If you've been keeping track of the news, you know that Russia is sending equipment and some troops to Syria. You also know about the disaster that's happening in Europe with all the refugees. As I'm in Russia right now (Crimea) I get these stories every day, with a Russian slant. Fortunately, the government hasn't limited my Internet (yet) so I can also read the Western press to get another perspective on these events. It would appear the two sides are headed for a collision, like two big horn sheep smashing heads. The noise is almost too much to bear but it's the underlying heat I worry about. There are too many hard heads and hardened positions at play in this mess and I really am concerned that the two sides may be getting themselves into positions where they have no reasonable way out. If Russia actually puts ground troops and jet fighters in Syria (a real possibility from the chatter I hear) they will cross a Rubicon that the West has indicated is unacceptable. It could very easily lead to confrontation in the air at the very least as there are American jets (among others) bombing across the country. Russian pilots are highly trained and very effective and there would most likely be casualties on both sides and lots of destroyed hardware. What will these two bulls do in that case? There are massive egos involved and too much political capital to be lost should one of them back down. This is how wars start. It's getting very hairy around here and one false move could spell disaster. If you are religious, now is a good time to start praying.
Sometimes the Best Plans Run Astray...
It's funny but cameras sometimes don't see the same scene as the human eye. It may be the transition to 2D which flattens the image or it might be color and light ... sometimes it's not even obvious why the image from the camera is so different from what you remember. Today's image is a perfect example of this phenomena. I was in King's Canyon National Park (near Sacramento), traveling along the King River. There's a spot, about halfway between the park entrance and the far end of the road where a massive cliff rises from the valley floor to tower over the road. I noted this spot on my way in and, while driving out, stopped to take an HDR panorama. The cliff was super impressive with lots of texture and color. Down at the bottom, perhaps a 1000 feet below, was the river, raging through the narrow gorge. It was a really impressive spot. I grabbed the camera and tripod and very carefully crawled out on a narrow and dangerous ledge so I could shoot down into the canyon as part of the pano. The ledge was covered with loose gravel and dirt and I was very concerned that I might slip. But I felt the scene was too impressive to just back away. So I clung to the ledge and very gently took my pictures. I put them in my computer and waited for a time when I could process them into a majestic picture.
Jump forward a few days. I finally found time to set up the computer and did the usual work of merging my images into HDR and a huge panorama. Because the images were from the cliff face the pano software had a hard time finding matches. It took over an hour to get a final image. Imagine my disappointment when it finally emerged. To say it was lifeless would be an understatement. Several issues came to light ... first, the river all but disappeared in the distortions created by the panorama. What was an impressive torrent became an afterthought in the final image. It all but disappeared. And the cliff ... well, let's just say it was less than earth shattering. What I saw was a bland wall of gray with a few colors and one or two plants. Nothing like the massive stone wall I'd photographed. Maybe if I'd taken another row higher up, showing some sky, it would have impressed me more. who knows. So, disappointed, I put the image away and forgot about it.
King's Canyon Cliffs
A few weeks ago I was working through my backlog and came across the cliff picture. It was still bland and disappointing but I saw a glimmer of hope. Back into Lightroom it went and I started manipulating all the sliders I could find to see if something, anything, would emerge. Lightroom gives you a lot of power to tug and coax color out of your photographs. I didn't add anything (cheating) but used every bit of latitude Lightroom gave me to get an image that's not only acceeptable but even a bit tantalizing. This is, at some level, the image I remember as I clung to that ledge. It's not perfect but still ... perhaps worth teetering precariously above that abyss after all. I'll let you decide.
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| King's Canyon Cliff - 16mm(1.6 crop),f/18,HDR,ISO 100,license CC BY-NC 4.0 |
