog entry about photographers who choose to use software to add elements to their images. (http://wcbeanphoto.blogspot.com/2010/08/when-icons-have-feet-of-clay.html) and how I feel about that. If you're adding penguins or cloning zebras, if you're placing a full moon inside Delicate Arch, if you're adding an element that wasn't there I feel you've falsified your image and it ceases to be a photograph. I don't like it and I'll never do it.

When I was listing the software, though, I started thinking about why I have different processing programs. Well, here's the story:

Adobe Lightroom...this is my primary software of choice. I use LR for probably 90% of my digital darkroom processing. It's also got a really nice cataloging feature that lets me sort in several different modes and makes it easy to add my watermark to images. I make all my exposure and contrast corrections in LR and also work to manipulate the color as extensively as needed. If I buy a newer printer and they add a clone tool I would have no need for Photoshop Elements.

Nik SilverEfex Pro...This is a wonderful tool for converting color images to B&W files. The amount of control you have over the image is much greater than the conversion tools in Lightroom or Photoshop. I love this tool!

Nik HDR Pro...I'm new to this tool but I think it's going to be a really useful element in my digital workflow. It's used primarily to reduce the difference in exposure from foreground to background. Many times the sky is much brighter than the foreground or main subject. If you expose for the sky the shadow areas turn black. If you expose for the shadows the sky turns white. HDR can balance those exposures and I'm looking forward to learning it. Just need to remind myself to avoid the cartoonish images you sometimes see when there is a heavy hand on the HDR controls.

Adobe Photoshop Elements...I don't use Elements so much anymore since I've gotten pretty adept at Lightroom. I use it for a couple of primary functions though. When burning and dodging is needed I find the burn/dodge tool in PSE to be a bit easier to use than the one in Lightroom. I also do all my printing from PSE. Lightroom has a really good print function but sometimes it has difficulty interfacing with my old Epson 1280 printer. Even when all the LR settings are correct it sometimes does crazy things to the final print so I print everything from PSE.

But the main reason I keep using PSE is the clone tool. It's a tool used to make an area of an image look like an adjoining area of the image. I use it primarily to remove unwanted items from images. The images above of CoffeePot Rock near Sedona, AZ, are an example of how I use the clone tool. I think it works much better without the jet contrail in the bald blue sky. In the bottom image I have removed the contrail with PSE's Clone tool. And here lies a quandary. As upset as I get about photographers adding elements to their images, here I am talking about taking an element out of an image. Hypocritical? Maybe....I guess it depends on your point of view. Leave a comment and we'll discuss it.

Rollin', Rollin', Rollin'

2011-07-30T14:14:00.000-07:00

Got an old (or new) truck with no bedliner? Can't afford $500 or $600 for a drop-in or spray on bedliner? Sounds like me and my situation. When I bought this '92 Toyota truck to replace the '89 that was murdered in front of my house late one night, one of the things I liked about it was the fresh paint. At first glance, the bed was pristine, so much so that I almost didn't want to put anything in the back for fear of scratching it. But hey, it's a truck! You're supposed to haul stuff in it so I started looking for a bedliner. I searched Craigslist and Ebay but every time I found one that was close and inexpensive it was gone before I could get there. So I started shopping around for a spray on bedliner. I looked at Rhinoliner and similar products. They are really a lot cooler than the plastic drop in styles but pretty expensive. If this were a brand new truck I'd have no problem ponying up $600 for a Rhinoliner but this is a 27 year old vehicle.....so I kept searching.

One weekend I was watching Power Block tv and the guys on Trucks showed a kit that allows you to roll on your own bedliner. Same as Rhinoliner but it isn't sprayed. And the price was equitable! Not only that, I had some of the stuff at home. A couple years ago Chris took his Mother's Land Cruiser 4-wheeling and virtually destroyed the coating on her running boards. I thought I'd get some of the roll on bedliner stuff to replace the plastic cover that Chris had gashed and slashed. Never got around to putting it on so I had a full quart. Now to the web to get some tips and tricks.

Research done, I decided today is the day so I grabbed the orbital sander and started working. Here is a step by step guide:

First thing is to prep the surface. Rinse it with a hose to get off all the loose stuff and let it dry. Once it's dry you can start sanding. Keep in mind, you don't have to get down to bare metal, only to rough up the painted surface to give it some "tooth." If you don't prep the surface the product will peel off easily once it's dried. That's bad. Anyway, it took about 30 minutes with my little sander to rough up the entire surface of the bed. Surprise, surprise...my grey truck was once red!

Next, clean the surface. Directions recommend using Acetone or some such liquid but I was able to run my shop vac over the surface and eliminate the dust and particulate matter. This is a crucial step. You can't roll paint over a dusty surface. Once the surface is clean you can start painting.

Start in the corners with a brush. Once that's all covered you can start rolling the sides and wheel wells. I found a 3" roller to be ideal for this purpose. The smaller roller allowed me to get the grooves between the slats. Per the directions on the can it's best to put down one thin coat to begin then once it's dry, apply a second, thicker coat.

I said earlier it was around $600 for a sprayed on bedliner. Well, the roll on version cost me about $50 for materials and roughly 3 hours of my time. Now that I CAN afford.

Finally, here are some tips and tricks I learned:

1. Mask off the surfaces that aren't supposed to be rolled. This stuff gets everywhere you don't want it to.

2. Be sure you have enough material. Read the coverage chart on the can or online to figure out how much stuff you need then multiply by 3 or 4. The first can of stuff I used was by DupliColor and it indicated I should be able to cover my whole truck bed with 1 quart. Wrong Answer! I got started rolling and ran out of stuff about 1/2 way into the job. (Top photo) So, off to Lowes for more bedliner paint. Ultimately I ended up using 2 1/2 quarts total and have a good, even coating.

3. Use a roller cover made for rough surfaces. It will give a little more texture to the finished product than a smoother roller. And don't get the idea you can clean the rollers and brushes when you're done. This is some nasty stuff!

4. After it's dried stand back and admire your work....then if it's a hot summer day like today, use some of the $550 you saved to go to Coldstone or Maggie Moo's for ice cream!

So there you have it. Don't be afraid...it's quick, it's easy, and you'll save a lot of money. And don't forget the sense of accomplishment you get when you tackle something like this and get 'er done.

Suits me to a T(ie)

2011-07-02T17:32:00.000-07:00

Have you ever had a vision? No, I don't mean a peyote induced dream, I'm talking about where you're driving down the road or cleaning the garage or doing some other mundane activity and it hits you...the little man in your head starts screaming at you about something. I had a vision this afternoon, one that took me back to one of the more stressful days in my life.

It's been many years since my Dad passed away. When we got the call it was a complete shock. My Mom had been the one in poor health, the one that had been seeing doctors regularly so I figured she would be the first one to go. So when the call came that Dad had passed it was pretty devastating. I set about making preparations to attend the funeral. Packed some clothes, tossed my only dark suit in a bag and caught a plane to Oklahoma City. Fast forward to the day of the funeral...showered, shaved, time to put on my suit. Keep in mind, it had been a couple of years since I'd worn this suit. Well, the pants were a bit tight but after a minor struggle I was able to get the zipper up....and in doing so managed to rip the pants from waist to thigh. I think I came as close to a total meltdown that morning as I ever have. Fortunately there was a clothing store open in Holdenville and I was able to come up with a pair of slacks and a blazer that fit.

But what about the vision? Well, some of you may know that my daughter, Erin, is getting married in September. 9/10/11 to be specific. I've been a bit concerned that I might have to wear a tux but after much gnashing of teeth Erin said I could wear my dark suit with an off white shirt and a tie that is purple, black, and silver. Knowing it's been a couple of years since I last wore a suit (more on that later) I've been saying I need to try on the suit and see how much weight I need to lose to fit in it but haven't made it a priority...till today. I don't know what triggered it but there I was, driving to meet Heather and Judy to look at some patio furniture when the vision hit me. I saw in my mind's eye me standing there with a 12 inch rip in the front of my suit pants all those years ago and knew I needed to do this and do it NOW! When I got home I went immediately to the closet and pulled the suit out to try on the pants and....(drum roll please)....it's going to be fine. Granted, it needs to be cleaned, but the pants while snug, are in no danger of ripping. In fact, they fit pretty well. If I manage to drop a few pounds between now and the wedding I'll be fine. If not, I'll still be fine.

But what about the tie? I hate ties....if I could go the rest of my life without wearing a tie I would be okay with that. But there are, in fact, 4 reasons that I will wear a tie.

1. Someone is getting married.
2. Someone is getting buried.
3. A job interview.
4. A beautiful woman (My wife or one of my daughters) asks me to.

9/10/11 someone is getting married and my beautiful daughter, Erin, has asked me to. Done deal!

A Sunday Drive (On Saturday)

2011-06-14T19:32:00.000-07:00

My daily commute to work is 48 miles each way. Since I despise freeway traffic I always take the "old" highway 83 from Parker to Colorado Springs. It's a pleasant drive with enough curves and hills to keep your interest and along the way I see some great sights. With that in mind I headed out Saturday morning to photograph some things I see everyday on my drive. There were some pseudo wildflowers planted in the medians of some of the streets in Parker which would be nice at sunrise. And just a mile or so past Castlewood Canyon State Park one of the ranchers has some Longhorn steers that look awesome with a bit of backlight. Then there's the bison ranch a few more miles down the road and my ultimate destination, Paint Mines Interpretive Space near Calhan, east of Colorado Springs.

Well, the best laid plans.....when I got out of bed Saturday morning before sunrise the wind was blowing pretty hard so photographing flowers was out. Then I broke one of my photographic rules: "When traveling with the possibility of seeing wildlife alongside the road, keep the telephoto lens on the camera." I rolled up to see the Longhorns near the road but by the time I popped the hatch, got the camera out of the bag and attached the tele zoom, they had looked me over and decided to move off into the distance, presenting me with a grand view of their butts! Further down the road, the bison were about 1/2 mile off the road in the middle of the pasture so no shot there. Finally arriving at Paint mines, the wind was blowing even harder and it was after the 30 minute "magic" light so finding compositions with good lighting was pretty much impossible. Again, no shots.

One good thing came of my travels, though. I headed north out of Calhan to Kiowa and on the road there decided to head up Comanche Creek road to see if Prairie Wind Wildlife Refuge is still operational. I'd photographed all sorts of critters there back in the 90's but hadn't been there in nearly 15 years so I was pretty amazed that I remembered the route. Sure enough, the tigers were pacing their cages and there was a new lion enclosure. I didn't stop because they don't much like to have folks drop in unannounced, but I did take a trip down memory lane.

I stated a few months ago that I was going to post some essays from my original website and this is the perfect chance to bring one of them out of mothballs. Sit back, relax, and enjoy.

Every Picture Tells A Story, Don't it…

And mine are no exception. Take the Cougar series for example. I don't often have nightmares or dreams that wake me up in the night but when I do, they usually involve a cougar. We all have our phobias and that's mine. So when I was given the chance to photograph one of the cougars at the Prairie Wind Wildlife Refuge I gave it considerable thought before deciding to go for it.
The nights leading up to the weekend photo session were restless for the most part and as the time drew nearer I became more and more anxious. Was this thing going to eat me? Chew me beyond recognition? I'd seen deer and elk that were cougar kills and as an illustration of a cat's power and ability I've even seen a housecat kill a rabbit in one swift motion. The power per pound of these animals is awesome. It took all my will power and resolve to avoid picking up the phone and calling to cancel. But I was strong!

Saturday morning dawned clear and beautiful on the plains, the first rays of the sun lighting up the Front Range in my rear view mirror on the drive. That served to calm me a bit, but I was still more nervous than I'd been in a while. The orientation speech Michael gave did little to bolster my confidence. "Whatever you do don't run or show any signs of fear. These may be pets but they're still wild animals." That's code for "they will kill and eat you if you're not careful."

Okay, done with the speeches, tripods and lenses set up, film loaded, and my shooting site selected. The cat is released by one of Michael's assistants and comes over the hill about 100 yards away headed for Michael and the tidbits of meat he offers as incentive to behave. Right away I notice that the beast seems to be fixated on me. His eyes meet mine over the distance and I immediately look away. ("….don't make eye contact, they think it's a challenge.") The cat, Cheyenne, lopes up to me then walks in a slow circle around me giving me the once over. "Relax" Michael says, "he just likes your deodorant." (which by now has failed miserably)

Finally after 10 seconds which seemed like 10 minutes, the cat comes closer and drags his tongue up the side of my head then plops down to rest about 5 feet from my camera. I could have tugged his tail if I'd been so inclined. Check out the Critters portfolio and you'll see the results.

Stoopid Human Trick

2011-05-19T19:14:00.000-07:00

Will Rogers once said "Everything is funny...when it happens to someone else!" I often profess that while I'm not really a stupid person I frequently portray one in real life. To illustrate this, just about the time I start to think I'm pretty darn sharp, something happens to keep me humble. Listen up...

I can safely say that almost every photographer I know is a gearhead, myself included. As my friend Bret says, we "worship at the altar of Gear." One of my friends who shall remain nameless takes it to the extreme though. My wife often tries to get me to quit visiting or shooting with him because there's always some new toy he has to show me that I want to buy. In the past we've loaned each other lenses and stuff and it seems like every time we're swapping lenses he says "take this...how bout this...why not take this...." Sometimes I have to tell him to just QUIT! I got enough of your gear to add 10 pounds to my backpack!

A few days before my recent trip to Moab, Utah, I was at his house to retrieve my 70-200 f4 lens and he started running through the list. Seems he was between trips and pretty much everything in his bag was available. After running through his "catalogue" of lenses, one of the things that I found desirable was a plain jane 50mm lens, the same kind of lens you used to get in the old days when you bought a camera with a "normal" lens. In this day and age of high quality zoom lenses I haven't owned, much less used a 50mm lens for probably 2 decades but I wanted to do some night sky photography in the desert and the 50mm would be ideal. Light enough and fast enough for my purposes so I tossed it in my bag.

Well, the night sky photography didn't come to pass. It was really windy in the desert all the time I was there which stirred up enough dust to make the air seem hazy. It was great for sunrise shooting and amazing for sunset shots. Night sky....not so much. Besides, even if there were no dust and haze in the air the steady wind would have made a 30 second exposure impossible even with a solid tripod. I did manage capture a few images with the 50mm one afternoon though and it was kinda fun. I had to actually act like a photographer and move closer or further from the subject to frame the image properly. Also, the lens is light, easy to use, and scary sharp! Check the image with this blog for proof of that. Ultimately, I kind of like this little lens and here is where the stupid human trick comes in.

Arriving at the decision to acquire a 50mm of my very own (I still want to do some night sky shooting) I started haunting Craigslist when I got home from Moab. Sadly, there were no 50mm Canon AF lenses to be had. Lots of zooms but no 50's. On to Ebay...tons of 50mm Canon lenses. I narrowed my search by selecting Canon, Autofocus, Digital, and Prime as lens categories. Scrolling through the listings I came across a 50mm f1.8 that was ending soon and had a pretty low bid on it so I decided to place my own bid, making it low enough so if someone outbid me it wouldn't be a problem. To my surprise, the next morning I had an e-mail telling me I won the thing. I promptly went to Ebay and arranged payment via PayPal and waited for my new toy to arrive.

It came today and like a kid on Christmas, I had to open it before even taking my jacket off when I walked in the door and that's when my heart sank. The lens I received is an older Canon FD (manual focus) mount lens. There isn't enough hot glue and duct tape on the planet to make this thing fit on my autofocus EOS mount cameras! You can imagine my outrage...someone had listed this lens as AF and sold it to me under false pretenses! I fired up the computer and brought up the lens listing and sure enough, there in the information section of the listing it said....FD mount! Duh me....it was right there and I missed it. I operated on the assumption that since I narrowed my search criteria it had to be an AF lens so I didn't double check the fine print. I now have a 50mm Canon lens but there is no way it will work on my camera. It might as well be a paperweight. Unbelievable...

I often tell my kids something that my Daddy told me a long time ago when I was a little bitty baby boy...he said "Son, if something appears to be too good to be true, it probably is. I've been shopping 50mm lenses for a while and the going price for an AF 50mm f1.8 seems to be around $100 so what ever made me think I was going to get one in pristine condition for $40? If it seems too good to be true........ Anyone out there got a manual focus Canon camera and need a 50mm lens?

Oh Those Goofy Photographers

2011-05-10T20:03:00.000-07:00

It's no secret, as much as I despise crowds I also derive great enjoyment from observing the Human Condition. And whenever you get a group of people together it's almost a certainty that there will be some goofy things going on. The kind of goofy things that make you go "Hmmmmmmm..." Sadly, photographers are no exception.

Don't get me wrong, the group of Rocky Mountain Nature Photographers I spent Saturday with is a great group of folks. I enjoyed myself more than I have on a photo trip in a long time and I didn't observe anything strange though I'm sure there are as many eccentrics in that group as the general population with me leading the way. For the time I was around them, all parties were well behaved and rational.

I can't say the same about every photographer I encountered this weekend though, especially some of the ones I saw at Delicate Arch. There were some really "interesting" folks both on the trail and at the Arch and I spent time alternating between chuckling and just shaking my head.

As I stated in a previous blog I knew the opportunity to make world class images of Delicate Arch wasn't going to happen on Sunday afternoon. It was overcast and really windy so the light would be flat and there would be little or no chance to steady a camera in the gale force winds. With this in mind I left the backpack and big tripod in the car and started up the trail with my G10 in it's belt pouch and carrying my little Induro tripod. The light was going to be flat and ugly (witness the image above) so there was no logical reason to drag 25 pounds of gear up 1 1/2 miles of slickrock. Besides, the G10 is a great little camera and capable of producing some fantastic images so I was covered in the event of a miracle.

Going up the trail I saw all the expected things. Tourists with movie cameras running ahead of their group then stopping to film them coming up the trail. There were the usual array of people both young and old photographing the scenery with their smart phones. And one older gentleman who had an array of gear like I've never seen. He had a large photo backpack on his back with a camelback water bladder strapped to one side of it. On the other side he had a HUGE tripod and massive ballhead which together probably weighed close to 12 or 15 pounds. In front he had a large padded lens case capable of holding a camera with a large telephoto lens and since I saw a trunk case for a 300mm lens in the back of his truck I have to assume he was toting that lens in the big case. Though I don't know what he had in his backpack, with the water, the big lens, mongo tripod, and everything else I bet he had 35 or 40 pounds of gear strapped on his torso. To carry that much gear up a moderately difficult trail on a day when it's going to be impossible to make a pro quality image is something that baffles me. God bless you, brother. I'm glad it was you toting the stuff and not me.

The strangest thing about him, though, is that he carried that bigass tripod all the way up the hill and never opened it up. I was there for an hour or more and I never once saw him shoot something that wasn't handheld, a lot of it with a big heavy lens, probably an 80-200 f2.8. He may have been shooting wide open to increase his shutter speeds but in the low light conditions with the wind blowing at gale force, there is no possible way his images could have been sharp. Things that make you go "Hmmmmmmmm..."

During my time at Delicate Arch I saw the usual suspects hiking down to have their picture taken standing under the arch and there was even one guy laying on his back with his camera pointing up at the arch. The first and only other time I was at Delicate Arch, any time someone walked near the arch they were met with a chorus of "Get out of there...you're spoiling my shot" from the photographers up on the rim. This time, though, we all just looked at each other and grinned. What the heck...the folks down there under the Arch paid their $10 bucks just like I did and most of them are tourists from another country. They most likely will never see this site again so let em get their pictures to show the friends when they get back wherever home is.

But by far the oddest duck of the day was a young man with a shiny new Lowe Pro backpack chock full of camera gear. There I was, holding onto my tripod mounted G10 to avoid having it blown off the hill (have I mentioned the wind was blowing pretty hard?) when suddenly I hear someone fire off 9 frames with the drive on their camera on full auto Shake and Bake mode. 9 frames in about 2 seconds. Having done that before I assumed that he had merely forgotten to take his camera off motor drive after shooting some wildlife but NO! He moved a few steps to the right and did the same thing. Again, handheld camera and big lens. At this point I draw the conclusion that he's bracketing exposures which is something that I don't usually do but I know a lot of photographers that bracket everything. But wait...it gets better! A few minutes later the same young man hops up on a ledge fully exposed to the wind (I hate being redundant but I swear, it was probably blowing 40 mph gusting to 50 or 60mph) and triggers his motor drive again. This time, though, he turns at the waist, panning about 140 degrees from left to right. Shooting frames for a panorama?

Keep in mind, some of the photographers I hang out with are gearheads of the highest order. My friend Rich paid big bucks for a special head called Nodal Ninja that allows you to precisely calibrate multiple exposures for stitching together as a panorama. One of the photographers I was with on Saturday had a special device built to allow her to shoot time lapse panoramic images. Now here this goof is trying to be his own panoramic head when you can see him swaying in the wind. There is absolutely no way he could have possibly gotten sharp images that way. Combine the wind with the movement of the camera while he was twisting his body and it's a physical impossibility. I was tempted to ask him what he was doing but I couldn't figure out a way to ask that wouldn't sound like I was patronizing him or being condescending. Sure made me go "Hmmmm..." though.

What's your goofiest photography trick? You show me yours and I'll show you mine! Leave a comment and lets have some fun.

A New Beginning (and a new bucket)

2011-05-08T22:10:00.000-07:00

It was a dark and stormy.....Nah, that one's been taken.
It was the best of times, it was the worst....Nah, that one's taken too. Wait...I've got it! Try this one...

It was windy and overcast when I started up the trail to Delicate Arch. Yeah! That's it! A great new beginning. And a very incongruous statement for a couple of different reasons. First, the clouds were building in the west and I knew there was not going to be epic light on the arch. Normally I would have bagged it and headed back to the hot tub at the hotel.

Second, I have been to Delicate Arch before. I knew it was 1 1/2 miles uphill to get there and it was going to be a tough hike for me. I knew because I'd had tremendous trouble with the Klondike Bluffs trail the day before. The first pitch of that trail was more difficult than the Delicate Arch trail. It was very steep and involved a lot of steps up, not just going uphill over slickrock. By the time I got to the first ridge I was gasping for breath, my knees and thighs were aching, and I was probably 1/4 mile behind Bret and Scott in the first 10 minutes. I saw the trail start downhill and knew I could probably make it down there but if I did someone would end up carrying my happy butt out of there cause I'd never make it back up. Too many cheeseburgers, circus animal frosted cookies, and nachos finally caught up with me.

I stayed on the ridge and found some pretty decent images so all was not lost. After making my way down the hill in the semi darkness after sunset I was at the trailhead talking to a few others in the group of RMNP folks that had come to Moab for the weekend. That's when my new friend/photographer buddy Tim uttered the most prophetic statement I've heard in a long time. We were talking about another get together in Moab next spring and discussing the trouble we'd had keeping up with the others going up the hill and he said "I look at this as a beginning...when we get back here next year I'm going to be in shape to keep up and this is the beginning of that process." Thank you, Tim, for shining the light into my brain.

I came to Moab this weekend ostensibly to hang out with friends and create some great new images and both of those things happened. But there was a disturbance in the force...something else occupying my thoughts. You see, 10 days ago I was diagnosed with prostate cancer. Don't be alarmed...my Urologist has assured me that this cancer won't kill me. I may die with prostate cancer but I won't die OF prostate cancer. Nevertheless, the "C" word is a sobering thing and I came here to spend some time alone after all the other photographers headed home Sunday morning. I spent the day deep in thought, trying to decide what to do for the rest of the day and, more importantly, the rest of my life.

While heading back to Moab from Onion Creek I started thinking about what Tim had said and as if someone had turned on a light bulb in my brain I had The Epiphany! Driving down the Colorado River towards Moab I came across some kayakers taking turns surfing a wave in the river and they were having such a grand time I figured that Kayaking should be added to my new bucket list. It was lunch time so I stopped to watch them while I ate and that's when it hit me...this disease isn't an end to anything...it's a beginning to the rest of my life. Then the revised bucket list and watershed events in my life started to bombard my senses. Here's what I came up with.
First, the critical events of this year:

1. In November I turn 60. That's 6/10's of a century! Damn, no wonder I'm starting to fall apart. My cardio vascular capacity is pathetic. My muscle tone is deplorable. In short, I'm a physical mess.

2. My eldest child is getting married in September. It's going to be a glorious event and I'm really looking forward to it.

3. I've made it to the 10th year of employment with my current employer and got that extra week of vacation! Whooooo hoooooo

4. Yes, I do have prostate cancer and something needs to be done. I have some decisions to make

So with those things in mind, I'm going to have to come up with a new bucket list. I'll let you know when it's ready for release but rest assured, #1 and #2 will be to get this cancer cured and get in better shape. And that's what made me decide to make the trip to Delicate Arch despite knowing how much difficulty I was going to have. I made it to the top and it was a lung busting bitch. But I had to do this you see. This is the New Beginning.

Photographers: They say (and do) the funniest things

2011-04-04T20:36:00.000-07:00

This image doesn't have a lot to do with the following blog entry but it's one of my favorites and I haven't yet taken an African safari so my stock of elephant photos is sadly lacking. But I have seen and read some things today that bother me a little bit and I always like to share so here goes.

There's a lot of hoopla going around the web right now about GoDaddy CEO Bob Parsons posting a video of him shooting an elephant. Of course the folks at PETA have chimed in and some other animal rights groups are suitably outraged and I suppose that's all well and good. Every adult is entitled to their own opinion and if it is different than mine it doesn't really matter. I don't expect to agree with everyone nor do I get distraught when everyone doesn't agree with me.

For the record, I couldn't care less about Mr. Parsons shooting an elephant. If he has the money and it's not illegal, more power to him. Last I heard, elephants weren't on any one's endangered species list. Furthermore, there is evidence that the elephant in question was doing a great deal of damage to a small village's crops but I'm not here to debate that. You can find all the information and more by doing a google search and form your own opinion. I promise I won't ridicule you or respect you less regardless of what that opinion is.

What I saw today that raised my eyebrow was the reaction from the photographic community of which I consider myself a member. The outrage and vitriol was far beyond what I'd expected to see. One of the photographic bulletin boards I watch from time to time had a thread that, unless I miss my guess, will soon have photographers calling for Mr. Parsons to be drawn and quartered. I'm not surprised that there was some reaction, photographers are some pretty sensitive folks for the most part. I was, however, a bit stunned at first by the vehemence of the opinions. Then I thought about some of the photographic sensitivity I've experienced in the past and I got a big bite of the reality sandwich. There are 2 incidents that I've been involved with in the past that should have tempered my surprise...listen and learn.

I mentioned earlier that I watch some photographic bulletin boards online. One of the boards, Nature Photographers Network, was a source for my first experience with the depth of feeling that some photographers have for the environment. One of the threads was bemoaning the loss of Glen Canyon which occurred in the 1960's when the Glen Canyon dam was built on the Colorado River creating Lake Powell. I was just back from a houseboat trip to Lake Powell which might not have been my favorite vacation ever but is certainly top 3, and being new to the game of online bulletin boards I chimed in with my thoughts that Lake Powell was truly the Jewel of the Desert and a wonderful resource. I added that though I would love to have seen Glen Canyon before the dam, I really felt the resulting lake is a beautiful and wondrous place. I was immediately assailed by one of the photographers on the board who dismissed my knowledge, credibility, and even my humanity for espousing such an opinion. By stating that I enjoyed the lake I had established my credentials as a cretin of the first order. I conducted a private e-mail exchange with the other photographer and after we both expressed our views in a much more civil manner we agreed that we will always disagree on this matter and moved on. To this day his images and soulful essays are an inspiration to me and someday I hope I'll have the chance to buy him a cold adult beverage and discuss photography.

The second time was much more amusing because I didn't start the fireworks but was around to witness the effects of some simple differences in philosophies. A few years ago I was at a photo seminar put on by Outdoor Photographer magazine here in Denver. The format was to bring in 2 prominent photographers to give presentations of their work over the course of a weekend. The first day of the seminar was conducted by David Stoecklein. David is a wonderful photographer and if you have ever eaten at a Black Angus Steak House you've seen his work. He is famous primarily for his images of horses and cowboys but he's also a very successful commercial photographer and part of his presentation was centered around advertising photography and some of the tricks of the trade of a working commercial shooter.

Keep in mind, there were between 100 and 150 people attending this seminar, all lured there in the hopes of learning the magic behind David's horse images and make no mistake, there was plenty of that to go around. But he also spent some time before the lunch break talking about how he had created some of the advertising images in his portfolio. When he came to an image he'd shot for Jeep things began to get interesting. It was an image of a Jeep Grand Cherokee sitting on top of a seemingly impossible to climb mountaintop. In his narrative describing the image he disclosed that (paraphrasing) "...we had to go up and cut down about 6 trees so the helicopter could set the Jeep down on top of the hill..." With that disclosure there was an almost audible gasp from the audience. Six trees destroyed? A helicopter to put the Jeep in place? To a group of self described Nature Photographers this was akin to blasphemy. And the amusing part? After the lunch break, a meeting room that had been nearly filled to capacity before David's unfortunate utterance was half empty for the afternoon session.

Yep, photographers are a sensitive bunch. I shouldn't have been surprised.

Beisbol been berry berry good to me

2011-03-23T19:15:00.000-07:00

There's a scene in the movie City Slickers where the 3 main characters are discussing their best day ever. Billy Crystal's character describes his first experience attending a ballgame at Yankee Stadium with his father. He talks about walking out of the tunnel and seeing the grass so green it nearly blinds you, the smell of cigar smoke, and how good the hot dogs tasted. I've never been to a game at Yankee Stadium but I can relate to those feelings.

When I was a young Bean Sprout, probably 9 or 10 years old, I can't remember exactly, my Dad loaded the family in the car and headed north to Kansas City where the Athletics were hosting the Yankees for a weekend series. I know, I know, the A's are in Oakland now but they were originally in Kansas City. I remember that we dropped my Mom and sisters off in downtown KC to do some shopping while Dad and I went to the game. As nearly as I can recall it was very similar to the scene described by Billy Crystal. What I do remember is that Mickey hit one out, Yogi hit one out, and it was the grandest sports experience of my young life. I'd become a Yankees fan at a very early age at the insistence of Grandma Suzie who was a rabid baseball fan and I guess it rubbed off. We were Yankee fans because of Mickey Mantle who was from Oklahoma as were my parents and Grandma. I had no choice. I'm still a Yankee fan, mostly because there are no other American League teams that strike my fancy and if I ever cheered for another AL team Grandma would be spinning in her grave.

But I live in Colorado now and Colorado has the Rockies. It's Spring Training time, 9 days till Opening Day, and I'm starting to get that old tingle. In March, every team is a contender for the pennant, there are no losers and hope springs eternal. Tulo and Cargo have both been signed to long term contracts, Ubaldo has 3 years left on his contract, and Todd Terrific appears to be back in form so those of us in Rockies land are very optimistic. It's going to be a good year at Coors Field and before too long I'll be jumping on the Light Rail to Union Station then walking the 3 blocks to the ballpark. When I walk up the stairs and onto the concourse in the left field corner the grass will be so green it will nearly blind me. There won't be any cigar smoke but I'll definitely be assailed by the smells of cheese steak sammies, popcorn, roasted peanuts, and the hot dogs will taste better than a $25 steak. With any luck I'll be surrounded by good friends and we'll have good conversation during the game. I missed Spring Training this year but when I hear the crack of the bat and see Cargo park one in the second deck in right field, it won't matter.

Is it too early to buy tickets for a Rockies/Yankees World Series? PLAY BALL!

A Shot in the Dark

2011-03-10T21:07:00.000-08:00

It's no secret, I'm a research junkie. When I'm headed to a new location I spend countless hours online looking at Google Earth and Bing Maps. I look at every image I can find of the place where I'm headed. Usually I know what sort of conditions and subject matter I'll find before I get there and I'm rarely, if ever, surprised by what I find. So how is it that this, one of my favorite images, came from a location I had never scouted, never researched, and never seen? Pure Unadulterated Dumb luck! Settle in and I'll explain.

This is an image of what I call "The Other Bear Lake." Pretty much every photographer in Colorado knows about Bear Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park and there are always plenty of images cruising around the web of that Bear Lake. But this is a different Bear Lake. Yes, it's in Colorado but about 150 miles south of RMNP. It's off the Highway of Legends between the town of Cuchara and Cuchara Pass.

When Heather started college at Eastern New Mexico University in Roswell, we spent a lot of time traveling between Parker and Roswell. In August of her second year, after dropping her off for the school year, Judy and I headed home and spent a night in Taos along the way. We headed north out of Taos and came into Colorado via the San Luis Valley then across LaVeta Pass to Walsenburg where we hit I-25. Along the way I noticed some large stands of aspens near the summit of LaVeta Pass and after a few years of going to Crested Butte every September to photograph the changing aspens I thought it might be time for a change. I made a mental note that this area might be a nice change and a few weeks later when it was aspen time I made the decision to head south instead of west.

The extent of my research was the trip over LaVeta Pass and a few minutes online to book a cheap motel on the outskirts of Walsenburg. I packed my gear and left work Friday night headed south for the 2 hour drive to Walsenburg. It was dark when I got to the hotel and dark in the morning when I left for LaVeta Pass and some of the aspen groves I'd seen weeks before. And that's where the evil Bill took over.

I don't know what I was thinking. I have no rational explanation for it and probably never will. My plan was to head up LaVeta Pass and spend some time shooting in one of the huge groves of aspens but when I got to the summit of the pass the truck just kept on going as if it had a mind of it's own. Over LaVeta Pass, turn south at the town of LaVeta, and keep going south through the small town of Cuchara. A couple of miles south of Cuchara I saw a sign pointing up a dirt road that said Bear Lake 4 miles. At that point the truck made a quick right turn and I was off to Bear Lake.

Now keep in mind, it was still as dark as the inside of a coal bin at midnight. The only things I could see were trees and bushes illuminated by my headlights but I kept on driving, undaunted, towards Bear Lake. All the time the good Bill and the evil Bill were arguing: "Why didn't you stop on the pass, moron? At least we know there are aspens there." "Shut up and drive...where's your sense of adventure?" "Yeah, but there may not even be aspens up here...all I see are pine and spruce trees." "Show some backbone and drive...if it doesn't work out we can go to LaVeta Pass for sunset...nobody likes a whiner!"

On we went...and about 3 miles up the road a strange thing happened: the pines and spruces gave way to aspens. Old growth aspens! This might actually be okay. When I finally arrived at the parking area for Bear Lake the eastern sky was just starting lighten as it does in the 30 or 45 minutes before dawn. I could vaguely make out the surface of the lake down the hill from where I was parked. Then reality set in. I had no idea if there would be any decent compositions, no clue if there were any aspens around the lake, and the cloud bank I could barely make out near the horizon was probably going to block any sunlight and make dawn a dreary boring thing. I berated myself for breaking tradition and flying blind into this area and feeling pretty down I grabbed my tripod and backpack and headed for the lake shore. I was here, there was no time to make it back to LaVeta Pass before sunrise, so I might as well take my lemons and make some lemonade. What the heck...if the light is grey and flat I can shoot some intimate landscapes in the forest.

The rest is history. I got my camera and lens on the tripod, walked a few yards up and down the shoreline to find a suitable composition, and started thinking about finding some colorful leaves to photograph when this fiasco was over. And then the magic happened.....the cloud bank started to break up into mini clouds and the sun started tinging the edges of the clouds with pink. The slight breeze that had been rippling the surface of the lake stopped. Everything was dead calm and the sky exploded with color. Amazing! And the image at the top of this blog is the result. A case of pure dumb luck putting me in the right place at the right time.

I spent the next 3 or 4 hours shooting and came away with one of the most successful aspen shoots I've had in years. Was I lucky? You bet your behind I was...but I'll take luck like this any day.

Every Picture is a Jelly Donut

2011-03-05T05:33:00.000-08:00

Pardon my poetic license with the title of an old Rod Stewart song (Every Picture Tells a Story, Don't It?) but we all change lyrics from time to time in order to make them fit the situation. In this case, though, I'm pretty sure the picture doesn't tell it all.

What you need to know is that the truck in the picture was traveling from right to left when the driver lost control. The vehicle left the roadway, crashed through the guardrail , hit the culvert, flipped end over end, and came to rest facing in the opposite direction. The good news is that the 22 year old driver and his 18 year old passenger walked away with minor bruises and abrasions. (seat belts really do work!)

First thought is "Holy crap! What a terrible wreck!" followed by relief that the occupants of the vehicle were okay. But as Paul Harvey says: "And now...the rest of the story!"

Special thanks to my friend Amie Isban for e-mailing this to me and as she said:

If God isn't done with you, He isn't done with you.

If only they knew...

2011-02-28T18:48:00.000-08:00

There is a group of people out there that I call The Oblivions. You've seen them...at the grocery store they are the ones that stop their carts in the middle of the aisle and start reading labels. Nobody can get around them so you're left with being rude or waiting. They'll stand in a doorway during a conversation and be totally unaware of anyone trying to go through the door. At the lunch counter they will have a conversation with the cashier while everyone behind them is trying to get their food and eat it within the 30 minutes allotted for lunch.

I don't think they mean any harm. I don't think they're even aware of what they're doing but that doesn't stop them. Anyway, in the spirit of revisiting old blogs and essays, here is an essay I posted shortly after our Alaska cruise in 2005. Enjoy...

The Narcissistic Fog of Oblivion

Okay, I'll admit it. I'm not always the most considerate, most rational, kindest person you've ever met. In fact, I can sometimes be a bit recalcitrant given the proper set of circumstances. But though I've recently come to be pretty comfortable with my own degree of benevolence towards my fellow man, I saw some things on our Alaska Cruise that really showed how rude and insensitive people can be. And the sad part is I don't think they even realize it.
It all started at the Vancouver airport in British Columbia and let me say that I don't blame the Canadians or any other group of people specifically. For those of you that have never flown in or out of Vancouver, it's a lovely airport. Almost on a par esthetically with our airport in Denver. And it's pretty well laid out. You come off the plane and follow the signs, which are clearly labeled, to your destination, which, in our case, was Customs. Once through customs you go to the baggage carousels to get your bags and that's when the problems begin. Vancouver is a bit smaller than DIA so there are only about 4 baggage areas which is not a problem in and of itself but to exit the area there is only 1 door. All the people from all the baggage carousels are trying to get out one skinny little door at the same time. One of the most disastrous bottlenecks I've ever seen.

Logic and common sense would dictate that if folks apply the ski lift line etiquette we may have a bit of a wait but everyone will get out quicker. But like a wise man once said, "Common sense is perhaps the least common of all commodities." Things went okay for a minute or two but when we got within 50 feet of the door, chaos took over. One would think that an extra measure of politeness would assert itself but suddenly it was every man for himself. Several times I had to excuse myself and crowd in front of someone in order to keep contact with Judy. It was madness! My first exposure in a long time to the game of Chicken. We were calm though, knowing we didn't have anywhere to go, and when our turn came we were out the door and into the fresh air. We caught the shuttle and were delivered safely to our hotel with no further mishaps.

This mentality continued to manifest itself in various forms throughout our trip and after a while we remarked on it and started having fun observing it. In Ketchikan and all the other ports it showed its head in a different guise. When a group of people are approaching you on the sidewalk and 4 of them are walking abreast taking the whole sidewalk, wouldn't you think 1 or 2 of them would speed up or drop back and line up to let another couple pass? Not happening. Many times we observed this behavior in just about every place we were from Canada Place to the boardwalk in Skagway and the sidewalks of Seward.

The first couple of times Judy and I stepped aside and let the folks pass but that got real boring real fast. Next I tried making eye contact while continuing to walk towards the oncoming foursome but that had little effect also. Finally I came upon the perfect strategy. When confronted with the choice of getting off the sidewalk to avoid collision, I merely walked up to the approaching group and stopped, forcing them to make a move to step aside or stop.

Another form of Oblivion was the groups of people that stop to visit in a manner and location that totally blocks everyone else from passing. You're left with the choice of trying to squeeze by or waiting until the conversation is through which could take several minutes. After a few waits and a few bumps I finally started alternating between saying "excuse me" in a loud voice, or clearing my throat. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't but the people were usually aware that they had blocked egress and made adjustments immediately

I don't suppose I can hope that these things will magically disappear nor do I think I even want them to. Oblivion serves 2 purposes for me. It gives us something to observe while in public places and thus amuse ourselves, and of course it makes us even more aware of these behaviors in ourselves and hopefully we can avoid being the rude Americans.

So there you are. Do you know any Oblivions? Are you a closet Oblivion? Leave a comment and we can share a chuckle together.

We'll always have Lake Powell...

2011-02-21T20:15:00.000-08:00

Not exactly sure how to start this blog. I usually go for a cheap laugh or a catchy "hook" beginning but words fail me so I'll just start. Today I had my 14 year old Labrador, Kahlua, euthanized. She'd been getting more and more feeble recently and this morning after I had to carry her up the stairs to let her out I looked into her eyes and she told me it was time. Truth be told, it was probably time some months ago but I've been selfishly putting it off. Sorry old girl..

In an effort to avoid becoming too maudlin and depressed I've been thinking about some of the good adventures she and I had over the years and thought it might be cathartic to share them. I hope you'll indulge me for a few minutes.

The image above is from a trip she and I made to Lake Powell in 2003. I had a few extra vacation days and decided to spend a 4 day weekend tent camping so I loaded up the boat, tossed Kahlua in the truck and off we went. I'll never forget that trip for several reasons but mostly because of Kahlua. The first evening on the lake I'd found a marvelous little beach and made camp when huge houseboat full of partying 30 somethings decided they needed my camp spot more than I did. After the usual verbal sparring during which they told me they wanted my camp spot and I politely declined to give it to them, followed by their threat to kick my butt and take it, I had Kahlua do one of her favorite tricks. She was the most gentle lovable dog around but upon being given the command "Mean Dog" she would growl and bare her teeth. I knew she was bluffing and it was just a trick she'd learned but the guys on the houseboat thought she was serious and none of them wanted to get chewed up so they left. I still chuckle about it sometimes.

In her younger days Kahlua was an amazing retriever. Maybe too good....one summer she got really disgusted with me while fishing on my In-Laws' ranch in South Dakota. Every time I fish there I practice catch and release unless I've been requested to supply the makings for a fish fry. On this one particular trip Kahlua was with me and every time I released a fish she would dive in the creek and try to retrieve it. After about a dozen tries she looked at me with a puzzled expression that said "What the bleep are you doing? I can't fetch those things!" And on the Lake Powell trip I eventually had to stop fishing. Seems every time I cast a lure she would jump in and try to retrieve it. I didn't have a doggie boarding platform for the boat so after the first 4 or 5 times of dragging her soggy butt up over the side of the boat I figured my back needed a rest. Besides, I had visions of her actually grabbing one of the lures...the thought of a Labrador getting punctured by a bunch of treble hooks was not a pleasant one.

She was quite the retriever though. Once when my niece, Cathy, and her family were visiting, her son Jared spent all afternoon tossing a ball in the park and Kahlua nearly ran herself ragged fetching it. We almost placed bets on who would tire out first. Later, at the dinner table, Jared asked his mom "..when we get home can we get a REAL dog like Kahlua?" I guess he wasn't so enthralled with their herd of dachsunds after playing ball with my dog.

We had some good times, me and her. But one thing stands out above all others. I had borrowed some display tables from my employer to have a garage sale and on Sunday afternoon I loaded them in the truck to return them and took Kahlua with me. The business was in a less than savory part of town and I almost always saw some homeless guys in the alley or down the block but I didn't want to have the tables sit outside in my truck all night so away we went. At the studio I backed my truck halfway into one of the rental studios and was in the process of unloading tables while Kahlua explored the new place. I was finishing the unloading process and walked back into the studio. I was facing away from the door and Kahlua was in front of me facing towards the door. All of a sudden she got all puffed up...her hair was standing up and she started growling deep in her chest. Not the playful growls she made when we played tug of war but a real mean menacing growl. I turned around to see what she was looking at and saw one of the homeless guys standing about 10 feet away from me with a piece of pipe in his hand. He looked at me, looked at the dog, then dropped the pipe and beat feet down the alley.

But now she's gone..and if there's a doggie Heaven she's earned it. Her legs will work again and she will be able to hear again. Her eyes will be clear and bright and barking will be fun, not painful. The rabbits and pheasants will be slow and stupid. Best of all, there won't be any cats or if there are, I won't be there to stop her from chasing them. Enjoy your rest, dear friend. You will be missed.

Random Musings

2011-02-16T21:34:00.000-08:00

Occasionally I write a blog when there's not really anything specific to ramble on about, simply snippets. This is one of those occasions. So strap in and here we go.

The picture up top is the new sled. The Murano is dead, long live the Nitro. 15 days ago I was involved in a minor fender bender and I learned quite a few things. Mostly, though, I learned about vehicles with airbags. The Murano had part of the front bumper and front fender carved off. No big deal...couple thousand bucks of body work and good as new. But no!!! During the crash a few wires of the wiring harness were sheared off and apparently when that happens to a vehicle with air bags it's an automatic total. See, once the wiring is replaced there's really no way to test the air bags. Well, no way short of running the vehicle into a wall which is sort of counter to the point.

Anyway, after getting the check for the total I went car shopping last Saturday and ended up with the Nitro you see before you. It's different than the Murano..(duh)...much more primitive. Where the Murano was plush and luxurious the Nitro is spartan and functional. No electric seats, no heated seats, not a spec of leather anywhere....radio controls are (gasp) on the radio instead of the steering wheel and horror of horrors, there's no compass to tell me which direction I'm going and no outside temperature indicator. But all is not lost. I'm fairly certain I won't rip the skid plate off of the Nitro like I did the Murano and I'll have to work pretty hard to get this thing high centered like I nearly did in the Murano last year in the Badlands. And to be honest, the Murano needed some work...new front struts, new tires, and the CVT (continuously variable transmission) was getting sketchy again. It was replaced at 87,000 miles which was about 85,000 miles ago. So maybe it's not all bad. I'll know more in a few months.

I wonder: Why is it that the "best ever rock bottom" price of a vehicle can be reduced by nearly 10% by just saying "Let me think about it until Monday." You tell me this is your absolute best price then reduce it when I stand up to leave...what the bleep? I hate car shopping.

And to the moron that was running the engine of a Charger inside the showroom at the Dodge dealer, I was absolutely truthful when I told you the carbon monoxide blowing in my face was giving me a headache. Your wife may fake headaches but I don't. Get a clue dude.

Unexpected dental work, car wreck, wedding expenses adding up, airline ticket prices doubled...all these things conspired to cause me to cancel my March trip to Phoenix for spring training and my proposed trip to photograph the Palouse region of Washington state in May. But the good news is Erin is having her wedding in Sedona in September and I've wrapped some extra vacation time around the date so I can spend some time there and then dawdle my way home photographing some neat stuff on the way.

Rocky Mountain Nature Photographers get together in Moab in May, Sedona in September...2 road trips for the new vehicle. ROAD TRIP!!!!! Whoooooooooo Hooooooooo!

Speaking of Moab, if any of you are passing through there this summer take some time to check out a couple of photo shows. In July my friend Bret Edge is having a show of his images along with the work of Guy Tal at the Visitor Center of Dead Horse Point State Park near Moab. 2 of my favorite photographers displaying their work in one place at the same time! Bonus! Also, Bret will be having a solo show beginning September 10 at Back of Beyond book store in Moab. One of the best book stores on the planet and some wonderful images...another bonus!

Speaking of airline prices, what's up with Southwest! I love Southwest and won't fly any other airline unless SW doesn't fly where I want to go. But come on, guys...the fares from Denver to Phoenix during the month of March are double what they are in February or April. I guess they figure what with spring break and the Rockies training in Scottsdale for the first time, they can sell tickets for as much as they want and people will buy them. Then in April the price gets back to normal. Freakin shameless profiteers.

Okay, that's all for now. I've had my monthly quota of ranting and whining. Next blog will be less rambling and more substance.

Sedona in September

2011-01-30T11:16:00.000-08:00

I've been out of the Photography biz for well over 10 years now. Sometimes it seems like just yesterday when I was agonizing over the decision to walk away from a job I loved and plunged into Corporate America. For those 10 years I've satisfied my Photography Jones by taking "photo" trips 2 or 3 times every year. I've been to some wonderful places...Banff and Jasper National Parks in Canada, Vancouver Island, also in Canada. I've made several trips to Utah and Arizona, to Yellowstone twice, and the Grand Canyon. And don't forget the trips to New Mexico when Heather was in school at Roswell. Every time I've come away with some wonderful images and some fantastic memories of the travels.

In the fall of 2010 Judy and I signed up for a cruise to Alaska in May and June of 2011. The added bonus is that Rick Sammon, a photographer friend of mine, was conducting a photo workshop on the cruise. We signed up, sent in our deposit, and started planning shore excursions. I got the appropriate vacation time booked on the calendar at work and the wait began. In November, it all fell apart. First the workshop was cancelled due to lack of interest. Then the entire cruise was cancelled by the cruise line. This all left me wondering where I could go for a photo trip in lieu of the cruise so my mind started churning.

I've wanted to photograph the Palouse region of Washington State for a long time and the dates we had reserved for the cruise fell into the proper time frame for a trip there so I started the usual research I do before every trip. I found a decent hotel in Colfax, WA, saw that I have Wells Fargo Rewards to make car rental nearly free, and looked into some websites of other photographers for information on locations and techniques for photographing the region. Things were looking really good for a May trip to the Palouse and I was just a couple days away from pushing the button and making non-refundable reservations.

But wait! Not so fast camera boy! When Erin, Sean, and Katrina visited for Christmas the rumors that had been floating around were solidified. Erin and Sean are planning their wedding in the fall, probably September, and while the budget for said event will be pretty sparse as weddings go, my discretionary funds for the year have pretty much been accounted for. In short, no airlines, no hotels, no rental cars for photo trips. Fortunately for me the news came before I'd committed to any trips and the subsequent reservations. Whew! Recently we learned that Erin has chosen Sedona, AZ as the venue for her nuptuals. If you haven't been to Sedona, you can see my gallery of images from a trip there last November. Sedona gallery

So now I'm left with a bad news/great news situation. The bad news is I won't be flying all over the western United States creating images this year. The great news is I'll be attending my wonderful daughter's wedding inn a positively amazing location in September. 9-10-11 to be specific. Some consolation prize, eh?

And this doesn't mean I won't be taking any photo trips at all. Heck, I've been lamenting for years that I live in one of the most photogenic states in the country yet my photo files contain precious few images of Colorado. I see some car camping weekend trips in my future for 2011. Great Sand Dunes anyone? How about Rocky Mountain National Park? And don't forget Crested Butte for wildflowers in July. Who knows, I may still be able to swing a trip to the Palouse in May. But instead of a "fly to Spokane, rent a car, drive to Pullman, and stay in a hotel" kind of trip it may morph into a "add a couple extra days of vacation, drive the Murano up there, and camp in the car" trip. I'm working on logistics.

So if any of you happen to be in the vicinity of Sedona on September 10, 2011, give me a call, shoot me an e-mail, or communicate some way and I'll buy you a cuppa coffee.

Better Lucky Than Good

2011-01-16T08:51:00.000-08:00

This is the second in a series of essays from my old website. First published in about 2003, this one still creeps me out a bit when I think about it. Read and learn...

Better Lucky than Good

An old saying, maybe, but one that's all too frequently accurate as was displayed during my first trip to the desert in 1997. An incident that occurred while photographing in Lower Antelope Canyon near Page, Arizona during a family vacation brought home to me the absolute truth of that saying..

The trip started innocently enough in Moab, Utah. It was my first photo excursion to the desert and I was a bit overwhelmed by all the subject matter I encountered the first morning in Arches National Park. I shot some film, had no clear idea what I should photograph first so it ended up being mostly documentary snapshots. A terrific reason to return someday. One day there then on to our next stop, Halls Crossing on Lake Powell where we had reserved a 3 bedroom trailer and speedboat for a day on the lake.

Lake Powell was all it was billed to be, Jewel of the Desert. The day dawned clear and sunny and after getting the once over on our rented powerboat we were off to explore with some water skiing also on the agenda. Got my first glimpse of some Anasazi dwellings, the Defiance House ruin in Forgotten Canyon. The lake was truly astounding, capturing my attention seemingly at every bend. I knew I'd be back to this place many times. A great day on the lake followed by a wonderful night's sleep and up the next morning on our way to the next destination, Page, Arizona.

One of the reasons I'd included Page as a stop on this trip was my desire to photograph Antelope Canyon, perhaps the most famous slot canyon of all. It is situated about 2 miles outside Page on the Navajo Tribal Lands and appears in countless television commercials, tons of print ads, and just about every existing brochure detailing the virtues of this area.

Those of you that know me know I'm a research junkie. When I'm planning a trip to a location I've never seen I spend countless hours on the internet trying to get an idea of what to expect. That way I can previsualize to a certain extent what I'm going to photograph. My reading on slot canyons kept referring back to one thing: "If there is rain anywhere within 30 miles of the canyon, GET OUT!!! These canyons are natural funnels for water and a flash flood is something you don't want to endure in this confined space."

Two miles outside of Page is the entrance to Antelope Canyon. On one side of the highway a Navajo concessionaire takes your money and shows you the entrance to Lower Antelope Canyon. On the other side of the highway a Navajo concessionaire from another clan takes your money and drives you to the entrance of Upper Antelope Canyon. I chose Lower, paid my $5 and headed down the first in a series of ladders that take you to the heart of this slot canyon 60 feet below the surface. I took a brief look before heading underground and saw that there were some clouds on the horizon but nothing immediately threatening.

Once I reached the bottom of the canyon, it was apparent that this photo experience would be all I ever hoped. There were no bad compositions and changing the angle of view changed everything. It was marvelous. I was in photographer's Heaven for at least a little while. After about an hour of shooting, I began to notice some sand falling on my head and equipment. Obviously the wind on the surface had picked up. Then I noticed that my exposures were getting longer and longer. A glance upwards showed me that it was getting cloudy above my head. Then I noticed that the other people in the canyon were rushing past on their way to the surface and I could hear someone above me shouting something but I couldn't make out the words. I kept thinking "just a few more exposures….I don't know when I'll get this chance again."

All of a sudden, the little man in my head started screaming…"Hey, it's cloudy on the surface….clouds equal rain….remember your research and get your dumb butt out of here." I packed up and started hustling to the surface noticing it was getting darker and darker. With about 3 ladders to go, I noticed raindrops starting to fall on me and increased my pace, finally climbing up the last pitch to the surface just as the sky opened up. I headed over to the parking lot where one of the other tourists asked if I'd seen the concessionaire or heard him shouting for me to get out of the canyon. I said no, but would go back to look for him. I met him after slogging through a torrential downpour to near where the first ladder was. He appeared happy to see me and said "didn't you hear me yelling for you to get out? If you'd been there 10 more minutes, we would have been fishing your body out of Lake Powell in the morning." I thought he was being overly dramatic until I could see the water blasting through the canyon below our feet. Everything I'd read was right….you DON'T want to be in a slot canyon when it's raining.

I made it out and got some marvelous shots, but 2 weeks later, a group of tourists and their guide got caught in the canyon during a rainstorm and were swept to their deaths. 2 years later one of the bodies had never been found, a terrible testament to the power of a flash flood in a slot canyon. Sometimes it's much better to be lucky than good.

Every Picture Tells a Story, Don't it?

2011-01-10T20:10:00.000-08:00

My friend, Bret Edge, has a series running on his blog http://blog.bretedge.com/ where he is posting some of his favorite images of the past decade and giving the story behind the image. I LOVE this idea and gave considerable thought to stealing the idea and still may, (though I'll wait a few months till all our common friends forget it and will think I'm a genius) but today at work I had a conversation with a co-worker that changed my mind. We were discussing her screensaver picture of a cougar and I had the brilliant idea of posting some of my essays off my original website. They were written before I started blogging but still have some pretty good content so with your permission, here is the first one. Enjoy!

Every Picture Tells A Story, Don't it…

And mine are no exception. Take the Cougar series for example. I don't often have nightmares or dreams that wake me up in the night but when I do, they usually involve a cougar. We all have our phobias and that's mine. So when I was given the chance to photograph one of the cougars at the Prairie Wind Wildlife Refuge I gave it considerable thought before deciding to go for it.

The nights leading up to the weekend photo session were restless for the most part and as the time drew nearer I became more and more anxious. Was this thing going to eat me? Chew me beyond recognition? I'd seen deer and elk that were cougar kills and an illustration of a cat's power and ability. I've even seen a housecat kill a rabbit in one swift motion. The power per pound of these animals is awesome. It took all my will power and resolve to avoid picking up the phone and calling to cancel. But I was strong!

Saturday morning dawned clear and beautiful on the plains, the first rays of the sun lighting up the Front Range in my rear view mirror on the drive. That served to calm me a bit, but I was still more nervous than I'd been in a while. The orientation speech Michael gave did little to bolster my confidence. "Whatever you do don't run or show any signs of fear. These maybe pets but they're still wild animals." That's code for "they will kill and eat you if you're not careful."

Okay, done with the speeches, tripods and lenses set up, film loaded, and my shooting site selected. The cat is released by one of Michael's assistants and comes over the hill about 100 yards away headed for Michael and the tidbits of meat he offers as incentive to behave. Right away I notice that the beast seems to be fixated on me. His eyes meet mine over the distance and I immediately look away. ("….don't make eye contact, they think it's a challenge.") The cat, Cheyenne, lopes up to me then walks in a slow circle around me giving me the once over. "Relax" Michael says, "he just likes your deodorant." (which by now has failed miserably)

Finally after 10 seconds which seemed like 10 minutes, the cat comes closer and drags his tongue up the side of my head (taste test?) then plops down to rest about 5 feet from my camera. I could have tugged his tail if I'd been so inclined. Check out the Critters portfolio and you'll see the results.

Baby it's Cold Outside II

2011-01-01T21:13:00.000-08:00

In Part 1 I talked about photographing in extreme cold weather conditions and mostly concentrated on keeping your most important piece of equipment, yourself, warm and comfortable. When temps drop into single digits or negative numbers like my trip to Castlewood Canyon this morning, it's not just metal that suffers from fatigue and you can't concentrate on images when you're shivering. I didn't talk much about camera gear though, hence Part 2.

Back in the day when camera bodies and lenses were all manually operated there were a lot of special problems you had to deal with. Pro shooters knew that for extreme cold weather shooting you had to have your gear winterized. Early in the season all their gear went to the repair shop of choice where they were tuned up and set up with special cold weather lubricants. When you shoot for a living you can't afford to have equipment fail because of the cold. When spring came around the stuff went back to the shop to be cleaned and set up with normal lubricants. The only batteries they had to be concerned with were the ones that ran the metering systems and any pro worth his salt could function without a meter most of the time.

What if a camera wasn't winterized you ask? Well, many years ago I was visiting my wife's family in the Black Hills of South Dakota the week between Christmas and New Years. They live on a ranch near Sturgis and Deadwood in a beautiful little valley. A beautiful little valley that gets beastly cold in the winter. This particular winter was one of those times and for several days the temperature stayed below zero, at times approaching -30 degrees F. Some folks say that when it gets below -10 you can't tell the difference but don't believe it. Been there, done that. Anyway, I went out one afternoon as the sun was setting to photograph the bluffs at the east end of their valley with my trusty 4X5. Sparing you the details, I got the shot set up and pressed the cable release. My Copal shutter set for 1/2 second should have been "cliick." At -20 the shutter was more like "cliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiick." Closer to 5 seconds than 1/2 second. Problem? No cold weather lubricants. I stopped down a couple of stops and used the shutter on Bulb to get the shot.

But what about today's cameras? Fewer moving parts and no spring loaded shutters to worry about but everything is run on batteries and as we all know, when the batteries are dead your camera turns into a $2000 paperweight. So how can you avoid this? Well, the pros spend mad cash on external battery packs. They can have a cord running to the battery compartment from the external pack that resides inside their jacket. Keeps the batteries warm and the camera functional. No external pack? No problem...make sure your batteries are fully charged and keep the spares in an inner pocket to stay warm. If I'm walking a considerable distance between locations I'll even take the battery out of my camera and put it inside my jacket. Keep in mind, at 10 degrees a fully charged fully functional battery will last about 70% less than it would on a nice sunny warm afternoon.

As far as lenses, if you're going to be doing a lot of cold weather shooting you may want to spend the extra money to have your repair shop install cold weather lubricants. I'd hate like heck to pay for a workshop, travel to Yellowstone in the dead of winter, and find out my lenses won't autofocus in the cold. If you've already spent thousands of dollars on said workshop then a couple hundred more to have your lenses conditioned won't matter and it just might save your trip. A word of caution though....don't forget to have normal lubricants put back in before heading out for a summer shoot. I've seen a lot of lenses with cold weather lube dripping out of them like water when the temps go up in summer. Not a good thing. If you decide to leave lenses as they are, consider using them on manual focus. It will result in sharper images and save battery life.

Another thing to be aware of is taking gear from a warm vehicle to cold weather. Condensation is NOT your friend. Carry a lens cloth in an outside pocket where you can easily reach it and wipe the moisture off your lenses before they freeze. Above all do NOT breathe on your lenses to clean them. You'll be amazed at how quickly the moisture in your breath freezes when it's below zero. Also you need to avoid the urge to carry a camera and lens inside your coat. Once they cool down to ambient temperature leave them out until you're done shooting. Otherwise you have to go through the condensation thing all over again.

Finally let's take a look at your tripod. Is it carbon fiber or metal? We all know that CF tripods are lighter and stronger than aluminium sticks but there's a major advantage to CF when the weather is cold. It's not ideal to carry but CF will not suck the warmth out of your hands nearly as quickly as metal. Next to losing heat through your head, carrying a metal tripod on a cold day is the next quickest way to lose body heat. CF is a lot more efficient in this area but still cold. Good gloves are paramount to keep your hands warm. There are some companies out there that sell "sleeves" for tripods and many tripods including the Velbon El Carmagne and Induro brands insulate the legs with foam rubber grips. Got a metal tripod and can't find the "sleeves?" Simple...head on down to your local hardware big box store and pick up some foam pipe insulation and a roll of gaffers tape. Bingo Bango, you got tripod sleeves made to order.

So there you have it, some tips on keeping you and your gear warm in extreme cold weather. Got some other strategies? Leave a comment and let's share best practices with everyone.

Baby it's Cold Outside!

2011-01-01T09:22:00.000-08:00

Let's face it....Photography is an inconvenient avocation. I often find myself wondering why Sunrise can't come a little later in the day or Sunset be some time other than supper time. Why does rain have to be so damaging to lenses and cameras? Unfortunately, the best times to create the highest quality images are usually the most inconvenient times especially in the depths of winter.

If you're one of the folks that leads photo workshops in ultra cold weather places, Bosque Del Apache for cranes, Churchill for polar bears, Yellowstone in winter, or some similar location...if you're a working photographer on assignment to Antarctica or some such location, you already know about the cold weather tricks. Your lenses have been tuned up by your repair facility of choice and are chock full of cold weather lubricants. You have external battery packs for all your camera bodies so you can keep the battery pack tucked warmly inside your jacket. You probably have a sponsorship for some world class cold weather clothing. If that's the case, this won't be of much interest to you cause you already know this stuff.

But what if you're a weekend or vacation shooter like me and most of my photographer friends? What do you need to know about shooting in abnormally cold weather? I spent a couple of hours on New Year's Day 2011 shooting at Castlewood Canyon near Franktown, CO, and have spent many a cold morning or evening with cameras in tow when visiting relatives in the Black Hills for Christmas past and I'm going to share a few of my tips for successful cold weather photography.

First and foremost you have to keep yourself warm. It's no fun being out in the elements if you're not properly dressed and if it's not fun, why do it? So let's concentrate on clothing first. And keep in mind, I don't have an unlimited budget for clothing so I'll share some of my secrets along the way. So let's get started and talk about clothing first.

Living in Colorado we talk about layers. Winter temps can go from single digits early in the morning to 50 degrees or more in the afternoon so we learn early to dress in layers. On a trip to Bosque Del Apache to photograph Sandhill Cranes last January I started layering with silk long underwear followed by a basic cotton t-shirt, a long sleeved flannel shirt, and a bulky fisherman's sweater. I added some thick wool blend socks then donned my Columbia ski/wind/snow pants. I didn't skimp on the price of these pants but was able to buy them at a tremendous discount one year at the end of March when sporting goods stores are trying to clear out all their ski gear. These kind of pants are a must. They're windproof, waterproof, and the gore tex allows moisture to escape. I can't stress enough...wear the jeans when you go out to eat or for kicking around town but they aren't worth a darn in really cold weather. I top everything off with a no-name parka I got at Kohls. It has a zip out liner so it's actually 3 jackets in 1. If you're a fan of North Face or the other elite outdoor clothing companies, be my guest but I try to save money without sacrificing warmth and quality whenever I can.

For footwear I have a pair of gore-tex lined hiking boots for most situations but if it's really cold I have some Sorrel winter boots that are cozy even in sub-zero temps. I don't advocate multiple pairs of socks because every time I've tried it I get blisters but whatever works for you is what's best.

Once I get outside I have several different configurations of gloves. For cold without snow I have a pair of wool mittens with a flap that lets me expose my fingers without taking off the whole mitten. These work well when there's no moisture on the ground or in the air and I can add a pair of silk glove liners to make them usable in very cold temps. Not too great if there's a lot of wind or a possibility of getting wet. For those conditions I have some inexpensive ski gloves. I've bought them large enough that I can use the silk liners with them if it's really cold. The trade off is that these are my warmest gloves but also bulky. I have to take them off to make camera adjustments. Finally, I recently picked up a pair of thin thermal gloves at Costco that seem to be pretty good in moderately cold temps. They have some rough surfaces which makes it easy to hold onto slippery photo gear like cameras and lenses.

Finally one of the most important part of your winter ensemble...headgear. You lose body heat through the top of your head quicker than any other spot and if you're follically challenged like I am, it becomes even more critical to keep your coconut warm. I have an assortment of hats that includes ball caps and wool ski hats but if the weather is really frigid there's one hat I own that is head and shoulders (pardon the pun) above everything else. Call it a trapper's hat, call it a Rocket J Squirrel hat, call it what you will. It's a goofy looking contraption and I'm sure I look like a fool wearing it but I've never let that be a deterrent for me. The nylon shell with goretex lining keeps me dry and the fake rabbit fur ear flaps keep me toasty warm in the coldest of temperatures. It truly is worth it's weight in gold.

So there you have a description of my attire. There are other things you can add like chemical hand warmers and boot warmers, face masks and bandanas. There are some really nice insulated coveralls that are usually worn by snowmobilers but they are a little too bulky for my taste and make me feel like the Michelen man. I'm sure there are lots of options I've overlooked but this is what works for me. If there's something out there you know about please leave comments...I'm always looking for new ideas.

I haven't talked at all about gear and how to winterize it but that's also critical and I'll share some of my tips and tricks in a future blog. For now, though, don't let the cold keep you inside. Dress appropriately, get outside, and make some world class images.

It's all about Family: Part Deux

2010-12-28T21:32:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago I wrote about being with family members at Thanksgiving and how I felt about the whole experience. At that time I vowed to spend more time traveling to visit family and take fewer solo photo trips and I have just had that resolve strengthened. Here's why....

They say Christmas is for children and family and I've come to believe that may be one of the truest statements I've ever heard. This year, for the first time in a few years, we were together as a family for Christmas. Heather has come home after some time at Eastern New Mexico University in Roswell. Granted, she was home for Christmas break every year but this time we didn't have to drive 1000 miles round trip to get her. Chris has boomeranged and is back home with us. In the past he's usually been home for Christmas but this one is special because (we hope) his health concerns of 2009 are behind him.

Mostly, though, this Christmas was special because Erin and her family came home from Phoenix for a week. We've not all been together at Christmas for at least 5 years and I was surprised at how much I'd missed it. Especially because Granddaughter Katrina was home and the magic is back in Christmas. Katrina is 10 now and still a bit of a child though she's growing up quickly. But I have to say there is nothing to compare to the look in her eyes and on her face when opening a gift that she really really wanted. Christmas truly is for children.

But that's not the only thing that's got me feeling so maudlin. Our family tradition, started long ago by the Bean families that preceded ours, is that we all gather on Christmas Eve to eat chili and open gifts from each other. Then we go to bed and when we wake up in the morning, Santa has visited with more gifts. It's a time honored tradition and one that's going to be around for at least as long as I am.

So there we were on Christmas Eve. Erin was in the kitchen baking a pie and I was working on the chili. I've never cooked WITH someone and the delight of sharing my new kitchen with my eldest child is a feeling I won't soon forget. We bumped into each other a few times, laughed, joked, and told stories from when she was Katrina's age. The eggnog was tasty, the pie was good I'm sure, and the chili was killer as always.

While we were cooking, the laughter and shouting started wafting up from the family room. Chris, Heather, and Katrina were playing Super Mario Brothers on the Wii. The laughter and smack talking was music to my ears sweeter than the greatest symphony. It made me grin like a fool just hearing them. Then it was time to eat and we gathered in the dining room for the first time in a long time. We moved into our house a week before Chris was born and he turned 24 in July. Shortly after moving in we bought a table for the kitchen and ate all our meals there. Two toddlers and a baby...not a good mix for a formal dining room with very light tan carpet. Having remodeled the kitchen this summer, we now have seating in there for only 3 or 4 max so with 7 people in the house it was time for the dining room.

Erin started in first, saying she thinks she remembered eating in the dining room once. Heather couldn't remember and Chris said "this is weird...I've NEVER eaten in this room." We had a great laugh about that and the stories started flowing. We went through some of the things that happened when the kids were small and discovered, to Judy's shock, that all the kids had snooped for Christmas presents over the years, looking in all the logical hiding places, and Erin had even unwrapped some packages to see what was inside then re wrapped them to hide the evidence. To her credit, she always was able to feign surprise but hey, I was a kid once and knew all the tricks. It was no surprise to me.

After finishing some darn good chili we adjourned to the living room and spent the next hour or so opening presents. We open in turns, starting with the youngest and going according to age. I mentioned earlier and I'll restate it, there is NOTHING like the look on Katrina's face when she unwrapped presents she was hoping for. That's why Christmas is definitely for children. Always has been, always will be...

After opening gifts we had some more eggnog and sat around telling a few more stories before Erin, Sean, and Katrina headed off to spend the night at Sean's mother's house. I was sorry to see the night end but happy in the knowledge that this Christmas was one of the best ever...at least since I was a child. And I'm secure in the knowledge that from this point on, no matter how far apart we are, I will do everything in my power to bring the family together every Christmas. Yes, it's for children, but it's also for Families.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Best of the Best

2010-12-15T22:09:00.000-08:00

I like to keep up with what's going on in the photographic community so I regularly read a lot of blogs written by other photographers. One I read this evening detailed going through all the files from 2010 to pick the Best of the Best. Not a bad idea and one that I may adopt and put into place after the New Year. For now, though, I've already picked 2 of my favorites from the year and they both are shown above. The image of Jackson Lake and the Grand Tetons is one of my favorite images of all time and from a purely photographic standpoint it is probably one of the 10 best images I've ever created. Recently it was selected by my fellow employees to be on the cover of a calendar put together by my employer. Because my image was selected, the proceeds from sales of the calendar will go to the charity of my choice, Special Olympics of Colorado. (It's not available to the public but if you'd like to spend $5 on a decent calendar and know your money is going to a good cause, let me know.) But that's not why I chose it as one of my favorites. The other image of a sunset taken in the desert near Queen Creek, AZ is probably not as technically good. If I weren't so lazy I would go into Photoshop and clone out the jet contrails in the sky and I'll get that done soon but for now, I love the image just the way it is. Here's the story on both.....

My daughter, Heather, is a wonderful young woman. She's a Special Needs kid and part of the reason I selected SOCO for my charity is because of her history competing in Special Olympics. Before heading off to Roswell, NM to attend college a few years ago, Heather was 8 times defending State Champion in Special Olympics gymnastics and it was a wonderful experience for her so naturally, I'm a bit biased towards Special Olympics.

While she was going to school in Roswell she learned many things and researched a lot of stuff and about 2 years ago she started asking me to take her to Yellowstone. We'd been there once when she was much younger but only passing through on the way from South Dakota to San Francisco. Well, I love Yellowstone and can always use an excuse to go so we started planning and in May, 2010 we packed up and headed north. We spent 3 days in Yellowstone and 2 days in Grand Teton National Parks and saw some amazing things. Mostly, though, the company was wonderful and being able to show Heather the parks for the first time was very special to me. Creating a wonderful image like this one was a bonus.

The desert sunset came to be in a similar manner. When my oldest daughter, Erin, and her family lived here in Colorado we got to spend a lot of time with granddaughter Katrina. We were built in babysitters nearly every weekend and saw her several times each week. It nearly tore my heart out when they moved to Arizona but it was a good move for the kids and they really love living there. That was 6 years ago and Katrina is now 10 years old going on 11 and quite the young lady. Naturally, I try to visit as often as I can which is not nearly as much as I'd like but being a seamhead (baseball fan) I take advantage of the situation and almost every year make a trip to AZ in March to spend time with my girls and see some Rockies spring training games. This year I made that pilgrimage and one afternoon when I was heading out to San Tan Mountain Park to photograph a sunset I asked Katrina if she'd like to go. To my delight she said yes so we took off. We talked about a lot of stuff and took a short hike to which led us to the image you see. It's probably not the most technically perfect image I've ever created but I have a new hiking buddy and who knows...I may even turn her into a photographer like Poppaw!

So there you have it...my two favorite images of 2010. The images are nice, the trips were great, and the company was exceptional. Not bad!

It's all about Family

2010-11-27T21:57:00.000-08:00

You've heard the sayings a million times: Blood is thicker than water...Family comes first...and there are many others you've heard. But have you really ever given them a second thought? I've heard them too but for a while now I've been paying little attention to them. Oh sure, I made it to all of Heather's year end activities while she was away at college. And I made it to all of her Special Olympics performances. When Chris was young I was at every ballgame and most practices. One year I even coached his baseball team. (If any of you Dads are thinking of doing that, call me...Please!) When the girls were little I took them to swimming lessons and gymnastics lessons and suffered the indignity of being the only father at Mom and Tot activities.

I spoke with my parents fairly regularly when they moved away and saw them as often as we could. Many times on a 3 day weekend Judy and I would pack the kids in the car Friday after work. We'd drive to Limon and stop for chicken nuggets at McDonalds followed by ice cream at the railroad car across the parking lot from McD's. Then we'd bundle the kinds in their jammies and drive the rest of the night to Wichita and spend a couple days with my parents and sisters. It was a bit tougher when my Dad retired from Boeing for the second time and moved to Holdenville, Oklahoma but we still tried to see them regularly.

I'm not sure what happened or when but after my Dad and then my Mom passed, we started visiting Judy's parents more often. We made the occasional trip to visit my sisters and their families but not nearly as often as before. And over the next several years they dwindled to almost never. Oh sure, we made a point to visit for the Bean family reunion in 2007, and I made a quick trip to Wichita in 2009 for my High School reunion, but visits there as a family have been virtually nonexistent.

I haven't helped much either. The past few years I've exhausted my vacation time on solo photo trips. When my kids or my sisters started bugging me that we haven't visited Wichita enough it was easy to justify by saying there is no vacation time left. There were visits from both my sisters and some of my nieces here in Colorado from time to time but trips to Wichita were only for special occasions and my family is starting to get restless.

Recently two visits have caused me to rethink my vacation time and how it's spent. In October I visited Phoenix and spent a wonderful evening and morning with my Daughter and Granddaughter before heading out on a photo trip. Yes, I admit it...I spent more time creating images than I did with my girls and it hurt when I had to leave.

Most recently two of my nieces rented a cabin in the mountains west of Colorado Springs and were there for Thanksgiving. We arranged for my family to visit them and I cooked a turkey and stuffing for the meal. We had a great visit and, again, I was sad to leave. All the way home I was thinking of how I've neglecting my side of the family. It's not been intentional, just inconvenient. And that's got to change.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not going to stop taking photo trips. Those solo jaunts are what keeps me sane. Cutting off the photo trips would be a very bad thing for me and Judy and the kids. So that's not going to happen. What I can do, though, is to take long weekend trips instead of devoting a full week to trips. And in doing so I can save some vacation time for visits to family either in Kansas or South Dakota.

By now you're probably wondering why there is a photo of a Christmas Cactus accompanying this essay. Well, it's got to do with a family visit. My daughter, Erin, and her family are coming home for Christmas. They live in Phoenix and I figured I needed a way to make them feel at home so today when I put the lights up for the season I included the cacti. Should do the trick, right?

What's the Big Deal?

2010-11-23T21:24:00.000-08:00

For the record, (and it is a record...2 blogs in a row without a photo) I have no issues with heightened security measures laid on by TSA. I understand my politics and beliefs may be light years diametrically opposed to those of many of the young people I work with and certainly some of my more liberal photographer friends. I hope this won't start too many arguments because I'm not going to change your minds and you aren't going to change mine so please, indulge me for a few minutes.

Like most Americans I was sickened and outraged by the events of 9/11. I believe to the core of my being that despite what some government officials say we are in a war. A war on terrorism. And I don't believe we are trying very hard to win the war which saddens me greatly. I'm not yet at the point of "..Kill them all and let God sort it out." But I do believe we are in peril every day of our lives and we need to be ever vigilant. And that's the point of this discussion.

Many people are becoming indignant and outraged by the more thorough frisking recently implemented by TSA at Denver International Airport. I haven't watched much national news lately but the stories on our local news channels are multiplying like rabbits. Just this morning I watched a report on 9News in Denver and therein lies my issue.

The story had the usual voiceover by one of the news reporters accompanied by footage of about 12 or 15 people suffering the "indignity" of being frisked by TSA agents. I saw it first last night on the 10 o'clock news and again this morning on 9News at 5am. Last night there was a disturbing thought tickling at the back of my mind and it was confirmed this morning when I saw the report for the second time. Of the 12 or 15 people being frisked, EVERY SINGLE ONE was a middle aged or older Caucasian. No young people, no people of color, all of them were older white men and women.

Maybe it's because I'm an older overweight balding white guy and quite possibly I'm overreacting but I'm pretty sure that a 70 year old Grandmother from Middle America doesn't quite fit the terrorist demographic. I'm fairly certain that Mrs. Butterworth isn't going to stuff a chunk of C4 or Semtex in her bra and take out a commuter flight to Billings. I'm equally certain that a Wilford Brimley look-alike isn't going to mold plastic explosives into his sneakers and blow Griz off the tail of a Frontier flight.

With this in mind I'm left with a head full of questions. I understand that reporters have certain artistic license in editing so was this purposely edited in a manner to inflame and outrage people like me? Are they really frisking a valid cross section of the mass of humanity that will pass through DIA this week or was the news report really representative of the people they select "at random" to be more thoroughly screened? I could go on and on but I think you get the point by now so let's cut to the chase.

Given the events of 9/11 followed by the shoe bomber and later the underwear bomber, followed by the SUV full of explosives in Times Square and many other terrorist plots, I'm stunned into disbelief by the hue and cry raised by people who object to being frisked. To those people I would ask only 1 thing: Consider the alternative. Think back to images of the space shuttle that exploded and the video of the flaming wreckage falling back to earth. When faced with that prospect I really have very little problem with the thought of someone brushing the back of his hand against my junk. If that's what it takes to keep my flight from going out in a blaze of glory, show me where I need to stand and get gloved up.

And one more thing: If you really seriously object to having your junk brushed and your cheeks squeezed, shut up and go through the full body scanner. It's not going to kill you. Less security just might.

Peace, Out.

Stoopid Photographer Tricks

2010-11-20T08:23:00.000-08:00

You may notice that unlike most of my other blogs, this one doesn't open with an image. It's a little unusual for me to do that but I'll explain:

So there I am, standing behind the tripod. Got the right lens, cable release attached, tripod leveled and image composed. A very symmetrical line of huge old cottonwood trees that were planted in a straight row several decades ago silhouetted against a colorful morning sky. Got my Rocket J Squirrel hat on to keep my ears warm and my light warm gloves since it's only 25 degrees out there. I reach down to press the release button on the cable release and simultaneously glance at the LCD display to check out the histogram for exposure data and......see a 3 word phrase that reminds me how dumb I can be at times: NO CF CARD. That's right, no card in the camera and my backpack with extra cards is back in the car 200 yards away. Hence, no sunrise image. Just as well though. After two of the most spectacular sunrises I've ever seen the past 2 days, the color this morning was pretty lame. But that's not the point. See, Photographers can sometimes be a bit distracted during the creative process. I've detailed it before in a blog that talks about being in the creative "zone." And the result is often what I call Stoopid Photographer Tricks.

Over the years I've had my share of SPT's and I'm not proud of them but as Will Rogers once said, "Everything is funny when it happens to someone else." With that in mind, here are a couple of my more memorable SPT's.

Several years ago in the early 90's when I was trying to convince Judy that I needed to buy a large format camera to improve my images, I devised a foolproof strategy. The deal was to borrow a 4X5 camera from my workplace and head up to Rocky Mountain National Park where I would shoot a large format transparency of a beautiful mountain scene and shoot the same scene on 35mm so I could demonstrate the additional quality available from 4X5. I found a great shot of the Colorado River flowing through a meadow in the Weimenuche Valley and started setting up for the shot only to discover that the camera I borrowed had a 3/8" threaded socket while my tripod was 1/4". Basically, I couldn't mount the 5 pound camera and lens on my tripod and I'm not foolish enough to even contemplate hand holding a 4X5 studio camera. I made my living at the time by checking details like that before sending a camera out on a rental so how was I able to get 100 miles from home with an unusable camera? SPT. I solved the delima by taking the head off my tripod and bolting the camera directly to the legs with no leveling head. I leveled the camera by adjusting the legs of the tripod. It was cumbersome but I got the shot and later when I dropped the 4X5 on the light table next to the same shot on 35mm slide film it was a slam dunk and 2 days later I had my own 4X5.

A few years later I was visiting the In-Laws at their ranch in the Black Hills of South Dakota and one morning I decide to hike up the hill from the ranch and try to duplicate the angle of photograph taken of their valley in the late 1890's. (Yes, I had that idea years before John Fielder's book of then and now photos came out) When I got up on the bluff where the old image was taken from it was pretty easy to align my camera using some rock formations as a reference. I set up the tripod, got the 4X5 out of the backpack, and.......discovered that during my hike the tightening knob for the quick release mount on my Studioball head was missing. Again, there was no way to mount the camera on the tripod. I backtracked the way I'd come with the phrase "needle in a haystack" running through my mind. Fortunately I was able to find the knob AND the two little springs and bracket to make the head functional. This was a typical problem with the Studioball head and I knew it but for some reason when I finished shooting the previous afternoon I hadn't tightened the knob to keep it from vibrating loose. SPT.

Both of those episodes ended well with me getting the shot I wanted though not as easily as I should have. But not every SPT ends well. About the same time frame as those incidents I borrowed a Canon 500mm f4 lens to photograph some elk in Rocky Mountain National Park. This was before I had switched to the Studioball and my tripod head at the time was a Bogen ballhead with the typical Bogen octagonal quick release plate and lever release. This was an early version of the head before Bogen installed a safety release button on the lever release. Anyway, I finished shooting one morning and as usual I set the tripod next to the sliding door to my van and started packing equipment like I always did. First, take the camera body off the lens and pack it away then pack the lens. Simple, right? Well, this time I dismounted the camera body and when I was turning to put it in my backpack the strap got caught on the lever release of the ballhead, releasing the lens. Naturally, without the camera and motor drive to balance the lens it was front heavy and I will never forget the sinking feeling in my stomach as I watched a $5000 lens plummet to the asphalt. I was fortunate that the hood was still on so the front glass wasn't damaged but the impact did enough damage to the lens that I was out a pretty hefty repair bill to get it fixed up by Canon USA. Probably my most devastating SPT ever and certainly the most expensive.

There have been many more Stoopid Photographer Tricks over the years though none have been as costly as the Canon Lens trick and I must have morphed into someone else because when I think of them I have to chuckle. And that's exactly what I did this morning when I had no memory card to shoot with.

So how bout you? Let's hear about your most amusing SPT. Leave a comment and let's talk it over.

Another Year Older

2010-11-13T21:28:00.000-08:00

Photographically speaking, 2010 is done. Cameras and lenses have been cleaned and stowed. Memory cards have been downloaded to both computers and my external hard drive. The best of the best files have been edited and uploaded to the website. Now only 2 chores remain: I need to select an image to print for my annual special edition Christmas cards and I need to pick my favorite image and print it for the 2011 Rocky Mountain Nature Photographers White Elephant Print exchange. Simple, right? Not so fast, camera boy.....I've taken some pretty remarkable photo trips this year and choosing a favorite image is more difficult than I thought it would be.

**After further reflection I decided to add this link to a gallery on my website containing all the images referenced below. This way you don't have to click on every one then hit the back button on the browser to get back to the blog. http://wcbeanphoto.photium.com/portfolio133636.html

In January we had to take Heather back to Eastern New Mexico University in Roswell and I was able to detour for a sunset and sunrise shooting at Bosque Del Apache. I'd heard of Bosque and read about it for years but this was my first trip there and it was amazing. Thousands of Sandhill Cranes, tens of thousands of Snow Geese. And despite my inexperience at shooting birds in flight I was able to make some wonderful images including this one: http://wcbeanphoto.photium.com/photo7555642.html

In March I made my annual pilgrimage to Phoenix to visit my Daughter and Granddaughter. We saw a Rockies spring training game and I was able to slip off one morning for a drive up the Apache Trail where I captured some extraordinary images. Here's my favorite from that shoot: http://wcbeanphoto.photium.com/photo5180843.html

Heather was home again for a late spring break and to celebrate her upcoming graduation she and I took a trip to visit Yellowstone and Grand Teton parks. She's been asking me for a while to go there and this was our chance. We saw grizzly bears, black bears, elk, bison, moose, coyotes, and of course the wonderful scenery. I've always loved seeing the Tetons and on this trip the weather conditions came together for a terrific sunrise. http://wcbeanphoto.photium.com/photo5269818.html

July saw us on 2 trips. Judy and I spent 4th of July weekend at a lovely B&B in Taos and even though the main focus (pun intended) of the trip was not photography, heck, I never travel without at least 1 camera. I found some images around Taos, mostly of the architecture there and found a wonderful image at the church in Rancho De Taos. http://wcbeanphoto.photium.com/photo5504914.html

Later in July we were back in Roswell again for Heather's graduation. We had 2 vehicles so I made a side trip on the way back home that was pretty uneventful. Despite that, I was able to shoot one sunrise that proved to be one of the most colorful ones I've ever seen. They really play up the alien thing in Roswell and the way the trees glow at sunrise....well, you be the judge. http://wcbeanphoto.photium.com/photo5907679.html

There were no special photo trips in August but I did spend a little time in the sunflower fields north of Longmont and came home with some very nice images. I'm in the process of printing a 5 print series for a wall display and this is one of my favorites. http://wcbeanphoto.photium.com/photo5931259.html

In September we traveled to South Dakota for a family visit and I was able to spend an afternoon shooting in the Badlands. I'd shot there before but as nearly as I can remember it was nearly 30 years ago so I was quite excited to spend some time there again. Some nice images and one terrific sunset.
http://wcbeanphoto.photium.com/photo6237648.html

Then October. At the end of the month I had some vacation time to burn so I flew to Phoenix for a long weekend with Erin and her family and a side trip to Sedona. I always love spending time with my girls and Sedona was incredible. I spent one afternoon in West Fork Canyon photographing fall colors and had a terrific time. Here is my favorite from that trip. http://wcbeanphoto.photium.com/photo7427256.html

Now it's November and I've just celebrated (?) another birthday which has caused me to be a bit maudlin and reflect on what I've done this year. I took some wonderful trips and created some images that really move me. As far as deciding which is my favorite, well, I just can't. So I've opened this blog with an image of my favorite Greek Goddess, my granddaughter Katrina. Funny that I've created so many wonderful images this year but my hands down favorite is this one that I didn't shoot.

So which one is your favorite? Leave a comment and let me know.

I seeeee Nothink!

2010-11-02T20:46:00.000-07:00

I don't usually go on rants and I'm not going to go off this time. Well, maybe just a little, but mostly I want to discuss what I perceive to be a disturbing trend in the National Parks and National Forests. It might be that I'm just paranoid, or there could be a completely plausible explanation. Then, again, maybe I'm onto something.

It has to do with Rangers and my attempts at information gathering. Don't get me wrong, I have tremendous respect for the men and women that work for the Park Service or Forest Service. They have terribly difficult jobs to do and they take it all in stride and smile through even the most inane of questions. They spend a good deal of their time protecting fuzzy woodland creatures from idiot people and equally as much time protecting the people from the creatures. A thankless job? In most cases...but when I was in college in the 70's one of my ambitions was to be Mr. Ranger Sir. I even spent 2 summers working for the U.S. Forest Service based in Darrington, WA.

In the more recent past I've had the opportunity to spend time in several National Parks and Monuments and travelled through countless National Forests and I've always been impressed with the amount of information I could gather in a 5 minute conversation with one of the rangers. Where have the wolves or grizzlies been most frequently spotted? Where are the most impressive displays of wildflowers? Is there a bigger bull elk in Morraine Park than the one I've been photographing in Horseshoe Park? All the information I need to be successful in my never ending search for new images. But lately there's been a change, and I don't much like it.

I started getting this feeling in the summer of 2009. I was planning a trip to Southeast Utah for 8 days of photography and started doing my usual research to get more information on how to find a site called False Kiva in Canyonlands National Park. I knew that several of the folks posting on one of the forums I read had been there and others had tried to find it unsuccessfully. The trend that ran through most of the threads was that while Park Rangers are obligated to disclose it's location, they would often refuse or simply not comment. I understand the concept behind non-disclosure of the locations of fragile cliff dwellings or rock art. The amount of vandalism is unbelievable so I don't have much of a problem with keeping those places secret. But False Kiva isn't in that category and to flatly refuse to divulge it's location is concerning.

When I visited Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks in 2007 I spent quite a bit of time talking to rangers in both parks about where I could most likely find the critters I wanted to photograph and in every instance they were very forthcoming with the information though with the caveat that animals are very unpredictable and their information might not be accurate. They even kept a notebook of animal sightings on the counter at the visitor centers so you could see where the most critters were being spotted. But in 2010 that was all changed.

When Heather and I visited Yellowstone and Grand Teton parks in May of this year I naturally went to the Rangers for information....and was stonewalled. When asked if there were any fresh carcasses near roads I was given no information. When I asked where to find the nest of the Great Horned Owl near the visitor center in Mammoth nobody seemed to know. In Grand Teton when I asked if anyone had spotted Bear #399 they looked at me like I was speaking Martian. Not only that, but the notebooks containing records of sightings were nowhere to be found.

More recently I visited Coconino National Forest and the area around Sedona, AZ for a quick shooting trip. I stopped at the Visitor Center south of the Village of Oak Creek to look at maps and get some information. One of the folks in a Ranger uniform was literally following me around asking if I had any questions or needed help with anything. When I asked about the West Fork of Oak Creek Canyon he was only too happy to point it out on the map but when I asked how far up the Canyon I had to go to find the overhang with the reflecting pool, again I got the look like I was speaking a language from outer space. It was as if someone had flipped his switch to the OFF position. There was even a large photo of the area in question hanging on the wall and I pointed to it when I asked the question. No response...

I suppose it's possible that all the Rangers I approached honestly didn't know the answers to the questions I was asking but consider this: Rangers in Yellowstone and Grand Teton are tasked with controlling traffic for critter jams and also for removing carcasses that are too close to the road so Joe Tourist won't get chewed by a bear. They have radios and everyone on the Park frequency knows instantly where the jams are. The West Fork of Oak Creek is billed in every tourist guide as "..the most popular day hike in Arizona" yet nobody seemed to know where to find the location I was interested in. Coincidence? I think not!

How bout you? Have you experienced similar refusals to disclose information at a National Park or Monument? Leave a comment and let's hear about it.

I'm spoiled

2010-10-31T21:58:00.000-07:00

The sign showing where you turn off the highway says "Call of The Canyon" and it's aptly named. I've heard the call....more of a Siren's song capturing me and pulling me closer. It's the West Fork of Oak Creek north of Sedona and I was fortunate enough to spend a few hours creating images and just generally being awed by the scenery.

The feeling here is very similar to what I've experienced in Antelope Canyon. Every step, every creek crossing, every turn around a bend in the canyon presents you with another image, each more impressive than the one before. And when you're headed back to the vehicle it's the same. You see compositions and lighting conditions that you missed on the trip in.

I've never seen fall colors so vibrant or varied. I commented in an earlier blog that I've never seen so many orange and red leaves as this year but this puts the aspens of Colorado to shame. The oaks and other trees have banded together to produce a kaleidoscope of colors. And now I'm spoiled. I'm not sure I'll ever be able to photograph fall colors in Colorado again without feeling somehow deprived. I guess next fall we'll see. For now, I'm pretty happy with this set of images. Check the website gallery titled "New Work" in a few days to see the whole collection.

To Shoot, or not to Shoot...

2010-10-24T21:32:00.000-07:00

Those of you who know me or have read previous blogs know that I'm a research junkie. When I'm planning a photo trip to a place I've never shot before I spend untold hours online searching for information. Looking at previously shot images, looking at maps, booking hotels and airline tickets, generally making myself as familiar with the location as I possibly can before arriving. Most of the time I get some good data that makes my trip successful for the most part. But sometimes it's a problem.

There are a lot of locations in the West that are very iconic. They've been shot by tens of thousands of photographers over the years and you've seen images of them all...Delicate Arch, Mesa Arch, Yellowstone Falls, Old Faithful, the Grand Tetons, all the famous views in Yosemite. The image accompanying this blog is another of the icons, The Mittens in Monument Valley. I could show you hundreds of images online shot from this particular spot in all sorts of lighting conditions. I think mine is a bit unique but like many of the icons, if you look hard enough you can find a set of holes from thousands of tripod legs in this spot. And there's the problem.

I'm heading out Friday afternoon for Arizona. Flying into Phoenix and spending some time with my daughter and her family before driving north to Sedona for a couple of days shooting. I've been doing my usual research and in this case, I'm just about sick to death of seeing Cathedral Rock reflected in Oak Creek. It seems if you google or bing up Sedona and images of the area, 99 out of 100 will be images of Cathedral Rock reflected in Oak Creek. So the challenge is there for me....create some unique images of an iconic location. Yes, I'll probably make at least one exposure of Cathedral Rock reflected in Oak Creek. You can't visit an icon without photographing it even if your image will be number 10,000,000 in a series. But I'll be spending my time searching for images I haven't seen before and who knows, I may get lucky. I may run into some unusually spectacular light like I did at Monument Valley. Check back in about 10 days and see.

What was once old is new again

2010-10-08T22:15:00.000-07:00

I am always looking to become a better photographer. I look at other shooters' websites, read their blogs, and monitor a few photographic bulletin boards where my peers post their images for critique and accolades. And I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm not above stealing a good idea and adapting it to fit my own thought process. So a few weeks ago when I ran across a blog post by Greg Russell about using newly acquired skills to process older images it struck a chord.

Don't misunderstand me, I'm not a Photoshop or Lightroom wizard. There are many thousands of folks out there that have forgotten more about processing images in the digital darkroom than I'll ever know. But I'm always trying to improve. I go to seminars...I read books...I follow Lightroom on Facebook for tips and tricks. I also talk to other photographers and in the past year I've become much more active in a group of Colorado based nature photographers and have even gone shooting a few times with other photographers. (My wife tells me I probably shouldn't go shooting with Richie V anymore cause he has lots of cool toys and I always want to buy some new stuff after a shooting excursion with him) Mostly I'm just trying to get better and I think that though I have a long ways to go before I can truthfully say I'm pretty good at it, my skill level is higher than it was 5 years ago. The software is also better and much more powerful than in years past.

So with apologies to Greg for stealing his idea, I've assigned myself a project. I'm going through my older images and reprocessing them with better software and more skill. This will be an ongoing project and I'll probably try to post some of the more dramatic improvements here. Which brings us to the photo above. Combat fishing on the Russian River in Alaska. This is an image I shot in 2005 when we took a cruise then spent some time on the Kenai Penninsula after the cruise. At that time I think I was using Photoshop Elements 2 or 3, can't remember which one but it was a much less sophisticated version than Lighroom 3 which I use for most of my processing today.

The top image is the original version, processed from the RAW file shot in 2005. My technique then was even more primitive than the software I was using. About all I did was adjust the black and white points, crop a little, and sharpen the file. There was a little bit of burning and dodging but that's about it.

The bottom image was processed in Lightroom and then exported to a plug in called Topaz Adjust where I was able to brighten and enhance the color without increasing the contrast too much. I also cropped out some distracting elements and I have to admit, I really like it quite a bit better than the original.

My goal is to work my way through the Alaska images at the rate of 1 image per week minimum so it may be a while before I make my way through the archives. And by then this year's images will be old so I can process them with whatever software and skills I acquire in the future. So keep checking back and please leave comments to let me know what you think.

"...Why do they shoot for short pay.."

2010-09-27T19:44:00.000-07:00

With apologies to Michael Burton, an Arizona rancher who wrote a wonderful cowboy song called Night Rider's Lament. I've stolen one of the lines and changed it to suit my purpose. It's a beautiful song about a cowboy who left the city life and a woman for who knows what reason. But he's wrangling cows and his city friends can't for the life of them understand why he does what he does. He explains it in the most loquacious of terms which I'll get to in just a while.

I've been thinking a lot lately about why photographers do what they do. Why do we crawl out of a warm bed or sleeping bag 3 or 4 hours before sunrise and stumble through the woods or drive significant distances at a high rate of speed to photograph a sunrise where the magic light may only last 3 or 4 minutes. Why do we sit shivering near the edge of a meadow in pre-dawn darkness waiting for the bull of the woods to grace us with his presence only to be disappointed a great deal of the time. Why do we stand knee deep in glacier fed streams to get just the right angle for our composition?

Some do it for the money. There are quite a few folks out there that make a living as photographers. Some live check to check and some are very successful. I don't have statistics to back it up but I'd guess that maybe 1% of 1% of all the photographers out there have gotten wealthy because of their craft. I spent a little less than 20 years making my living from photography though it mostly came from the periphery of the business, not from shooting. I did manage to make some money shooting weddings and portraits and I've sold some stock photos over the years but mostly I was working in photo labs or some such nonsense.

Some do it for the glory. There are photographers out there who publish scores of books. Some conduct workshops all over the world. Some have huge displays of their images in airports or restaurants and some even have their own tv shows. There's a lot to be said for the ego rush that comes from seeing your work displayed. Even more to be said for knowing that people are willing to pay to learn what you know. It's a rush that's hard to beat. I had one of my images displayed at the company where I work for a year and every time someone said "Bill, is that your photo hanging across from the elevators in building 1?" it made me warm and fuzzy all over.

I can't really pretend to know why my friends do what they do. Most of the photographers I associate with these days have "day" jobs in fields other than photography. We toil by day so we can get out on the weekends and create images. Some make some pretty good sales of their photos and with any luck, I'll be able to parley some of my images into cash to supplement my upcoming retirement. But that's not one of the main reasons I do what I do.

It's the rush...the fun...the therapy..the zone. Yeah, I said zone. When I go on a photo trip most of the time my family declines every invitation. They've been around me too long and been on too many excursions with me and they realize it's not usually fun or entertaining for them. When I'm seriously shooting, concentrating on creating images, I get into a "zone." I lose all my social skills and give little or no thought to the comfort or even the presence of the people around me. I might wait hours at a location for the light to get right. I might go back somewhere again and again at different times of the day to see how the light looks at different times. I don't care if my family has been sitting in the car for a long time and are tired and hungry and bored. When I'm working at my craft I'm there for me, not for them.

Sounds stressful, doesn't it? Well, I suppose it could be but amazingly enough, even though I'm zoned in to what I'm doing, photography is very theraputic for me. I come back from photo trips feeling very calm and peaceful even though I may have had limited sleep due to rolling out of bed for sunrise several days in a row. Despite sleep deprivation I feel tanned, rested, and ready for anything when I come back from a trip.

And then there's the rush. When I see a sunrise color the surface of a mountain lake. When I hear 6X6 bull elk bugle during the rut and see his frosty breath in the morning light. When I put a blank sheet of paper into a tray of chemicals and watch an image magically appear or even when I see a print come out of the ink jet printer. When I've been sitting in a hotel room for 36 hours waiting for the blizzard to stop and when it finally breaks and the sun comes out and gives me the best hour of light conditions I've ever seen. It's all about the rush and it's something non-photographers will never quite understand. And also something I can never truly explain. So I'll let Michael Burton's lyrics say it for me. (The correct lyrics this time)

"But they've never seen the Northern Lights...they've never seen a hawk on the wing. They've never seen spring hit the Great Divide..."

Stay in your warm bed for as long as you like. If you're looking for me I'll be out chasing sunrises like the one here of the Grand Tetons. See you out there.

Anticipation........

2010-09-26T19:25:00.001-07:00

A famous football coach once said "..Luck is where preparation meets opportunity." This is one of my favorite quotes of all time. Maybe not the favorite but certainly top 3. And the images accompanying this post are examples of just that..preparation meeting opportunity. But there's a third element that I tossed in with the other two. Anticipation..one of the key elements of being a successful sports or nature photographer.

So you've learned everything there is to know about your camera gear and how to operate it in every conceivable situation. You know the critical elements of exposure, composition, and the physics of photography. You know that telephoto lenses compress perspective and wide angle lenses stretch perspective. You know the techniques for stopping motion or for increasing or decreasing depth of field. In short, you're prepared.

You've come to a dream location. Alaska, the Rocky Mountains, any pro sporting event you can think of. You have researched where to go to photograph the scenes or critters you're interested in. The time of year is right, you're in the right place, and you've been blessed with ideal weather by the photo Gods. This is opportunity.

So what now? Do you just run out and point your camera at your subject and hope it works? Well, maybe. Some photographers think if you shoot enough you'll get a few useable images and they're probably right to a certain degree. But let's take a little less haphazard approach.

The images that accompany this post are all results of 3 elements: Preperation, Opportunity, and Anticipation. I didn't just get lucky to get the images. I worked hard doing my research so I'd know where I had the best chance to get the shot. I knew my camera and lenses inside and out so I could change settings in my sleep and I knew what lens would work in what situation and what lenses wouldn't work at all. And I was able, through my research, to be in the right place at the right time to get the image. Here's how.

Let's take the middle image first. Simple shot...a black bear crossing a creek. Easy, right? Not so fast! I had a chance to visit Yellowstone in 1991 for a few days. I'd driven all night Friday night after work to be at the Oxbow Bend on the Snake river for sunrise before heading north into Yellowstone. I found a campsite at Indian Creek campground and headed out to scout the territory. Before I left I had a conversation with the campground host. Upon learning that I really wanted to photograph bears and moose he gave me the usual fisherman's answer. "You should have been here earlier this morning. We had a black bear come right through camp." Over the next 3 days I was to hear this several times but somehow the bear and I had conflicting schedules. Finally, on my last day in the park before heading home, I was sitting in front of my tent eating lunch when some people came running past headed for the meadow just over the hill. When I asked what the hurry was they said "It's a bear...headed for camp!" Sandwiches and chips were forgotten. I grabbed my camera, bolted it up to the 400mm lens and tripod, and headed to the top of the hill. It was a sight to behold, typical of Yellowstone. 1 bear, 50 tourists with instamatic cameras trying to get close to the bear. The tourists would move inside the bear's circle of comfort and the bear would move away. They'd come closer and the bear would move. I had spent the previous afternoon fishing Indian Creek and knew it a little bit so I put on my thinking cap. The bear was headed in the direction of a shallow ford where he could cross without swimming. Figuring that is where he would be, I beat feet back down the hill and headed for the ford. I got my tripod set up and set the exposure data on the camera and sure enough, 10 minutes later the bear appeared exactly where I thought it would. Preparation, Opportunity, and Anticipation. I got the shot.

The whale tail came about in a similar manner but for a much different reason. While visiting the Pacific Northwest in 2006 I had a day to kill while Judy went shopping with an old friend of hers so I booked passage on a whale watching cruise out of Anacortes. We cruised for a couple hours before finally finding some whales off the waterfront at Everett, Washington. The mode of operation is to spot a whale, try to guess where it's headed, and put the boat in the path of the whale. The first couple of times it was a fiasco! The captain pointed the boat at the whale, everyone raced to the front of the boat, and it was impossible to see the thing, much less photograph it. After watching the pattern of one of the whales I noticed that it was surfacing closer to the back of the boat than the front so I thought it might be a grand idea to move away from the crowds and hope the back of the boat would be the place to be. Sure enough, the next time the whale surfaced it was 10 feet from the stern of the boat and I was the only one to see it. It was a simple matter to get the shot. Preparation, Opportunity, and Anticipation. I got the shot.

The elk was maybe the best illlustration of anticipation. I was in Rocky Mountain National Park and found this guy running himself ragged trying to keep his harem of cows together. They were moving back and forth across the Moraine Park road near the main road intersection. I photographed him for about 30 minutes moving back and forth across the road before deciding to move on. As I was walking the 50 or so yards to my car I saw the lead cow of the harem start heading up the hill right towards my vehicle! Knowing the pattern of this group I knew that I'd watched them cross 3 times exactly where the lead cow crossed so instead of putting my camera away I thought I might just wait a few minutes to see what happened. I felt confident that I knew where they were going to cross so it was a matter of just picking the background and distance I wanted. I set up and waited. Sure enough after about 10 minutes the lead cow crossed right where I thought she would. One by one the other cows and calves followed her in single file. Finally, the bull came across the road and passed right in front of my camera, exactly where I predicted he would. Preparation, Opportunity, and Anticipation. Again, I got the shot.

Was I lucky to get these images? You bet I was. But I worked my butt off to be able to execute the shot when preparation and opportunity put me in position to anticipate the outcome and get the image I wanted. Try it...it works!

You don't have to outrun the bear......

2010-09-22T20:01:00.000-07:00

There is no telling what might inspire a blog post. It might be something I see or something I hear. One blog entry came to me when I was mowing the lawn at my daughter's house. It sparked a memory of a conversation I'd had years before with my Dad about what kind of lawnmower to buy then progressed to how much I missed him and wishing I'd talked more with him. You just never know what's going to tickle my fancy.

This one, though, came to me in a little more arcane fashion. As a photographer I like to keep up with what other shooters are doing. There are several blogs I monitor regularly and a couple of those recently got me thinking. Bret Edge posted about photographing at an iconic location in the Rockies and his experience finding a marvelous image away from the crowd of photographers who were all shooting Maroon Bells near Aspen on a hum drum morning. Then another photographer named Greg Russell posted a couple of links to his blog on Bret's blog and when I started digging through his blog I found one entry about using new skills to process older images. In the midst of this all I was thinking about upcoming photo trips I may be taking including a cruise to Alaska next June that's also going to be a photo workshop cruise conducted by my old acquaintance Rick Sammon.

So where am I going with this? Well, let's see...lots of people trying to accomplish the same goal in a relatively small area...reprocessing older images....Alaska....I've got it! Combat fishing at the confluence of the Kenai and Russian Rivers in Alaska. Duh...makes perfect sense to me, hence the image. But what about the title? Be patient dear reader.

In 2005 Judy and I decided to celebrate our 30th anniversary by taking an Alaska cruise. One of the things we did was set up a trust for our special needs kid in case something should happen to us and during that process we found out that with net worth, retirement plans, and mostly life insurance, we are worth a ton of money..dead. Well me being me, I started talkling about how this would be a perfect plot for a romantic mystery novel. A couple finds out how much the other is worth dead just before a cruise and they spent the bulk of the trip trying to figure out how to do away with the other one. For the most part, Judy was unamused and for some reason when we were taking our evening walk around the Promenade deck on the cruise ship she always made sure I was closest to the rail. But that's not where the title came from.

When we were talking about some of the things we wanted to do after reaching Alaska we talked about how, during her youth, Judy's family would go fishing on the Russian River and catch lots of salmon. I started doing some research and saw some images of the Russian River Falls and salmon jumping up there but there was also a warning about bears being there. When I told Judy I wanted to see this sight she said "what if we run into a bear?" Answer? "No problem, hon...I'm pretty sure I can outrun you." The saying in bear country is "You don't need to outrun the bear, you only need to outrun one of your buddies."

Thanks Dad. You did pass on your Smartass chromosone.

So here you have it. An older image revisited. Lots of people in a small area trying to accomplish the same goal. And a trip to Alaska. Simple progression, right?

When Icons have feet of clay

2010-08-23T19:07:00.000-07:00

The debate has been around since the inception of digital photography and will probably still be raging long after I'm gone. It centers around the difference in "enhanced" digital photographs versus "manipulated" photographs. It's been written and discussed ad infinitum. I've even written about it in previous blogs but some things have happened recently that put a new twist on it for me.

I'll begin by stating my views on the subject. When I upload an image to my computer and launch it in Photoshop or Lightroom I almost always only perform tasks I did in the darkroom. I'll crop the image if necessary, adjust the contrast, adjust the exposure, maybe increase the saturation, and use minimal sharpening. Some of these are necessary because of my technique and some are necessary because of the characteristics of the RAW format that I shoot in. I consider these images to be "enhanced" and they are always my attempt to render the image the way I saw it. There are 2 images on my website currently that have been "manipulated" using Photoshop magic but I knew when I shot them that I would be creating a surreal image in the computer. But the main thing for me is to present the images how I saw them. Not how I imagined them or how I wish I'd have seen them, but what I saw that moved me to create the image.

In that spirit I've always stayed away from filters that alter the perception of colors. Things like color enhancing filters, warming polarizers, or a combination of the two. The results produced by them just doesn't look real to me. I loved Velvia film when I was shooting film but only used it for certain low contrast scenes because of it's not always realistic reproduction of colors. In short, I tend to shy away from anything that changes the faithful reproduction of an image and I'm not a big fan of folks who produce those kind of images.

I also have no respect for photographers that are deceptive in describing their work. For many years I admired the work of Art Wolfe. His Nature and Wildlife photography was an inspiration to me. Then it came out that some of the images in one of his books were manipulated to the point where more animals were added to a herd of zebras to make the patterns look like there were more animals in the herd. I'd just about gotten over it until recently Outdoor Photographer magazine ran a cover shot by Art Wolfe of the moon showing through Delicate Arch in Utah. After much debate it was disclosed that yes, the moon had been added to the image of the arch. In essence, he was portraying things that simply had not occurred.

Not long ago a photographer was disqualified from a prestigious international competition when it was disclosed that his image of a supposedly wild wolf jumping over a fence was, in fact, a shot of a captive animal obeying it's trainer's commands. Again, deceptive.

Now there's the whole debate over HDR (High Dynamic Range) photo processing. I'm no expert but my understanding is that HDR is used to make adjustments in an image where the contrast is naturally too great to render a usable image. But people are getting carried away with it. Most of the time HDR images look pretty good but a lot of HDR's have a strangely unrealistic look. The colors are too saturated or the image is too crisp for what are professed as the conditions.

A recent image by Tom Till falls in this category. In one of his most recent collections of images Mr. Till displays some HDR images. One in particular is unrealistic to the point of being disturbing. His image looking through the window of an abandoned building near the ghost town of Alma is just downright unrealistic yet he declares that the images were reproduced the way he "saw" them. If he truly saw this image in the manner it's presented I'd really like to discuss his point of view. When I first looked at it I felt like I was having an acid flashback. It's simply too crazy looking.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not the Photoshop police and I'm not out to bust anyone who uses the tool to it's complete capability. All I'm asking is for people to be honest. If you saw 50 zebras in a herd, show me 50 zebras, not 100 zebras. If you didn't see the moon in that particular place in relation to Delicate Arch, don't tell me you did. If you've photographed a captive animal, don't tell me it's wild. And finally, if your vision of a scene is so ridiculously false, don't portray it as how you saw the image unless you're having an acid flashback. BE HONEST with me.

I mentioned earlier some of the actions I use when processing my digital images. The image accompanying this blog is a perfect example. Here's what I did and why I did it. As I said, I shoot in RAW format which does require some adjustments. The image was cropped to a more panoramic format because I feel it suited the subject. I increased the contrast slightly since RAW files tend to be low contrast. The only thing I did after that was to sharpen the image a little since RAW files are always a bit less than optimum sharpness. Basically I made 3 adjustments to this file. One because of the format I visualized when I saw the image, and the other two to compensate for the RAW format. It really does represent what I saw in the field. And if you have questions about any of my images I'll be happy to disclose my work flow and the reasoning behind it at any time.

In the meantime, anyone know of a couple of incredibly talented photographers out there that I can admire?

What...Me Rant? Nahhhhhh

2010-08-13T21:29:00.001-07:00

Me? Rant? Never! Okay, well maybe a little, but only on days that end in "Y" and then only if I'm in groups of 1 or more or when I'm by myself or with someone. But never fear, readers, for this blog will only be half a rant.

Last weekend I went on an overnight trip to Steamboat Springs for a quick visit with some of the in-laws. Not a bad deal, right? Spend the night in Steamboat Springs, a wonderful mountain town. I'd get a chance to visit with some of the favorite relatives and there was a chance I'd be able to photograph some wildflowers based on reports I'd read on some of the photo bulletin boards. So off we went.

On the road about 1:30 Saturday afternoon and almost immediately I should have known how the weekend was going to go. About 20 miles out I had a vision: I left not 1 but 2 tripods at home. Can't shoot wildflowers without a tripod so we turned around and headed back to the house. An hour wasted. But not to worry, we're on the road. The rest of the drive was uneventful and we made it to Steamboat in a little over 3 hours. Let the adventure begin!

Second issue (and a portion of the rant): We pulled up to the hotel just before 4:30 and I went to the office to check in. Check in time is 3:00, right? So I tell the desk clerk who we were, he checks the computer, then gets on a walkie talkie and starts talking in some foreign language for about 3 minutes. He gets a reply and tells me our room won't be ready for 20 minutes but we can wait in the lobby if we want. Now the burn begins....so back to the car, sit there for 20 minutes then go register and get our suitcases all settled into the room. Then back in the car and off to the condo where the in-laws were staying.

After a bit of conversation we figured my brother in law and his kids weren't going to be arriving for a while so me being me, I decided to head up the hill to Dumont Lake to look for wildflowers and found a Bonanza. To quote Richard Landis, "...sweet flowers in profusion.." (if you remember that song you must be really OLD) but I did have a wonderful 90 minutes of shooting before the light faded. I wondered why it was getting so dark till I looked at my watch and saw it was past 8pm. Guess I better get back down the hill for supper.

We had a grand supper, Mike and the kids finally arrived, and we had a good visit before heading off to the hotel for the night and there we ran into the second hotel snafu. I tried to utilize the free wi-fi only to discover the password had expired. Another trip to the desk where I was told "yes, we know. The password always expires about this time on Saturday night." Grrrrrrrrrrrrr But I got it going before hitting the rack for a few hours of sleep. Up early the next morning and back up the hill for some sunrise light on the flowers. It was overcast so I had unlimited shooting time but I only played for about an hour before heading back to town to wake the family and have breakfast. On the way back I detoured up the Buffalo Pass road for a ways and was surprised by 2 big bull moose grazing in a meadow. I've seen lots of moose before but these were the 2 biggest bulls (and only big bulls) I'd ever seen. Of course I had a wide angle lens on the camera and they headed into the woods before I could change lenses. Note to self: (again) when traveling with cameras in wildlife habitat, keep the freakin telephoto on the camera ya bonehead! I missed the shot but I now know where to find them. But on with the story.

I got the gals awake and dressed and we took a peek at the breakfast area at the hotel. It was very small and very crowded so we decided to head to the condo for breakfast. Good meal, more conversation. Finally, we decided to head home...at 1pm. I knew we would hit the heart of the "coming home from a weekend in the mountains" traffic but had no choice. Sure enough it took us over 5 hours to get home. Arrrrrggggghhhhh.

But now the rant begins. I'm really fired up at the human race, specifically the rich ones who build huge homes in the woods and expect others to protect them from natural disasters. You know who you are and the pine beetle devastation is YOUR FAULT! I'm not delusional enough to believe that this is the first time the forests have suffered this malady but before there were no megahomes to protect. Mother Nature controlled the pine beetles by burning their little behinds out. But now we can't do that. We HAVE to protect property and structures. Don't we? I say NO FLIPPIN WAY.

The conifer forests of Colorado have been raped..abused...pick your term and the farther north you go the worse it is. North Park and the area around Steamboat Springs exhibit the worst beetle kill areas I've ever seen. I get so depressed when I see that I can't even begin to express it in words. My creativity was challenged when shooting the wildflowers because I couldn't find a backdrop of conifers that wasn't full of brown ugly beetle killed trees.

I know it will never happen but I sure wish we could utilize Mother Nature's way of controlling beetles. If we could just have a few major forest fires and back off from supressing them. If we could just let them burn...I truly think that's what it would take. But the toll on personal property would be enormous and for that reason I know it will never happen. We'll never just let the fires burn. And that, my friends, is a travesty worse than the beetle kill.

Saying Goodbye to an old friend

2010-07-31T18:47:00.000-07:00

Most photographers I know are gearheads. As my friend Bret put it, we "..worship at the alter of gear." We all understand and accept that there is no perfect camera bag, no perfect tripod and head combination, and no lens that is perfect for every situation. I suspect that, like me, all photographers tend to get twitchy if we go too long between buying some new gizmos. We've even been known to barter and swap equipment sometimes for no better reason than to satisfy our jones for gear.

But this is not to make excuses for gear envy or anything. This is merely goodbye to a lens that has served me well for a long time. I'm speaking of my faithful old Canon 100-400mmL IS lens. I was the original owner, having bought the lens not too awfully long after I left my job managing a photo equipment rental business. I no longer had unlimited access to several hundred thousand dollars worth of equipment so I had to start acquiring my own gear and the 100-400 was the first serious lens I bought.

We made some excellent images over the years, this lens and me. Elk in Colorado, Bears in Wyoming, Whales in Washington, more Whales in Alaska, Deer just about everywhere. The list goes on and on. But I've not been shooting a lot of wildlife lately if you exclude the trip to Yellowstone. And I haven't shot sports since my son was about 12. So maybe it was time to find a more useful piece of equipment.

The first feelings of disatisfaction started to creep in during my trip to Yellowstone in May. Don't get me wrong, the lens performed well as always. I got some wonderful images with it but I just wasn't happy. Call it frivilous, crazy, self centered. Call it what you will. But in Yellowstone I more often than not had the smallest lens around. I couldn't really put my finger on it but I began to feel a bit unhappy with the 100-400.

My thoughts turned to other lenses. How could I shake this feeling of wanting more? Then I had a vision while driving home from work. What about a 70-200? It would cover a focal length range that I didn't have. It's among the sharpest lenses Canon has ever made. And I could probably swing some kind of trade for my lens and some cash which I could use to buy more gear! Man, this is getting better and better! I mentioned the deal to my friend Richie V and he said I could borrow his 70-200 for a long weekend to Taos to see if I wanted to do the deal. It was a spectacular weekend and I got some wonderful images with Rich's lens. I decided to do the deal but it wasn't as easy as I thought. I composed a good ad for craigslist but couldn't bring myself to push the button. Pre sale seller's remorse I guess.

Finally, though, I was able to rationalize to myself why I should go ahead with the ad. What the heck, there probably isn't anyone out there who wants to make the trade I'm proposing so I posted an ad saying I'd sell my lens outright or trade for a 70-200 f2.8 straight across or for a 70-200 f4 and some cash. I wasn't concerned about IS since I shoot most everything on a tripod. So I posted the ad thinking I wouldn't hear anything about it.

Well, the best laid plans....I had 3 replies in less than an hour after posting, all wanting to swap. The first responder said if I didn't want to trade for his lens he would pay the cash. So we made arrangements to meet and agreed to a period of time where either of us could change his mind and swap back no questions asked. It was difficult but I went through with it and after a 3 day trip to Roswell I'm not sad. I'm now the new owner of a Canon 70-200mm f4 L IS lens and as a bonus I also have a new Canon 1.4x tele converter.

There are 2 images at the top of this blog. The one of the trees was shot Thursday morning near Roswell, NM with the 70-200mm and the Bighorn Ram portrait was shot in May with the 100-400. It's tough to tell from the image of the trees and because of the way this blog uploads images, but the shots I did with the new lens are razor sharp. I'm not disappointed in the least with the lens or the trade.

So Goodbye old friend. Enjoy your new home and make me proud.

Musings on leaving Roswell and New Mexico in general

2010-07-31T07:29:00.001-07:00

Roswell, in and of itself, really isn't that attractive. Once you get past the alien stuff it's pretty bland. No spectacular scenery, no fantastic waterfront...the landscape is pretty flat and boring. It can get beastly hot in the summer and pretty cold in the winter. We've eaten at quite a few different restuarants there over the years and none has proven remarkable enough to seperate itself from the pack. I suppose, now that Heather is done with school, I may have put Roswell in my rear view mirror for good. I may pass through there on the way to somewhere else but as a destination there's not much there.

I left there yesterday morning with a grandiose plan that included photographing some locations and scouting others and was partially successful but when 4pm found me sitting in Blake's Lotaburger in Santa Fe I realized I was dramatically behind schedule and the weather was closing in so I pointed my nose north and headed home. No wildflowers for me this year I guess. But I did have a lot of time to consider New Mexico and my travels there and here is the list:

Roswell...been there, done that, probably not going back.

Lotaburger is just another average burger (sorry Lorenzo, I know it's your favorite)

Taos-a nice place to visit...once or twice. I've been there 3 times and it's pretty much same old, same old now.

Santa Fe-Definitely holds some possibilities. The Old Town area looks fascinating for shopping and there is a well respected Photographic Arts training facility there. Might warrant a long weekend sometime.

Albuquerque-So far I've only been here on a "passing through" basis. It's a nice halfway stop on the trip to visit Erin in Phoenix. I recently learned that my Great Grannie Bean lived there the last part of her life and my cousin is there now. As soon as my sisters and I can coordinate our schedules we'll descend on Patsy for a lesson in family history.

So much for the cities. But there are a lot of locations I need to photograph more extensively and some I haven't visited at all. The images above are from yesterday's trip. I detoured to Three Rivers Petroglyph Area and later visited Gran Quivira Ruins. I was at both locations during the harsh light period of the day and would really like to be at both places during the magic hours.

I've never been to Bisti Badlands though it's near the top of my photographic bucket list and the same for Chaco Canyon and Canyon de Chelly. I spent one morning shooting at White Sands so some extended shooting time there would not be out of the question.

So while New Mexico has a lot to offer, Roswell....not so much.

The Eyes Have It...(Or Not)

2010-07-17T14:13:00.000-07:00

Please forgive me for posting the same image on 2 consecutive blogs. I don't usually do that but in this case it's appropriate and I'll explain in a little while.

Considering my background in Photography a lot of my friends come to me for advice on what camera to buy. Usually they are looking for a point and shoot, a market I don't really pay much attention to. The technology changes about every 90 days so my knowledge of specific models would be outdated by November. For these reasons the answer is usually the same...cameras are designed by computers and built by robots so if you stick with one of the major brands it's pretty tough to get a bad camera. Mostly it's a matter of which one fits your hand and your budget being the best camera for you.

There are 2 things I do mention, though, when I answer the question. I think it's important to have an optical viewfinder and the maximum amount of optical zoom you can get. These are two critical features in my opinion. But there's a problem. If you sense a rant coming on you're right but not just yet. Just now I'm camera shopping for my wife and trying to take my own advice.

About 7 or 8 years ago we were at a family reunion in northern Nebraska. My brothers in law and I decided it would be fun to take a canoe trip down the Niobrara river and I wanted to take some photos. Having been in canoes before and knowing their propensity to tip over sometimes I asked if I could borrow the spousal camera, a nice little Canon Sureshot film camera. The question: "Why can't you take your own camera?" The answer: "My camera and lens is worth over $1000, yours is a little over $100. If we tip the canoe over the math doesn't make sense." With logic like that it was an easy sell so me and the Sureshot headed out for a canoe ride.

Along the way there was some discussion about who would drive the canoe. I mentioned I'd been in canoes quite a bit when I was younger so I was nominated to steer one of the canoes. I neglected to advise them that the last time I was in a canoe was about 1963 but it wouldn't have mattered. So there we were, getting the canoes in the water, arranging the coolers and cold drinks, and pushing off. I thought I'd be cool and jump in the stern after pushing into a little deeper water and that's where my judgement came into question. Forgetting my canoe experiences I neglected to jump in directly from the stern, choosing to approach from the side. An instant later the canoe was upside down and I was sitting in 3 feet of water with just my head above the surface. Worse, Judy's camera was hanging around my neck and to my dismay, it didn't swim very well. In fact, it drowned instantly. After much explaining when we got back I promised to buy her a new camera, relishing the opportunity to get her away from film and into the digital world.

Two weeks later she was the proud owner of a Canon A75 digital camera. It was 3.2 megapixels, a lot for that time, had an optical viewfinder, and wonder of wonders, allowed her to shoot video which she did in profusion every time Heather was competing in Special Olympics. After much whining and groveling she even allowed me to borrow it for a trip to San Francisco. (that's why the same image is posted on 2 consecutive blogs. This image was shot with that camera before being altered in Photoshop) It's been a great little camera and has served her well for many years. But now it's dying. The LCD no longer works for viewing so you can't see what you're about to shoot or have just shot. So I'm camera shopping. LET THE RANT BEGIN

In attempting to heed my own advice one of the critical options of a camera is an optical viewfinder. After shopping a few stores, though, I'm learning that those options are becoming more and more difficult to find. In fact, the local Best Buy didn't have a single point and shoot camera on the shelf with an optical viewfinder. Ditto the local Costco. What the bleep is wrong with the camera manufacturers? Do they think people never shoot photographs in bright sunlight? Is it their opinion that all photographs are taken indoors? What the bleep? When I bought my Canon G10 last year it seems there were a lot more cameras with optical viewfinders. Of course, the G10 and it's replacement G11 cost about twice what I've been authorized to spend.

So I've been shopping cameras. After a quick discussion it's been made clear to me that an optical viewfinder may be one of the things I'm a bit OCD about. With that in mind I'm going to disregard my own advice. By dismissinng an optical viewfinder I can concentrate on sticking with the major brands and merely look for a robust optical zoom. So far I've looked at a Nikon and an Olympus model. And I think we've found one at Costco. Better yet, it's on sale! Boooo yahhhhhhh! Now I'll have one more camera to learn. So what if there's no optical viewfinder? It ain't my camera!

Gimme yo left, yo right, yo left

2010-07-12T20:19:00.000-07:00

I've always been a little confused by the Left Brain/Right Brain thing. I took a Psychology class back in High School but all I remember about that is being told that 1 out of 5 Americans suffers from mental illness. After that we all tried to avoid sitting in the 5th seat. I didn't hear about the Left/Right thing till much later in life when I was studying Photography.

They say that most people fit into one of the two categories. Studies seem to indicate creative people tend to use the left side of their brain more while mechanical people are right brain oriented. I don't know if that's entirely true but I accept it and will use that as the premise of this blog entry.

I believe very strongly that Photographers use both sides of their brains equally. If they didn't, most of the outstanding photographic images you see (perhaps even a few of mine) would never be created. Here's why....

There is a lot of discussion about the ability to "see" an image. You can definitely learn all the rules of thumb regarding composition and lighting but a lot of folks believe that you either have the eye or you don't. I tend to fall into this camp. How else can you explain why someone with a bazillion dollars worth of equipment can create some pretty good images but nothing that really moves you yet a person with basic equipment can photograph the same scene and create a very emotional image.

When I'm out on a photographic expedition and searching out things to photograph the left side of my brain is going at warp speed. Is this an interesting composition? Is the light good now or would it be better at a different time of day? When I decide something might make an interesting image and the camera is brought out, how does it look through the viewfinder? Would it look better if I moved my angle of view? Are there any distracting elements in the frame? Any bright spots that will draw the eye away from the subject? Then come the compositional rules. What's attracted me to this image? Are there leading lines? Repeating patterns? Contrasting elements? All the rules of successful composition run through my subconscious at lightning speed. Most times I don't even think about it, the image just "hits" me. The image of the subdued shadow of the cross on the bell tower is an example of just such a "hit." I saw it and even before turning on the camera I knew how I was going to compose and frame the image.

So if we conclude that the left brain is responsible for "seeing" images, where does the right brain come in? Well, there is a lot of mechanical activity in creating a photograph. Once the left brain has found an image worthy of photographing what now? What lens should I use? A telephoto to compress the elements? A wide angle to stretch the perspective? Should I use a small lens opening for more depth of field or a large lens opening to blur the background? What about shutter speeds? Do I need to freeze or blur movement? Should I use a filter to get the desired effect? A polarizer? Neutral density? How bout a graduated ND filter? Most importantly, do I need to correct the exposure readings or will they be sufficient for this subject? And that's not considering post processing. Was the white balance correct? Did I crop the image correctly? What about burning and dodging? Color correction? Come on right brain, give me guidance. What do I need to do mechanically to execute this image the way I see it in my mind?

Now that we've gotten that data out of the way, let's examine how the process is executed for the two images accompanying this blog beginning with the Shadow of the Cross. I was in Taos, New Mexico for a long weekend and went out to San Francisco De Asis church one morning to photograph the church. I'd photographed the church before and have some nice images but when I visit a place I've previously photographed I'm always looking to improve on the existing images. In this case I didn't think about it being Sunday morning. People were showing up for early morning Mass and were milling around on all sides of the church so the grand elevation shots were impossible. I started looking for detail images and when I finally made my way to the front of the church I looked up at the bell tower and this image "hit" me. I saw it before me and in my mind's eye I saw how it would look as a finished photograph. Now all I had to do was execute the image. ENGAGE RIGHT BRAIN! I had a wide angle zoom on the camera but knew I needed more focal length to isolate the view I wanted so I quickly changed lenses and got the camera mounted on my tripod. What about framing the image? I zoomed in and out a bit to find the composition that most closely matched what I wanted to portray. Now let's think about exposure. The majority of the subject is neutral, probably very near 18% grey reflectance value which is what the meter is going to try to do so no compensation is necessary. There is an area of shadow and an area of white but neither is enough to influence the exposure adversely. Now that exposure is calculated and verified, what about the shutter speed/aperture combination? The subject is static so there's no danger of subject movement and I'm on a tripod so there's no danger of camera movement therefore the shutter speed isn't a determining factor. I don't need to blur a background and the subject is far enough from the camera that a moderate lens opening will give me adequate depth of field. Knowing that all lenses are critically sharpest about 2 stops in from maximum aperture I stopped down to f8 and pushed the button. A glance at the histogram on the LCD display told me I'd nailed the exposure and the preview told me the composition and focus was right on so I was done and on to the next image. The left brain "saw" the image and the right brain made it happen.

But what about the other image? Well, that one came to be in a reverse sequence. It took shape in the right brain first, moved to the left brain for refinement, then back to the right brain for execution. I was attending a photo seminar in San Francisco a few years ago which dealt with both the process of seeing and creating an image but also post processing techinques in Photoshop. One of the quick and dirty techniques we learned in the morning session was a graphic pen technique. Basically Photoshop converts a photograph to a line drawing image using the graphic pen effect. Then using some Photoshop magic you "paint" the color back in, the result being a graphic image that's a bit surreal, similar to a hand colored Black and White photograph. My right brain communicated the mechanical process to the left brain which "saw" an image of the fishing boats at Fisherman's Wharf which would be perfect for this techinque. During the lunch break I hopped on a cable car to the Wharf, composed the image, and exposed it. (The seagull was a bonus) Then back on the cable car and on my way back to the hotel where the seminar was being held. A quick download from the camera to the computer, the graphic pen effect was initiated, the color was painted back in and there was the image, just as I'd seen it in my mind.

So there you have it. The left brain "creates" the imaginary image and the right brain takes over to mechanically execute it. In my opinion there's no doubt about it. Successful photographers are mentally ambidextrous.

Agree? Disagree? Leave a comment and we'll discuss it.

I Wonder.......

2010-07-08T20:25:00.000-07:00

Did you ever ask yourself "Why did I choose to come to this place?" Well, I asked myself that a few times over 4th of July weekend in Taos, New Mexico. Don't get me wrong, I like Taos and it was nice to get a chance to spend some time there.

My first visit was 3 years ago when I drove through on the way to White Sands in southern New Mexico. We were delivering Heather to Roswell for her first year of college and since all her gear required 2 vehicles I took off early and made a side trip to White Sands for a little photography time. Since I had no time crunch I decided to detour through Taos and see if it was worthy of more time. I spent an hour walking around Taos Pueblo before driving through town and on to Santa Fe and points south.

The next visit was a year ago. We picked Heather up in Roswell after the school year ended, dropped her off at the airport in Albuquerque for a visit to Erin's house in Phoenix, and drove to Taos to spend the night. We took the High Road from Santa Fe to Taos and spent some time photographing old mission churches at Chimayo, Las Trampas, and Picturis. It was a grand day and I got some of my favorite images. We had a nice supper in Taos and I was up at sunrise to photograph San Francisco De Asis church in Rancho de Taos. It's easy to see why this building attracted such artistic notables as Georgia Okeefe and Ansel Adams and why it is now the most photographed church in America. After breakfast we spent a couple of hours going through the shops on the Plaza before heading home, vowing to return when we could spend some more time.

So why ask myself "why?" Well, it sounds funny but this had some of the same characteristics of our Alaska Cruise in 2005. On that trip, by the time we got to Skagway we'd seen the same tourist trinkets and baubles in the same kind of stores twice before. In Taos, going through the shops on the Plaza, I got the same impression. Same stuff, different day. So why did we elect to spend 3 days here? An excellent question.

Maybe it was the food. I had Pasta Bolognese at The Trading Post Grill on Friday night and it was really good. And the breakfasts whipped up by Charles at American Artists Gallery Bed and Breakfast were amazing. Veggie breakfast burritos one morning, scrambled eggs with peppers and onions accompanied by turkey sausage the next, blue corn pancakes with blueberries the final morning. Good stuff. And of course the Beef Tenderloin tournados at Lamberts on Saturday night. The service sucked...it was over an hour between the time we ordered and our food arrived but when it got there all was forgiven. It was marvelous. And don't forget Saturday's lunch at Taos Diner. Really good pulled pork bbq sandwich. Yeah, maybe the food had something to do with it.

Probably, though, it is the history and the architecture. I'm a big fan of the historical period of the early to mid 19th century in the West and I'd read about Taos being a very popular spot for trappers and mountain men to winter. Kit Carson and Charles Bent were two of the most prominent citizens of Taos during that period. And I mentioned the church architechture before. Just look at the images contained here.

So while it may be same old, same old as far as the merchandise in the shops, there are a lot of other things to bring me back. And I will be back. Just not sure when.

The Tetons are teasing me (again)

2010-05-27T06:26:00.000-07:00

Another grey day in the Tetons. Story of my sad and pathetic life. Above are 3 photographs, reading top to bottom: Sunrise Wednesday, Sunset Tuesday, Sunrise (or lack thereof) Thursday. With the exception of the top photo, the Tetons have been teasing me and are now telling me it's time to leave.

When we rolled in on Tuesday afternoon the cloud deck was very promising. Scattered but thick clouds with a break on the western horizon that would allow the sun to reflect off the underside of the clouds and color up the Tetons. But just before sunset the cloulds just magically disapated. They just went away! There was some nice late light on Tiwinot but mostly it was a fizzle.

Sunrise Wednesday was really nice but not spectacular. Again, some clouds adding atmosphere to the shot and a break at the horizon that would allow the clouds to color up but alas, just before the sun came up some clouds must have formed at the horizon. I got some awesome light on the peaks as you can see but the clouds never did display any color. On a scale of 1-10 I'd rate this one an 8. Some more colorful clouds and less wind to spoil the reflections would have made it a 10.

Finally, this morning. I planned to be at the barn on Mormon Row when the sun came up at 5:45 and knew it was a 30 minute drive to get there. When I rolled over and looked at the clock it was 4:59 and I knew I was going to have to hurry to get on location. It was overcast when I got outside but there were some breaks near the horizon (are we seeing a theme here?) and I thought it might be one of those magic times when everything gets some blazing color. Blazing down the highway, hoping not to T-bone an elk or moose or bison, I came to the realization that I wasn't going to make it to Mormon Row so I quickly pulled into Schwabacher's Landing. Put the camera together, get the gradient neutral density filter holder mounted on the lens, and hike the 2o0 or so yards to the beaver pond hoping the color on the eastern horizon would spread to the rest of the sky now that I'm in place. Sadly, another fizzle. The sun just barely kissed the top of Tiwinot for about 15 seconds before the clouds on the horizon closed in and everything went grey.

So today is the day Heather and I have to head home and the Tetons are making sure I don't forget that. But before leaving, I was standing by the beaver pond at Schwabacher's grousing with a couple of other shooters about the lack of light when 2 things hit me:

1. Nobody likes a whiner. So what if the sunrise was a drag...there are so many other things to see and do here that any day is a glorious day. Remember: Your worst day on vacation is better than your best day at work.

2. These mountains are so freakin spectacular to look at, any day you're here seeing them is a great day. Besides, leaving on a grey day means I have to come back. Next time I'll plan the trip a bit differently. More time in the Tetons and less time in Yellowstone. Maybe that way I can trick the weather and it will be nice while I'm here.

Things that make a Photographer go "Hmmmm...."

2010-05-26T19:45:00.001-07:00

Musings on the last night in the Tetons. After 4 days in Yellowstone and 2 days here Heather and I are headed home tomorrow. It's been a grand journey and very thought provoking in many ways. Here are a few:

Camel Flash (Camoflouge)

I've seen lots of serious photographers in Yellowstone decked out in full camo gear from head to toe. Even their lenses have camo wrappings. Now I fully understand the importance of blending in when you're photographing creatures that aren't habituated to man. I've even been known to wrap myself in a camo poncho with only my lens poking out on a few occasions. But here's the deal. What is the purpose of being fully camo equipped in Yellowstone? I guess they figure if a bear or bison decides to charge the 100 or so tourists standing shoulder to shoulder photographing said creature, the camo will hide you and you won't be the one the critter stomps or chews. Hmmmmmm

Equipment Envy (It's all about size)

I fancy myself a professionial photographer. At the very least I'm a recovering professional photographer. And when I hit the field with my 100-400 zoom I usually feel pretty secure in my equipment. But all this week I've felt puny...under gunned...insignificant. When I haul out the 100-400 and I have the smallest lens there it's a sad deal. In Yellowstone, more often than not I found myself surrounded by "photographers" who have more wrapped up in their rigs than I paid for my car. Top of the line Nikon or Canon body with full blown motor drive, 500mm or 600mm lens, big-ass Gitzo tripod with a very expensive gimbal head, motor drives, etc. Where do these guys get their cash to buy this stuff. What do they do with the images? Are they all pros or just wannabes? Hmmmmmmm

Are you sure that's a wolf?

A few times this week we dropped by the Slough Creek trailhead where there was usually a ton of people with spotting scopes and stuff. When asked what they're looking at they would grudgingly point across the valley about 3/4 of a mile to an area where one of the wolf packs has their den. With my spotting scope cranked all the way to 60X I could see some small moving dots. "Are you sure those are wolves?" "Of course, I said so didn't I?" Seems to me if you're too far away to tell what the heck something is at 60X magnification, you didn't see no wolves. Hmmmmmm

Badgers? We don't need no stinkin badgers...

One of the ways to spot wildlife in Yellowstone is to drive around looking for a bunch of folks with big lenses (there goes the lens envy thing again) standing by the side of the road, stop and ask what they see. One such group replied "we're waiting for a badger to come out of the brush." A badger....really? Here you are in the home of 2 of the predators at the very top of the food chain and you're waiting in the rain for a badger? I just don't get that one. Hmmmmmm

Information please....

In past years and trips to Yellowstone and Grand Teton the Park Service staff has been really helpful with information on where to most consistently see wildlife. Keep in mind, wolves and bears are where you find them. To a certain degree they are creatures of habit but as someone once said, "...the only thing predictable about a grizzly is that it's unpredictable." This year, though, none of the government employees would commit to anything. The standard answer was "I haven't really heard anything specific..." Rubbish. They have radios and hear about every bear jam and every wolf jam and every whatever jam. But this year, none of them are sharing. Must be some kind of directive from the Democratic administration. Hmmmmmm

Wolf Watchers are friendly people. (If they know you)

There's a chat board I monitor from time to time detailing the movement of wolves and bears in Yellowstone. The folks there seem pretty friendly though occasionally they'll go off on some newbie that asks what they perceive to be a silly question. This year, though, on more than one occasion I stopped at a group of spotting scopes and asked what they were looking at. Most of the time someone would say "wolves" before going back to a conversation with their pals. More than once I had to be a persistant ass to get them to tell me more than that. Once I even had to ask 4 times for landmarks so I could try and spot the critter. They probably thought I was rude. I KNOW they were rude. Hmmmmmmm

And on that note I'm headed back to the cabin to get ready to leave in the morning. Bye for now Wyoming. I'll be back. And next time I'll have a bigger lens and a buncha camel flash clothing. That makes me a pro, right?

I was NOT lost....I was exploring!

2010-03-25T20:27:00.000-07:00

When it comes to directional orientation there are two kinds of people: Folks that are pretty aware and folks who need Garmins. You know which one you are. If you're aware you may not always know exactly where you are but you have a pretty good idea of how to get where you want to go. If you're the other group, when someone tries to give you directions using North, South, East, or West (Take Colorado north to Colfax and turn east..) your eyes glaze over like a cop at a donut shop. You much prefer left, right, and descriptions of landmarks. And that's okay.

Personally, I'm in the first group. I can't explain exactly how or why I got this attribute but I'm almost always aware of where I am and how to get where I'm going. Maybe I got it from my Dad. When I was young and trying to learn my way around, and even later when I was older, Dad took great joy in never going the same way to a place twice. And if you were in a car following him you bloody well better know how to get where you're going cause at some point he was going to blaze through a yellow light and lose you.

Maybe it was from Boy Scouts. We went on a lot of campouts during the summers and did some orienteering with maps and compasses. My third year at summer camp I had to "carry my rock." We had to find a rock that weighed at least 16 pounds, carve our initials in it, and deliver it to the main office of the camp on Thursday night. Friday morning we were given a map to the location of our rock which was 5 miles from camp. You had to find your rock and carry it back to camp then carry it around with you all day and at the Friday night campfire, the last one before going home on Saturday, you got to put your rock in a big pile of rocks from years of 3rd year campers and got your "Indian" name. Me being me, I looked at the map and decided to take a shortcut that would cut at least 2 miles off the distance. Took off cross country and came out on the road about 100 yards from my rock. Probably pure dumb luck but I'll take it.

Then there was the surveying class I took when I was studying Forestry in college. I had to lay out a grid on a plot of land, take appropriate measurements, and create a topographic map of my plot.

Whatever the case, I'm not directionally challenged in the least. When my wife asks if we should take her car somewhere "because it has GPS" I laugh hysterically and ask if she remembers who she is talking to. But that's only background, not the point.

Last weekend I was visiting my daughter in Arizona and spent 2 mornings creating images in the Superstition Mountains north of Apache Junction. The first morning I parked the car on the shoulder of Highway 88 and walked about 100 yards into the desert to get a shot with no power lines. No problem, just walk back to the highway and I'm good. Easy. Next morning, though, was a llittle different story. I pulled into the parking area of the Bulldog Canyon Offroad Area about 30 minutes before sunrise, shouldered my backpack and tripod, and headed down a 4 wheel drive road. There were some pretty prominent landmarks and I was on a road so I didn't worry about getting lost. Heck, I could just backtrack on the road and find my way out no problem. After hiking about 3/4 of a mile from the car I found a good shooting location a couple minutes before the sun started to light up the landscape and spent about 15 minutes shooting the sunrise. The light was getting flat pretty quickly so I decided to head downhill from the road to a wash I'd crossed earlier that was running a trickle of water to see if I could locate some shaded pools to shoot reflections and that's where I went wrong.

After a while of shooting in the wash I started following a pair of Cardinals that were flitting from tree to tree, trying to get a decent shot of a real Arizona Cardinal. After about 30 minutes of trying to get a good shot I gave up and headed back to the car. I thought.....

I knew the road had crossed this wash but I wasn't sure exactly where so I figured I could head uphill a little ways and hit the road then hike back out so uphill I went. About 5 minutes of climbing and I was getting a bit winded and thinking "I should probably have hit the road by now...and that rock formation looks sort of like the one I was photographing this morning but wasn't it waaaaaaaaay up the hill from the road?"

So here's the situation: I'm away from my vehicle in unfamiliar territory. I had clearly gotten disoriented a bit when I was chasing the birds. Looking around I could see nothing but cacti, rocks, and hills. No sign of a road or a highway or the parking area where my car was. What to do? If I were in group 2 I would immediately panic and probably wander off in the wrong direction eventually becoming one of the many people that have gone into the Superstitions never to be seen again. But I'm NOT in that group. So I found a smooth rock to sit on and started thinking. Eventually a logical plan was formulated in my mind. I knew I could head straight downhill and find the wash. If I headed back the way I'd come while following the birds I would probably come across where the road crossed the wash. If not, I could keep going until the rock formations on top of the hill matched the angle I'd photographed them from then head uphill and find the road.

In this case I got to the wash and about 100 yards later I found the road and made my way back to the car. I wouldn't say I was lucky because I was able to avoid panic and use logic to find my way back but it could easily have been a difficult situation because I was a little bit stupid. I went into an unfamiliar area without a map and compass which is something I NEVER do...well, almost never. I had only a small bottle of water, hardly enough to last a day if I was truly lost. I was alone and nobody knew where I was other than "up by Apache Junction." That's not a recipe for disaster, it's a whole flippin cookbook.

So what's the moral of this story? Just this: DON'T BE STUPID! And follow a few simple rules.

1. Be Prepared! The Boy Scout Motto. Dont hike in the Desert without enough water and try to have a map of the area and either a compass or a handheld GPS. It's easy to get disoriented when everything looks alike.

2. If you're going somewhere alone make sure that someone knows at least the general area where you'll be and a rough time frame for your return. And if that changes, let someone know.

3. Before setting off on a hike take a moment to look around you for landmarks. See where the sun is in relation to where you are so you can logically figure out where the car is.

4. Finally, think your cell phone will save you? Wrong answer. Through this whole ordeal I had exactly zero cell service. In fact, I didn't have any reception until I got about 5 miles down the highway towards Apache Junction.

Most of all, be smart. Think about what you're doing. And above all, don't panic. If you got there you can get back but only if you can stay cool and think logically.

Random Musings while waiting to leave Phoenix

2010-03-22T18:05:00.000-07:00

Okay, no more whining from me about not having any good images from the area around Phoenix. I found a treasure trove on the Apache Trail past Lost Dutchman State Park on highway 88. Got some nice stuff but there's probably 100 more locations I want to shoot. As if I needed a reason to come back. I think I may have found a hiking buddy and budding photographer in Granddaughter Kate. Time will tell.

But here are some random thoughts and musings:

1. If you buy a snow-kone at Surprise Stadium be prepared to have lips and tongue the same color as the flavor you chose.

2. If you're in Queen Creek and have to choose between a game in Tucson or Surprise (a Phoenix suburb) choose Tucson: it's closer.

3. After you return your rental car in Phoenix be sure you're on the right bus for your terminal. It never fails: every time I've rented a car in Phoenix someone gets on the first shuttle to the terminals that's available no matter which terminal their plane is at. Then scream bloody murder when the bus flies past where they want to be. If you're too stupid to read the signs that are EVERYWHERE, shut up! I don't want to hear about it.

4. Unless you're one of those people that hasn't flown or watched the news for 10 years or more don't be surprised when TSA makes you toss your 12 oz bottle of sunscreen. And don't get all indignant about it. The rules of 3.4 ounces or less have been in place nearly 8 years people.

5. If you checked in late for your Southwest flight and have a boarding pass that reads B98 don't jump up and get in line when they start boarding the first class passengers. You have a while to wait. And I promise, the plane won't leave until the door is closed and it won't close until you're aboard.

6. If you are "that guy" (see #5) and you have a carry on big enough to stuff a body in don't be surprised if the overhead bins are all full and you have to check your bag. And don't act all indignant: Check in earlier!

7. If you roll up to the little counter at the airport where they have plug in's for your laptop and someone tells you the plugs are dead, don't make yourself look dumb by trying them. Nobody dislikes you enough to lie to you about the plugs. Well, at least not until you try the plugs thinking that person is being spiteful and doesn't want you to use the plug.

8. Finally, when you're going through security to get to the concourse, you see everyone around you taking off their belts and shoes and jackets...and there are (once again) signs everywhere stating "Remove shoes, belts, jewelry, jackets or sweaters, and other metals" don't think you're exempt. Trust me, you are NOT that special and rest assured, after the third time through the metal detector in front of me cause you forgot to take off your watch and your jacket and your belt, I WILL tell you what a moron you are.

Okay, enough ranting for now. I need to get a cold drink before my plane leaves and I think someone wants to try using the plug I'm sitting in front of. Peace, Out!

"Cochise don't come in peace...He comes painted on the arrow..."

2010-03-20T21:45:00.001-07:00

Back in the late 70's when folksinging duets were popular there I was at a bar in Denver and heard this song. For some reason the lyric line stuck with me, maybe because I've always enjoyed studying 19th century Native American conflicts with the opressive US Government. This area of Arizona was homeland to the Apache and Cochise was the war chief for a while.

As I was driving northeast from Apache Junction I tried to visualize how the Apache made their way through these canyons. When I pulled off the road a couple of miles past Lost Dutchman State Park and hiked into the desert to get a view without powerlines in the way I could barely move through the landscape without getting punctured. If it wasn't the Cholla it was the Pencil Cactus. If it wasn't the Pencils it was the Prickly Pear. If it wasn't the Prickly Pear....well, you get the idea. Everything out here will either bite you, sting you, or stick you and more than once I had to find a rock to bump Cholla clumps the size of golf balls off my pants leg or my hiking boot. I was fortunate that none of them penetrated my skin. But I digress.....

Mostly I was thinking "how the heck did those people travel up these slopes in leather moccasins? How did they keep thorns out of their bodies?" Amazing...legend has it that an Apache youth could run all day with only a pebble in his mouth to make the saliva flow. I could barely walk at a slow pace without becoming a pin cushion.

I blogged a few months ago about my past inability to come away from here without any images that I liked. Well, today I got some stuff I'm pretty proud of. Maybe not world class but I like them. Definitely an improvement over what I've done in the past. I guess the key is to remember that the "magic hour" is barely 30 minutes here before the light gets harsh and ugly. In other climes good shooting light can run nearly an hour but not here. Now I know.

The Devil in the Details

2010-03-09T20:31:00.001-08:00

I'm a research junkie. I freely admit it and understand it and sometimes even revel in it. I've been spending some time planning a few trips this spring and summer and it's occurred to me that I may be a bit OCD when it comes to planning. So I thought I might share some of the madness I go through when setting up a trip. In this case we'll take the Yellowstone trip in May. Heather has been asking me to take her to Yellowstone ever since she saw my photos from a trip there in May, 2007 and I've been getting the itch to go again so this is the year. Anyway, here's the procedure.

First, I have to go through the mental gymnastics of checking the schedule at work and comparing it to Heather's spring break schedule. In this case the stars aligned and I was able to get time off in May the week before Memorial Day. That's a great time to be in the park. Bison calves have dropped, elk are about to give birth, and moose are not far behind. And in the Lamar Valley in the northeast corner of the park that means 2 things: wolves and bears. Good thing since that's what Heather wants to see.

So, time and destinations are set. Now the search begins for lodging. I can't camp in the car with Heather along and even if she wasn't there it's still too cold at night up there. So I hit the web and search for lodging around Cooke City or Silvergate, Montana both of which are just outside Yellowstone and the towns closest to the Lamar Valley. Now comes decision time....opulent or basic? Motel room or cabin? Kitchenette or not? If there's a kitchen in the room we can cut some of our costs by not eating at restuarants. Great idea. That decision made, I can narrow the choices down and send inquiries to the choices about availability for our time frame. 2 of the 3 choices responded, 1 didn't so they're out. I weighed the advantages of the other two and made a decision. A quick phone call and the reservation was made. First chore done.

Now it's time to do the same for Grand Teton. Heather says she really wants to spend some time in the Tetons so we'll spend 3 nights in Cooke City before heading south for 2 nights in the Tetons. I have a favorite place to stay there: Signal Mountain Lodge. Pop into their website to refresh my memory about the rooms available then call and make a reservation. That does it, the sleeping arrangements are made for the trip.

On to the itinerary. What are we going to do while we're there? For the next 6 weeks I'll check some websites I know that detail what's going on with wildlife in the park. By the time we get there I'll have an idea where the wolves are hanging out and most likely where there are some fresh kills that bears are feeding on near the roads. That's where we'll be for sunrises and maybe for sunsets. During the rest of the day we'll see the sights of Yellowstone. 1 day we'll head south through the Hayden Valley to Yellowstone Lake with a stop at LeHardy Rapids to see if we can photograph some Harlequin Ducks. Another day we'll head west to Mammoth and maybe south to the Firehole river. The next day we'll have a look at Yellowstone Falls. On our travel day we'll make a stop at Old Faithful and see the geyser pop. Then on to the Tetons for more tourist stuff. Maybe even a day trip to Jackson, the ultimate tourist town.

Now my thoughts turn to the photographic process for the trip. Are there any "must get" shots that I don't already have? Do I have the right equipment? These and other things will be rolling through my mind. I'll be thinking of the last trip and how did my equipment perform. I'll check and clean lenses and cameras over and over again. By the time I unpack the cameras in Yellowstone they'll be cleaner than ever. I'll have to check the memory cards to make sure everything on them has been downloaded before formatting the cards and who knows? I will probably pick up another card or two. You can never have enough memory.

Then back to the web and a search for images of Yellowstone and the Tetons to see if there's anything out there I haven't seen and to look for inspiration. Have I overlooked any locations? I'll review my photos from the previous trips to see what I can do better. Would this shot look better at sunset than it did at sunrise? And along the way I'll try to think of something to sacrifice to the weather gods to get me some clouds for that sunset behind the Tetons. Clear blue skies are good for general sightseeing but they're a pox on the house of a nature photographer. This is when I'll start making a shot list and start haunting the photo bulletin boards for info on specific locations. Finished, right? Ha!

As the trip gets closer I'll start making mental lists of things. Should I take the camp stove and cooking gear? What food will we need to take? What about clothing? This is a volatile period in Yellowstone. Last time I was there in May the temps were in the upper 60's during the day and I got sunburned. At night it still gets down to the high 30's or low 40's usually and there's the occasional night when you have to scrape the windshield in the morning. In 2007 the day I left for home it snowed and I drove through snow all the way across Wyoming. Gotta be prepared for anything

The last few nights before we leave I'll be going over equipment to make sure everything is ready. Tightening screws on the tripod, charging batteries, formatting memory cards, packing everything. I'll be doing laundry and packing a suitcase. Checking hiking boots to see if I need new laces. And bear spray! Gotta have bear spray if we're going to be hiking at all. Fishing gear? Yellowstone doesn't usually open for fishing until Memorial Day but there's a stream behind the cabin we've rented in Cooke City. Will there be time for fishing? Did I remember to pack the maps and compass and what about the guidebooks?

Sometime during this hectic last week before I'll have to decide which route we're going to take. Through Casper to Cody or cross country and through Dubois? Should we leave Friday night and get a motel along the way or leave early Saturday and have one long day of driving?

Are you tired yet? Well, there's obviously something I've overlooked. Hopefully I'll remember what it is before we go roamin through Wyomin. If not, it can't be very important.

So that's a brief tour of what I go through planning a photo trip. Family trips are something else entirely but I don't want to get into that right now. Maybe next time. If you see or think of something I've left out, let me know. How do YOU plan for a trip?

I Just Can't Help Myself

2010-03-04T20:30:00.000-08:00

My name is Bill and I'm addicted to buying photography equipment. Well, it's not quite that dramatic but you get the picture. As far as I know every serious photographer has this affliction. There's always 1 more lens, 1 more bag, 1 more gizmo and I know if I just had that 1 more dealio I could make better images. They say you can never be too rich or too thin and you can never have too much photo gear.

I'm not sure exactly when this started but I think it was during my first 2 or 3 weeks at the Fishback School of Photography back in the 70's. I thought I had some pretty good equipment to start the school. I was armed with a Mamiya Sekor 1000DTL body complete with a 50mm 1.8 "normal" lens, a Bushnell 28mm and a Tamron 80-200 zoom. A couple of weeks in I realized that my photographs were mostly fuzzygraphs. I worked with my technique but that didn't help. My friend and instructor, Kurt Fishback, broke the bad news to me: "Bill, I hate to be the one to tell you, but your lenses are crap." And so started my addiciton.

The fall from grace was quick and terrible starting with a move up to a medium format Mamiya C220. Eventually I replaced my 35mm equipment with Canon gear and started a seemingly never ending parade of lenses. Sigma 400 f5.6, Tokina 80-200 f2.8, Canon 35-105, Canon 100-300. There was no end in sight. And the accessories...Heaven help me!

Shoulder bags, backpacks, more backpacks. Larger bags, smaller bags. Tripods, big ones and little ones. Filters, both the screw in and Cokin P mount varieties. Warming filters, cooling filters, polarizing filters, neutral density filters, red filters, orange filters, yellow filters, and the ever present skylight filters. Thank goodness I never liked the effects obtained with warming or cooling polarizers or color intensifying filters. That would have only added to my woes. Oh, and by the way, every lens takes a different size filter so I had to have a complete set of filters in 3 different sizes.

Over the years I developed several stratagies for combating that dreaded question from my wife. When I wanted a new piece of gear she would ask "What will this do that your current equipment won't do?" I learned early on that "make me happy" was not the hoped for response but if I could justify my request I usually got my way. I guess she was and still is my enabler. But I learned to trick her. For example, when I spotted a nifty 4X5 field camera I wanted I did what any normal photography addict would do: I borrowed a 4X5 from work and photographed a landscape in Rocky Mountain National park on 4X5 and the same scene on 35mm transparancy film. When making my case for buying the camera she asked the question. I responded by putting the 35mm slide on the light table..nice, eh? Then I dropped the 4X5 next to it and she said "Oh....I see." Next day I was the proud owner of a Calumet 4X5 wooden field camera and the gear circus began all over again. More lenses, more filters, film holders, polaroid backs, focusing loupes, tape measure to calculate bellows factor, and of course a bigger backpack to carry it all. Oh yeah, a bigger tripod to hold it steady.

That was a long time ago though, and I think I'm finally under control. Well mostly. I don't really consider the deal when I decided to sell the 4X5 and go completely digital. And I haven't bought a new lens in nearly 2 years. Of course you might remind me of the switch to a smaller lighter tripod and smaller ballhead. Then the switch from aluminum to carbon fiber tripod and a newer fancier ballhead. Then the search for another smaller tripod to travel with but it was okay, I still had an extra head for the new tripod. And when I bought the daypack for my trip to Utah last year I had every intention of selling it when I got back, really I did.

But I think I've finally reached a place where I can be comfortable. I've got a nice DSLR and 3 excellent lenses. Not only that but I've converted to all slide in filters and 2 of my 3 lenses are the same filter size so I only need 2 adapter rings. But then, I sold my macro lens a while back and there's a wildflower season fast approaching. And the 100-400 is a great lens but not a fantastic lens...wonder if I could trade it for a nice 70-200 L lens. But then I'd have to find a long fast lens for wildlife. And when push comes to shove my DSLR is two generations removed from the newest model scheduled to be out soon. And memory cards...you can never have too many memory cards.

Honey....can I borrow the checkbook?

And The Winner Is........

2010-03-02T21:11:00.001-08:00

Truthfully, the winner is me but in the end I chose this image for large printing. A few weeks ago I blogged about needing to pick out an image from my files to have printed. In January I was very fortunate to win a prize at the RMNP shindig consisting of a free 24X36 print done by Denver Digital Imaging www.theslideprinter.com and mounted by DuraPlaq www.duraplaq.com. Well, I got the print back today and I couldn't be happier.

In the earlier blog I detailed how I searched the files for a suitable image and narrowed the choices down to 2. I burned them both to a cd and took them to DDI and this is the one that looked better on their monitors so this is the one that I picked. I knew they'd do a good job since I was a regular customer back in the dark ages when I shot film. I hadn't been in their building since I converted to digital about 6 years ago but I knew they'd do a fine job.

I didn't know a lot about DuraPlaq since I've always been a mat and frame kind of guy but I'd seen a couple of prints and some samples at the RNMP shindig and was pretty excited to see the result. They did't disappoint. The final product looks FANTASTIC! I need to learn more about them and the price structure though. I've had a difficult time selling large prints in the past since the matting and framing for big prints is very pricey. I have a 13X48 panoramic print on display at T Rowe Price in Colorado Springs and the frame and mat for that one set me back nearly $250. I'm thinking DuraPlaq will prove to be an alternative and will most likely be competitively priced.

So, a big shout out to my friends at RMNP for the door prize. A big thanks to my old friends at the Slideprinter/Denver Digital Imaging, and a really big thanks to the folks at DuraPlaq. Thanks to them I got me a great big beautiful print to hang above my poofy leather chair.

2010-02-26T18:16:00.000-08:00

I was reading a blog post by a fellow photographer yesterday about knowing your subject and your art. As is often the case I started thinking and remembered an essay I posted on my website about 7 years ago after a family reunion of my wife's family in northern Nebraska. "Nebraska?" you say? Well, google up the Niobrara river, have a peek, and we'll talk photography in Nebraska. Anyway, I decided to repost the essay. Hope you enjoy. Yeah yeah, I know the image isn't from Nebraska but it is one of my favorite sunrise shots. Deal with it!

They Just Don't Get It.....

It's the kind of morning that city people can't understand. It begins when I wake in the half light that envelopes the world about 30 minutes before dawn and continues as I stand on the porch of a 100 year old farmhouse and watch the sun slide past the horizon. Maybe it's the way the steam rises off my first cup of coffee that tastes so good I could swear it's the nectar of the Gods. Perhaps it's the way the new sun glints off the spider webs in the field just beyond the mown area of lawn making them shine like a new silver coin in the sun. Personally, I believe it's the air.

The storms that moved through night before last and yesterday afternoon have scoured any impurities from the atmosphere and left behind air so pure and clean I'm sure if I take a breath I'll never be able to breathe city air again without choking. It's not quite like cold clear mountain air that sears the lungs when I take a breath and it's certainly not the filtered purity of a modern air-conditioned office where I spend most of my waking hours. No, this is something else entirely. A bit more humidity, remnants of the previous storms, but mainly it's the clarity that makes me feel this is what God had in mind when he designed mornings.

I am a photographer after all, and I spend a lot of time praying for mornings like this. When I create an image I try to convey the feelings I experienced when I saw a particular scene and it's almost impossible to make a bad photograph on this kind of day. But a photographer friend once told me the best images are often the ones in your mind, not on the film so occasionally I leave the cameras in the case and just observe the magic.

I have a lot of friends that wonder why I never travel east to photograph their parts of the country. My wife nags me a lot to visit the cities of the east: New York, Boston, Washington. I'm sure the eastern landscapes are magnificent in their own right and the cities are spectacular but they hold no allure for me. I sometimes struggle to explain why I have no desire to visit any place in the east knowing that they just don't get it.

But I'm okay with that. Really I am. You see when I experience a morning like this I realize it just doesn't matter that they don't get it. It doesn't matter that the East will never see a magical morning like this. The sun is shining on a fresh new world, the magic has begun…I get it.

Gear Review: Induro C014 tripod/Markins Q3 ballhead

2010-02-17T19:24:00.000-08:00

I haven't done a lot of gear reviews in the past and I've always been sort of a rebel in some aspects so this isn't going to be your typical review. I'm not concerned with specifications like the thickness of the wall of the leg tube or the maximum load capability. That kind of stuff relates to all sorts of gear ratings but the one that comes to mind is capacity of tents. A 4 person tent can only accomodate 4 persons if they're all really good friends or if all of them are pygmies. Same with load ratings of ballheads and tripods. If you look at the max load specs of the Markins ballhead you would believe this device can support up to 65 pounds. Good luck with that but more on that later. On with the review.

I was a bit skeptical about buying a tripod with twist leg locks. I kept remembering my first serious tripod, a Leitz Tiltall which had twist leg locks. It worked really well as long as the temperature was between 45 and 80. Much colder or hotter than that and the legs were a nightmare to open and close. Don't get me wrong, it was a good sturdy tripod but when I discovered that I couldn't remove the 3 way head and put a ballhead on it the Tiltall had to go. My next tripod was a Bogen 3221 with a Bogen ballhead. The quick release plates on that head didn't lend themselves to a secure platform and the lever release enabled me to drop a 500mm f4 lens on the concrete. 2 days later the Bogen head was gone, replaced by a Graf Studioball head. This rig served me well for over 10 years and I don't know it's actual weight but I think it was about 87 pounds so as I got older and my knees got stiffer it had to go, replaced by a Manfrotto 190XB with a Mini Studioball head. Much lighter and also much smaller. Then I started reading about carbon fiber tripods. Ultimately I came across a Manfrotto Carbon One 441 tripod for a decent price and sold the 190XB, using the proceeds to acquire the Markins Q3 ballhead. Well, that tripod is my main unit. It's a perfect height for me, very light, and very sturdy. But it doesn't fit in a medium sized suitcase! Arrrrrrggggghhhhh. Conclusion: Man can not live on 1 tripod alone. So I started shopping for a smaller tripod to travel with.

After a lot of research and reading reviews online I narrowed my choices down to the Induro C014 or the Velbon El Carmagne 640. Ideally I'd have opted for the El Carmagne but I'm not one of those guys for whom money is no object so in the end, price was a major determining factor. I found the C014 on Ebay at a screaming good price ($150) pushed the button, and 3 days later I had a new tripod. Here's the data. I said I don't care a lot about specifics so I'm not going to give you very many. Here's what I care about:

1. Will it fit in a medium sized suitcase?

2. How far do I have to bend over to use it?

3. How sturdy is it and how much does it weigh?

4. How quickly can I set it up and tear it down?

Other than that I don't really care what it looks like though this is a pretty snappy looking unit. So here goes.

The interior measurement of my medium suitcase is 24 1/2 inches. Folded length of the tripod with the ballhead mounted is 21 1/4 inches so no problems there. Diagonally it might even fit in a small suitcase that's appropriate for carry on but I'll check that some other time.

At 5'9" tall I'm what used to be called "average" size and this is the only gripe I have about the tripod so far. With the legs fully extended the top of the ballhead is 49 1/2 inches tall. I'd like it to be maybe 6 inches taller with legs extended. I NEVER extend the center column unless it's absolutely the only way I can get the shot because that effectively turns your tripod into a monopod and 80% of the inherent stability is gone. That being said, if you're 6' plus or have a stiff back then this is probably not the tripod for you. Of course, if it were 6 inches taller it probably wouldn't fit in the suitcase. The height is not ideal but it's a worthwhile trade off for me. You have to bring some to get some.

How sturdy is it? My field test this weekend was a bit abbreviated but I'm convinced this tripod/head combination will be more than adequate for the lenses I have. I probably won't use it much with the 100-400mm but it will handle the 17-40 and the 28-135 with no problems. I don't have a 70-200 (yet) but I suspect it would handle one of those pretty well too. As for weight, when the postman gave me the box my first thought was "Dang this is light. I hope they didn't forget to pack the tripod." With the Markins ballhead mounted the whole thing is just over 3 pounds which makes it a breeze to carry and it's remarkably sturdy for such a tiny thing.

I was concerned with the time it takes to set up a tripod with twist lock legs but there's something amazing about this little guy. My hands aren't inordinately large but I find that I can loosen all 3 twist locks on a leg at one time, pull the leg out to full extension, and lock them in place probably quicker than I can set up my 441 with lever locks. As for cold weather performance, one of the properties of carbon fiber is it's ability to resist contracting in extreme cold or expanding in extreme heat. Last weekend I was shooting in 20 degree weather and had no issues with the legs either extending or collapsing and the locks were good and solid without having to torque them down really hard. That's a plus.

Finally the Markins Q3 ballhead. In the past I've used ballheads by Arca Swiss, Foba, Bogen, Studioball, and now the Markins and I can say that the Q3 is by far the smoothest and easiest to adjust ballhead I've ever used. It's fit and finish is immaculate. In short, it's a purty little devil. The key there is "little." I've put it through a lot and finally was able to discover it's one shortcoming. In January I was photographing Sandhill Cranes at Bosque Del Apache with my 100-400mm lens and as long as I was photographing stationary objects the Q3 performed great. The issue was panning to try and photograph cranes as they take off in the morning. The little Q3 would get really sticky if I tried to pan more than 100 degrees. As an experiment I switched lenses and found I could pan with no issues using the 28-135. The big zoom was just too darn heavy for the Q3. Other than that I have no issues with the Q3 and would not hesitate to recommend it to anyone with the proviso that you be aware of it's limitations.

All in all, I am convinced that this tripod/head combination is very close to my ideal travel/hiking/lightweight tripod. It weighs nearly nothing, it's very sturdy for it's size, and most importantly it fits in my medium suitcase. I think I'll keep it!

Music Can Set You Free

2010-02-15T21:12:00.001-08:00

Let me say right up front so there's no mistake...I'm a Rock 'N' Roller. I grew up during the 60's listening to artists like The Yardbirds, Buffalo Springfield, Cream, and Jimi Hendrix. I played lead guitar in a couple of garage bands during High School and made a little money at it though not a lot. When I got my first car I went through all the gyrations to make the AM radio sound good, installing speakers in the rear deck of my 1964 LeMans along with a reverb device. I was astounded and obsessed when 8 track tapes came around and later followed them to cassettes and finally cd's in all my vehicles and at home.

I've listened to lots of different kinds of music but I always come back to Rock. Guitar rock...the cd currently in my car stereo is a compilation cd that I burned with lots of hot guitar licks. My musical tastes are more esoteric as I grow older but given a choice I'm still going for the hot screaming guitars. I've never been a devote' of Classical music other than to notice that most of the cartoons I watched as a sprout were set to Classical music, a fact that was lost on me until I was in my 30's and watched some cartoons with my kids. The exception (for obvious reasons) being Ravel's Bolero. If you younger people don't understand the reference, don't e-mail me, I'm not sharing.

But tonight, watching the Winter Olympics, I heard a piece of music that moved me. Not because the couple skating to it were fantastic. I despise pairs figure skating. But for another reason entirely.

The music was "Sunrise" from The Grand Canyon Suite by Grofe. I don't know why it caught my attention, possibly because I enjoy the Grand Canyon. But as I listened, I was mesmerized and transported to another place and another time. Back to early 2008, standing on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon watching the clouds break and seeing the sun light up the Canyon. I'd arrived around 4pm Thursday, having driven in from Las Vegas, and once checked into my hotel room I headed out to the Canyon to get some shooting time. Before I could get there, though, it started to snow, lightly at first then heavier and heavier until I could barely see 100 feet. No problem I thought, it will stop during the night and I'll get in some good shooting tomorrow. That was Thursday night....24 hours later when I finished supper it was still snowing hard and I had to leave by 11 the next morning to make my flight in Vegas so I was beginning to worry.

Saturday morning at 5 it was still snowing but I decided to head out to the Canyon and sit in the car until the weather broke or I had to leave, whichever came first. at 6am it stopped snowing and at 6:30 the clouds in the east began to break and let the sun shine through. It was one of the most magical sunrises I've seen anywhere and led to the most productive 2 hours of shooting I've had in many years. But back to the story.....

Listening to the music tonight I closed my eyes and was back on the rim of the Canyon that morning. I could see the clouds breaking, the first hint of light in the East. Then more light, lighting up small sections of the Canyon. And finally the sun fully lighting up the morning and the clouds melting away. It was a magical morning and the music put me right back there.

I can't promise I'll listen to it regularly, but I'll tell you this. Before too awfully long I'll have the full cd set of The Grand Canyon Suite. It will be in the car and burned onto the hard drives of all my computers and who knows...I may treat myself to an Ipod one of these days. But for now, I'm content with the images from that trip. How bout you?

Right In Your Own Backyard

2010-02-14T17:59:00.001-08:00

Well, almost. A few days ago I set a task for myself in response to a blog by Bret Edge. Bumper sticker version: There are a lot of photographers out there that travel to exotic locations but a lot of us don't spend enough time photographinng close to home. I'm a prime example since only 2 of the last 10 shooting trips I've taken have been to locations in Colorado. So I decided to do something about it.

The Assignment: Within 10 days of the original blog I was tasked to create a blog postable image within 20 minutes of my home. It's been kind of cold and we got about 4 inches of snow overnight so with the assignment gnawing at my brain I grabbed the G10 and my new little tripod and headed out to run some errands and maybe locate a photo or two.

Now understand, I've been thinking this over for a few days...the location that is. My first thought was Castlewood Canyon for sunrise and, in fact, I woke up this morning about 5am and looked outside to see if there was going to be any semblance of color in the sunrise. What I saw was hopeless. Snow falling so thick I couldn't see the detail of the streetlight a few houses down the street. Back to bed for me.

I thought about taking a hike up Cherry Creek which runs about 200 yards behind my house and provides me with some nice views in the spring and summer when the cottonwoods are leafed out. But a quick hike upstream and downstream from the Cottonwood Drive bridge was a little disheartening. Lots of interesting compositions but the sky had cleared and presented me with a cloudless blue sky, the bane of a landscape photographer's existence.

Back to the car and more thoughts: Finally, Eureka! I've got it! Check out the old standby where I used to go to shoot senior portraits, bridal portraits, family portraits and even some landscape details. Let's just hope the waterfall isn't completely iced up. Got there in 5 minutes, hooked the G10 up to the ballhead, headed down the hill and was rewarded with the sight of water flowing around the boulders in the creek. Turned on the camera and got the error message that none of us ever wants to see: "No Memory Card." No problem, right? Wrong. The memory card I usually keep in the camera is sitting on my desk where I left it after downloading the Bosque images to the hard drive. No problem, there are more cards and they should be in the camera bag, right? Wrong.....I usually carry the G10 in my backpack with the DSLR and that's where the *(_*&&^ memory cards are. Back in the car, blaze home (thank goodness it's only 10 minutes and not some distant locale) grab the memory card wallet and blaze back to the location. Fortunately the light was still good and I was able to create the first image you see above. Now I can finish my errands so it's off to Wal Mart to buy dog food.

On the way I was driving past one of the parks where my son played baseball when he was 9 or 10 and happened to glance down the gulch that runs around the park and saw the snow covered rocks. Two decent images inn 20 minutes in completely different locations. I guess I don't need to travel too awfully far to find some things to photograph. No vacation time? No problem. Cloudless sky? No problem.

And the moral of the story? Well, I'll still keep traveling to build my stock files. In fact, I'm headed to Phoenix in 5 or 6 weeks to visit my daughter and will spend a few hours photographing in Lost Dutchman State Park. And in April I may be heading back to New Mexico to photograph Bisti Badlands with a fellow photographer. But ultimately, if I'm out of vacation days or just want to get out, there's a lot of subject matter....Right In My Own Backyard.

What's it Gonna Be?

2010-02-09T20:26:00.000-08:00

The challenge has been issued, the guantlet thrown down, and I've accepted the assignment. Earlier today I responded to Bret Edge's post about Wanderlust. You can read it for yourself at http://bretedge.wordpress.com/ . I posted that only about 20% of the images in my photo files are from my home state of Colorado and Bret issued an assignment for me to create some images from Colorado before the end of February. Well me being me, I accepted the challenge but altered the terms: Sometime in the next 10 days I'm tasked to create a marketable image within 20 minutes drive time of my house. To quote the immortal Foghorn Leghorn.."Nice boy but he ain't too smart." But accept the assignment I did so now all I have to do is decide where to go with my trusty cameras.

Hmmm....within 20 minutes of home.....I wonder. Will it be Castlewood Canyon? I've seen some nice images from there recently and I drive past it every day on my way to work. How bout the wildlife 10 minutes away in Ponderosa Hills subdivision. I once counted 10 fox dens in a 5 square block area. Maybe a hike up the frozen creek 2oo yards from the house. I know the dogs like going there. Or maybe the 100 or so Canada Geese that overnight in the park behind the house. Who knows? I guess you'll just have to keep checking the blog to find out.

Do as I say, not as I do!

2010-02-04T14:41:00.001-08:00

I must have heard that saying 10,000 times when I was a kid. It was very popular with my parents. Sadly, I guess I didn't learn a lot about that.

Later in life when I first began teaching Basic Photography I was relentless on my students when it came to composition. "Everyone in the world sees things horizontally at eye level. Get higher or lower...turn your camera vertical...BE CREATIVE!" Sounds simple right? Flash forward 25 years to the present. I was fortunate enough to win a fantastic door prize at the annual RMNP shindig. Denver Digital Imaging is going to print one of my images 24X36 for free and have it mounted on Dura Plaq also for free. I started thinking immediately what image will I choose and where will I put it in the house?

After an evening of looking around the house for an empty space and consulting with my interior decorator (my wife) I decided that the 2 prints hanging in the 32 inch wide cubbyhole over the fireplace have faded so badly after 22 years that they need to be replaced. There's a perfect location for a vertical image. Now the search begins for an image and that's when I came upon a disturbing trend. All of my images that I really LOVE and would like to have printed large are.....eye level horizontal! What the.......

Don't get me wrong, I love all my images and there are plenty of verticals to choose from but under careful scrutiny each of them is flawed somehow. A lot of them were shot with "average" lenses and while they work well as smaller prints they would never hold up to 24X36. I've got a file drawer full of 4X5 transparancies that would be wonderful but I don't currently have megabucks to get them properly scanned. So that takes care of plan A. No vertical image that I LOVE that will hold up to large printing.

So here I am, back to evaluating locations for a nice 24X36 HORIZONTAL print. I found a logical spot and now all that remains is to choose an image. AAarrrrrrrggggghhhhh! Ever wonder what it's like to spend 4 hours going through digital files looking at images? Who's got the migraine meds? But I managed to narrow the choices down to 6. Then to 3. Then to 2. And I finally made my decision, burned the image to cd, and headed for the lab. Care to guess which image I chose from the two above? I'll let you know in a couple weeks when I get the print back.

And by the way, I made a label to stick on the ballhead on my tripod that says, simply....DFV.

DON'T FORGET VERTICAL!

Your Favorite Place

2010-01-31T10:22:00.001-08:00

Make no mistake about it: I love hanging out with photographers and talking about photography. There are always comments and questions. "Where have you shot recently?" "Where did you shoot that image?" "What lenses do you carry in your kit?" Stuff like that. Pretty innocuous for the most part right? But without fail there is always one question that starts the hamsters jogging on the wheels in my mind.

Last night I attended the Annual Shindig of Rocky Mountain Nature Photographers and had a great time. Good food, good beer (thanks Aleks) good conversation, and great photography speak. I saw some folks I hadn't seen since I left the photography biz 10 years ago and plunged into Corporate America, and connected with some new friends that I'd previously only known from reading their posts on the RMNP forum. I can definitely say that all were had by a good time.

But there I was, having a conversation with Richie V's lovely wife Veronica. We were talking about how we'd met in 2007 at Morraine Lake in Banff, Alberta, Canada. Small world, eh, when 3 people that live about 5 miles apart in Colorado have to get together in the mountains of Canada? We talked about trips I'd taken recently and trips Richie and Veronica had been on and she asked THE QUESTION!

"What's your favorite place to shoot?"

Wow....talk about thought provoking. Of course I came back with a smartass reply of "the next place I visit" but it did start me thinking about some of the places I've been fortunate enough to see with my cameras recently. Let's see....I could probably list 50 spots that I love to photograph but that would take all day and you'd all get bored before the end of the blog. But I could probably list the 4 top candidates for my favorite places to shoot.

The Pacific Northwest: I've been to the Northwest and Canada quite a few times recently. The Skagit Valley Tulip Festival in April has drawn me back repeatedly for the abundance of colorful photos and I've had some great photo days on Vancouver Island and on the BC mainland. I still need to photograph the Palouse region of Washington and the rain forest on the Olympic Penninsula. And I've never spent any time shooting on the Pacific coast of Washington and Oregon so the future trip possibilities are numerous. Yep, this is definitely a favorite.

New Mexico: Since Heather started going to school at ENMU in Roswell I've had the chance to photograph at White Sands, Taos, Santa Fe, and most recently, Bosque Del Apache. I'm in the planning stages of a trip to Bisti Badlands with Richie V in April and there are many more photos to be had at the places mentioned earlier. Another favorite.

Yellowstone: I love watching wildlife and Yellowstone is the American Serengeti. Undoubtedly the best place I've ever seen to view wildlife up to and including grizzly bears and wolves. There are also some wonderful memories there since it was the first National Park I visited with my parents back in the mid 60's. I made a shooting trip to Yellowstone in 2007 and came back with some great images but there are still many more to be had. I'm planning a pre-graduation trip there with Heather in May. She's been asking me to take her there and this seems to be an appropriate time. No way Yellowstone and Grand Teton aren't on my list of favorites.

Moab and Southeast Utah. I was there last in September 2009 for an 8 day shooting trip and it only served to reinforce how much I love photographing this part of the country. I could make 100 trips to this region and still not get all the images I'd like. Undoubtedly a favorite.

That's 4 and there are so many more. Grand Canyon, Lake Powell, anywhere in Colorado, and I'm even considering traveling to the Ozarks this fall for changing leaves. Where does it stop? More importantly, how do I choose just one? It's impossible!

So I guess my answer to Veronica wasn't so flip and smartass after all. My favorite place to shoot just may be the next place I visit. How bout you?

When Life gives you Lemons......

2010-01-21T20:58:00.000-08:00

There's a phrase my old photo instructor used for photographs like this. He called them Happy Accidents. It's what happens when you totally blow a shot and the result is so bad it's good..or at least interesting.

So there I was at Bosque Del Apache for the first time. I rolled into Socorro, New Mexico around 3:30 pm on Sunday, dropped my wife off at the hotel, and headed south to scout the refuge and find my sunset shot and a location for sunrise on Monday. Photographically it was a great afternoon. I made some great images of the Sandhill Cranes in a couple of different locations and checked out the Flight Deck where I would be Monday morning to photograph the Blast Off of geese. All set, I got back to the hotel around 6:30 and we found a great place for supper where we had the best meal of this trip. There's more to that but it's another blog topic for another time. Back to the shoot.

Monday morning I pulled into the refuge about 6:15am which I felt would give me time to set up and capture the "magic light" that starts about 30 minutes before the sun breaks the horizon and catch the blast off at sunrise. My plan was to catch the fly out of the geese then hop in the car and head over to the crane pools for the crane fly out. (I'd been told they like to sleep in a bit more than the geese) I was in position to shoot, just waiting for the sun when the *)^%*) geese decided to ruin things by blasting off early. They left at least 20 minutes before I planned on shooting! Inconsiderate creatures!

So, Bill, how did you handle the situation? No sweat. I had my camera set up and pointed in the right direction so I hit the "on" switch and fired off a 10 shot burst. I knew it was too dark for anything to be even remotely in focus but I fired the shutter anyway. And what you see above is the result. Kinda quirky, kinda abstract. I like it. But there's no doubt it was the epitome of a Happy Accident.

Lets try this again

2010-01-20T16:34:00.000-08:00

Last night I dashed off a blog entry after viewing a photo that had been converted to Black and White by an acquaintance of mine. I didn't give it a lot of thought and upon re-reading it today it seemed a little scattered and pointless. But it started my brain to working and took me down Memory Lane for a little while but mostly I started remembering the process of morphing from a guy with a camera to a photographer. And it was Black and White that did it.

I first got the urge to become a photographer when I saw a reproduction of Edward Weston's famous shot of a pepper. It was in an art book for a course my wife was taking at Denver University. The image had a quality that was like a painting. The tonal range was amazing and the composition was almost too simple to be true. But it was a striking image and pretty much changed the course of my life. Not long after that I bought my first "serious" camera and started shooting film but at that point I was just a snapshooter. You know the type....15 shots of everything in case someone or something in the scene breathed and slightly changed position. But when Judy finished school we packed up and headed west to the Glen Fishback School of Photography in Sacramento and from the first day Black and White photography took over my life.

I was taught the nuances of exposing and processing film to obtain the ultimate in quality negatives. We were taught how to distinguish a fine Black and White print from a photograph with no color. Kurt Fishback taught us how to see the world in Black and White. We started looking past colors and seeing patterns and textures, shapes and shadows. And then came the day...we made our first prints. Dropped the paper in a tray of Dektol and were amazed when the image magically appeared. To this day the rush is still the same when I upload images from a camera memory card to my computer and pop one open in Photoshop or Lightroom. It's like digital opium .

Eventually, through my own work and from jobs in photo labs in Denver, I became a darn good printer. In fact, I became one of the best printers I know but it took several years and 10,000 or 20,000 prints to get there. Now I'm in the same position with digital photography and digital printing. There's a pretty steep learning curve and at times I struggle which brings us to the point of this blog.

The generation of young photographers out there who have basically learned their craft digitally over the past few years is populated by some amazingly talented and creative folks. I'm constantly in awe of some of the images they create and that feeling keeps me going, striving to master the digital process. Seminars, books, dvd's, you name it, I've used it to advance my ability. And I feel a kinship now with the young guys who've learned to shoot in color and are now learning Black and White. The Nik SilverEffex software for converting images to black and white is fantastic. The range of controls they offer boggles the mind. But I can see a difference in images that are converted by old B&W warhorses like me and the newer generation and here's why.

The image at the top of this blog is one I converted from color to B&W using the Nik software. It's part of a series I shot in northern New Mexico which was inspired by a portfolio of images shot by another photographer friend of mine and printed in, you guessed it, Black and White. But here's the deal: I didn't look at the color images and say "Hey, I think that would be a nice B&W print." I searched out and shot the images in this series with the express intent of converting them to Black and White. I looked at the scenes and shot them in a manner that would best lend itself to B&W reproduction. I saw the images in Black and White before I came close to pressing the shutter button. I saw the textures and the shapes. I saw the relationships between shadows and highlights.

So all of you incredibly talented shooters out there who are starting to convert some images to Black and White, take a tip from an old D-76 sniffer: Approach the image from a backwards perspective. You can go through your files looking for images that "might look good in B&W" but it's worth a try to say to yourself "if I shoot this, how can I best portray it in Black and White." I think you may be surprised by the results.

Out with the 'Oughts

2010-01-01T14:06:00.000-08:00

I guess it's appropriate to begin with this photo. This is the January photo from the 2010 Arizona Weather Calendar and guess what???? It's my image! My first highlight of 2010.

But its a new decade now...2009 is behind us and 2010 has dawned clear, bright, and cold. November and December were colder than average and so far January is looking to be colder than the average. Good thing we got this global warming thing going on otherwise it would be REALLY cold. Anyway, it's time to reflect on 2009 and look forward to 2010 so here goes.

2009 was a year of peaks and valleys for me and mine. I suppose every year could be viewed like that but it seemed more radical in '09. (read that as ought 9) The year started out with one of the most devastating valleys ever. My son, Chris, at age 22 was diagnosed with testicular cancer. And the kicker is that he was diagnosed by mistake. His regular chiropractor was out of the office and when the associate saw Chris he quickly determined that the issues weren't structural. He packed Chris off to the hospital and 8 hours later he had been selected, inspected, detected and had 1 less onion. The chemo he went through was not too terrible when referenced with some I've heard of but it wasn't a day at the beach for my boy. But he came through it successfully. Major valley but we are crawling up the other side towards the peak.

June was a good month. I was located and tracked down by a childhood friend that I hadn't seen or heard from in over 40 years and coerced into attending my 40th High School Reunion. And it was fantastic! I have been avoiding these things for a long long time thinking I didn't have a lot in common with these people when I knew them, what could we possibly have in common now? I've been kicking myself ever since for not doing this sooner.

Photographically speaking it was also peaks and valleys. I had a marvelous trip to Washington in April to photograph the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival.....again, and came away with a nice collection of images. On the valley side, my annual trip to Crested Butte in July to photograph wildflowers was not quite a bust but was significantly less successful than previous trips. I took the Murano on a road I shouldn't have and ripped one of the skid plates off the chassis. Next year..oops, this year, I'll have a truck to drive so off roading won't be so traumatic. More on that later.

September was an interesting month. Instead of heading to the Colorado mountains to photograph changing Aspen trees, I opted to head out to Southeast Utah since I haven't been there for a few years. I arranged to meet up with a couple of photo buddies and we had a grand time. I came home with a great collection of images and saw some things I hadn't seen before. Now the truck story:

I'm a truck guy...I freely admit it. And I've been going through truck withdrawal since wrecking my Ram 1500 nearly 4 years ago. The Murano has been a good vehicle and if I still had the truck I wouldn't have been able to continue to commute to Colorado Springs for work when gas was up around $4 a gallon. But the Murano isn't a truck. I've been teasing Judy for a while now, saying I was going to buy an old fixer upper truck to "haul stuff" with. Joking, but at least halfway seriously. Well, in late August, she said that Chris's Subaru was having engine issues and wasn't driveable so maybe it would be a good idea to buy a truck and let Chris drive it while he was getting the Subaru fixed. Of course I was cool and calm while the little man in my head was doing cartwheels and screaming at the top of his lungs. I sold some company stock to raise some money and started looking but didn't find one before my trip to Utah. I left, telling Judy and Chris to keep looking and call me if they found a truck. Sure enough, about 3 days into an 8 day trip I got a call...I'm now the proud owner of a 1989 Toyota 4X4 pickup. Peak, right? Hmmm....as we speak the truck is in the shop getting a new clutch and probably having some work done on the front suspension. My bargain truck just got about $1000 more expensive. Oh well....it's a truck and it's mine! Now all I need to do is figure out how to get Chris to fix the Subaru so I can have my truck.

In November I was able to use the last of my vacation days to visit Erin and her family in Phoenix. What a wonderful trip and dang, that grandaughter is amazing. Smart and beautiful...a great trip.

In December, Chris had to make a choice: His blood markers and subsequent exams showed that his cancer was maybe gone away but there were still some questions about some stuff in his abdomen. He had to decide if he was going to have surgery to find out what the spots were or if he would wait until February, have another CT scan and then maybe still have surgery. He had lost his job earlier and decided it might be good to have the surgery now and not have to explain to a new employer how he needed some time off in February so the surgery was done. 5 hours on the table....then 2 mights in the hospital before going home. The surgeon said the "lumps" were just scar tissue from the cancer and he was 99% certain they weren't cancerous so we all celebrated that.

December 23 I got an e-mail from Judy saying Chris was in the ER and would probably be admitted to the hospital. My worst fears weren't realized...the cancer wasn't back. But he had several blood clots including a big one in his leg that the doctors were concerned about. They kept him there overnight and he was able to cut a deal with the doctor to be released and we had a small family Christmas Eve at home which was what he wanted. He seems to be doing well now and the great news was he has been declared cancer free! Whoooooo Hoooooo...now just get rid of the clots and find a job.

So that's 2009. Peaks and valleys. But what of 2010? Well, I'm glad you asked because there may be some big doings afoot. Let's see.....

I'm starting with a photo trip to Bosque Del Apache which is one of the best spots in America to photograph migratory birds on their winter grounds. We'll drop Heather off at school in Roswell on Jan 16 then head over to the Bosque the next day for a couple short days of shooting before heading home.

Heather has been bugging me for years and I think this year is the year I'm taking her to Yellowstone, probably the week before Memorial Day. She's out of school for a break at that time and I was previously very successful photographically at that time a couple of years ago so we'll probably do that. Maybe Chris can come along too. That would be a grand trip.

What comes after that? Nobody knows but I'm sure it will be exciting. So strap in, the Oughts are out and it's a new decade. Let's have some adventure!

Revising the Bucket List

2009-12-02T19:50:00.000-08:00

I've just been watching one of the episodes of Ken Burns' latest effort, The National Parks: America's Best Idea. And I'm speechless and a little emotional. If you haven't seen this work please please tune in to your local PBS channel and have a peek. It's well worth your while.

Besides the amazing cinematography and terrific music there is a good history lesson. But that's not what's got me going. In the final 2 hour installment there are some interviews where people talk about how when they were kids their parents dragged them to the National Parks and how the experience changed them and their lives. Those interviews got me to thinking about the National Parks and National Monuments I've visited. The list reads something like this: In no particular order

Yellowstone, Grand Teton, Rocky Mountain, Glacier, Mount Ranier, Olympic, North Cascades, Sequoia, Yosemite, Death Valley, Grand Canyon, Wind Cave, Bryce Canyon, Capitol Reef, Zion, Arches, Canyonlands, Glacier Bay, Kenai Fjiords, White Sands, Great Sand Dunes, Badlands, Black Canyon of the Gunnison, and I'm sure there are some that I've missed. There's also Banff, Jasper, Yoho, and Wells Gray in Canada.

But as I remember it, Yellowstone was my first and still my favorite. Listening to the people tell of their first National Park visits I was transported back to the first trip to Yellowstone with my parents. It was 1964 and both my sisters were gone from home with families of their own so this trip was just me and Mom and Dad. We set out from Wichita in Dad's 1964 Dodge pickup with a small camper shell on the back to sleep in and headed west to Colorado before turning north towards Wyoming. We drove hard and managed to make it to Rock River, Wyoming where we rented a sleezy motel room the first night. It was my first experience in Wyoming and I remember being amazed at the number of antelope alongside the roads. We must have seen thousands of them. The next day we made the rest of the drive to Yellowstone and camped near Old Faithful that night.

We'd talked about bears and driving through the south part of Yellowstone we saw quite a few before we got to the campground. Supper that night was cooked on our campstove and it was a bit chilly so we ate inside the camper. After we finished eating we were talking about bears and getting nervous about leaving our skillet on the picnic table where the grease might attract the critters. Dad and I were daring each other to go out in the dark and get the skillet and I was so spooked there was no way I was going to do it. Finally Dad said he would....he opened the door of the camper and stepped out then stopped, spun around, and dove back in the camper. I was sitting by the door and convinced that a bear was about to eat his feet, I grabbed the chain on the top of the door and slammed it shut, nearly taking Dad's feet off in the process. When I came back to my senses and my heart rate slowed I saw him laying in the floor laughing so hard he was crying. It was all a trick! Gee, who would have figured him for a lowdown trick like that. I guess that's why his childhood nickname was Lowdown. At least that's what Grandma Suzie always called him. During that trip we spent 3 or 4 days inside the park itself, I can't remember exactly how long we were there but it was long enough to spend time seeing just about every area of the park.

Later, we drove south through Grand Teton National Park, through Jackson Hole, and south through the Starr Valley where I was dared into getting my first taste of fresh cheddar cheese at a dairy south of Afton and became a lifelong devotee of cheese. On through northern Utah where we got stuck on a 1 lane road during construction and had to go in reverse about 1/2 mile down a moutain road to let the construction trucks through. What an adventure.

I guess because it was my first National Park Yellowstone holds a special place in my mind and heart. I don't get there nearly often enough but each time I do it's a combination of new and old memories. Like the time I was there in 1991 for a few days this time on a serious photographic mission and experienced the best fishing of my life....and came across a place where there was a grizzly track over the top of my boot track on a creek bank where I'd walked only about 10 minutes earlier. And again when I was there in 2007 and saw my first grizzly and heard my first wolf call. Amazing.

Heather has been talking about visiting Yellowstone to see the wolves and as I write this I'm 99% convinced that sometime in May, probably the week before Memorial Day, you'll be able to find us in the Lamar Valley near Cooke City. And hopefully I can pass on to her some of the feelings and memories I have from my first extended visit to Yellowstone. It's been added to the bucket list.

So take the time to seek out the Ken Burns series on the National Parks. Better yet, get out and visit a National Park or National Monument. And if you need a co-pilot, call me. I'm always up for a road trip.

I Just Can't See It

2009-11-24T17:51:00.000-08:00

I'm puzzled....baffled....stunned! I don't know what the problem is or rather, I know what the problem is but just don't know how to fix it. My daughter, Erin, and her family moved to Arizona about 6 years ago and since then I've visited several times. Every time I've taken some time to shoot some photos of the landscape near where they live. One time I made a special point to visit Saguaro National Park near Tucson on a shooting expedition. But there's a problem.

After all those trips and all the images I've shot I still don't have anything I am proud of. Maybe it's the light. Light has different qualities in different lattitudes and maybe I just haven't adapted to shooting that far south. Maybe it's the colors, or lack thereof in the southern deserts. Maybe it's something as simple as a mental block. I just don't know. All I know is that most of the time I feel like I'm having a good day but when I get the images downloaded to the computer my reaction is "...Good grief! Who shot this crap?"

I've been through creative dry spells before as have we all. Sometimes I get to a location and just don't see anything that excites me and makes me want to photograph the landscape. That's sort of what happened on the above mentioned trip to Saguaro. But those times are few and far between. And this is different in that sometimes when I do shoot something, the execution is faulty. Like not noticing when I take my camera out of the bag that it's inadvertently been switched from Aperture priority to Program on the settings dial. Or shooting something that requires a lot of depth of field with the lens at or near wide open.

Whatever the case, I just can't seem to create a great image in the desert of southern Arizona. And it's beginning to bother me..to the point that I'm starting to strategize my next trip. Maybe I should try shooting sunset instead of sunrise. Maybe I should try and avoid looking for specific shots and just shoot what comes my way. Perhaps I should spend more time concentrating on technique instead of just freewheeling like I usually do. Whatever the case, I'm already looking forward to the next trip. I'll get some winning images if it kills me.

S.A.D. What an appropriate acronym

2009-11-03T21:00:00.000-08:00

Every fall, for almost as long as I've been a photographer, I've been heading up the hill to the mountains in Colorado. Late September is when 2 of my favorite events in life come together. The elk have begun to gather in the meadows at dawn and dusk and the rut is in full swing. If you've never heard the bugling of bull elk during the mating season you've missed an amazing spectacle. It's one of the sounds in nature that sends chills up and down my back, much like a wolf howl.

Mostly, though, I make the trip to photograph the changing colors of the aspen trees. Sometimes I go north to Rocky Mountain National Park but mostly I've been heading to the Kebler Pass area west of the town of Crested Butte. It's a magical time and the colors from year to year are never the same yet always amazing. And Kebler Pass sits in the middle of the largest Aspen forest on the planet.

This year, however, things have started to change. I noticed it when I came back from a shooting trip to Utah in mid September. I planned my trip to coincide with being in the Kebler Pass area around the 12th of September. A bit early I guess..in most years anyway. I didn't expect to see a tremendous amount of color but thought I might see a little bit. I was totally unprepared for what I found. Entire hillsides and groves of aspens had already dropped their leaves. Many others had leaves that went from green to brown and were ready to fall. No more grand landscapes....later there may have been some more intimate shots but the classic Kebler Pass view of an entire hillside explosion of color ranging from green to yellow to red to orange is no more.

A little research when I got home turned up the reason. S.A.D. Sudden Aspen Decline syndrome. I don't know the reasons behind it but the aspen forests of Colorado and other Rocky Mountain states are dying. There's a part of me that hopes this was just a 1 or 2 year problem but all I've read says otherwise. We may have seen the last of the great color shows in the Rockies. At least for my lifetime. And it's a sad departure for me. What the heck am I going to do next September? I've got lots of elk photos though I suppose I could always use more. But something tells me you may not see me in the Rockies in September.

There is hope, though! One of my childhood friends who lives near Table Rock lake in Missouri posted some shots of the changing colors there. I'm not sure when the color change begins but what I saw whetted my appetite to photograph some hardwood forests for a change. Lots more reds and oranges than the aspens and who knows...maybe it's a different time frame so I'll still be able to shoot the elk AND the changing colors in the Ozarks. Something to look forward to. And besides....Crested Butte is still the wildflower capital of Colorado. I'll be back there in July.

So there it is. S.A.D. has definitely made me sad. But there's always hope.

What's in the Bucket?

2009-10-31T11:03:00.000-07:00

The first big storm of the year has come and gone. October is a bit early for heavy snow but not unprecedented. And sitting inside looking out at the drifts makes one think of many things.

A few days ago a photographer posted a topic on a photo bulletin board I watch about "what's in your photo bucket list?" Needless to say, I've had plenty of time to think about it while waiting out the storm. There are a lot of directions it could take....exotic locales, guided safaris, fantastic equipment....and all of them ran through my mind at one time or another. But in the end, the list is pretty simple and basic. They are in no particular order of preference but rather, randomly as they pop into my mind. So sit back and fantasize with me for a while and imagine my photo bucket list top 10....

1. Back to Yellowstone. I was there 2 years ago for a few days of photography and got some marvelous images. My files lack a couple of images from Yellowstone that I need to get: I don't have a good image of the wolves. Granted, I heard my first live wolf howl and saw plenty of the critters in the 3 days I was there but with one exception they were a loooooooong ways off and on my photos they appear as dots in the distance.

I also don't have a good image of a large bull moose and as near as I can tell Yellowstone or Grand Teton is the best place to find them this side of Alaska.

Heather has asked to go to Yellowstone so perhaps we'll make a trip up there in 2010.

2. Four Corners region of Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah. I've just come back (well, a month ago) from a trip to Southeast Utah including Arches, Canyonlands, and Monument Valley. I could go back to Moab 100 times and not get every photo I want. But there are other areas that I've barely scratched the surface of and many I've not yet seen. Bisti Badlands in New Mexico...Canyon de Chelly in Arizona....Cedar Mesa in Utah...Mesa Verde in Colorado...I could go on forever. I'll get back to this area every chance I get.

3. Fall colors in New England. With the unbelievable die-off of aspens in the Rocky Mountain west those of us that have made the annual pilgrimage to Crested Butte and Kebler Pass every September are going to have to change our plans. I'm hoping this was just a seasonal thing but in my heart I don't quite believe it. I think we've seen the demise of the Colorado aspen forests for decades to come. The alternative? New England. Something about the variety of color makes it an attractive alternative to the aspens.

4. Washington State. I've made a few trips there in April of various years to photograph the tulips of the Skagit Valley but there are many areas I've never been to when in posession of a camera. The Palouse region of Eastern Washington...The Olympic Penninsula...the sea stacks on the coast...the Cascades around Darrington where I worked a couple of summers during college. So many things to see that I haven't.

5. Southeast Alaska, specifically the Inside Passage. I went through there on a cruise in 2005 but for the most part the ship went through areas I'd like to see during the evenings. I wouldn't mind another cruise but what I'd really like is to take the Alaska ferry from Bellingham, WA to parts north. That way I could take as much time as needed in areas I'd like to see. Killer whales at Robson Bight...grizzly bears at Knight Inlet. And the marvelous scenery...nuff said.

6. Glacier National Park. I've been to Glacier a few times but mostly just driving through. Never for an extended photo trip. Perhaps I could combine it with a road trip through Banff and Jasper parks in Canada. Hmmmm....talk about an epic road trip. Yellowstone, Glacier, Banff, Jasper, Wells Gray, Vancouver, Mount Ranier....then home. Problem is, it would take a whole summer to do that trip and feel like I gave every location it's properly alloted time for photographs. Maybe when I retire...

7. The Great Lighthouse tour. Two possibilities here...One is the coasts of Washington and Oregon, continuing north through British Columbia along the Inside Passage. Lots of amazing lighthouses to see. The other possibility would be one of the Great Lakes, maybe Lake Michigan or Superior where there are amazing lighthouses. Something about the water keeps drawing me to the coast.

8. Polar Bears of Churchill, Manitoba. I've been seeing images from here for years and always had a longing to go. Perhaps someday I'll head up there in November for my birthday.

9. Speaking of bears, that's the other part of Alaska. Maybe Lake Clark, maybe Brooks Falls. Who knows? So much more Alaska that I haven't seen. Up to Fairbanks and Denali. More time on the Kenai Penninsula.

10. The Ultimate...The Alaska Highway. If I could plan one amazing, all encompasing trip, this would be it. From Denver, through Yellowstone and Glacier, into Canada through Banff and Jasper. On to Wells Gray Park, Williams Lake, and head up the Alaska Highway. Ultimately taking the ferry from Anchorage back to Seattle and making my way home. I suspect a trip like this would take many months so it will have to wait.

So there you have the top 10 on my photo bucket list. With the exception of the New England colors it's all in the west. I guess in the end I'm just a western kind of guy. But I'm open to suggestions about things in the East so who knows. What the heck, it's always open to adaptation. Maybe I'll see you out there.

A Learning Experience

2009-10-18T17:47:00.000-07:00

So I've been lusting for an Adirondack Chair for my deck or patio. I sat in one somewhere, can't remember where, but it seemed to be one of the most comfortable chairs I've sat in for quite a while. Right then I decided I neede one or two for my deck and the search began. Untold hours searching the web....days on craigslist....haunting log furniture places. And what I found was that the things are bloody expensive! Want 2 Adirondacks and a matching loveseat for patio furniture? No problem...send me your check for $1500 and I can have the manufacturer ship them anywhere in the country. Well, that's a bit rich for my blood so I started thinking of alternatives. Back to Craigslist. Finally I found one for $25 with a footstool! The pics looked pretty good so I went and got it. Well, as always there's a reason it was $25 when new ones are nearly $200...it was weathered pretty badly. No problem says I, there's a garage full of power tools at home and I can replace the really bad parts.

First were the arms. I measured them up and made a trip to Lowes for a piece of lumber to cut the new arms out of. Using the old arm for a pattern it was easy to cut out new arms and install them. Then I decided to replace the seat slats so back to Lowes for some lumber. Got the slats replaced and looked at the chair. Looks great but maybe I should sand the back slats. Pulled them off and started sanding when all of a sudden the little guy in my head started getting me in deeper. "Hey dummy, if you just sand these down, when it comes time to build another chair you'll have to take them off again. Just get some lumber and make new ones." So I did...then it was the legs...then the back braces. Finally, I gave in and just replaced everything, using the old chair parts for templates. I learned a lot in the process...here's the list.

1. Between 7th grade wood shop and watching DIY network and HGTV, I'm pretty good at this stuff and it appears to be at least a little theraputic.

2. I built this one out of mostly redwood which, in retrospect, might not be the best. Redwood is durable and weathers well but it also splits easily when driving screws near the end of a piece of wood. I had to replace a few pieces and got into some pretty extensive pre-drilling.

3. I have all the tools I need to produce chairs like this except one: I need to find a way to effectively taper the back slats. I can cut the tapers with a jig saw but it's pretty crude and not at all attractive. Back to the drawing board!

4. This is still the most comfortable deck chair I've found and a perfect project for a weekend.

Next up: Make a lumber list, one trip to Lowes, and find out truly how expensive it is to build one of these. I think I've got about $50 in materials but I made several trips to Lowes and bought non-chair related stuff on a couple of the trips so I don't really have a perfectly clear idea how much it cost me. Maybe one of these weekends when Judy is traveling........

Anyway, that's my story and I'm sticking to it. I haven't yet quite perfected my technique to the point of making them for other people, but who knows...after the next one, I may be soliciting orders.

Tranquility

2009-09-19T17:41:00.001-07:00

Okay so I stole the idea from my neighbor across the street. And combined it with my tendency to obsess about an area I've just visited for a photo trip. All summer long I've been listening to the fountain my neighbor has on her porch. Tranquil sounds....running water...very soothing. And somewhere I decided it would be cool to have one of my own. After looking at fountains at the garden stores and the home improvement stores and seeing how bloody expensive they are, I decided "Hey, I'm a pretty handy guy...I can probably build one myself and save some bucks."

So off I went to the web to find inspiration and instructions on building garden fountains. Wow..is there a lot of useless information! But I found a site that gave me the basics and started accumulating stuff to build it.

First was the pots. After an expeditionary trip to shop for pots I guess I'm not so surprised that the things cost so bloody much. WOWZA ..how can a freakin clay pot cost so much? Maybe I should look into making clay pots when I retire. Oh well, now the search begins and after a couple of weeks I find a pot on sale that will work for the bottom of the fountain. And it's got Kokopelli on it. Must be karma since I'm headed to Moab for a shooting trip in a couple weeks. Just need to find 2 more pots that are a little smaller and a pump.

No more luck finding pots before leaving for the desert but when I pulled off the road in Utah to look at Castle Valley I get an inspiration....I need some river rock for the fountain, why not gather some rocks from the Colorado River to use? Cheaper than buying them in Denver. So I spent one afternoon picking up rocks on the river bank. I spent a lot of the trip looking for Native American pots to complete the fountain and found some really nice ones but I can't really afford $100+ for a pot that's going to live outside.

Back to Denver after the trip and trips once a week to Lowes seeing if they put their pots on sale Sure enough, one day I find 2 pots that will work and they're both on sale! Whoooooo hooooooooo. Pick up the pots and a pump for the fountain and I got all the stuff I need.

After a couple times of putting the thing together then tearing it apart to adjust the pump, it's perfect! I got my own fountain and it's very soothing and tranquil. And soooooooooooo easy to build. If you're interested, e-mail me at wcb@wcbeanphoto.com and I'll send you directions...for a small fee of course.

Back in the Saddle Again

2009-09-15T19:32:00.001-07:00

Well, it's been a while since my last blog entry. Partly due to Yahoo decimating 360 which was where the blog was housed. It's moved to my yahoo profile but I think this is going to be a much better venue. I suppose time will tell.

For now, just a quick note to say:

I'm Back!