My Sister's House

I was in the mountains again last week-end, but my journey was more than just a chance to camp out. A group of friends and I went up just before the week end but my motive was to give my sister a birthday present. She and her children had to evacuate from Lebanon during the most recent Israeli aggressions - with little more than the clothes on her back. So now that she is making her home here she is gradually assembling the things needed for day to day life. A frying pan can take on a whole new meaning you know!
Anyway I have been slowly gathering a camping house and when better to give it than on a camp out. I knew she was not able to stay overnight but I lured her up to a picnic - ensuring her presence with the assignment of food needed for the group.
She was surprised to say the least and I hope she is able to spend many a peaceful day in her new house - where-ever that may be. Happy Birthday little sister - with much love.

Camping

I love to camp out. There is something very grounding about being in the outdoors. It also offers the oppurtunity to take pictures which is often not possible in my work a day world. I met several friends and we camped on the Portal side of the Chirachua Mountains. Our recent rains have been very good for the forest, and although it was quite warm it was very green. We camped right beside Cave Creek and I was lulled to sleep every night by the sound of running water. No bad thing in my book. It is already begining to get chilly in the high country and the leaves are just starting to drop. This shot saya it all for me.

JPG Magazine

So I have entered another picture in the jpg magazine. You never know some one might think it is worth looking at

Summer Rain

I see in the news locations in the US where people are being overwhelmed by the amount of rain they are getting. We are getting some very significant amounts of rain here in Southeastern Arizona as well but it is not such a big problem for us - at least those of us lucky enough to live in Bisbee.

Bisbee was plagued with flooding from summer storms so in the early 1900's the city fathers build a huge ditch through town to cary off the flood waters. Bisbee is build down in a canyon which was already very flood prone and by creating a concrete walled channel to direct the runoff most of our flood problems became managable. We still have some areas that are problematic during heavy rains but for the most part they are related to newer construction.

One day last week I got caught up in one of those problems. US 80 which is the main road into town from the west suffered from a rock and mud slide during a brief but heavy summer storm. I personally had never seen that amount of rain 'over the divide'. I was stuck having to wait it out because I did not have enough gas to double back to Sierra Vista. Banning Creek which runs alongside US 80 was flowing at about 8 feet of depth and in some areas over 200 feet across of boiling muddy water full of tree limbs and rocks. I happened to be in the area two days after the event and the creek was back to its usual 1 foot of depth and 5 to 7 feet of width.

Rain in the desert is a blessing, even too much rain is a blessing and it never stays around too long. We are blessed with sandy soil that allows the water to soak in and here in the mountains it all runs off to lower deserts which usually don't get the same amount of rain as the higher elevations do. Its win-win.

It is also beautiful.

Spring in Southeast Arizona

It is spring here - no doubt about it. Weather conditions are not really what determines spring in the desert, and spring is not the visual bracchanalia that you might see in other areas of the country. Desert spring is related to the increasing amounts of daylight and the sun warming the ground. The ocotillo will bloom even when there has been no rain. The jack oaks will drop their leaves sending out the catkins that will be acorns later in the summer. Sand verbenia and penstemmon will bloom in patches along the roads and California poppies spring up snuggled up in cracks and crannies of the walls and sidewalks.

For the untrained eye the vistas are still dull and brown made up mainly of dead grasses and mesquites that remain dormant.

It is a secret that desert dwellers are bound to keep.

Easter

So Easter is past. The last of the chocolate holidays. Easter is a bit of a mystery to me. The number of people that get religion and get all dressed up for a concept that they don't practice on the other 364 days is a bit of a head scratcher for me. I do however like the candy and an excuse to take time out of busy lives and get together with family. My two youngest grandsons really enjoyed the egg hunt part of the day. Got an interesting shot in my daughter's side garden and I think it makes a good B&W. I think I may go back for a reshoot and see if I can straighten the skull on the wall as that tilt is not working for me.

I took the shot from a side view but I don't think that photo works as well. I have chosen black and white for this shot because there was not much color in the scene to start with, and I want to add a sense of drama. The bricks are concrete, and the skull is in dappled shadow.

We have, very near to Bisbee, a wildlife refuge, mainly for water fowl and specifically for the migration of the sandhill cranes. The Sandhills are very wonderful bids. They migrate in large numbers and are very fun to watch. The sandhills are also the family flock of several whooping cranes that have been placed with them under the safety in numbers therory I guess.

I took some time out yesterday to drive out to the refuge. I had big hopes for both the lighting and the sky after two days of great rain, but was a bit disappointed. As my Grandmother said 'Climate is what you hope for and weather is what you get'. I had some fun, which is what the trip was about. I was rewarding myself for having to work this week-end. I got some photographs worth working on and if time permits I plan to go

back this evening.

I wonder who looks at or reads this blog? At times I think maintaining this is an exercise in self-promotion that is going nowhere. I don't get any comment on the shots that I post here. I have no way to know if that means there is little of interest here or if people just don't comment. According to the counter I added some 130 people have stopped by. I don't think all those hits could be me -could they?
I have a bit of work up in one of the local galleries but that seems to be a dead end. In the 6 months the work has been up I have sold one print and a few cards. Some of the problem may be location as the work is displayed in a small dark backroom and I am paying for the privilege, but ya never know.
I have submitted a photo to jpg magazine and it has gotten a few votes. I don't know if the votes are from people who really think it is a good shot and fits the theme of entropy or if the votes are from people who like me and are trying to be kind.
In any event if you follow the link I posted below it will take you to my jpg mag submission. I think it is worth a look. Whoever you are, if you are viewing this post, I hope you will decide for yourself. I really do think beauty as well as visual intrigue are in the eye of the beholder.
http://www.jpgmag.com/photos/84982

Well while I was in San Fransisco I had a chance to play with Nikon's new VR lens, the 18-200 f/3.5-5.6. Needless to say my plastic took a hit that day. I am very happy with this lens and suspect that it will be my new walk about lens. It is fast, sharp and very versatile. I often struggle with being able to get close enough to my subject due to rough terrain or physical barriers. This lens will solve some of those issues.

The combination of the new lense and the new software has re-energized my photography. I am semi-patiently waiting for the course work to arrive from the New York Institue of Photography as well. I think it is time for me to add some formal structure to my knowledge base. I know myself well enough to know that I will not buckle down to learn some of the basics unless I am forced into it by some type of formal framework. I am also a bit pathological as a student and will work hard to be 'the best'. It is probably good that there are no other students against which to measure myself as I can be hard on myself and demanding of others in that setting.

San Fransisco

I was just in San Fransisco for a lighting fast trip. I was there for a meeting with the agency's CMS fiscal intermediary which was not a lot of fun but had to be done. The meeting was boring but my plane did not leave until late the next day which gave me a little bit of time to wander around and see some of the sights. I was on foot in the Fisherman's Wharf area. Very touristy but also very photogenic. I did not take the DSLR but had the Olympus p&s. I had forgotten how tough it was to work with the shutter lag and as a result lost some shots but I do have one or two that I think may be worth the effort.

While I was out in the early morning - long before most tourists would be out and about I ran into the baker who works in the Cannery Row Bakery. He had just finished the morning baking and had set up a basket on the counter displaying the various rolls that are avaialble. The shot through the door came out rather nicly for a P&S camera. The lighting was a challenge so I metered for the bright napkin and then recomposed the shot. All in all I was pleased with the results.

Well I have made the jump to Adobe Lightroom to manage photos and simple adjustments such as curve and tone. It is very easy and if you do any work in photoshop the learning curve is not too steep. I spent a few weeks working with the trial version before making the jump and I think it was a good choice. I had quite a bit of fun with the program this last weekend and think I got some adequate photos out of the process. I was up Brewery Gultch on Sunday taking a few shot and did all the adjustments in Lightroom. It handles RAW files very quickly or at least much more quickly that Adobe Bridge which slows my 2 gig machine to a crawl at times and heaven forbid that I should try to manage more than one action at a time.

While I was up the Gultch I took several shoots of the area where the cribs were - in particular the bed frame fence. This is one of the best IMHO.

JPG Magazine

There is a great magazine out there that I just recently discovered called JPG. It is a magazine that showcases work by the submitters of photos and the photos that are included are the ones voted on by the membership. There are generally several themes in each issue and several articles re;ated to photographers are issues related to the brave new world that has become photography today.
I submitted several photos to the current theme of Entropy and hope that if you are reading this blog you might cruise over to the JPG site and vote for work that you think is worthy of being published.

So check it out.

http://jpgmag.com/photos/

Adobe Lightroom

So I was fooling around this last weekend and downloaded the trial version of Adobe Lightroom. This program has been in beta development for sometime now - a process that I did not get involved in. The first version seems to be very user friendly and I am thinking that it is a better place to start the RAW workflow than the use of Adobe Bridge which is a big memory and resource hog on the PC. I am running with 2 gigs of RAM and it is still a slow boat to China and prone to lock up at a moments notice - or is that lack of a moments notice?
So here is an example of a B&W conversion that I did utilizing Lightroom. I think that it is a pretty good effort and at least as good as conversion using the Carr method. Now mind you I am looking at the quality of the B&W conversion not the subject matter of the photo, which is marginal IMHO.

It has been very busy all around me these last few days but I did manage to squeeze in a short burst of photography. I was working on a project for work. We are housed in two rental building managed by slumlords evidently. I had an amazing realization. It is much easier to take photos that are intentionally visually repellent than it is to take a shot meant to pull in the viewer. It was a fun project but needless to say I won't be posting those ugly photos here!

What I did do that was fun is take some macro shots of my co-workers violets. I am concerned that now that this amazing plant has received my attention it is not long for this world. I've killed a bunch of them. My Mom used to grow violets. She would break off a leaf and have a new plant in a few weeks, give it to me and it was dead almost before I got it home.

Up close and personal they are amazing blossoms well worth the closer look.

Match Point

I am a flickrite. Flickrian? What ever - I never know how that convention works. One of the groups that I participate in is Match Point. I am sure I have written about it before in some blog or another. We have just finished a match based on Favorite Images in which I made it to the final round. I am proud of my achievment and suspect that I might have won had I waited to post until after my opponent. There is a big strategy component to the game, and that is the part at which I am not very good. Anyway here is the shot that made it to the finals.

The next match will be Patterns in Nature and I spent some time this morning working on shots that I might use for this match. This agave is one that I think works well for theme.

Today my friend flew down from Tucson to bring her airplane in for its well-flyer check. We had an opportunity to have a meal at the Bisbee Breakfast Club which is always a treat. She was pressed for time so rather than drive back to Tucson and then go to the market she decided to stop in our local co-op, which is just up the street from the resturant. In busy lives it is all about time management. The displays are very visual in our local co-op. It is one way that you know you are in an arts community. I had lots of fun with the phd camera (push here dummy)which I am carrying everywhere I go these days.

Art is in the living. If you live in Bisbee you get it.

Chiricahua Rock House

While browsing through some other people's posts on flickr I got inspired to work on some shots that I thought might look good in B&W, for which I must say I have a real fondness. Many people who know me and comment on my work often are drawn to color. Color can be too easy if you ask me. It is easy to wow the viewer with highly saturated color and here in the southwest we have a big edge. The landscape is so vibrant that you don't need to resort to post processing tricks to get the blue skies and rich earth tones. It is all there for the photographer.

Black and white on the other hand IMHO relies on subject matter, composition and the ability of the photographer to capture the vision that motivated the photographer into making the shot.

A flip of perspective

Sometimes I have to look at a photo a bit before I can see what is needed to make it a more dynamic shot. Sometimes all the looking in the world won't help. I think this is an improvement.

Snowy morining

Arizona does not do snow well. Most of southern Arizona is covered in a blanket of snow and there is a heavy snow warning for Cochise County until 5 PM today. I woke up to about 6 inches of the cold white stuff, road closures and workers that are in varing degrees of not able to get the usual workday to happen. The town is generally shut down at this moment. The city services only the main street and other than that you are on your own. The roads are begining to clear a bit but I hope to continue to see this storm from the inside looking out.

I am no snow fan but it does make for interesting photos. There is always the challenge of exposure that will keep the snow white without blowing out the highlights. I don't see enough snow to be a good hand at is, but I keep trying.

In my world at this moment in real time

So it is snowing again. It looks like the this El Nino year is going to continue with winter snows. We get a good portion of our moisture in winter rain and snow. I would put my money on rain everytime but climate is what you hope for and weather is what you get.

Just the image

So the point for me is the image. Is it something that grabs the viewer? Does it say something about my vision? Is it pleasing from a strictly visual point of view? Have I done the best I can with the image I captured?.

The things that grab me are not always explicable, and I find black and white to be the best way to strip an image of what distracts the viewer from the detail I want to show. Things that are not always as they seem. After all in life that is one of the basic precepts. Things are not always as they seem.

Snow in Arizona

The powers that be knew that I would not be too fond of snow, which is why I was born in Arizona. Even into the most desert of climates a little snow must fall. With the drought that we have had over the last few years there has not been much snowfall to speak of. We got about 3 inches overnight, most of which melted but it can be pretty to look at here anf there.

A new year

As usual I spent the holidays in Mexico. Now that is the way to do Christmas in my opinion. Kids don't have the gimmies, family doesn't have to have arguments and one can really enjoy the season. We - my family and friends camp out on a streach of undeveloped beach just north of Bahia de Kino in the state of Sonora. There is nothing there, and I mean nothing. No tables or porta-potties, no water and not much of a road, but it is beautiful. I miss the sound of the waves when I get home from this adventure.

We have a traditional Christmas dinner of turkey and stuffing which we roast in a pit in the ground It was very quiet this year and only 5 people for dinner which meant that we actually sat down to the table to eat. Some years we have had as many as 35 people for dinner and wiped out two big turkeys right down to the bones. Several other folks showed up after the holiday - some first timers and some old friends that have often spent the holidays with us on the beach.

This shot is the view from the front of my camp. Rough to have to get up and make coffee looking out on this vista. I want to be back there now.