Big Sur Again

Sometimes bad things happen...

Toward the end of my cycle I decided to head south from Albuquerque and check out a few places. White Sands, Carlsbad Caverns and Guadalupe NP were on my to-do list. I hit White Sands and then went south to the other parks before heading north to Albuquerque again. At the end of this trip I was driving up I10 through El Paso and noticed that there was a storm brewing over Las Cruces. Storms in that part of the world are a great thing as they give you a dramatic sky to go with the wild geography. I wanted to see if I could catch a storm in White Sands as it can get really interesting so I turned east on rt. 70 and drove like a madman to get there before the storm broke. I was lucky and made it into the monument and up on the sand just in time. I wanted to get a timelapse of the storm. It took a while to get everything setup but finally the camera was rolling and getting some great shots. I watched a couple of guys get out of their car just below where I was positioned and wasn't at all surprised when one of them started climbing the sand dune straight toward where I was standing. When he was still 20 feet away I shouted at him that I was shooting and wanted pristine dunes for my shots but he kept coming. So when he got 10 feet away I told him again that I was shooting a timelapse and wanted him to change directions so he didn't interfere with my shoot. He kept coming. Just as he got about even with me I told him that I was not adverse to picking up my $2500 camera and lens and using it to beat the crap out of him if he didn't stop. That seemed to get his attention and he turned but not without giving me a dirty look and a finger. I have a hard time understanding the mentality that says it's OK to be an a**hole and simply destroy someone else's shot. He wasn't willing to explain to me why it was necessary for him to walk across the pristine sand I had chosen for my work. There are literally thousands of dunes in the monument he could have chosen to climb and why mine was so important still isn't clear to me. But I'm glad I ruined his day because soon after that confrontation he and his friend left the dunes and drove away.

The storm provided another unexpected bit of excitement as my shoot continued. The wind was blowing pretty strong but there was little sand in the air when I first arrived. In the video below, you can see about 30 minutes of the storm and the first 25 are very clear. But as the shoot progressed I could see sand far away but wasn't really worried because the wind was mostly from left to right. However, if you look carefully at the video you can see a wall of sand suddenly rising to my left and coming very quickly toward my position. I guessed it was about 8 minutes total from the time I first saw the cloud until I hit me full force. I had taken precautions for the camera, putting it in a rain sleeve so the sand didn't get inside or cause any damage but I hadn't made much effort to protect myself. As it was very warm I was in jeans and a short-sleeve t-shirt. I really wanted to stay a few minutes more and capture the full force of the storm as it swept over my position but I was being filleted by the sand which was stripping skin off as I ran back to my truck. I also wanted to get my truck out of the sand blaster but it was slow going as the road was rapidly disappearing under the sand. When I finally got to the ranger's station I showed the ranger my shots and he was amazed at how fast the storm had come. There were people way out on the sand and they had to have been in real danger as they couldn't avoid the full force of the wind. I hope they got out safely.

Anyway, sometimes stuff happens. Sometimes it's an idiot who thinks he's really important and sometimes it's something completely beyond your control. That's one of the reasons why I do this ... you never know when something really interesting will happen.

Big Sur Again

I already related my trials in Big Sur this trip so I won't rehash them. This overlook was just down the road from the spot where I took the other image from last week. I love the erosion which has created the most interesting forms in the foreground. Very dramatic and wonderful to look at. Enjoy.

Big sur - 24mm,f/18,HDR,ISO 100,license CC BY-NC 4.0

White Sands

White Sands

Early in last year's trip I headed south from Albuquerque to White Sands. A very interesting place with some wild geology. The 'sand' is really gypsum, the stuff used to make drywall. It peculates out of the ground, carried by ground water. The stuff is actually wet and sticks to everything. Because it's wet it doesn't blow around much so the dunes are relatively stationary. But it does act like sand in many ways so you can see these nice waves that form when the wind blows. Really interesting place and I recommend a visit if you're in the area of southern New Mexico.

I wanted to get some sunset shots but the clouds didn't want to cooperate. Shooting into the sun with the white sand tends to wash everything out and that's what happened this time. When the weather isn't helpful I start looking for interesting features to study so the trip isn't a total waste. I found these interesting waves across the dunes, orientated just perfectly to the setting sun. I love the symmetry and how the alternating sun and shade spots emphasize that regularity. Sometimes there's beauty in the most simple things.

Made with a single exposure, run through Lightroom to bring out the colors. Hope you enjoy.

White Sands - 35mm,f/18,1/2500 sec,ISO 3200,license CC BY-NC 4.0

Bisti Mushrooms

Trump

Damn, how I hate writing that name. The fact that 'the Donald' is our next president sits real heavy on my heart. A Narcissist, a real hard core Narcissist, has just been elected to run my country for the next 4, 8 or how many years he chooses. I've been around these types enough in my life to know they are real trouble. Thin-skinned and really quick to retaliate, they can cause so much trouble if given enough rope. And I'm guessing the clowns in congress will give this guy all the rope he wants as long as he goes along with their agenda. I really fear for the future of my country, not only because of him, but because we've lost all sense of direction and are floating around aimlessly, armed to the teeth and with no idea just how dangerous a dying country can be. Will he pick a fight with someone over a slight or a nasty comment? Will he be easily swayed by flattery? Of course. One has to really hope that there are people, somewhere, who can provide a check on his over-sized ego and keep him from doing something really stupid. Of course, maybe his selection is a good thing. Is it better to get a shot to the head or to die of a thousand tiny cuts? The democrats have been using the latter solution but I'm inclined to think the former is better. Get it over with and start anew. I can tell you, from my perspective living outside of the US of A, most people just want our country to go away. They are tired of these clowns in Washington or NYC telling them what to do and then screwing them over when their back is turned. America has little to offer the world anymore. We had our chance and blew it. Time for someone else to have a try at fixing the train wreck.

Bisti Mushrooms

If you're driving along I-40 near Grants, New Mexico, I recommend a hard left (north) onto route NM 371 and a visit to the Bisti/De-Na-Zin wilderness areas. Not as flashy as some national parks or as spectacular as many of the rock formations in the Great Basin, it's still worth the diversion and driving on some not so great dirt roads just for the chance to see some really strange geological formations. I've been to a lot of national parks and seen a load of geography but nothing prepares you for the odd formations you see in Bisti. Just be prepared for the heat and lack of water ... it is really dry there. I walked into Bisti in late May and nearly lost it as the sun, even at 5 pm, was intense. Got really dizzy even with several bottles of water and had to find some shade to recover. I was lucky to find a couple coming out and they told me about these strange rocks that looked like mushrooms. I was able to follow their directions and finally came on the weirdest thing I've ever seen. There they were ... thousands of flat rocks perched precariously on dried mud pedestals. It was almost surreal. I tried to imagine how this came about. The pedestals were mud, not rocks, which seems strange as one would expect the next rain storm to simply wash them away. But there they stood ... and they've been this way for a very long time. I think ... and I don't really know for sure ... but I think this whole area was, a few 100 thousand years ago, inundated with a massive flood that swept mud and all these flat rocks down from a higher elevation. The whole mess then dried. Over the years rains have slowly swept out the mud, leaving these flat rocks exposed. They act as umbrellas, protecting the underlying mud 'stems' from being flushed away. Of course, over long periods the stems do disappear and the flat rocks settle on the surrounding mud so the cycle starts over again. What an amazing sight.

Just a note of caution: wilderness areas are managed by the BLM. They are very serious about the wilderness classification. There are minimal improvements in the designated areas so be very aware of your surroundings. You'll likely not see anyone else (there were 3 cars in the parking area when I arrived and I think all but one were campers) on your travels and 'rangers' are not there to help you out. Although I'm crazy enough to hike alone I strongly suggest against this for most people. If you get hurt, no one is there to help you. People do die in these wilderness locations for lack of rescue resources. Also, have a GPS system so you know where you are. I have an app on my Android tablet that tracks my location so I have a way of finding my way back to my car. It's called 'Backcountry Navagator' and you can buy it from the Google Play store (a few bucks). It uses free Geological Survey maps. You simply tell it to start tracking your location as you hike and then you have a trail to follow on the way out. I used it in Bisti and it was very helpful. Places like Bisti don't have a lot of geological reference points (like a tall mountain) and it's real easy to get disoriented. Especially after the sun goes down it's damn easy to lose your way. In fact, I wanted to stay at the mushrooms for the sunset but chickened out as I was already dizzy from dehydration and was concerned that I might get lost even with my GPS track. I was concerned the tablet battery might run out (GPS is battery intense). I left early to make sure there was still light when I found my truck. It was still touch and go as I got 'lost' and couldn't find the markers (2 bright red hills that disappeared as the sun set) and was forced to trust the GPS track for a while until I reacquired them. There are no paths to follow ... just a lot of random footprints in the soft earth and many shallow washes that can and do force you to traverse left and right until you can find a way across. I strongly recommend having a fully charged backup battery that can be used to recharge your tablet/phone/GPS tracker in the event your battery runs down. They are cheap insurance against a mistake. And carry lots of water/sports drink to keep yourself hydrated. It's amazing how fast you can get in trouble. It really sneaks up on you.

This is a 5 image sequence run through the usual processing (Photomatix and Lightroom). Love the blue sky and clouds. A characteristic of New Mexico that's really nice. Makes for amazing sunsets.

Bisti Mushrooms - 35mm,f/18,HDR,ISO 100,license CC BY-NC 4.0

Very Large Array, Socorro, New Mexico

The Trip from Hell

Sometimes it's just ordained that a trip doesn't work out. It can be weather or an accident or a personal situation ... anything can happen to take the wind out of your sails. Unfortunately, this trip home had pretty much all of these. You already know about my troubles with the US government and my investment advisor. After a week of fighting and angry words I finally freed up my funds and put them in another financial institution. Because of all the trouble my residency in Crimea caused I'll not be telling them about my plans anymore. They just know I'm in Europe and will be in touch when I return.

I'm back in Crimea now, the trip over. I didn't add to this blog as I was too angry and too distracted to actually write anything coherent. Also, I made a conscious decision to not process many of my images as I've found the whole hassle of doing that is just too hard and the results too unpredictable to be of any use. All I did was fire up my computer when I could and download all the images I'd taken so there was at the very least 2 of every photo. I processed a few images just to make sure I had something usable and to check out the new Canon 6D and the Samyang 14 mm, f/2.8 lens. Both are fine and take some really nice pictures. Now that I'm home I've started cataloging and arranging what I have and am developing a plan to work through them. I've found some really great images and more than a few that are not worth keeping. More on this in later blogs.

Back to the trip. It rained a lot more this time due to El Nino. I love rainy days but only the beginning and the end of the storms. It's then that I see the most dramatic skies and the most spectacular sunsets. But cloudy skies for days on end don't produce nice images and rain isn't really all that good for the equipment. So I spent far too many days sitting in my truck watching rain drops slide down my windshield. I also had an accident ... not the truck but my body ... and that limited my mobility somewhat. I twisted my knee (and probably tore a ligament) so I'm now wearing a knee brace which helps somewhat but I'm not a mobile as I'd like. Add to that the wet weather kept my asthma from really getting better meaning I had difficulty hiking any great distances or tackling difficult terrain. Unfortunately, much of the really impressive geography in the Southwest is only accessible by hiking.

But the biggest detriment to my trip was my attitude. After the war with my investment adviser and the horrible start to my trip I just couldn't gin up the enthusiasm needed to really do a first rate job. My first stop, LA, didn't help very much as I spent far too much time driving from one place to another and then struggling to find a place to park the truck where it would be left alone. Too much of LA is either pay to park (and very expensive) or no parking so I had to drive around to find a place where I felt the truck was not at risk. Instead of the 3-4 weeks I'd intended to spend I split after only 6 days. Once I was on the road it became an issue of dealing with large crowds everywhere. This year is the 100th anniversary of the National Park Service and they are pushing very aggressively to get people into the parks. It's working unfortunately. I often found the campgrounds filled and the parks overflowing with humanity. It's hard to shoot landscapes when they are overrun with bodies. I'll be spending far too much time this winter removing humans from my images. Not what I expected and a far cry from last year. So, by the half way point I was basically on autopilot, drifting from one park to the next without much enthusiasm. I wanted to go home with several weeks left. Not the way to make award winning images I'm afraid. But maybe I can save the effort with some really creative post work.  We'll see.

Anyway, the trip ended up on June 3rd with a very long trip back to Crimea. That, at least, was reasonably uneventful. I've got my equipment back in running condition and will start working on images in a few days, once I'm over the horrible jet lag. I've been home for 4 days and am still unable to function very well. Guess old age is catching up with me at last. Once I'm OK, I have 13,868 photos to look at. Many are timelapse sequences and I've got a lot of work to get them ready. As I didn't spend as much time in LA as I'd planned, I'm not going to do an exclusively LA video but will weave in all my best photos and the timelapse into a 'best hits' show. Probably will call it 'Wonderous...' and there are some amazing images to put there. Will take a while to get that together and hopefully have something ready by the year's end. Wish me luck.

Very Large Array

If you take I-25 south from Albuquerque to Socorro and take rt. 60 west about 50 miles you'll get to the Very Large Array (VLA), a massive radio telescope. It's an amazing place with these huge radio dishes arranged in a 3-pointed star spread out across the desert. I spent several hours talking to the senior engineer for the facility and hope, next year, to be given permission to spend a night photographing the array against the milky way. I did a timelapse of the main array and one of the dishes as they twisted and turned to track a target billions of light years away. I'll certainly include the video in my best hits show. What's so interesting about the array is it's sensitivity. The engineer told me the system could detect a cellphone signal from Jupiter. Now that's sensitive! They are currently studying black holes and other radio sources and doing some really interesting science. Turns out the radio frequency bands are extremely important to see things that are obscured by dust at most other frequencies.

This photo is a panorama I took at sunset. I was as close to the antennas as possible (the camera's electronics can do a real number on the receivers). It was a gorgeous sunset and the antenna were pointed in just the right direction. I've already printed a hard copy of this image and it's spectacular. Hope to frame it later this year. So, here's hoping ET phones home...

Very Large Array - 35mm(ff),f/18,HDR,ISO 100,license CC BY-NC 4.0

Shiprock Sunrise

There's More to Life Than...

It's been a while since my last post. I've been busy with other things. I'm working a lot on my software project ... an application to help me remove flicker from my timelapse sequences. You've seen the flicker ... the video looks like something from the old hand cranked camera days with each frame having a different brightness. It can be very disconcerting to see something like that in a modern sequence and I work very hard to avoid getting that effect. Sometimes it's impossible to avoid like taking a sequence of images at a waterfall in the moonlight. The amount of mist changes from shot to shot so the intensity of reflected moonlight causes the image to 'flicker'. In that case you can do very little to fix it as it's part of the scene. The flicker I'm talking about has more to do with variations in shutter speed and aperture from one shot to the next and I can do something about that. I've been working on this program for several years now as it keeps getting shelved as my interests shuttle from one project to another but this time I'm intent on getting the thing working, at least for my purposes. It may never see any commercial success but that's OK. I want this for my purposes and that's good enough for the present. Right now I'm working to get bugs out and to make sure there's enough capability for my workflow which, at the moment, means making sure I have the ability to read in images in the correct format and to output images in the proper format. Right now that means being able to read Adobe .dng files and to output the same or DPX movie frames. I got that working yesterday (all except for the .dng output part). I also want to add some capabilities to the effects I can use to give me more latitude in how I fix the flickering. I think that takes maybe a few more weeks. When I'm finished I'll post a few examples so you can see what I'm doing.

Shiprock Sunrise

My first stop on this last cycle was Shiprock, NM. It's in the 4-corners area. I've written about it before so won't bore you with a rehash. I slept on the indian reservation so I could be at the rock at sunrise. When I awoke, the sun was just starting to lighten the sky so I was able to set up my camera and take a quick panorama of the colors in the sky. It was the first sunrise I'd seen in a long time and was very spiritual in a way. There's something very different from a sunset which has an ending quality about it. With a sunrise there's renewal and the feeling that there's hope for the new day. At day's end you know whether there was success or failure and your emotions are colored by those outcomes. The new day offers a chance at starting over and that's special.

Shiprock Sunrise - 17mm(1.6 crop),f4.0,2.5 sec,ISO 100,license CC BY-NC 4.0

Shiprock, New Mexico

3 Days on the Road and...

I'm sitting in a campground near Page, AZ. The sun is low in the sky and a cool breeze ruffles the flaps on my tent. It's an unusual sight, my little production studio. I've got a complete editing setup in my large 4-person tent and for the last several hours I've been working diligently to edit a few of the photos I've taken over the last two days. Yesterday alone I took almost 200 images including several panos and a ton of HDR image sets. So far I've managed to merge a 33 image HDR pano of Horseshoe Bend near Page at sunset and an HDR of Ship Rock, an ancient volcanic vent that rises high about the surrounding pastures in the 4-corners of New Mexico. There's a lot more to do and I'll get to as much as I can as the sun goes down and I can see the monitor better. I've decided to color correct everything using 5600 Kelvin artificial light so the colors are as true as I can make them.

I made Shiprock, NM, on Friday night and, after a bologna sandwich (with processed American cheese no less) and a dill pickle, I drove across a cattle grate and parked my pickup just up the road so it wasn't visible from the road. It was dark and very desolate but necessary if I wanted to be near the rock as the sun came up. Froze my ass off for the most part and slept fitfully. Awoke around 4 to see the vague outlines of a dozen large cows grazing contently on the scrub brush a few feet from my truck. At 5:45 my tablet's alarm went off and I got up to prepare. It was very cold, near freezing, and I wasn't really dressed for the bitter wind. Found a hoodie behind my seat which helped some and put on my hiking boots. Day one of the adventure was about to begin.

Ship Rock

This is a unique place. Millions of years ago the entire 4-corners area was a cauldron of volcanic and tectonic activity. Much of the landscape we see and admire today developed during this period. Ship Rock is just one of many unique geological wonders from that era. What's unique about this spire is a series of large, decaying, hardened lava 'cracks' radiating from the central vent. As the magma surged toward the surface it forced the ground violently upward, opening three large cracks which subsequently filled with hot magma and then cooled in place. Over the years the surrounding soft sandstone eroded away, exposing these huge slabs of harder rock. Imagine a major interstate turned on it's side and you'd be close to what they look like. Black, old and slowly falling apart.

Ship Rock is sacred to the Navajo and they aren't really pleased when others disturb the area. They're OK with photographers as long as they're not too obvious but lately climbers have appeared on the spire and that's not tolerated. So I had to be discrete, meaning no tent and no lights. It was a long, cold night out there waiting for the sun to rise.

As I waited for the sunrise I watched the horizon for the first glimmers of light. There were clouds to the east and they promised to deliver a very beautiful event. Around 6 am the sky began to lighten and it was gorgeous. I caught it all, but you'll have to wait another day for those images (panos included). I think it's worth the wait.

I drove my truck very slowly over the rutted dirt road, growing ever closer to the spire. I was alone except for a few cows that grazed contently nearby, oblivious to my presence. I had to hurry as the sun was quickly approaching the horizon and I knew the beautiful reds of early sunrise would only last a few minutes. Finally I had to stop, rushing to get my camera and tripod setup. I didn't have to wait very long for the spectacle to begin and it was over almost before it started. 5 minutes tops. But what an amazing 5 minutes with the monument turning a warm, inviting red as it reached out to embrace the new day. I snapped away, one picture every 30 seconds. As the reds intensified I switched to bracketed exposure, working to get as much of the color as possible. And then, even quicker than it came, it was over. But the images were there to assure me that it was a beautiful as I'd anticipated.

Ship Rock, NM at sunrise - 16 mm (1.6 crop), f/16, 1/4 sec, ISO 100 License CC BY-NC 4.0

From my new Canon 16-35 f/4 (the very first image with this lens). Amazing piece of glass. Much sharper than my Sigma 17-70. And the colors are spectacular, don't you think? This is a 3 image HDR, washed through Photomatix and Lightroom and nothing else. I see it spills over the blogs right edge just a bit but I'm not going to cut it down anymore as that would be a sin. This is a low res JPEG and it still knocks my socks off ... you should see the full-sized version. WOW.