Your Favorite Place

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......

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

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

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

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

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

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.