Grand Canyon - Pima Point

Tax cuts ...

It would appear that the Republican tax cuts are going to pass ... what a surprise. The one thing that party can do well is give even more money to the already obscenely rich. Of course, in a few years when the deficits start to swell they will start screaming about how they have to fix that by taking more money away from the other end of the economic spectrum ... the poor and the elderly. They will leave that to the Democrats who are experts at taking things away from those demographics. It's all a scam ... you do understand that, right? It's also very unnecessary. All you need to do is read up on Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) to see why. In short, taxes do not pay for government expenditures. This is something none of the congress members understands as they are almost all lawyers or doctors. They think a government should be run like a household. But a monetary sovereign (a government that controls it's money supply) doesn't have to work like a household. It prints money! No household does that unless they have an illegal printing press in the basement (but that's another story). Sovereign governments can print as much money as they need. I know ... but what about inflation? Well, excess money doesn't lead to inflation ... the last few years of rampant quantitative easing proves that. A lack of things to buy is what causes inflation. But we are awash in things to buy ... just visit a local WalMart or look at the massive warehouses being built everywhere by Amazon and others. We also have a huge oversupply of autos that are unsold and waiting for someone to find the money to buy them. Inflation won't happen as long as there are things to buy. And we need infrastructure investments ... to the tune of 3+ trillion dollars so that also applies to paying wages and buying things to fix the broken roads and bridges. The government could turn on the presses tomorrow and run them day and night for years without causing any inflation. But they won't because that would rob the bankers of their cut of the very lucrative money market where the government borrows money. We could, literally, eliminate the deficit by printing 20 1 trillion dollar platinum coins and drawing against them to buy back all those government bonds we've sold over the years. Without generating any inflation. But don't hold your breath waiting for our incompetent elected officials to fix the problem. No gona happen ... ever! Too much money to be made.

Grand Canyon - Pima Point

As always, my first stop during this last cycle was Grand Canyon. I find that this park sets the tone for my trip and it was certainly true this time. For the first time I found the campground full and was forced to leave the park after only one day. There is no overnight parking except in the established campgrounds so I was forced to leave. They are very strict about this rule. This bad start was an omen that overshadowed my entire trip. I got some very nice images along the way but the trip itself was one bad thing after another. Anyway, to salvage my trip to the canyon I wanted to get one good panorama before I drove south. I took the red line bus out to Pima Point which is about a far west as one can go on established roads and went to setup on the rim. I've never seen an overlook so overrun with people. They were everywhere, even hanging off the rim. I had to elbow my way through so I could get out on the very edge to take my traditional pano. I found a nice rock outcrop where I was alone and, for the most part, out beyond the crowds. I did catch some people in the very edge of the pano but was able to clip them out of the finished image. It was a beautiful evening with just enough clouds to get a nice sunset. What I got is below.

I have one thing that happens at least once during each cycle. I get antsy and finish shooting before the action is finished. If you've watched a lot of sunsets you know that there is a certain process to how the light ebbs. There's the anticipation as the sun approaches the horizon followed by the first big burst of color. Shutters are going like crazy trying to capture this phase.Then there's the inevitable lull where the clouds go gray and the scene gets very boring. That's the time when most people gather up their gear and exit stage left. The patient pro knows there's likely to be more and he waits. Eventually, if the cloud conditions are just right, there's a second, even more spectacular color burst that lasts only a short while. That's when the sun breaks under the clouds and illuminates the bottoms with very intense red light. Over time this fades and you enter the blue period where the sky slowly darkens from light blue to dark blue to black. You can get some very spectacular shots during this second surge but, as I said before, you have to be patient. Well, being the first day of the cycle, I forgot this cardinal rule and broke my setup when the gray period came. And I was horrified to be standing at the bus stop when the sky lit up bright red again. It was too late to run back to the rim and setup so I could only watch as an amazing picture came and went, unrecorded. But this is a time to be very careful, especially around the rim, as accidents can happen when you are flustered and in a hurry. In the rush to setup you can make a mistake and get dead. So I just reminded myself, once again, to wait until the scene if 100% over before breaking my setup. Someday I'll remember this before I make a mistake.

This is a composite picture made from 80 separate images. I took bracketed sequences of 5 images each for a total of 16 blocks. Each block was run through Photomatix to give me an HDR image and then stitched together in Photoshop to produce the final panorama. There's a lot of work in this image as the tonal variation across the HDR blocks was very broad and I had to do a lot of cleanup. Some people think panoramas are easy ... just take your pictures and stitch them together. That's rarely all that happens. Panos can get very messy and it takes a trained eye and a lot of patience to fix all the problems. But the result is truly spectacular ... don't you think?

Pima Point - Grand Canyon 24mm,f/18,HDR,ISO 100,license CC BY-NC 4.0

San Francisco

Catalonia...

I wonder if this place, Catalonia, is the canary in the coalmine. What I mean by this is the following ... I've noticed of late that a lot of small regions are striving to get away from their bigger brethren. Scotland and Ireland for example. Or the Donbas in Ukraine. Or what happened to Yugoslavia. One can point to literally hundreds of places where the people are very unhappy with the powers that be and are agitating for their independence. I don't have a really firm opinion on this one way or the other but it certainly runs contrary to all the elite attempts to cobble together one big entity that rules them all. Suddenly trade agreements are falling apart and the EU looks a bit shaky given Greece and the Brits. Even the US is starting to see some ominous cracks. It certainly seems plausible that America could fracture into several large autonomous countries ... don't you think? The south certainly, then the West excluding the left coast, then the industrial northeast and maybe Texas on it's own. That would leave Alaska and Hawaii as odd men out with no where really to go. Maybe Alaska joins with the south or the mountain west region and Hawaii jumps in with California. I think many on both sides would agree that maybe Lincoln was wrong to force the south back into the union. Look what an unhappy lot they've been ever since. They just don't seem to fit in very well. Same with the mountain west with their libertarian tendencies and their big emphasis on state's rights. It's a very unstable time we live in. So many counteracting forces all pushing and pulling in different directions. Not the big, happy family one would expect. I don't know where this is going but it certainly looks like we're in for a big upheaval. Hold onto your hit ... it's going to get very rocky.

National Park fees...

I see where the Trump administration wants to significantly increase the entrance fees for many of the most popular national parks. I have a senior pass so I'm safe but these new fees, up to $70/car are really steep. A lot of families couldn't afford rates like that. The justification is the increased crowds that are, surely, overwhelming these parks. I can attest to this first hand but I think the solution is not the correct one. What is overwhelming the parks is all the foreign tourists and their big buses. I've been in a venue when a couple of these monsters roll in and it's a huge circus. Especially when they are Chinese. I'm not against Chinese tourists but they are the majority of these big waves that wash over the parks. I was in Yellowstone in late May and saw this issue big time. One morning I was in the midway geyser basin when 2 big buses rolled in. Suddenly there were 150 Chinese, all doing their best to get in each other's way and the noise was impossible. They have no appreciation for the amazing place they are visiting and you literally can't set up to take a picture with them around. I've had them walk in front of my camera and stand (or vamp) while I'm trying to get a shot. There is no respect for others. They all want to vamp for the camera and take a million selfies. For about 30 minutes the place is bedlam. Then they get on their buses and move on down the line. But all too soon another group arrives and the mess repeats. So, why not charge these tour groups big fees to enter the park. Let them pay $100 each for the privilege of visiting our parks. That would raise a lot of money and maybe keep the citizen's fees down to a reasonable level. And maybe cut down significantly on the numbers in the parks. I think it's worth a try.

San Francisco

I love this town. I went to graduate school down the peninsula in Palo Alto and my wife and I would ride the train up just to spend the day wandering around town. I know the overstuffed coders from Google and Facebook have overrun the place but it's still not all that bad. That said I find myself only spending a few days at a time there as the craziness gets to me and I have to chill for a while. This last trip I was only there for 3 days and then moved on. It's hard to find a place to sleep (I don't stay in hotels for a lot of reasons) so I have to drive out of town. This time I spent 2 nights in a rest area on I280 near Hillsboro which was very interesting. But there are so many wonderful places to shoot and that's what keeps me coming back.

This image was taken from the foothills in Golden Gate Recreational Area. I was in the last overlook just before turning north and couldn't pass up taking this image. You can see most of the bay area including the Bay Bridge and Treasure Island (just behind the north tower of the bridge) and just a bit of Alcatraz. It truly is an amazing place.

This is a single image, run through Lightroom. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

San Francisco - 35mm,f/16,30 sec, ISO 200,license CC BY-NC 4.0

Point Cabrillo

Hurricane Irma

I'm starting to feel like a broken record, always talking about hurricanes, but they are the number one topic right now. Irma is within hours of pounding into south Florida and I have every reason to expect this will be another disaster. Florida has been ignoring the threat for a long time, building big hotels and resorts right on the beach and draining the Everglades in the stupid belief that they will never be needed to stand sentinel against a big storm. Well, now they are about to pay big time. It will be truly interesting to see how much of south Florida is left next week. Of course, the pundits, who have little skin in the game, are convinced that this is just another storm like all that came before it. Rush Limbaugh, the mouth who can't stop "entertaining" his followers with one bucket of bullsh*t after another, announced that this hurricane was all a liberal fantasy, not real in any form, and then, like the coward he is, ran from his Florida home to somewhere safe while those who listen to his bile are stuck there to ride out the monster. If ever there was a case for muzzling someone, this clown is a prime candidate. People are going to die because of his lies and I think it's time for him to pay up. What do you say .... Rush? Willing to put your money where your mouth is?

As always, my heart and thoughts go to those who are being hurt by this storm. And I hope some of our lying politicians are watching this disaster unfold with a new awareness that our country and others need to start taking climate change and these monsters seriously. Maybe it's a good idea to abandon much of the low lying parts of Florida ... to let it return to the barrier reef state it had in the "good old days". Maybe we should reconstitute the Everglades too while we are at it. This storm gives us the opportunity to rethink our development practices and to not throw good money after bad in some stupid attempt to regain our foothold on the beach.

Point Cabrillo, CA

Point Cabrillo light is a few miles north of Mendocino on California's north coast. It's now a museum but still functioning as a lighthouse. The association that keeps it running is sanctioned by the Coast Guard to maintain the light in first class condition and they do an amazing job. I spent an hour talking with the keeper on site and he filled my head with all kinds of neat information. I took lots of pictures of the light and will, sometime in the future, put one or more here for your enjoyment.

This image is of the rocks near the light and it shows why the light is there. I wanted to really show how it must have looked to an earlier mariner, trying to feel his way up the coast in a storm and at dusk and what he must have seen. Those rocks and the crashing waves gave me the willies and I was on solid ground at the time. Imagine what it must have felt like looking through an old telescope as your boat pitched and yawed beneath you. Crazy or insanely brave they must have been.

Anyway, I took this image at f/22 so the exposure would be long enough to show the breaking waves as a mist. In this case the view is very ominous, as the dark rocks thrust up through the surf. The noise was deafening. Put yourself in that mariner's shoes and feel the pounding water and the salt spray. Makes you feel a bit queasy, doesn't it? A picture can do that sometimes. That's the power of an image. Grab hold of the rail ... it's going to get very rough out here.

Point Cabrillo - 144 mm,f/22,10 sec, ISO 100,license CC BY-NC 4.0

Sierra Nevada Afterglow

The Election...

It's been almost a week since Trump won the election and it's time for some soul searching and some thoughts. Trump's first picks are not encouraging ... especially Bannon from Breitbart. He's pretty repugnant and his position as the gatekeeper gives one considerable pause about his potential power. He could be a big problem. But I think we all need to consider a few things before panic sets in:

1) Trump is going to pick people he knows and who have been loyal to him during this run. That's always a given for a new administration but is especially true this time as Trump has few political friends and seems to be a big loyalty kind of guy. So he'll pick the few politicians he's done business with (including Rudy and Christy ... his real estate connections) and people who stuck with him during the blizzard of hate he endured after the convention. Don't think he's too thrilled with the Republican leadership who distanced themselves from him and there are few Republican rank-and-file who endorsed his run. That may mean he has few allies in the legislature who will stand with him when it comes time to get things done. He very well might have as difficult a time there as Obama. Somehow I think Hillary would have gotten along with them better. Expect him to rule by executive order if the legislature balks too much.

2) Trump has a history of being very intolerant of games, disloyalty and incompetence. He fired 2 campaign teams because they didn't get the job done. I'm inclined to believe he'll do the same thing if someone doesn't toe the line or isn't effective. He'll start his administration with 'friends' but I expect that will quickly change as those people prove their inability to move the ball forward. Expect a lot of churn in his administration.

3) He'll test the limits of nepotism as he brings several family members into the administration. He'll be talking to his daughter, Ivanka, a lot and may be listening to his son-in-law too. Wonder if anyone will have the courage to bring up these issues with him. Doubt it very much. Expect to see his family providing a lot of support and advice.

4) I have no idea what his agenda is but we can already see major effects just based on his campaign positions. Would appear TPP is now officially dead as are the European equivalents. I'm happy about that and he hasn't even taken office yet. Not real happy about his insistence on withdrawing from the Paris environmental treaty and his potential appointment as head of EPA. But I really think Hillary wouldn't have been much better. Our political culture is very much anti-climate right now. Trump is just making it official so we have a more solid target to campaign against. He'll get an earful from the Europeans and the Japanese about this and maybe, just maybe, he can be persuaded to change his mind. He already flipped on dumping the ACA completely so there's hope on other fronts as well. Also, expect him to blow up most of ACA but keep a few of the better parts. Won't please the insurance companies which is a plus but that means the whole insurance thing in up in the air again. Don't expect to see single payer in this environment even though everyone, including Republicans, know this is what is really needed.

5) Trump has moved the conversation decidedly to the right. That means there's space on the left for a real movement for social justice. A Clinton presidency, like Obama's, would have been difficult to work against as the Democrats are very good at co opting any movements in this direction. But the party is in disarray right now and for a long time. There aren't any strong faces at the moment and, for the first time in 24 years, not a single Clinton to overshadow it all. Maybe Sanders and Warren and a few others can, if they want, grab the dragon by the throat and change the direction. I'm really hoping for a wholesale house cleaning that throws all the old garbage out. The party is really messed up and has it's priorities in the wrong place. It needs to walk away from the bankers and the billionaires who have destroyed it's heart. Sanders showed how to raise a lot of money without kissing up to the elites and that's the way it has to go in the future. One can always hope.

I think we're in for a really difficult time going forward. The world is lurching right in a very dangerous way and there's not much to stop the slide. The left is damaged badly and being threatened by the hatred of the ultra right so I have little hope of a resurgence of left ideas anytime soon. History seems to show that these cycles happen, over and over. One can only hope a major conflict isn't needed to swing the pendulum back to the left but that's what one sees in reading the tea leaves. I don't see Hitler in Trump but I do think that others are waiting in the wings for when he fails. Some of the clowns in the Republican stable are really scary. The future is very cloudy and I fear for my children and the generations to come.

Sierra Nevada Afterglow

I was at Mono Lake during this trip, hoping to get a really spectacular sunset. I was lucky last year and was counting on the late April storms to give me something really special. But it wasn't to be. The clouds rolled in mid-afternoon and by sunset there was nothing. I got some really nice images on the lake as the sun went down and then started driving back toward highway 395 for the tripsouth toward Monmouth Lake and a rest stop. It's about 7 miles from the tufa to the highway and it was well after sunset as I drove through the twilight. It was very cloudy and I could see snow falling heavily in the Sierra mountains. The sky was just amazing ... the sun was well below the horizon and, with some wonderful luck, was coming in under the snow clouds. Must have been clear skies to the west for this to happen. Anyway, the sky was ablaze in this blue light and the mountains simply glowed. I had to stop and take a picture. Fortunately, the road had a large gravel apron so I was able to pull well off the road and set up my gear. The first images I took were OK but something was missing. What I needed was a really long exposure so the clouds smeared out. So I put my 10 stop ND filter on the camera and was able to get an exposure of 178 seconds. That's exactly what I wanted and the results are amazing. This is a single exposure, adjusted in Lightroom but that's it. And I couldn't be happier with the result. Hope you enjoy it too.

Sierra Nevada Afterglow - 14mm, f/11,178 sec,ISO 100,license CC BY-NC 4.0

Lebec Cloud Formation

Tweedledum or Tweedledee?

I'm not real political as a rule. I hate getting my hands dirty in the shit that passes for discourse these days. In my opinion we've not had a good president since FDR and he was really a great leader by accident. A smart man, something quite lacking in most leaders unfortunately, he realized that in order to save capitalism and the US he had to make major changes in the way the government worked. He put his personal interests aside and did what he felt was right for the country. Such a noble act. His actions brought us back from the depression and guided us through most of the war. But since his time we've had a string of crooks, opportunists, grifters and simpletons. We've seen these clowns take a great nation and make it into the laughing stock of the world. Living in Europe I get to see this up close and personal. But nothing prepared me for what we have now. We get to choose between the ultimate grifter and the buffoon. Between the ultimate insider and an 'outsider' who is more inside than even Hillary. Both so obscenely rich that they are absolutely disconnected from the daily existence of all but the most wealthy. I'm so disgusted with them that I'm not even making the effort to vote. It really doesn't matter anymore who is president. Neither of them will be effective as the real power behind the throne sits in the C-suites of major banks and corporations. Big money and large corporations are in control now. In control, that is, until they run the whole mess off the cliff. The idea that only the investor matters is so corrupt and stupid that it's laughable were it not so tragic. Greed is not a good basis for society ... sorry Gordon Gecko. We all live on this rock ... a small, fragile stone circling a minor sun in a minor galaxy. It's all we have and we're destroying it so a few people can grab even more obscene wealth. But when the wheels come off ... and they will come off pretty soon ... all that money won't be worth anything. Sorry to be so negative but that's our reality.

Lebec Cloud Formation

When I'm in LA, especially in the northern suburbs, I drive north up I-5 to a rest stop near Lebec to spend the night. It's only30 miles but seems light years from the frantic climate in the city. The air is cleaner, there's open sky and I can let my system wind down just a bit. Round trip burns about 4 gallons of gas in my little truck so I save quite a bit over even the cheapest motel and I don't have to take all the gear out of my truck. All in all a good deal.

Anyway, this last trip into LA I was sitting in my truck reading on my tablet. It was just after 8pm. I happened to look up to the north and saw this cloud. It was amazing and the most unusual formation I've ever seen. I grabbed the 60D with the telephoto zoom and walked out into the surrounding brush. I tried to take a timelapse of the cloud but something wasn't right as I found major fluctuations in the exposure levels between shots. Even using my custom deflicker program I was unable to stabilize the footage so, for now, it's going to wait until I can figure out a way to fix the problem. But I did get some excellent stills of the cloud. It had formed over a series of low hills just to the north of my location. I'm not sure of the dynamic but have to assume there was some striation in the upper level winds interacting with the wind deflecting off the hills. The cloud was quite fluid and dissipated over a 40 minute period. The sun was setting to the west (to the left of the frame) and much of the fluctuation, I think, is the amount of light being reflected by the ice crystals in the cloud. The color changed too as the sun set over the coastal mountains. It was an amazing sight for sure. Anyone out there who can offer a reasonable explanation for why this happens?

Lebec Cloud Formation - 70mm(1.6 crop),f/11,1/250sec,ISO 100,license CC BY-NC 4.0

Old Woman and the Night Sky

Windows 10...

I've been holding off on upgrading my big workstation to Windows 10 because, quite frankly, I don't want to be constantly fighting with software and my operating system when I'm trying to do my images. It's hard enough getting everything right under the best of circumstances so adding in a balky new OS only makes things even more difficult. And, up until now, Windows 10 has been balky and strange. So I held off, staying with Windows 7 until the last moment. Well, yesterday was the moment. I really like Windows 7 but am not too enthused by the idea of spending $129 to upgrade to 10 after July 29th. It's always a toss up ... do I stay with what I have and am comfortable with or do I take the plunge and upgrade to the unknown. The real problem is compatibility ... I have tons of software that is really happy with 7 and much of it can't be simply upgraded without some serious expense or other issues (Adobe and the cloud SAAS they've foisted on everyone is one example). But I also don't want the headaches associated with an old, out of date OS either. The only redeeming policy from Microsoft is they made provision for going back to the old OS if I wanted to. That clinched the deal. So yesterday, after an overnight download of the install package, I bit the bullet and installed 10. No big issues with the install and I'm running on it as I type this post. It seems to be OK and all my software, so far, seems to be OK with it. I'll upgrade to the big bug release coming next month and see how everything is working. If there aren't any major issues I'll stay with 10 but still have a separate solid state drive with 7 just in case. This constant churn in technology drives me to distraction. Some of it is OK but the need to always come out with something new is really wearing over time.

Old Woman and the Night Sky

I was in Death Valley twice this trip. In mid-April I was on the salt taking sunsets but the full moon made it impossible to get any reasonable star photos so I went down toward LA for a few weeks and came back in early May. I spent a night on the salt and got some really spectacular Milky Way shots (including a long sequence of 268 images for an eventual time lapse clip).

There's a problem however. 268 shots of the salt are really boring. They had serious floods in Death Valley last fall and the old, interesting salt formations were all washed away. What's there now is really new and really white but there aren't any really fascinating shapes yet. Those will come over time if more flooding isn't in the works. And, to be really honest, a really nice time lapse of the Milky Way doesn't impress anyone anymore. What's needed (and demanded) is an interesting composition of the stars and a really impressive foreground structure. That's a wonderful idea, of course, but out on the salt there really aren't any cool foreground structures at the moment with the new, monotonous (did I say white ... really white) salt stretching out as far as the eye can see. So, enter the old woman.

If you head up the road from Badwater (and the salt) to Furnace Creek and keep going for a few more miles up 190 toward Stovepipe Wells you'll get to Mesquite Flat sand dunes. When you hit the parking lot you'll notice a small stand of dead trees, preserved by the extremely dry air and in amazing shape. One of those trees, the one most to the west, is the most interesting. Stand to the east and look at the tree and you'll see an old woman, her arms held out as if welcoming you to her embrace. She's truly a wonderful sight. I studied that tree for a long time, trying to find a way of incorporating it into a Milky Way sequence but I just couldn't see any angle that worked. First, to see the old woman you have to be facing west and everyone knows the Milky Way only shows due south so that's not going to work. On top of that, Tucki Mountain is due south of the dunes, cutting off any view of the rising galaxy. So I thought about all this for a while and realized that the only way I'd get the old woman and the Milky Way was to take shots of each one separately and then combine them in Photoshop. It took 3 days to make that happen. Mostly it was the building of the mask ... the black and white image that separates the tree from the background ... that took all the time. I had to break the process up into 8 separate areas because the bright background is too much like the tree to get a really strong contrast. The only way to get what I wanted was to work in individual areas and play with the contrast until I got enough separation to pick out the tree from the bright sky. There was a great deal of repair work even with all this isolation so it took 3 days to get everything right. But WOW, the result is really nice, don't you think? So I give you the old woman and the night sky. Isn't she spectacular?

Old Woman and the Night Sky - composite image, license CC BY-NC 4.0

Griffith Observatory Sunset

What Is Happening to my Country?

This has been a horrible week in America. Two senseless shootings by cops and then, yesterday, 5 cops died in Dallas due to snipers. Can someone please tell me what the hell is happening? Are we at war with ourselves? Can't we find a way to get along? Is the divide between us so deep that only more bloodshed is our future? Where are our elites ... don't answer as I already know where they are. AWOL! We haven't had a statesman in our country in most of my lifetime. Just greedy, corrupt politicians who sell their votes for money. What a bunch of crooks. And the current presidential candidates ... I hesitate to even say that word ... are atrocious. I'm now of the opinion that America is lost, falling fast into the abyss. We may very well be beyond redemption. Might it be time to just pull the plug and start over?

Griffith Park Observatory Sunset

I spent 2 evenings at Griffith Park Observatory. It's a really wonderful place and the views of LA are overwhelming. I highly recommend the place to anyone who's visiting the city. The view will blow your socks off.

Anyway, the second evening I had an agenda to do timelapse of the city but I wanted to wait until the sun was completely down. I had some time and could see that a really nice sunset was in the making. After you've done this for a while you get a sense of the clouds and the possibilities for a good sky. It seemed there was a nice display coming so I scouted around the place to see if I could incorporate the building into the sunset. I was lucky that there was a corner on the sidewalk where I could set up my camera and take a series of pictures without having to worry about people tripping over my rig. I had my 16-35 f/4 on the 6D (a really nice combination as you can see) so I set up the intervalometer and let the camera do the rest. I took 384 images over about an hour and the result was really nice. I'm incorporating the sequence in my video but thought it would be nice to show you one frame. This is really a composite of 2 shots, one at peak sky and one when it was dark enough so the lighting on the building stood out. I blended the two images in Photoshop and then used the NIK software suite (now free from Google) to fine tune the result. Then went back into Lightroom and tweaked the image until it was perfect. This is LA at it best ... a very beautiful location and the sky very near perfect. Enjoy!

Griffith Observatory - 25mm,f/11,1/4 sec,ISO 1600,license CC BY-NC 4.0

Griffith Observatory

Ideas...

This last week I've been concentrating on what comes during the next cycle. Right now it still looks like I'll head home in mid-January with the intention of staying until mid_April. I'm already starting to wheeze and suck on my inhaler more and that will intensify as winter approaches. Some things are very predictable, especially my health and how my body reacts to certain irritants.

I'm still pondering exactly what the agenda is once I arrive. LA plays big in all my thinking so I'm working on the tasks to accomplish once I'm on the ground there. There's a big video to film and tons of images to be taken. I'm looking at high quality videos from the new 5D Mk. 3 along with timelapse and hyperlapse sequences. I've also been looking at Blender a lot this week ... for those who don't know what that is I'll give you the short explanation. Blender is a 3D modeling application (free as it's open source) which can create entire stories in virtual reality. Think about any of your favorite fantasy movies (Terminator, Transformers ... you get the idea) and those fantastic creatures were all modeled in programs like Blender. I've been looking to see if it's possible to create a virtual human who can be my homeless lead. Why, you ask? Because it's easier to get a virtual human to do the things I want him to do than it is to get a homeless guy to do. The homeless tend to be somewhat unreliable and difficult to manage. They tend to do what they want to do and aren't really interested in listening to (or following) someone else's direction. There's also the risk issue ... working with the homeless can be dangerous as they tend to be unpredictable. Drugs and alcohol can make them crazy. And I have a lot of equipment which I'd like to keep. So a virtual actor has some appeal. I'll gauge the situation on the ground when I get there and decide which way to go based on who I find. But I want to be prepared should the facts dictate using the virtual character. So I've gotten a human 'rig' (from a free software called MakeHuman) that allows me to design the character I want and then bring it into Blender. I've already created "Screw" (my main character) and am now working to improve him so he's fully rigged (able to move) and looks almost believable. It's a lot of work and there's a ton of stuff to learn so I'm very busy these days.

Of course, there's also those photos to take so, while I'm in LA, I'll be using my spare time to visit interesting locations and to get amazing images. I'm also intending to work on my TL and HL sequences as they can be interesting and challenging. Learning new techniques is never going to stop as long as I'm still breathing.

Beyond LA things get a bit more iffy. I want to visit lots of places throughout southern California and Arizona in the time I have left. At the very least I want to see Joshua Tree, Death Valley and the White Mountains in CA and maybe a return to several places in AZ. If I have time I may work further north but I don't want to duplicate the 10K mile wander I did last spring. That's just too hard on me and my truck. I may also just hunker down in either Joshua or Death Valley for a while and work on all the images and videos I'll have accumulated in LA. I need to do preliminary screening and color correction on all that stuff. So it's highly likely I'll get a place in either park and just spend most of my time doing that. Maybe a week or more. This may change but the basic framework seems to be gelling nicely.

Griffith Observatory

During my stay in LA I spent several afternoons and evening in Griffith Park. The Observatory, high on a hill overlooking downtown, is especially interesting. Edwin Hubble did all his groundbreaking work there (yes, that Hubble from the space telescope fame). It's now a major attraction in the city and every night it fills up with an overflow crowd who come to see the amazing views of LA and the Hollywood hills.

The last night I spent in LA I decided I wanted a timelapse sequence that combined the observatory and downtown. To do that I had to walk a steep road high into the surrounding hills. As I'm asthmatic it was a challenge but I took my time and manged to find the perfect place. I set up the camera with my telephoto lens at 70 mm focal length and framed both locations. The sky was filled with clouds and the threat of rain was ever present but I felt getting the sequence was too important to worry about some water. As the sun set I started shooting and this went on for about an hour. I got some really nice images. This is the last image in that sequence. If you look carefully there's rain already falling downtown. I grabbed the camera and walked 'briskly' down the hill, arriving at my truck just as the sky opened up. It wasn't rain ... it was buckets of water and soon the road was a river. I sat patiently, waiting for the deluge to stop and then headed out of the city and toward the coast.

Griffith Observatory - 70mm(1.6 crop),f/11,13 sec,ISO 100,license CC BY-NC 4.0

Golden Gate Bridge

Where am I?

I'm not ignoring you ... I'm just off doing other things. I have a family that needs some attention from time to time and I'm still working on that software project. Plus I'm starting to think through what I want to do on the next cycle which starts probably after the new year. I'm thinking hard about spending a long time in and around LA to work on my timelapse video and then what do I do? I don't want to be driving nearly as much as I did last time ... almost 10k miles and a lot of money. This time I want to be more localized and concentrate on southern California. I think that's possible. And since I want to do a nighttime video I can sleep during the day and avoid most of the issues around night camping and rule breaking. There's lots of issues to be resolved and plans to be made so I'll be busy for the next 4+ months. I'll still try to cull my photos so there's a constant stream of new images but I have other fish to fry too so bear with me while this gets done.

Golden Gate Bridge at Night

I spent a total of 2 days in San Francisco. I've already explained why I cut my stay short so I won't bore you repeating the obvious. I spent almost all that time around the bridge as it's the most obvious landmark in SF. Such an amazing construction and one of the few man made structures that actually enhances it's environment. The guy who designed it made a really excellent choice with the color ... international orange ... which lets the bridge stand out from it's surroundings while actually complementing the colors of the hills and city. A true work of art. And, if you've noticed, one of the few human constructions that appears in my pictures.

It wasn't easy taking this panorama. I had originally hoped to take this picture from the highest observation point in the park but fog got in the way. I was parked high above the bridge, awaiting sunset and the chance to take some really awesome pictures but, as is often the case in northern California, the afternoon fog rolled in and pushed the ceiling down until the bridge disappeared totally from this vantage point. I was forced to work my way down the observation overlooks as the ceiling fell until I was pinned at the lowest observation point. But the insults weren't finished yet. Every time I got out of my truck to set up, some clown would pull into the parking area and leave his lights on so my shots were ruined. Finally, in total frustration, I crawled into my truck and hunkered down until very late ... almost midnight ... when all the gawkers had finally gone home to bed and I had the place all to myself. Fortunately, the fog remained just above the tops of the bridge stanchions so I could see the red fog lights and traffic flowing across the span. It's a very nice picture but not perfect. The fog and mist gives all the lights a halo which is both nice and not so good. Also, some of the sections are a bit overexposed. I plead to frustration ... after all the negative pressure going back many hours I was just rushing to get any image and get back into my truck. At midnight it's really cold and raw up in those hills and standing outside for long periods trying to get the perfect picture is very uncomfortable. If I get back there this next cycle I'll do better ... I promise.

Golden Gate at Night - 16mm(1.6 crop),f/11,HDR,ISO 100,license CC BY-NC 4.0