Capitol Reef

Starting but...

I've been home 2 weeks now and, surprisingly, am still plagued by exhaustion. I'm sleeping a lot more than I should, much to the consternation of my wife and daughter. I just can't seem to get back on Moscow time no matter what I do. I've probably had one night of good sleep so far but most I get maybe 4 hours and wake up just as the sun comes up. Really not sure what's causing this but it's a major headache. I've been using a new asthma inhaler which sort of works but I still find myself short of breath much of the time. Maybe that's the issue ... the new med may be making me sleepy and I may be chronically short of oxygen. Oh well...

As for my processing, it's proceeding slowly. As I feared, many of my images are not all that impressive. I knew I had an issue with holding steady ... I've discovered that my sense of balance isn't what it used to be and that really messes with holding still during longer exposures. Even with stabilization turned on I find too many images are blurred and worthless. Add to that I wasn't really able to get in a groove with the new camera and too many of my images are not in focus or the exposures are wrong. Not sure yet what the problem was/is but I need to figure it out by next year. Probably just need to get time with the instrument so I can learn it's sweet spots. Really hope it's not the camera.

Photomatix & chromatic aberrations

Chromatic aberrations (CA) are the bane of  every photographer's work. They are a fact of life, an issue with every lens ever made. Because glass bends different colors of light at different angles, there are always issues with color fringing. This is especially an issue when an image goes from bright to dark. I'm sure you've seen them if you look at your pictures close enough. Photomatix, the HDR software, has the ability to remove CA but there's a problem. In some images, especially when there is a very strong transition from bright sun to heavy shade and it's very sharp, you tend to get bleeding from the bright area into the dark. This is an acute issue at higher f-numbers. Because of the way Photomatix works, it merges and tone-maps the various exposures before attempting to remove CA and that's an issue. If you have any of this bleeding in your brighter exposures, the resulting merged image has a very messy transition between light and dark and the CA algorithm can't handle the transition. That means you have an ugly fringe along the transition and it's really noticeable. You can't really fix this after the merge. So, to remove the issue you need to run a CA pass on the photos BEFORE putting them into Photomatix. I use the excellent CA in Lightroom which is available in the Develop module under "Lens Corrections". If you do this first and then use Photomatix the problem disappears. Check out the light/dark transition in today's image ... middle of the photo on the left side. No CA to be found but boy was there an ugly mess there without correction.

Capitol Reef

I had never heard of this national park until I saw it on the Utah map. It's been around for a long time but gets very little attention. It's really a hiker's park as there aren't a lot of things to see from the road. I also didn't have a lot of time there as the campground was full and there weren't a lot of places to pull off and sleep. All parks discourage your sleeping in the observation areas although I do on occasion break this rule in some of the larger parks. I even get a 'wink' from the rangers as they tell me it's not allowed. But Capital Reef was very adamant that I couldn't sleep in the park. So I decided to find a good spot for a sunset shoot and then move on. Little did I know that 'moving on' would entail driving for several hours on very dark mountain roads to find a rest area. Saw way too many large elk standing at the road's edge ... all it would have taken was for one to jump out in my path and I would have been ... literally ... roadkill. Driving at night in the mountains is not a good idea.

After driving up and down the only major park road I found a spot just south of the campground. These huge vertical walls just screamed out to be part of the image and the road had just the right curve to make it an interesting compositional element. I was fortunate that the sky cooperated with a massive, dark cloud bank in just the right spot. And the sky was completely open to the west so the sun could make it's contribution to the overall look. I parked and waited. As the show progressed I kept taking 5 image sequences, spaced 1 ev apart. It took a while but was worth it. The resulting image is the essence of Capitol Reef ... wild and utterly amazing.

Capitol Reef Sunset - 16mm,f/18,HDR,ISO 100,copyright 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

Grand Canyon Yaki Point Storm

It's Been a Wonderful Trip ... NOT

As most of you know by now, I spend part of my year in Crimea. A few years ago, just after the Maidan disaster in Ukraine and after the corrupt president, Viktor Yanukovitch left the country, Russia came to Crimea and basically took us from Ukraine. There was a referendum but no one the west accepted the result. Despite this contention, Russia annexed Crimea in the spring of 2014. The west responded with crippling sanctions that cut the Crimea off from all international banking including Visa/MasterCard, Western Union and SWIFT. But, until this last trip I was always able to access my accounts in my financial advisor (who shall remain hidden as I don't want any trouble). Not so this time. I found I was locked out from all my accounts, unable to use my ATM card even for purchases in the US and unable to do anything in my IRA. I got home with a few bucks in my pocket and a big itch in my trigger finger. I went to my advisor's local office and they told me that due to my being in Crimea and actually "living" there they had the right to essentially confiscate my money and there was nothing I could do about it. The conditions for returning the money were horrendous to say the least and a circular firing squad with no resolution.

The big instigator of this problem is a little known US office called the Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC for short). OFAC monitors and enforces all the sanctions on all the countries presently in the US doghouse. That includes North Korea, Cuba (still), half the Middle East, other assorted bad boys and Crimea. OFAC sets the rules for any financial transactions that transpire between the US and the sanctioned country. No two situations are the same. But, and it's a big but, my financial advisor wanted to apply the same rules to all sanctions and wanted to apply the most draconian rules to all of them. Now I know, from personal experience, that the OFAC sanctions on Crimea allow me access to my money when I'm not in Crimea and also allow me to transfer money to my family for personal expenses. Only business and 'charitable contributions' are not allowed. I tried, for 4 days, to get this across to my advisor but he refused to comply or even talk to OFAC for guidance. He held that it was within his right to enforce rules that were more stringent than the OFAC guidelines and there was nothing I could do. His instructions were so ludicrous that I won't even repeat them here but the essence was my wife and daughter had to leave Crimea. Not going to happen in my lifetime so the money was trapped. In desperation, I sent an email to OFAC explaining the situation and requesting their help in solving the problem. They came back with the same stipulations I outlined above. I gave this email to my advisor and waited. It took 2 days for them to get in touch with OFAC and get told, rather forcefully I'm understand, to cut out the crap and give me access to my money. That they did and I'm in the process of moving all my assets to another location. So pox on my financial advisor for being a total jerk. If you're nice to me I might even tell you who it was. One of the big boys I'm afraid.

Grand Canyon Yaki Point Storm

After 5 days of beating my head against a brick wall I finally got my money. I was exhausted and needed someplace that would lift my spirits. That place is and will always be the Grand Canyon. I have a few friends there and I love the beauty and serenity of the canyon. So I packed up all my gear and headed west. Due to the El Nino warming, the weather in the West has been a lot wetter and somewhat colder. Last year it was very dry but this trip we had lots of rain and cold winds. Didn't matter really. It was just great to be there. I visited some old photo sites and found a whole new look due to the clouds. One such place was Yaki Point, a few miles to the east of the main encampment. This is a beautiful overlook and the heavy clouds gave it a very different feel. I shot this during the daytime but the image is still very dramatic because the sun is being filtered by all the cover. I like it very much and hope you do too.

Grand Canyon Yaki Point - 16mm(1.6 crop),f/18,HDR,ISO 100,license CC BY-NC 4.0

North Rim Sunrise

New Gear for the Trip

I have a fairly short list for the new gear I'm getting this time out. I've decided I really need a second camera body as I spent $200 getting my sensor cleaned twice during cycle #1 due to the dirt that got inside during lens changes. Even being very careful it's almost impossible to keep dirt from entering the body. Images taken during the last few weeks of my trip looked like they had chicken pox with all the black shadows. It's very time consuming to fix them (in Lightroom) and I always worry about degrading my images while trying to fix the problem.

Anyway, I found a great deal on a Canon 6D at B&H which combines the camera body with a Canon Pixma 100 photo printer at a price less then the camera body alone. I'm not really too excited about the printer yet (it's the razor while the blades ... ink and paper ... are the real cost items) but it'll come in handy if I want to print some small (12x18 is max size I think) samples for proofing my processing and for handing out to prospective clients for my much larger prints. I actually save $250 with the combination which is almost 20%. I'm also getting a super wide fast lens (Rokinon 14mm f/2.8) for astrophotography and some miscellaneous items for my computer. Not a lot of money but will help me get the job done.

North Rim Sunrise

I spent 2 days on the Grand Canyon's north rim at the end of Cycle #1. Slept in my truck in the parking lot of the lodge as there was no room and it's very expensive. Not even a campground site could be found. The north rim is only open during the summer (starting May 15th) and early fall. Too bad as I suspect the canyon is amazingly beautiful when it snows there. There are ways around the closure but they entail a very dangerous dirt road which I'm not inclined to attempt with my little Nissan pickup.

I wanted to get a sunrise shot so managed to drag my nearly dead body out and wandered to an overlook near the lodge. I was the first person there but soon others managed to make the trek to see the sun break on the canyon's eastern edge. As I've stated before, sunrises are spiritually different than sunsets. The air is dead calm and cool. The birds put on a great show, singing to greet the new day. It's such a wonderful feeling to wait and watch the world come alive.

Grand Canyon NR sunrise - 16mm(1.6 crop),f/18,HDR,ISO 100,license CC BY-NC 4.0

Bryce Canyon Overlook

Trip Finalized...

Finally have the trip finalized. I leave Crimea on March 31st and return on June 4th. Fly from Simferopol to Moscow where I catch an Aeroflot flight to Paris (ahhh ... so close and yet so far away), then Atlanta and finally Albuquerque. Return trip is the reverse. I'll stay in ABQ for a few days to get things ready and to make some arrangements for medical testing to see what's up with my blood chemistry and then head west. Plan now is to hit a few parks (maybe Grand Canyon if there's snow and Death Valley before it gets too hot) and then on to LA and a few weeks of shooting at night. After that I'll hit a few more national parks and monuments before making my way back to ABQ and home. Need to sit down and really plan out the trip which I hope to do in the coming days.

I'll be working on astrophotography for much of this trip along with the time lapse for the LA video. Expect to be working from sundown to sunrise for most of the trip and sleeping during the day. That may help with finding places to crash as cops aren't as worried about a truck parked in the daytime. Was a real hassle finding places to sleep at night with all the prohibitions on 'overnight camping'. Put a lot of extra mileage on the truck looking for places to park. Especially a problem in CA where they really don't want you overnighting anywhere.

Bryce Canyon Overlook

If you take the road south from the main canyon there are a series of overlooks that highlight various parts of the park. There's an arch and lots of hoodoos to see. This photo was taken at one of those overlooks. I wanted to show something different, beyond the actual sight and this overlook was really interesting. I was lucky that no people were standing there (I had to wait for a small group to leave) so the image is all about what you see. As you can tell, I'm not really keen on taking pictures of people in natural settings. Sometimes they can add to the image but not usually. They're rarely solemn enough and who wants someone taking a selfie to appear in their landscape pictures?

Anyway, this image is really nice. I like the composition and the wonderful sky with some residual storm clouds. Everything is wet so the colors are deep and rich. This is a single image, run through Lightroom and that's it. Enjoy.

Bryce Canyon Overlook - 35mm(1.6 crop),f/18, 1/125 sec,ISO 100,license CC BY-NC 4.0

Slot Canyons in Vermilion Cliffs National Monument

Update ... again

I'm 90% there on the trip home. Am presently setting up flights home from Crimea to Albuquerque. This will probably be my last flight out of Crimea as the western sanctions have made it almost impossible to get money from America. We've lost Western Union, VISA/MasterCard and SWIFT. There's not much left except maybe carrier pigeon. Unfortunately, we need money to live and that comes from the US so we've made the very painful decision to relocate, at least until the sanctions ease, to a relative's house in the eastern part of Russia. Ulan-Ude is just south of Lake Bikal, near the Mongolian border. It's a wild place, with lots of mining and logging. My wife has a cousin living there so we're taking up residence with her until further notice. Not sure how my asthma will take to all the dust but we'll find out when I get back. I'll be returning to Simferopol for a short visit with my relatives and to see how our flat is faring then on to the east. Oh joy...

Oh, dates of travel ... March 28-29 on the trip to ABQ and June 2-3 on the trip back. 2 months in the states and lots of things to do. Will be running the whole time. Have to wedge in some doctor's visits to see what's up with my blood chemistry (which is all over the place it seems) and to clean up the ever messy financial situation. Not sure yet how these off items impact my main agenda but we'll adjust as needed. Since I'm wandering I don't need to really have reservations and the road's always there leading to the next place. I'll update my trip map when I know more.

Slot Canyons in Vermilion Cliffs NM

I didn't win the Wave lottery (had a 1 in 100 chance) but I'm still determined to hit Vermilion Cliffs during my trip and maybe stop by the BLM office to see if I can get a second chance. If not I'll find other parts of the area to explore. There's lots of beautiful scenery to check out so it's not a lost cause.

One of the most amazing parts of that area is the slot canyons. Over 10 miles of wildness and are they spectacular. Not as well known as Antelope Valley in AZ but still a great place to hike and take photos. I have literally dozens of shots in the hopper and each one is better than the last. I like this one because it looks like an animal (maybe a camel or an elephant laying it's trunk against the rocks). It's amazing the shapes one gets with fast running water and sand. Just watch out for the rain as these canyons can fill up very fast.

This is a 3 image HDR, run through the usual treatment with PhotoMatix and Lightroom.

Slot Canyon/Vermilion Cliffs - 29mm(1.6 crop),f/18,HDR,ISO 100,license CC-BY-NC 4.0

Crater Lake Moss

Update on the Trip

It's been just over a month since my eye blew out so it seems appropriate to fill in the empty spaces left with the postponement. Eye is good but still has some floating debris that will, over time, disappear. It's well enough I can drive and read so that's a huge improvement. No residual pain or distortions which could impact my ability to take my pictures (whewwww ... what a relief). So that part is good.

Just went through my yearly re-certification here in Crimea which was a stressful event. You are required to fill out a form that basically gives up all your secrets ... or at least it feels that way. How many trips out of the country did you take? Where did you go? How long were you gone? Who did you talk to (a few thousand in my case during the 3 months). How much money did you make and what were the sources? It's pretty intense. Even the wife was more than a bit nervous about this but the guy we worked with (same guy we used last year to get the permanent residency papers) was very quick. We waited for him for about an hour and then it was over in 7 minutes. So I'm good for another year in this wonderful place. And I'm now cleared to leave once again. So, I'll be making plans this weekend for the trip home. Expect I'll be out of here during the month of March and will return around June 1. Need to make all the flight arrangements and get balls rolling for everything else. About time!

Crater Lake Moss...

They get a lot of rain at Crater Lake. Guess it's because it's really the first major mountain range the weather hits once it leaves the coast. We had rain several days I was there last spring along with some snow. And it's mighty damp. So, one shouldn't be surprised to see lots of moss and other wet weather stuff growing on the trees. We're not too far south of the Colombia River Gorge and it gets lots of rain and has trees covered in this stuff. Oregon is a wet place...

I was stuck at the visitor's center during a very heavy rain storm and, being the resourceful type, I started casting around for some interesting scenery to photograph. Across the road from the center the cliffs rise very quickly and are prone to develop fog and mist. I fitted the 70-200 on my camera and started shooting. Got some nice mist shots and then found these cedars all covered in the brightest green moss and lichen. They literally glowed even without the bright sun. And the cliffs weren't too shabby either. This is a 3 image set, run through Photomatix and then finished (including a severe crop from landscape to portrait orientation) in Lightroom.

Crater Lake Moss - 200mm(1.6 crop),f/11,HDR,ISO 100,license CC BY-NC 4.0