Morning at Camp and Little Wild Horse Canyon

I am an inveterate early riser, especially when camping, the early morning light is often the best of the day, and I usually get it to myself too! This is the southeastern edge of the San Rafael Swell, taken from inside our campsite. Just after dawn. (As always, click on the Photo's to see larger versions)

The folding and carving of the land is beautiful to behold and I can just sit and look at it for hours. This is a sere and dry land, starkly beautiful, where the only things that survive are the tough ones.

This is just behind (South) of our camp, we were in what I call a "Dirt" camp, on BLM land, which means that it is not maintained or serviced, but used and established without government interference. The best part is the folks that camp out there seem to do a very good job of cleaning up after themselves, there was no trash or littering around. A few yahoo's with ATV's had driven over the sign that said no motorized vehicles, but fortunately had not gone into this area much at all.
Even in the middle of nowhere, you can still see the transitory signs of man. I was amazed at how many airplane contrails were in the sky that morning.

After cleaning up camp we headed to my favorite slot canyon, Little Wild Horse. Now you may be asking yourself at this point, where are the people you were with? Well, I make it a policy to not post people expecially kids pictures on here, it is too easy to save these photos, and I do post the largest size allowed (for your viewing pleasure) and I would prefer to not have some kids parent coming to me ticked off that someone stole their kids head and put it on a website somewhere.

This is an old friend, but easier to negotiate than in the past, a LOT of sand was washed out of this canyon this winter/spring.

This pour off was easier to negotiate than it looks, but was not there last year, if I remember correctly this area was under sand when I hiked this last August.

This is the last 1/4-1/2 mile of the canyon, it is COMPLETELY changed from last year. I am kind of glad I wasn't there to get killed as the water pushed through here, there are LARGE boulders that have newly fallen and this stream bed has produced a lot of new rock. Wish I could have photographed it from a safe place though. There were areas that were 100ft wide and showed signs of 10+ft of water having gone through...

Heading back downcanyon towards the light made for some beautiful golden glow from around corners.

I am still looking for last years photo's but last year there was sand much higher than in this shot.

This is more in the nature of an experimental processing of this shot. Not in love with it, but at the same time it is interesting to see it differently than in real life.

Another Trip to Goblin Valley

At the end of the hike, we drove from Little Wild Horse to Goblin Valley State Park, to use the facilities, eat lunch, and let the boys play in the Hoodoo's. As I said before, Goblin Valley is one of my favorite places on earth. This time around I wanted to shoot with an eye towards B&W conversions. I think I got some reasonably fun shots. (As always, click on the Photo to enlarge it!)

This one I left Color, mainly because I could not find a processing look I was happy with.....

One Fine Sunset

Whilst in the midst of driving home from work the storm clouds began to clear, as I made my way home I prayed for the sunset to hold for me. It did. I may not have had the time to linger and get fancy, but what I got I like.

The Metal Man Again
I will rule the world!! Ha Ha Ha!!! Me and my weathervane shall subdue you and grind you underfoot.

Easter Eggs....

Saturday was my families annual egg dyeing day, silly me bought brown eggs instead of white eggs, but we agreed that "Jewel Tones" were kinda cool too!

All images but the last taken with Pentax SMC 135mm f2.5 manual focus lens and bounced flash manual metering.

Wabbit egg

Big green S
Diagonally
Empty Rack
Rows of Jewels
The Setting

The First Flowers of the Year!!!

I have been watching these guys for a few weeks, just waiting for them to open up. Finally when we went over to my parents on Sunday they were blooming... well one of them was! I set up my new tripod (more about that in a sec) and tried for a few shots. Not wanting the kids to be running amok without me for too long I didn't linger but was impressed at the versatility of my tripod.

These first two have had my standard post processing done.

This one I believe is an untouched original... I think....

Here is my tripod, it is really really cool, the center column can tip over and get really really close to the ground. I could have gone lower and shot up into this flower if it had been taller and the light was co-operating. For those that care it is an Induro AX 213 6M Alloy tripod with a Vanguard SBH-300 Ball head.

Two slightly different takes on B&W

OK, an hour and a half later here is what I was able to do in Black and White... which I rather like! Though the first a little more than the second.

4 Shots of the Utah State Capitol

Alrighty, time for a story.

I had the opportunity to attend a course last Friday and Saturday at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. As I often do, I went early to take some photos, because... well... I am a photographer as well as a Physical Therapist! So Friday I went to the inside of the Capitol Building as I have once before. Except this time I had my handy dandy new Tripod which with a L-Bracket allows me to shoot Panoramas with the nodal point of my lens approximately in the same place as the center of rotation of the tripod. More about that in some other post... So, there I was all by myself at 7:00am in the Capitol rotunda getting prepared to shoot. Once I started shooting I found that the lighting was very tough and I was going to have to shoot 3 bracketed shots and process them as HDR then stitch them. So I spent the next 30 minutes shooting at 25 degree slices until I had covered the whole 360 degree angle of view. Finally on Sunday I got the opportunity to process the HDR's and loaded all 15 shots into The panorama creator in Photoshop Elements 7 and off I went... with one small problem... it locked up my poor creaky old computer. Crashed and burned!!! So you don't get to see those yet, hopefully my brothers rocking machine can handle that load.

On Saturday it was not snowing and I was able to shoot outside. I had no idea that there was a reflecting pool behind the State Capitol, seriously, no idea. Well I discovered it at my usual early hour on a cloudy Saturday and this series is about that.

My main disappointment with this shot was the massive flare from the lights. Not unexpected due to using a 10mm lens with that large and bright of light sources, but disappointing nonetheless. I may use my 17-70 in a vertical position the next time and stitch a few shots together, it has a much better flare characteristic.

This the first of two quick and dirty treatments of these shots, you see a slight haloing of the building, that is due to my quick layer cutting rather than the processing. If I thought that this had promise as a saleable shot I would definitely go back and do a much tighter mask.

Despite being a little wild and crazy (OK a LOT wild and crazy!) I like this version much better. There is just a certain drama to it. I wonder if the Capitol Police would get after me if I waded into the fountain to get closer? Hmmmm......

This lovely piece is a 180 degree panorama shot with my Sigma 10-20, it is 5 HDR shots stitched together (15 exposures total) This I am tempted to try to sell, though I may repeat the shot with a better sky and try that. I dunno....

One more just for grins!

A Break in the Storm

Snowed this morning, I kinda hate that this time of year... fortunately there was a bit of beauty. I had this brought to my attention thanks to my wife. Hope you enjoy the "Break in the Storm" of your life to look at these.

These are three of my favorite things........

Sunrises (Even if I got the exposure a little light and lost some of the detail)

AND Roses with chocolate, have to say that shooting something that light and dark together was really tough!

Saturday Morning BEFORE the snow!

Got woken up early by the kiddos so I decided to try and catch some of the early morning light, up where I had seen some buds coming up the other day. Sadly the sun went behind clouds before I got up there, but I did have a little fun.

These first 3 shots were taken with my Lens Reversing Ring and an old Canon FD 50mm f1.8, yikes a canon lens on a Pentax Camera..... The 4th was taken with my Pentax SMC K-28mm f3.5 reversed.

I'm still figuring out the extreme shallow depth of field thing. I think it will take awhile, though I bet it will help to have no wind!

The rest of this series was with my new Pentax SMC DA 55-300 f4-5.8. I pushed the ISO to 400 and cropped a couple for composition only. I must say that this lens is impressing me more and more every day! Considering it was fairly early in the day and overcast it was able to gather enough light to be quite reasonably sharp.

This guy did need a little shadow compensation.