Clark Crenshaw Photography

Shooting star over the Dallas skyline!

2012-01-27T09:23:00.000-08:00

I had made a mental note in the back of my head that the next time the river floods, I need to go shoot the Dallas skyline and the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge reflected in the Trinity River. After the Dallas area received more than 4 inches of rain Tuesday night and Wednesday I decided I better head downtown for sunset. The river was definitely flooded but the lights on the new bridge were not turned on. Bummer! I decided to aim the camera at the downtown skyline and not worry about the bridge on some of the shots. The bridge looks so much better with the lights on and I could have really got some sweet shots had it not been sitting off to my left in the dark. Not the end of the world though. My archives didn't have an image of the Dallas skyline reflected in the Trinity River so I decided this was a good time to get a few. I was doing my usual thing, shooting 4 or 5 bracketed exposures of each scene. During a 13 second exposure I see something flash like a firework and then I see the shooting star streak down the sky, right in the middle of what I am photographing. Damn! How cool was that!
Quite honestly, I'm not sure if the picture does the shooting star justice. I like the photo just fine but I wonder if you would know what the streak was if I hadn't told the story. Feel free to give me your thoughts on that. I will probably never get another photograph of a shooting star in the skyline, but just in case you are listening up there "could you bring it in at a 45 degree angle next time?"

Inside Angel's Diner

2012-01-25T17:16:00.000-08:00

Inside Angel's Diner

I was looking for an image in my files and when I came across this one I thought "I've never shown this to anyone". So here it is! This was at Angel's Diner in McAlester, Oklahoma.

New Work From Your Old Archives!

2012-01-24T09:09:00.000-08:00

"Zion Tree"

This morning I read a blog post from an acquaintance on G+, Alan Majchrowicz. It was about "Bringing Life to Old Photos". I definitely could relate to his words since I also have a habit of reviewing images that were shot years earlier. The image above is a product of that habit. Whenever I return from a trip I will review all of the images. I will process all the favorites and then it may be months or years later before I go back and take another look through all the "losers". Oh heck, I shouldn't call them that. The favorites were probably the tens out of the group.There may possibly be many eights and nines in the remaining images and maybe a ten that I overlooked first time around. This can happen because my expectations are different immediately after a trip. I usually have a few shots that I am really excited about but sometimes I don't think the final image conveys how excited I was when I initially created the image. Several years later my mind has cleared of all those expectations. Software, my processing skills, and my vision have also changed and I hope for the better.
"Zion Tree" was taken three years ago in Utah's Zion National Park. I may have liked it better as a color image if it had a rich blue sky and better light to contrast with the snow and red rock. The light was flat and the sky was gray. When I looked back at it a few months ago, I thought "it may make a nice black and white". After making all the adjustments in Photoshop I was pleased but I did feel it needed one last tweak. Most of the Topaz filters seem to be used a little heavy handed by most photographers but a little bump from "Topaz Detail" worked perfectly to add a little texture back into the snow. I created a separate layer for that adjustment and then masked the layer so it only had an affect on the snow.

To Crop or not to Crop?

2012-01-23T14:57:00.000-08:00

Last week I posted a selection of images of the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge. One of them was this top image but I had cropped it right at the base of the arch. It also had a little more contrast and saturated color. This version is pretty true to how I remember it. I'm possibly having second thoughts about the first version. After looking at the raw file again I am starting to like my shadow running towards the arch of the bridge. The man that is taking a picture doesn't bother me that much. I did slightly crop the left side to remove a distracting person that I still don't want in the picture.

This second image is nothing more than a crop of the first one. I also like it this way but I still tend to be partial to a version without people. I think the shadow of me and my tripod would be enough. What do you think? Which version do you prefer?

Color or Black and White?

2012-01-22T09:31:00.000-08:00

I'm getting to where I will also process an image in black and white to see if I also like it rendered that way. Many times I feel that both versions work and possibly for different reasons. This is an oddly shaped church that I spotted while driving around Dallas last week. I was perfectly happy to have clear blues skies when I stopped by the following day for some mid-day pictures. The quick scouting of the place the day before told me the light would work well at this time of day. As a photographer, I try to shoot a scene when I feel that the lighting will give me what I'm after. It's not very often that lunchtime is my choice.
The black and white version was easy to process where the sky was very dark, drawing attention to the design and shape of the building. The church's odd look is what attracted me to it in the first place. The color version works much the same way to emphasize the shape of the building. However, it does have the contrast of the deep blue with just a touch of brown in the pointed doorway. Which do you prefer and why?

The Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge

2012-01-16T14:25:00.000-08:00

Recently, I have been making some photography trips to the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge that is being built in Dallas. The bridge which spans the Trinity River is scheduled to open on March 2, 2012. I think for the most part the bridge is finished but the road presently stops at its west end. The road that connects to it is what they must finish in the next six weeks and from what I see they better start working some overtime.

Reunion Tower has been the stand out building in the Dallas skyline since it was built in 1978 but this Santiago Calatrava designed bridge is quickly becoming the hot subject for photographers. I saw the results from this years Trinity River Photo Contest last week and many of the winners were of the new bridge. I did not enter the contest but I might decide to next year.

The very top image was shot yesterday evening when I made my second visit of the weekend to the bridge. At the end of the bridge there has been a sign that says no-trespassing. I've never seen anyone on the bridge until yesterday. When I arrived there was people everywhere on the bridge. I decided that I would just head out on the bridge and take some pictures too. That was about the same time the sun broke through the clouds and the light was great. It was however hard to take a good shot of the road portion of the bridge because people were everywhere. After maybe ten minutes I decided to get off the bridge and go down the levee to where I had planned to shoot. Right after I got on the levee the cops arrived and made everyone get off the bridge anyway. The nice light also vanished for the day so the very first shot I took was the one I liked best. I did crop off the bottom pretty good but I like it.

The bottom three images were all shot two days ago. A shallow pond in the Trinity River bottom made it possible to get a great reflection shot on the windless day. The last two are of the underneath portion of the bridge. They really have it lit up. That makes for some good night photography though.

I have a new web site!

This is my first post since 2011 and I would like to wish everyone a Happy New Year and a prosperous 2012. I have also made some changes to the look and design of this blog. I really like it and I hope you do to. My web site has also had a total makeover and the design of the blog compliments it. The new web site now has e-commerce. You can purchase prints or license images directly from the web site. It also has a great image search feature using key words to help you find what you are looking for. I sure wish my web site had included all these features years ago. The links at the top of the page will link you to the new web site. I have also enabled web forwarding so the same URL you have previously used will still take you to my web site. www.clarkcrenshawphotography.com

My Best Images of 2011

2011-12-23T20:16:00.000-08:00

I had a tough choice picking the 10 best this year. Several very good ones had to be left out but I think you will enjoy the images and the stories behind them.

School Days

This was shot at the Dallas Heritage Village. The Renner School is fixed up just like it was when being used as a one room schoolhouse. This has been a popular image at my art shows and it seems that a school teacher is usually the one that is interested.

Lake Martin Egret

When I traveled to my last show of the year in Covington, Louisiana, I stopped at Lake Martin. Both mornings had great conditions for photography and I made the most of it. I could have included more images from the trip than I have. Lake Martin Egret received so much positive response on Google+ and 500px that I had to include it. This day had started out much like the image below, but the fog had just lifted and was letting some sunlight in.

Moon Set on Lake Martin

The pre-dawn skies appeared to be clear while I was driving from my hotel to Lake Martin but things really changed when I got within a half mile of the lake. This was one of the first couple of images I took that day and the last one before the moon vanished in the fog. I spent the next hour shooting like a mad man and ended up with quite a collection of winners from this mornings shoot.

Lightning Over Dallas

Summer had been hot and dry in Dallas but late September brought some rain and lightning. Actually, it was much more lightning than rain and was pretty scary when it moved in. I headed to White Rock Lake and felt it was much safer to get out of the car now that the storm was moving away from me. I took many exposures and combined several of the better lighting strikes to create this image.

San Miguel Mission

The San Miguel Mission is in Socorro, New Mexico. I had spent sunrise shooting at nearby Bosque del Apache Wildlife Refuge. It was still fairly early in the morning when I headed back to town and wanted to shoot the mission. Normally, I would want some clouds in the sky but in this case the clear blue skies contrasted nicely with the warm adobe walls of the mission. The shadow fell in just the right place too.

View From the Winspear

On this evening I was anxious to try out a new wide angle lens that I had bought. I was hoping to shoot the reflection pond in front of the Winspear Opera House but a large Christmas tree was sitting in the middle of it. That forced me to look for something else to shoot and this is what I found. The new lens at 16mm did very well.

Reflection of Mammoth Mountain

In late August I spent a week in California. A large forest fire near Yosemite National Park had us changing our schedule but we managed to survive. I got this nice reflection one morning in Yosemite near the Tioga Road.

Jellyfish

On Sunday morning before the Rockport Art Festival I went down to the marina and shot a few pictures. I took a few shots of a jellyfish that was swimming near the surface. It didn't have the bright colors of some of the jellyfish photos I've seen but worked very well when converted to black and white.

Zion Tree

I may be fudging a little on this one. I shot it a couple of years ago but only recently did I process it as a black and white. It was OK in color but I really like it in black and white.

Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge Reflection

This is a new bridge that is being built over the Trinity River in Dallas, Texas. It has been designed by Santiago Calatrava and is scheduled to open around March of 2012. I was walking back to the car after taking some pictures of the bridge and noticed a large pool of water in the river bottom. I got a little muddy getting this last shot but it was worth it.

I wish everyone a Happy Holiday and Great 2012!

So that's what happened to those images!

2011-02-15T21:34:00.000-08:00

Last year I was at the Denny's in Avon, Colorado having some breakfast before heading to the art show at the Beaver Creek Resort. While turning through the Vail newspaper I was stopped by an ad for tree trimming. That's one of my photos on that ad! I assume they acquired the image honestly. This was one of 8 images that a company had purchased some of the rights to about 10 years ago. This was the first time I had seen one of them used but it got me to thinking...how often have those images been used? It occurred to me that I could use TinEye to search the web for these images. TinEye is a web site that does a reverse search on an image that you upload. It's really amazing. As soon as the image is uploaded it grinds away for a few seconds and then tells you something like...

10 Results

Searched over 1.8627 billion images in 0.111 seconds.

Wow! That is some fast moving stuff there! When I did a search on the image from the tree trimming ad this cover on the National Geographic Guide to Trees was one of the 10 results that came up. Cool!

I decided to try a search on another very similar aspen photo that was part of the submission. Damned if I don't have another book cover show up. One of the other results was a Chinese web site which is probably selling the image illegally unless they are the Chinese version of Getty Images. Maybe someone that understands Chinese can tell me what this web site is about. Most of the other images I sold rights to are also on this Chinese web site but not much else showed up when I TinEyed them. Just the occasional web site use. However, all the images had been distributed world wide so who knows how many other times they sold for print and wouldn't show up on an internet search.

I guess at this point I should give some background on what was sold to who and how this all came about. Back in 2000 I wasn't selling my work at art shows yet. Some of my work had been published and I had sold a few framed prints of my work but I was still at a stage where I was trying to figure out how to sell my work and begin earning a living with my photography. I submitted about 100 of my images to a company called Digital Vision. Another photographer that I knew had licensed some work to them. They made a CD of his images and whenever it sold or usage of an individual image was sold a royalty was paid. I was hoping for the same. The letter I received back was disappointing. They were only interested in 8 of the images I submitted. That obviously wasn't enough for a full CD so their offer was a one time payment of $150 per image. Even though $1200 immediately sounded good at the time I wish I had said no to the deal. I would also not receive any photo credits. Like so many new photographers trying to earn a living today I didn't think about the long term consequences. I was giving them the right to sell usage of these images until the end of time with no further compensation. What if one or several of the images became really big sellers? Some types of image usage could also be worth much more than what my one time payment was. I should have stood firm and insisted that either I receive future royalties or no deal. The photographer should always get a percentage when someone has paid to use one of their images. Always!

Five of the eight images!

In the past decade several of the big stock photo agencies have bought up most of the small agencies. Digital Vision was purchased by Getty, one of the biggest stock agencies on the planet. If you get on the Getty web site and do a search for "aspen trees" my book cover images will show up on the first couple of pages. They don't have my name on them but say Digital Vision.

I think its neat that several of my images have been put on book covers. I think its BS that I didn't get a photo credit for them. I also feel that I left some money on the table when I agreed to the Digital Vision deal. As the late Paul Harvey used to say "and now you know the rest of the story".

My work on display at the Gardan Cafe!

2011-01-28T08:59:00.000-08:00

On Monday I set up a display of my work at the Garden Cafe. This East Dallas eatery is open 6 days a week for breakfast and lunch. My work will showcased until March.

One of the my new images shown will be "Five Clay Pots". Instead of presenting this on canvas without a frame I have printed this one on a heavy photo paper. The paper was mounted to gator board, given a clear UV coating, and then put in a classy walnut burl frame with linen liner. I really like this look and will do other images this way.

Five Clay Pots

I also have five pastels on display.When I was 6 years old I took some pastel lessons from an artist that lived down the street from our house. Over the years I haven't worked with them very much but recently I have picked them back up. I think its a talent that I need to spend a little more time on and give it a chance to mature. What do you think?

Sea Oats and Sand Dunes

Pastel on sanded paper!

A few more from my California trip!

2011-01-14T13:24:00.000-08:00

Some more images from my recent California trip.

Tahoe Reflections

Tufa Morning

Tufa Panorama

Zabriski Point

Some of my favorite images from 2010!

2010-12-31T17:23:00.000-08:00

For my final blog post of 2010 I decided to look through the images I took during the year and pick out some of my favorites. Sometimes at art shows people ask me what is my favorite image. Usually I mention one of the better images that has been taken on my most recent trip. I've looked at the older images quite a bit and the initial thrill has worn off. My choices here were probably influenced in much the same fashion. The first three are from my recent trip to California. I photographed Lake Tahoe, Mono Lake, the Alabama Hills and Death Valley. The weather was a little questionable at times but I did get a few nice ones.

Dusk at the Tufas

Mono Lake Sunset

Tahoe Fog

Badwater Salt Flats

The next three images were created while spending some time in Alabama and Florida between my two November shows. The Little River Canyon is definitely worth another visit because better timing would have given me a lot more good shots. It wasn't really a good year for the fall color and I was also about a week late. Because of this I decided to spend several days at Pensacola Beach. It is a great area to photograph and I could have chosen more images from my time there.

Sea Oat Sunset

Fence and Dunes

Little River Falls

The next two images were created while I was in the Lincoln, Nebraska area while participating in several art shows. Did mention that I love Google Earth. That's how I found the "Old Nebraska Church".

Barn and Storm Clouds

Old Nebraska Church

For the first time in several years there was a great display of wildflowers in the Texas hill country. I was able to spend several days there and had good conditions to shoot in. I could have chosen more than I did from that trip.

Fish Hatchery Fence

Hill Country Spring

Reunion Tower is a favorite area in downtown Dallas to shoot. The NBA banners put on the buildings for the all-star game made a great image. The reflections of the tower is an angle I have never seen in any other photos.

Reunion Tower and NBA All-Star Banners

Reunion Tower Reflections

A record 12 inches of snow! Turtle Creek and the Dallas area may never look this way again. Almost had a tree limb break and fall on my truck while shooting at this location.

Snow at Turtle Creek

Gary, Dan, and myself drove up to the Tishomingo Wildlife Refuge near Lake Texoma in Oklahoma for this last shot. I had several variations of this which were also nice. Special thanks to Dan who was running around in the dark structure firing off different flashes with colored gels attached.

Tishomingo Deserted Building

Everyone Have a Great 2011!

Another trip to Lincoln!

2010-09-23T21:46:00.000-07:00

Last weekend I was in the Kansas City area for the Zona Rosa Arts Festival. Tomorrow I set up my booth for this weekends Lincoln Arts Festival. I wasn't planning on going home after KC so I headed on over to Lincoln on Monday. Tuesday evening I drove out west on I80 to photograph an old church that was near the exit to Milford. I initially discovered the old church by looking at Google Earth and coming across a geo-tagged photo of it.

After photographing the church I spent some time driving through the farmland on my way back to Lincoln. I didn't find anything else that I felt the need to photograph until I was almost back to town on highway 6. I was now just looking for someplace to get some dinner before going back to my hotel. When I saw Shoemaker's Restaurant and gas station I knew I had to stop, have some dinner and check the place out. The restaurant is decorated with gas station memorabilia including a lot of gravity fed gas pumps. While eating a steak dinner I asked if they cared if I brought my camera and tripod in. They said "You can take all the pictures that your little heart desires". That ended up being about 200.

The following evening I went out to the east side of Lincoln and photographed the Joyo Theatre. I found it the same way I found the old church. Love that Google Earth! I had photographed for about 30 minutes and the prime light of dusk was approaching. The owner just happened to come by about that time and went inside. I knocked on the door and he was kind enough to turn on the lights. Because of that I got some nice shots. Old theaters just don't look the same without the lights on. Wish I had prints of some of these for the show this weekend.

A Trip to Cornhusker Land!

2010-06-24T07:34:00.000-07:00

This evening I will be setting up my booth at the Omaha Summer Arts Festival in Omaha, Nebraska. Last weekend I was in Leawood, Kansas for a show. Instead of driving back home I spent the last couple of days taking it easy and looking for some photo ops in Nebraska.

This first image was actually taken on my way to Kansas. It is a 1938 Ford Club Cabriolet Convertible. I found this at Scotty's Classic Cars in Arma, Kansas. For $100,000 you can own it. The next image is of an old barn which I came across in the Nebraska countryside. There are lots of interesting old barns to be seen but getting the light and the setting right is the hard part. This one had some nice storm clouds behind it at sunset.

While staying in Lincoln I decided to spend one evening photographing the state capital. I used my tilt-shift lens for this image because the building is tall and you are so close to it. The lens helped me keep the perspective looking natural. The image below was almost better than it came out. When I spotted this scene a deer was on the hill to the left of the trees. I had to stop the truck, put the longer lens on the camera and dig out the tripod. He walked away just after I stepped behind the truck and was ready to shoot. The last image tells me why I don't see many fireflies in Texas ...they are all in Nebraska. It took some experimenting with ISO, aperture, and shutter speeds before I was able to see many of the "lightning bugs" very well on the image. This was at ISO 1600, f5, for 2.5 seconds.

Not what you want to see parked near the art festival!

2010-05-21T21:17:00.000-07:00

I'm writing this from my hotel in Ridgeland, Mississippi. I will be showing my work at the Renaissance Fine Arts Festival this weekend. They had some storms here yesterday but it is supposed to be nice weather on Saturday and Sunday for the show. That is good because the show is outside. Last weekends show in Midland, Texas was inside but it was affected by the weather just the same. While looking for a place to park at the Midland Center so I could check in and begin setting up, I noticed one of those storm chaser vehicles with all the instruments on top drive by. Hmmmmm! Several hours later I found out why they were in the area as all the artists were sent to the basement for about 30 minutes because a funnel cloud had been seen about a mile away. The streets became flooded and water came right up to the front doors of the Center. The attendance at the VIP Party that evening was definitely lighter than normal because of the rainy weather.

On Sunday morning while driving to the show I noticed an armada of storm chaser vehicles parked in a lot about three blocks from the show. I decided I had time for some photos so I pulled into the lot and took a few. Most vehicles had noticeable hail damage. Several of the radar vehicles were from the Vortex 2 research that you see on the Weather Channel. Glad to see that they were in Wyoming today. The last vehicle looked like a homemade tank. I don't think they were too concerned with getting hail damage.

I also worked in a little photography at nearby Odessa and Monahans. Since the show was over at 5 pm on Saturday it gave me time to drive over to Monahans Sandhills State Park for a sunset shoot. I got a break in the cloud cover but not a sky full of pink clouds that I had hoped for. Nice ripples in the dunes though. On the way back to Midland, I photographed the Ector Theater in Odessa. I got there a little late to capture a deep blue in the sky, but still some nice neon.

To Lubbock and back!

2010-04-20T19:45:00.000-07:00

Back in the early 70's I spent a couple of years at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas. Last weekend I participated in the Lubbock Arts Festival. This was my third time back since being in college.

Majestic Theater in Eastland, Texas

While driving to Lubbock I took a detour through Eastland, Texas to photograph the Majestic Theater. I wish it had a few more lights on but fortunately there was enough ambient light to get an interesting shot anyway. During the festival I was asked if I had a shot of the Cactus Theater. I didn't at the time, but I do now. After packing up on Sunday I drove through Whataburger, stopped to get gas, and then headed for the freeway to get out of town. I didn't get far. Only half of my burger had been eaten when I noticed the Cactus Theater and several other neon lighted businesses that were calling my camera. I found a place to park along Buddy Holly Drive where the Theater is located. It was approaching that magic time of day where the lights are on but images would still show a deep blue in the sky instead of black. I spent the next forty five minutes creating the next three images.

Cactus Theater

Chophouse

Alley

After leaving Lubbock, my goal was to drive to Sweetwater and get a room for the night. I really hadn't planned on shooting anything else but then I spotted the Tower Theater in Post, Texas. Much like the Majestic, the lights were not on but there was enough ambient light for a decent image. While looking at the high resolution version of this I could see that most of the lights are not even there any more. I guess that explains why they were not on!

Tower Theater in Post, Texas

Texas Wildflowers!

2010-04-13T19:05:00.000-07:00

I recently spent a couple of days exploring the Texas Hill Country and photographing the wildflowers. A rainy winter and spring has created one of the most colorful displays that we have had in years. Several of my favorite locations were as good as I have seen them.

The area around Burnet, Llano, and Marble Falls had an abundance of bluebonnet and paintbrush. I particularly liked hiking and photographing the trails in Inks Lake State Park. There is always a good mix of roads, trails, cactus, and rocks to compliment the flowers in my photographs. It is also a much more enjoyable experience than pulling off the side of the highway and photographing the flowers. I can't wait until next year.

A Trip to Albuquerque!

2010-03-12T22:01:00.000-08:00

Magnolia Station

On Wednesday I loaded up my vehicle and headed to my next show in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I decided a 45 mile detour would take take to Shamrock, Texas. This would allow me to shoot the Magnolia Station and the Conoco Tower at dusk. I think I got several new images which will add to my previous work from this location.

Conoco Tower and UDropInn

I arrived in Albuquerque on Thursday and set up my work for the show. That evening I drove a stretch of Route 66 looking for something interesting to photograph. When I spotted the Route 66 Diner I knew it was time to get out the cameras. After shooting the exterior I decided to go in and try the food. I took the picture of the car from my table. The chicken fried chicken was also good.

Route 66 Diner

Interior of Route 66 Diner

Today was the first day of the Rio Grande Arts and Crafts Festival. After it was over at 5pm I decided to go shoot a few more locations along Route 66. Yesterday I never saw the lights come on at the Hiland Theater. I didn't think they would come on today either so I photographed it right before sunset. I took a few shots of several old hotel signs after that and then spotted the Absolutely Neon building. I would hate to pay their electricity bill.

Hiland Theater

Absolutely Neon

The Evolution of an Image!

2010-02-26T09:11:00.000-08:00

Not too long ago I was shooting film. I would take my film in to be processed and anxiously go pick it up as soon as they said it was ready. Fuji Velvia, a positive slide film, was my film of choice. It was also preferred by most professional nature, landscape, and architecture photographers. Sometimes I miss the sharpness, extra contrast and rich color that you got from looking at a Velvia transparency. Despite all the good things about digital, matching the look of Velvia is not an easy thing to do most of the time.
Today I shoot everything with a high end, high megapixel camera. I have it set to capture in what they call "raw". This is the image in an unprocessed state. Shooting in raw will give you color and contrast that is dull compared to what you saw and photographed. Many things may need to be adjusted until this image looks the way you remembered it. However, who says it has to look exactly how you remembered it. Neither film nor digital have ever recorded things exactly as we saw them anyway.

The top image was taken last November on Orange Beach in Alabama. This is how the raw file looks in Adobe Bridge before any type of adjustments have been made. This image is surprisingly dull considering it was about five minutes before sunset and the sun had just popped out from behind the clouds. The light was about as sweet as it gets. Its also has not had any sharpening applied to it.

This second image was processed back in November not long after it was taken. Many adjustments were made with the raw converter in bridge. The image was then opened in Photoshop where some final adjustments were made. The last thing I do is sharpen the image. It may seem strange that it needs to be sharpened. I have a $7,000 camera body with a $1,200 lens attached. I have a very steady tripod and use good technique to create the sharpest image possible. However, this is one of those little things about digital that most people don't realize.

The other day I felt compelled to fiddle with this image a little more. Originally I had opened up the shadows some which is probably closer to the way our eyes see it. However, darkening the shadows and kicking up the contrast brings out more color and accentuates the shapes of the dunes. It dawned on me that this is close the way a perfectly exposed Velvia transparency would have looked. Next time I print "Orange Beach Sunset" I am going with this version unless someone talks me out of it.

Snowmageddon! New record snowfall for Dallas!

2010-02-13T16:42:00.000-08:00

On Wednesday I saw a tweet from Pete Delkus one of the weather guys at channel 8. "snowmageddon is on the way!!!!!!!!!!!!" A few tweets later he said we should get 1"-3". HA! If he had said we would get 10"-12" we would have all thought he was nuts but 36 hours later he would have looked like the weather genius if he had. I woke up Thursday to see that an inch had already fallen. The forecast still called for snow all day. Well, I don't think it stopped until around 2am Friday morning. We ended up with 11.2 inches for the day which broke the old record of 7.8 inches. We must have had another 1.3 inches after midnight which made the total for the storm 12.5 inches. That was also a new record.

Bird Houses on our Fence

The temperature was at or just above freezing the whole time it snowed. There was little wind and this wet snow stuck to the trees and bushes like crazy. It seemed every little twig had at least 2 inches clinging to it. Bigger limbs had a lot more.The more it snowed the more incredible all the trees looked. Around 11:30pm we noticed that it seemed really bright outside. Much brighter than earlier in the evening and much brighter than when I got up the next morning. The clouds must have been just right so that the lights of the city were reflected right back at us. The front of my house was photographed at 1:45 am. I actually had to darken the exposure some to make it look more like night. The light had such a great quality to it I almost got in the car and drove around to find something else to shoot.

My Back yard

My Front yard

I headed out early Friday morning. Fortunately the temperature was still at 32 degrees and not the 29 degrees they predicted. The roads were slushy but not frozen solid. Driving was not a problem. Everything looked awesome. I first stopped where the road crossed White Rock Creek. I got a few photos of this area where a trail follows the creek. I then got back in the car and headed to Lakeside Park located along Turtle Creek. Many limbs had broken off the trees in this part of town but I was still able to get some good shots of the trees reflecting in the creek. While I was out shooting I heard several loud cracks as another limb broke and fell to the ground. When I got back to my vehicle a limb was now laying in the street about 10 feet behind my truck. The snow was now starting to fall off the trees pretty quickly. I knew it wouldn't last forever. I did get one last shot of a dock at White Rock Lake.

The Trail near White Rock Creek

Another View of the Trail near White Rock Creek

Turtle Creek

Dock at White Rock Lake

Want to combine exposures for a realistic look? Do it this way!

2010-02-08T20:52:00.000-08:00

Three or four years ago I first heard about HDR. It was said to be a method of combining a series of different exposures in order to capture a wider range of tones in a scene. This would create an image with more detail in the shadows and highlights, much the way our eyes see things and not the limited range of film or digital. Sounded pretty neat at the time but it was only a little over a year ago that I finally started to learn and use the technique. A Photoshop seminar in the fall of 2008 and a book I purchased both claimed that Photomatix Pro was the best software for this technique and tone-mapping your images was the way to go. Well, tone-mapping has always seemed a little hard to understand and results seem inconsistent. Processing is definitely not over after tone-mapping. Mid tone values usually lack contrast and that needs to be fixed. The Topaz Adjust software seems to fix much of this problem but I usually have to dig a few more things out of my bag of tricks until I am happy with an image. I have also realized that HDR photography is quite the rage now. However it's not a realistic look like I have been trying to get, but a hyper saturated colors surreal look which seems to be the big thing. Nothing wrong with that but not what I want to do with my images and I'm not sure if that was what the HDR technique was intended to be. After all there has always been plenty of plug-ins and stand alone software programs that will take away the "real" look of your photos.
A few months ago I got an upgrade to my Photomatix software. When I opened the updated version of Photomatix I noticed an option for "Exposure Fusion". After blending exposures with it a few times I realized it did a much better job of keeping the image looking natural, real, and believable. I have been considering doing a blog post describing this method but haven't done it up to this point because I knew it would be quite time consuming to do a thorough one. I came across another blog post today which did a good job of describing the technique much as I would have. I have never met Kevin McNeal but he has some of the best wilderness photography that you will ever see. If you go to his blog you can get a rundown of this method of combining images. http://kevinmcneal.wordpress.com/2010/02/07/exposure-fusion-best-way-to-blend-images/
Some of what I do is a little different than Kevin's method. Like most post-processing techniques there are several ways to get the end result you are looking for. In the next paragraph I will detail the differences in how I do it. I suggest going to his blog and reading it before proceeding here.

Guanajuato Opera House

The U Drop Inn

When you choose your source images in Exposure Fusion, you will notice that it says "Note: Blending exposures works with converted files. For good results with Exposure Blending, it is recommended to convert your Raw files into Tiff or Jpeg files." I have taken their word for it and done it that way. I open the raw file that is in the middle of the range of exposures that I have taken. I will make many of the same adjustments in the raw converter that I would if it was a single exposure I was going to use for my image. However, I won't worry too much about the clipped shadows or highlights. The other exposures should take care of those values. I will save it as a TIFF. I then open the other raw files in my range of exposures and make the same adjustments to them before saving. The brightest and darkest exposures may get a small tweak from the adjustment brush if an area needs it. I then choose these images to be Exposure Blended. I will start with the default values in the final dialog box before processing the images. It is easy to get an understanding of what the sliders are doing. A description of what they do comes up when you mouse over them. I have found I can improve the image more by adjusting the sliders. Unlike tone-mapping they don't do strange unreal things to your image if you get a little heavy handed with them. When happy with the way it looks I will tell it to process the image. I then give it a name and save it. I will open it back up in Photoshop. I will then look at the brightest areas of the darkest exposure and see if I think some of the detail is missing from the processed version. I will also look at the darkest area of the brightest exposure and see if it will improve the processed version. If I believe the processed version still didn't retain all the detail in one of these areas then with the move tool I will drag the TIFF image which includes that detail onto the processed version. Dragging while holding down the shift key should line it up perfectly when you let go. I then click the icon for a layer mask while holding down the alt key. This creates a black layer mask which hides the new layer. Then I choose the brush tool set to white with a 10-20% opacity and gradually paint back in the parts of the layer I want to keep. I paint and change the brush size and opacity until happy with the results. I repeat this with another layer if necessary. I will probably make some other small adjustments in Photoshop but the image is usually looking pretty good at this point. I will look at the image and try to decide if it needs something else done to it. If not, its finished.

A few more from Downtown Dallas!

2010-02-06T07:44:00.000-08:00

The other day my photos of downtown were all shot from the roof of the parking lot at the courthouse. I still wanted to get some photos that would include all the NBA Banners in one shot so yesterday evening I was back downtown. I took the Reunion Tower image while just 15 feet away from me freeway traffic was zipping past. I would have liked to have backed up a little more. My 24mm tilt-shift lens was given the job of recording this. The shift still could not take all the lean out of the buildings so I had to straighten them up the rest of the way with a perspective fix in Photoshop. The problem with that version was with the Tower. You obviously were looking almost straight up at it because you can see so much of the underside of the ball. The buildings were straight but the tower still looked strange. For this version I decided to put a little more of the lean and convergence back in the image, much the way my normal lens would have rendered it.

Reunion Tower and the Hyatt

I still wanted a shot which included the whole skyline but showed all the banners. After looking at the results I think I may have found my new favorite spot to photograph the skyline from. I can see shooting this again at dusk and hopefully having some nice sky to go with it.

Downtown Dallas

New way of converting to black and white!

2010-02-03T09:28:00.000-08:00

Last week I went to a one day Photoshop seminar in Arlington that was put on by NAPP. One of the things I learned was a different way of converting to black and white. Usually I do this with a black and white adjustment layer in Photoshop. It was suggested at the seminar that I do it in my camera raw conversion instead. While in raw go to the hue saturation luminosity adjustment and convert to grayscale. Then you go back and adjust exposure, recovery, fill light, clarity, and blacks with the sliders. Adjust the contrast with the curves adjustment. I like the results I got here.

Getting ready for the NBA All-Stars!

2010-02-02T21:41:00.000-08:00

Dallas Skyline

The Dallas Skyline has had a few things added to it in preparation for the NBA All-Star game which will be played on Feb 14. Several very large banners with pictures of NBA players are hanging from several Downtown buildings. The one in the top image is close to thirty stories high. The Hyatt Regency actually has two on the side of the building but only one is visible in my photo. In the bottom image the banner doesn't appear to be quite finished. After zooming in on it I realized that a scaffold was working on it and the bottom right side of the banner was not all there. I hadn't even noticed it until then.

The Hyatt and Reunion Tower

Unfinished Banner

20/20 gallery and several new images!

2010-01-31T09:36:00.000-08:00

If you go to the Galleries page on my website you will find a gallery of the best 20 images from my "Twenty Nights in Twenty Days" project. I am pleased with the results. While doing the project I noticed several other blogs which encouraged people to do a 365 project. I love to shoot but I can't imagine trying to come up with a good interesting image for everyday of the year. On my project I had a couple of days where I wasn't too thrilled about the results. It is just going to happen occasionally. Once I hit the road when my art show schedule starts back up there will be days when it will be quite difficult to find the time to shoot something interesting, process the images, and post it to my blog. Some days there just is a lot of other things that need to get done. I did look at a link from a "365 project" image that was posted on a blog. The first 20 out of 23 images were snapshots of the guys 3 year old doing things. Several were cute but most were boooooooring! Some were poorly exposed and poorly processed. I would never make my fans suffer through something like that.

Sunrise at Bryce Canyon

Soooooo..what do these three images have to do with my Twenty Twenty project? Absolutely nothing. Sometimes I review and process images immediately after a trip or shoot. I'm always real excited about some of them but it's still a good idea to review them at a later date. Your emotions, expectations, and memories have faded by then and you can look at what you shot with a new and fresh outlook. Many times instead of shooting new work you can create some nice images by reviewing and processing some of what you already have. Bryce was taken back in November. The rainbow was taken back in late August while in Colorado. It started sleeting on us right after taking it. A small image on the internet probably doesn't do it justice. Zion was shot several years ago.

Rainbow from Mount Evans

Winter in Zion

Day twenty with some changing light!

2010-01-21T07:49:00.000-08:00

It was quite cloudy and sprinkling a little as I prepared to head out for my evening shoot. The weatherman had said we had a chance of evening storms. My wife was home and said she heard were under a tornado watch. She also said she had to go to Baker's Furniture in downtown Garland to pick up some leather samples and maybe we could eat dinner at the Italian Restaurant just off the square. Considering the way the weather was looking I decided that plan sounded like a good idea. I would take my camera gear and shoot some things while she was in the furniture store. I started out taking some pictures at the Hubbard's Cafe that I had shot on the first day of this project. The Christmas lights were down and maybe I can get a different feel to a picture of the place. Turns out I may like it with the Christmas lights better, but the weather sure changed after I got there. The sun had already been down for 15 minutes or so when the clouds started clearing. Off to the east I could see the tops of some thunderheads which had turned very pink after the setting sun. Cool... but why can't I be out shooting landscapes when it does this. It would have also looked great behind the Dallas Skyline. I did get a nice shot of the front of Vetoni on Main which is in an old building located a block off the square. Nice place with good food and reasonable prices.

Vetoni on Main

An interesting side note about Hubbard"s Cafe. Do a Google search for Hubbard's Cafe. The second thing in the list is my image of it I put on Flickr. I wonder how long it will take my image of Vetoni on Main to reach the first page of a search?

A Camera Club Visit!

2010-01-20T10:03:00.000-08:00

Mormon Church

My good friend Jeremy Woodhouse was giving a presentation at the Dallas Camera Club last night so I decided to shoot my way to the meeting which would start at 7:30 pm. It had been a while since I paid a visit to one of the meetings and said hello to some of my other friends who are still active in the club. My first and main stop was to shoot a Mormon Church in North Dallas. I had photographed it years before with film and had to do that through the fence. I was able to get inside the fence last night and digitally combining several images gave me much better results than my previous effort. My 24mm tilt shift lens also was a big help shooting this tall steeple which you are close to. After shooting the church I headed west towards the camera club meeting. I made one more stop to photograph this taco stand on Harry Hines Blvd.
Be sure and check out the two new widgets on the sidebar. They both give you a way to look at some of my Flickr images

Taco Stand

The Eisemann Center!

2010-01-19T07:03:00.000-08:00

I went over to the Eisemann Center in Richardson yesterday evening. It looked like a chance of some clouds and color in the sky for sunset. About 25 minutes after sunset the clouds off to the west pinked up and I was able to get them reflected in the front glass of the center. Just inside the entrance they have some lighted sculpture things high up on the walls. Kinda cool! I had about five minutes to shoot inside before they locked the doors for the night. I also wanted to photograph the dancing water that is across the street and have the Eisemann Center behind it. A red car was parked between the two while I was there. I guess I will get that shot next time.

Searching for Photos in Oak Cliff!

2010-01-18T09:12:00.000-08:00

Hunt Oil Building

Yesterdays Dallas Morning News had an article about how 20 local photographers were going to document the changes on Fort Worth Avenue, an area just southwest of downtown. I decided to go check the area out and see what it had to offer. While driving that way I decided to make a quick stop downtown and photograph the Hunt Building. This late in the day would have sunlight on the front of the building. I like the results. The front of the building isn't flat and curves as you see it in the photo.

Alamo Courts

After shooting the Hunt Building I made my way to Fort Worth Avenue. The Alamo Courts attracted me the most and I got the above image. It has a fence around it and is set for demolition. I would have loved to have taken this shot after dark with the lights on. I really didn't feel that was going to happen so I moved on. I took some pictures at another old motel and also found a great spot to shoot a skyline of downtown. The skyline shot will be better when some construction cranes are removed though.

The Texas Theater

My plan was to go by the Texas Theater on nearby W Jefferson Blvd. if I wasn't delayed by something else that caught my eye. Well, I ended up there. This is the theater where they caught Lee Harvey Oswald years ago. No cars out front and nothing going on at the theater last night, but at 6pm the lights were still off. I took some shots anyway and do like the processing I used which gave the place a vintage look. It was actually a lot darker than it appears in this image.

The image below was taken Saturday night. We ate dinner at a place called The Original Mexican Food. The window out front says the best Tex-Mex on the planet. Hmmmm... I 'm trying to think who I would award "the best" to. I think I have tried everywhere though. This is a picture of the front of the restaurant after I had some fun with Photoshop's liquify tool.

The Party Room

An evening in Fort Worth!

2010-01-17T11:28:00.000-08:00

Water Gardens

Fridays rain had stopped and it looked like we may have some nice light and clouds around sunset as I headed to Grand Prairie to pick up Gary yesterday. When I got to his house I could see that a line of cloud cover was already over Fort Worth and overcast skies was the kind of light we were going to have for our shoot this evening. We got some good shots from the Water Gardens and the Modern Art Museum but I do think a deep blue sky might have improved our images.

Omni Hotel

The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth

Rain and more rain!

2010-01-16T06:08:00.000-08:00

Yesterday evening the rain started and continued through the night. There was no let-up where I could go out and take a few pictures without possibly getting my equipment wet. I did take a couple of things. The top image was shot through the front window of my truck as I drove down the wet streets. Quite funky and abstract. The lower image was taken in a covered parking garage I sought refuge in. I may have stayed and worked it a little harder if I had realized that the rain is not going to stop! It was raining when I started writing this but has now quit and I actually see some blue sky. Maybe the weather will behave tonight.

Sometimes you just have to keep going back!

2010-01-15T10:56:00.000-08:00

Entry to the Corner Pocket

I got together with my friend Mike Pittenger to go photograph in the rain last night. The afternoon had been gray and drizzly and I felt we could get some good reflections in the streets after dark. We drove through nearby Wylie,Texas looking for some interesting things to shoot. A few pixels were used up but nothing terribly exciting came of it. I decided we might try the Square in Garland. I know I keep going there to shoot but when conditions change like this you can create images not possible when it is dry. Good subject matter can be shot in a variety of ways. I also knew Mike had not seen the theater and it would give him a chance photographed it. When we got to the square the streets were dryer than I would have liked. It had only drizzled a little in the last two hours. Mike had some fun shooting the theater and I got a nice one of the entry to The Corner Pocket. We called it a night and we headed back to his place to get my truck.
I stopped to get something to eat on the way home. I noticed it was raining quite hard outside now. Eat fast. Bring me the check. Rain has let up. I need to get back to the square. The streets were much wetter when I returned and much stronger reflections. Below is one of numerous compositions that I took from an assortment of puddles that I was able to work with.

Plaza Theater in the Rain #3

I thought I would included this last image. It is the darkest of the four exposures which were combined to make the final image above. If I was still shooting film this is probably close to what I would have had to use as my image of the reflections. It is dark enough to retain some detail in the bright marquee but it leaves everything else much darker than what my eyes could see. Some people seem to think digital is sooooo easy. The truth is that you need to have quite a bit of software skills in order to get the above version instead of what is below. Just thought I would throw that out there.

2010-01-14T10:24:00.000-08:00

I decided to go hit some golf balls yesterday afternoon since the temperature finally got back up in the 60's. I also threw my camera gear in the truck because I had spotted this old house behind the practice range. Once again I hoped for some great sunset light and didn't get any. I did use some long exposures which gave me the chance to run inside the old house and pop off my flash. I did this several times in several exposures which were combined. Still not satisfied I said to myself " why don't you just over process this image like so many other photographers are doing. Some people seem to really like that look." I show two stages of this process below. I really tweaked the second one. What bugs me about both is the glow or halo where the sky meets the trees and house. I have toned it down in these examples but the affect is usually much worse in some of the work I see on the internet.

After shooting the old house I headed back towards home and drove through the square in Downtown Garland. The coffee shop was open and I decided to take a few shots. The second one shows a good reflection of the Plaza Theater in the window.

A New Look to the Blog!

2010-01-13T11:32:00.000-08:00

You might notice a little different look to the blog today. I have added the same header as my web site plus the links to all its pages. The blog has been a separate entity from the web site since I started it a little over a year ago. I felt they should work together...and now they do! I also have a link to my growing gallery on Flickr. It is scary how many photos are on Flickr and how many people are looking at them. I decided I better jump on that train too!

Yesterday afternoon my brother went with me to the Mesquite Art Center to see the Photographing the West exhibit of photography. After looking at the exhibit we looked at the rest of the Art Center. We went to the car and got our cameras in order to photograph a meeting room that seemed to interest both of us. The room was much larger than necessary for the tables and 15 chairs. After we left the Art Center we drove through downtown Mesquite and then headed east looking for something interesting to shoot at sunset. We photographed the steeple on an old church then headed back towards Garland. My plan was to stop by the Posados across from Town East Mall and add to my neon collection unless we found something we liked better but that wasn't the case. It has some great lights just like the Plano location but it is still different. I think got a better CAFE than I got last week at the other location.

Playing Around at the Old Cemetery!

2010-01-12T08:01:00.000-08:00

I decided to do something a little different last night. Take a chance, experiment a little, try out a new technique. I have seen some work that was created with multiple images. They weren't really a variety of exposures but instead in each exposure a different area of the scene is lit with a flash. Usually colored gels are put over the flash to give added color. I went out to an old cemetery in Garland that I had driven by many times but never explored. Interesting place. It has one of those Historical Monument things telling about it at the entrance. I'm not necessarily a fan of cemetery photos but I'm sure I can get something neat with this technique in the future.

A Stadium Double!

2010-01-11T09:24:00.000-08:00

The Ballpark in Arlington

My friend Gary went with me to shoot last night. Since he lives in Grand Prairie I decided that we could meet at his house and then drive out to nearby Arlington and photograph The Ballpark and the new Cowboys Stadium. We had another one of those "not a cloud in the sky" sunsets. Where have all the neat high clouds been for the last ten days? Both Stadium shots were taken from a bridge that crosses a small lake that is almost between the two stadiums. It was frozen solid except around the edges. We have been close to record cold the last two mornings, colder than it has been around here for about ten years. Both shots were 4 different exposures that were combined in Photomatix Pro. Instead of using the tone-mapping feature I have used Exposure Fusion to combine the images. Even after it has combined the images I make several new layers from the original exposures and mask in a few of the best exposed areas. A lot of extra work but I am pleased with the results and it is not going to give you that over processed funky look which so many tone map images have.

Cowboys Stadium

After checking out a few other possible photo locations around Cowboys Stadium we headed to Tom's Burgers and Grill. After a nice 1/2 pound burger we took a few shots of the exterior before heading back to Gary's house.

Tom's

2010-01-10T10:06:00.000-08:00

I did manage to get a good shot of the Dallas Skyline around dusk yesterday. Most of the best skyline images of Dallas are taken near the Trinity River levee just west of downtown. Not the safest area to be in after dark. I have to wonder why I finally go down there to shoot and go by myself. After hiking down the levee to get a better angle it was almost a relief to run into another photographer. We both photographed until dark and then walked back together. I drove back into downtown and was able to get a shot of the Majestic Theater. A Laser Spectacular to the music of Pink Floyd was going to be shown at 9 pm. Unlike several nights ago when we drove by, I felt the lights in front of the theater would be on tonight. Even got a free spot from a parking meter that was right out front. All the surrounding parking lots were ready to start taking $15 from people attending the Light Show. Tickets to the show around $30 then about half that again to park. What a rip off.

After having some Mexican food with my wife I made one last stop and photographed C & M Tire. Its an out of business gas station which is now selling tires and chrome hub caps. I combined 5 different exposures but am pleased with the way it turned out.

2010-01-09T13:33:00.000-08:00

I was over by the Hollywood Theater in Garland last night and spotted this sculpture at the Dart Station that was next door. The sun had set and it was just dark enough to use a flash with a red gel on the sculpture and have it pick up some of the red. I also added a texture layer, vignetted it and then reduced the opacity quite a bit. After shooting the sculpture I went across the parking lot and photographed things on the front of the Hollywood Theater. I chose to include this shot of the ticket booth and several funky looking posters. Still working on the Casa Linda Theater. The Bert Monroy filter takes a lot of work.

A work in progress!

2010-01-08T09:43:00.000-08:00

Last night I stopped and photographed the Casa Linda Theater. It hasn't been open as a theater for a number of years but the front isn't much different than it has always looked. About 6 pm the lights came on and I quickly shot a variety of compositions and exposures. It was also about 30 degrees with 30mph winds and I wasn't wanting to stay out very long. I figured this would be a great subject for a photoshop project and I can do that inside. Some of the lights are out and there are some real estate signs out front. The handicapped sign also needs to go. I have made some headway but am not finished yet. The image on the bottom is a combination of 2 exposures. I also fixed the perspective, got rid of the sign and fixed the lights. I also got a little tweak from Topaz Adjust. I plan to put some writing on the marquee and some posters in the windows. I'll keep you posted on how that goes.

A slightly frustrating evening!

2010-01-07T09:27:00.000-08:00

Last nights shoot started atop a parking garage behind Baylor Hospital. Dan was with me again and I had felt we would have a clear view of downtown from the roof of this five story parking garage. It was totally overcast so we knew the light would not be the best. After editing my images I have come to the conclusion that downtown just isn't near as interesting from that side. I will consider a location on the other side of downtown next time. After leaving the parking lot we drove a few blocks to an old diner we thought we would photograph. The front was full of cars so we continued on to the Adler Hotel. I do like some of the shots I got there. Do you like the version where everything is out of focus except the sign? After leaving the Adler we drove back by the Diner. Some of the cars had left so we pulled in next door and got our cameras out. Before I could take the first shot a lady comes out and hollers "you can't take pictures here, get off the property or I will call the cops". In an age where most people have a camera on their cell phone and good 12 megapixel point and shoots that fit in a shirt pocket are available, it amazes me that some people still get so worked up when they see a big camera on a tripod. If someone really wants a photograph of this place, they will get one. I don't need one that bad and tell Dan "let's get the hell outa here and go get something to eat".

These last two images were not taken last night but I have been playing around with some processing techniques that I thought I would show you. The first is the Lakewood Theater in Dallas and the second is Mission San Xavier in Tuscon, Arizona. By adding a texture layer and a vignette I have given them a little bit of an aged and weathered look. Photographs of many different things can be used for the texture layer. Rough concrete, tile, or crumpled paper are what I like best. I don't intend for this to be a photoshop tutorial, but you set the blending mode to Overlay for the texture layer. You might also like adjusting the opacity or masking parts of it. Every image is different so you have to experiment some. Good luck.

Reunion Tower and the Hyatt Regency!

2010-01-05T21:07:00.000-08:00

Today I decided I would head back downtown around sunset and photograph Reunion Tower and the Hyatt Regency. Some great clouds were in the sky earlier in the day and I was hoping they would create some nice sunset color that would reflect in the buildings. However, about the time I headed downtown the clouds were gone. The first shot was taken right after sunset and as you can see, nothing but blue sky. According to The Photographer's Ephemeris sunset was at 5:35. TPE is a great tool for figuring out when the sun and moon will rise and set at any location. The second image was taken at 6:02. The sky would soon be totally black so I hurried around to the other side of the hotel and took the last picture near the entrance to Reunion Tower. I got that accomplished just in time to still have a little blue left in the sky. Cool!

The weather guys say we may have freezing drizzle tomorrow evening and high temps in the 20's on Thursday and Friday. I better get out my long johns.

A Colorful Mexican Restaurant!

2010-01-05T09:51:00.000-08:00

Several years ago I took some photos of the sign at Posados, a mexican restaurant out in Plano, Texas. I'm not sure if I misplaced the images, didn't back them up, or if they took off with an old computer, but I can't find them. They were taken with my 6MP Rebel. It was my first halfway serious digital camera and it started this cycle of having to save and keep track of all these digital images. Hopefully I keep track of things better now. As I write this I look at my main computer which has 3 external hard drives hooked up to it.
I have been wanting to get some more photos of Posados so I drove out yesterday evening. The sun was just setting when I arrived and it was still fairly bright outside. The lights were not even on yet so I sat in the car and waited, and waited, and waited, and waited, and waited. Finally about 35 minutes after sunset they turned the lights on. Ten minutes earlier would have been better. I really had to move fast because that little bit of blue left in the sky vanished not long after I started shooting. I do like the shot I got of the entrada. The Cafe sign would have come out a little different if I could have taken it about ten minutes earlier. The dark part around the lettering is actually painted a light gold but its color is overpowered by the red cast of the neon if its too long after sunset, which it was.Wonder if a little fill flash would have helped? I may try that next time.

Keeping your plans flexible!

2010-01-04T08:26:00.000-08:00

I called my friend Dan yesterday to see if he wanted to go with me and shoot. He asked "where you going"? I said "I haven't decided yet. Maybe Fair Park or downtown Dallas." We decide to go downtown and check out the new Winspear Opera House. When we arrived at the opera house we could see people inside, possibly preparing for an event later that evening. However, the doors were locked and we didn't get a chance to ask someone if we could come in and take some pictures. We did spend about 15 minutes photographing in the area and I did get a nice image looking through the glass of the opera house.

We decided to leave the opera house and see if the lights were on at the Majestic Theater. No lights on...we keep driving. Dan says we should check out the Hunt Oil Tower which has been open for about a year. It has a bunch of blue lights on the top and a really great fountain in the front. Good thing it is Sunday night. Finding a parking spot and dealing with traffic would be a pain if we did this during the week. We spent the rest of our time shooting the fountain which constantly was moving and changing colors. What a cool place to photograph though. I had trouble narrowing it down to only three.

Back to the Square in Garland!

2010-01-03T09:19:00.000-08:00

I have photographed the Plaza Theater before but I believe that you can never be too familiar with your subject. The light will change and so will the surroundings. Even if I have shot it 20 different ways there will always be 10 more ways that I will eventually think of. The way I process my images is also in a constant state of change. New software, new techniques, and changing visions on my part. So is the way of digital photography.
When I arrived last night I thought... Oh crap. They are having a play tonight and there are cars out front and people going in and out. I was able to shoot the top image and not include the clutter out front. I did this with one shot instead of an HDR combination of exposures like I usually do. Getting all the lights to be on in one shot is much of the problem. See how they go off and on at this link. It actually was a good thing that the theater was open. The play didn't start for another hour so I went inside and asked to take some pictures. I had never been inside before. The interior is Art Deco and quite well restored as you can see.

I've Given Myself a Project for the New Year!

2010-01-02T19:09:00.000-08:00

First, let me wish everyone a Happy New Year! I hope 2010 brings great things for all of you. For myself I have started a new project. I call it Twenty Nights in Twenty Days. My goal is to go out and find something cool to photograph every evening for twenty days. I'm not taking a trip to Europe, Mexico, or the Desert Southwest...just driving from my house and searching for photos. My primary goal will be to photograph after dark but I may not completely stick to that rule. You might think I already photograph everyday, but that is just not the case. I spend a great deal of my time out of town at shows. In between the shows I spend a lot of time printing inventory or editing images from previous photo excursions. Since it is eight weeks until my first show, I have time to focus on a project like this. I also plan to put some of the previous evenings images on the blog each day. Be sure and follow my progress!

On New Years Day I drove out to Rockwall, Texas to begin my search for photos. I did find a park with an old windmill but nothing I was really excited about. On the way back I stopped and photographed sunset at an area of Lake Ray Hubbard that I had spotted while driving to Rockwall. The wind was calm and there was some good reflections, but still no winners. I decided to stop by the Square in Garland before heading home. The top image was taken at Paw Paw's, a small cafe just of the square that I had never noticed before. The second image was taken through one of the cafe's windows. The last shot was another cafe several blocks away called Hubbard's. I have had lunch there before but not sure if I had ever driven by at night and noticed the lighting. Speaking of food, this is when I headed back home for some dinner.

White Christmas in Garland, Texas!

2009-12-25T21:55:00.000-08:00

I've lived in the Dallas area for 57 years and it finally happened...snow on the ground on December 25th. It wasn't very much snow. We never get very much around here. It started Christmas Eve right after lunchtime. For several hours it came down quite hard but the temperature was above freezing and it was melting as soon as it hit the ground. Around 4:30 the temperature had dropped and the snow finally started sticking. It continued for another three hours but was light. We only ended up with a little over an inch at my house, but enough to call it a White Christmas. First one here since 1926, and I missed that one.

I just had to go out Christmas morning and take some pictures in my back yard because I knew the snow would start melting as soon as the sun got up good. We also had to be at my mother in laws around noon. Several critters had left tracks in the fresh snow. Something had crossed the fence and gone over to the edge of the pond and then left the way it came. Probably a cat. The picture above is an interesting set of tracks which came from the back fence and then vanished under the deck through a small opening. If you look close you can see a line down the middle of the tracks. I'm guessing this was a rat or a very large mouse. Looks like I will be going to the hardware store tomorrow and getting a present for this rodent.

A few more images from Death Valley!

2009-12-13T09:33:00.000-08:00

Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes

I've added a few images from my recent trip to Death Valley. Next time I need to spend a little more time in Death Valley because I actually spent less than 24 hours of my trip there. If you recall a previous blog about the trip, there were a lot of plans that were changed.

Badwater Reflections

I camped out near Stovepipe Wells. That put me close to the Mesquite Flat Dunes which I photographed at sunset. The next morning I drove to Badwater Basin, the lowest point in the U.S. at 282 feet below sea level. There actually was a little water in one area and I was able to get some reflections of the distant mountains. Right before sunrise I photographed the salt flats. The salt flat was much rougher than I expected it to be.

Badwater Salt Flats

The last image was taken at Zabriski Point, a very popular photo location.

Zabriski Point

Some black and white and a touch of color!

2009-12-10T08:03:00.000-08:00

The other day I purchased myself a new computer with the 64 bit version of Windows 7 installed. This is my main Photoshop machine where I do all the processing of my images. I seem to replace computers about every 2 years because the old computer becomes too slow, the hard drive is full, and its just not capable of doing things that I need it to do. The latest version of Photoshop, CS4 seems to need more Ram, a better graphics card, and of course a faster processor always helps.

Lately, in big Garland, Texas where I live we have had some cold and wet days. This morning it is 23 degrees. I know that is nothing to you Minnesota folks out there, but its cold for here. This has given me a chance to look at some of the work I shot earlier this year and test out this new computer.

So where were these images taken? Starting from the top...

An old house near Sherman, Texas.
Dick's Classic Garage.
Sign on the side of a building in Sapulpa, Oklahoma.
Dick's Classic Garage.
Gauges on an old fire truck in the Texas hill country.

A Funny Christmas Email!

2009-12-08T08:07:00.000-08:00

I got a funny email today and thought I would share it!

Read the story before looking at the picture below!!

Well, there is good news and bad news about my Christmas decorations this year
Good news is that I truly out did myself this year with my Christmas decorations.The bad news is that I had to take him down after 2 days. I had people come screaming up to my house. Great stories. But two things made me take it down.

First, the cops advised me that it would cause traffic accidents as they almost wrecked when they drove by.

Second, a 55 year old lady grabbed the 75 pound ladder and almost killed herself putting it against my house; she didn't realize it was fake until she climbed to the top (she was not happy).

By the way, she was one of many people who attempted to do that. My yard couldn't take it either. I have more than a few tire tracks where people literally drove up into my yard.
I think I made him too real this time...
Oh well, it was fun while it lasted! See what you think.........look below......

Happy Thanksgiving!

2009-11-26T21:19:00.000-08:00

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! Once again I ate way too much and am sitting here feeling like a stuffed pig. I did want to mention that I have some of my work hanging at the Garden Cafe. If you live in the Dallas area you might want to go by and check out my work. It will be on display until the first of the year. Several of my new images are hanging. The Garden Cafe serves breakfast and lunch everyday except Monday.

I also wanted to show some of the images I took at the Maxwell Wildlife Refuge last week while in Kansas. Processing raw images that were shot under such foggy conditions is a little different than processing images created under stronger lighting conditions. There was very little contrast in the images and they look quite dull until you make some big adjustments to the contrast. In the shot of the three elk these adjustments made the color of the grass a little too red and saturated but the elk still needed some contrast in their faces to bring out the details. I used Topaz Adjust to bring out the features and details of the elk. Unlike the examples on the Topaz web site, I use a pretty light touch with my adjustments because I don't want my work to look like an illustration. I also desaturated the grass a little to keep the scene looking the way I remembered it.

The image below of the bison was processed a little differently. I created a color version which I liked but then made a second layer which was converted to a black and white. I then made the layer about 40 percent transparent in order to let a little of the color show. It almost looks like a brown toned photograph, but not quite.

Could I just stay at home for awhile?

2009-11-22T15:23:00.000-08:00

It seems like I have been constantly on the move for the last four weeks. I arrived back home from a week out west only to leave town again less than 48 hrs later. After completing my last two shows of the year I then spent all day Monday driving back home. Early Thursday morning I was off again driving to Kansas with my brother. I got back home about midnight last night.

So... just where did this variety of pictures come from? The top image was taken at Orange Beach in Gulf Shores, Alabama. It was taken on November 11th, the day after the remnants of Hurricane Ira passed through the area. The next image was created in northern Oklahoma while driving to Kansas. Great clouds that day. On Friday we went to the Maxwell Wildlife Refuge just north of Canton, Kansas. The refuge has a lot of Bison and Elk which can be photographed. It was very foggy that day. Notice how quickly the background fades to gray in the image below of a mother Bison and her calf. Later that day we drove to nearby Lindsborg, Kansas to see the gallery of National Geographic Photographer, Jim Richardson. Great work! On Saturday we attended a program put on by the Great Plains Nature Photographers. It was held at the Great Plains Nature Center in Wichita, Kansas. The main Speaker at the program was photographer, Boyd Norton. He was also photographing with us at the refuge the day before. It was great getting to know him and hear his program on Saturday. Back in the early 90's when I started getting serious about my photography, the first photography book I bought was written by him. The Art Of Outdoor Photography

After the program was over we jumped in the car and headed back to Texas. It had been a short but fun trip. I had made some great new friends in Boyd and Barb Norton, Jim and Cindy Griggs, and Duane and Eddy Graham. Special thanks to the Griggs and Grahams for all their hospitality.Check out Jim's blog post about the weekend.

The last image was taken at a gas station in Perry,Oklahoma, one of the small towns that we passed through on our drive back home. It was a very old gas station located right off the square and it did appear to still be selling gas. The pumps were fairly modern and I chose not to include them.

Waiting for Covington!

2009-11-09T12:14:00.001-08:00

I'm sitting in the McDonald's in Fairhope, Alabama watching it rain. I'm glad it didn't do this yesterday at the show in Pensacola. It would have been every artist's worst nightmare. What's left of Hurricane Ida is going to go right over this area tonight. Thank God it is supposed to clear back up by this weekend where I will be at the Covington Three Rivers Art Festival. Sales have been tough enough this year without getting drowned at the same time. Come out and see me if you are in the New Orleans area.
I've added a couple of images from my recent trip. The top one was shot at Bryce Canyon. The next two were shot about 15 miles away at Red Canyon. Its really weird how Bryce failed to get an accumulation of snow, but it gave me a good excuse to stomp around in the snow for an afternoon and explore the Red Canyon area. I need to go back and explore it some more.

Sometimes you just have to be flexible!

2009-11-05T20:04:00.000-08:00

Red Canyon

Monday night I landed at Dallas Love Field after spending the week photographing in Utah, Arizona, and California. In some ways the trip was like many I have made...fly to Las Vegas, rent a car and then drive to some location to photograph. What made this trip different was all the changing of plans I made. I usually schedule what I will do and what days I will do it. I then make the necessary reservations at campgrounds or motels. The day I arrived in Las Vegas the TV weather guy said there would be 60 mph wind gusts. 60?????????? I decided it may not be a good time to spend two nights camping out in nearby Death Valley. Soooooo...I headed to Zion National Park but ended up driving all the way to Bryce Canyon. No camping out either! The next day was cold and windy with blowing snow. It was probably the most brutal conditions I have ever tried to photograph in. That afternoon at Rainbow Point it was 18 degrees with 50 mph gusts. The snow and clouds finally started to go away on what was now the third day of my trip. Bryce Canyon didn't really have much of an accumulation of snow but nearby Red Canyon had about 4 inches of fresh snow. I spent that afternoon hiking through the snow and getting some of the best photographs of the trip.

Left Fork of North Creek

Day number four was spent hiking in Zion National Park. While driving back from my hike in North Creek I decided to drive out to the LaVerkin Overlook before it got too dark. The sun had been down about 10 or 15 minutes but a long exposure gave me a good image of this viewpoint which looks back towards Zion.

LaVerkin Overlook

The following day was Halloween. It was kinda ironic that I ended up camping at Little Finland a place that is also known as Hobgoblin's Playground. It is way out in the middle of nowhere, about an hours drive east of Mesquite, Nevada. There you will find some of the strangest rock formations you will ever see.

The Head of the Beast

The last night of my trip was spent camping at Death Valley. The temperature that afternoon was about 83 degrees and the winds were now completely calm. Quite a switch from what I got at Bryce Canyon. Before heading to the airport the next day I spent the morning photographing the salt flats near Badwater, the lowest point in the United States, 282 feet below sea level. The salt flat was different than I expected. The crystallized salt has cracked much like mud will crack as it dries in the hot sun, but on a larger scale. The round area in the bottom of the photo is about 4 or 5 feet across. The edges of the cracked areas are knee high in many places.

Badwater Salt Flats

Overall, I think I got some usable images despite all the changing of plans that I made. It is interesting to note that the images taken in Red Canyon were probably the best of the trip and I didn't really have Red Canyon on my radar when I planned the trip. Oh well. Sometimes you just have to be flexible with your plans!

Honors and awards!

2009-10-20T19:22:00.000-07:00

City Garage

This weekend is the Huffhines Art Trails and yours truly is going to be the Featured Artist. It's quite an honor to have one of your images put on the posters, the t-shirts, the web site, and most of the advertising. Several photographs of mine were given consideration but City Garage got the call. City Garage was shot several months ago while on my way to the Rockport Art Festival. The t-shirts were printed yesterday so I drove over to the City of Richardson's Community Events office this afternoon and picked up a poster and t-shirt. I think I look good in black!

The bottom picture was taken at last weekends Frisco Arts Festival. I am with Frisco Association for the Arts' President of the Board, Larry Hansard. They had just presented me with first place for photography. This first year show went about the way many first year shows go. Attendance and sales were not what everyone was hoping for. They did put on a great event for the community. Hopefully it will grow and get better in the coming years. The Frisco area has a lot of potential as an art market...a growing community with lots of big houses and a lot of wall space to fill with art.

Photo by Susan Bellson

Bought myself some slide show creating software!

2009-10-10T19:03:00.000-07:00

I spent yesterday afternoon creating a slide show of Red Rock Country. I purchased Pro Show Gold yesterday, picked out some music, and its now here for you to enjoy.

When a Japanese Baby is born!

2009-10-08T16:16:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine e-mailed me this. It makes me miss my Fuji film.

A successful show at Hidden Glen!

2009-09-21T21:04:00.000-07:00

I just spent the weekend making my first appearance at the Hidden Glen Arts Festival in Olathe, Kansas. This small show in the Kansas City area proved to be a success. I also did do some photography on the trip. After setting up my booth on Friday, I drove to nearby Overland Park to photograph the Rio Theater at sunset. The top two images were from that evening. The entrance to the theater was created from five different exposures. I wasn't satisfied with the results from using Photomatix so I manually combined the exposures. Each exposure was put on a separate layer. I then masked out the part of each layer that I didn't want to include.
I made several stops while driving home today from Kansas. I found several locations that I need to go shoot again at a later date and time it so I can be there when the light is better. The bottom image was shot at Peggy Sue's 50's Diner. The exterior I will save for another day, but I did like the light coming through the blinds which was falling on the interior booths.

What to do with my Friday!

2009-09-11T19:01:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I set up my booth for the Atlanta Arts Festival. Since the show doesn't start until Saturday morning that left me figuring out what to do with myself today. I really needed a day to take it easy so most of it was spent at my hotel watching tv, taking a nap, and spending a little time looking back at some of the images I took on our trip to Utah back in April.
The top image was shot in Arches National Park outside of Moab, Utah. I cropped it square. It would be nice to say that it was shot with my new Hasselblad with the 40 megapixel back but the truth is this...my big fat shadow had to be cropped out of the right side. I also had to clone out my car which was parked near the exact center of this image. I had scouted the area out the afternoon before. My primary shot was a puddle about 10 yards from here and looking in a different direction. I guess I should have considered this composition as a possibility too.
The lower two images were taken in the Needles District of Canyonlands National Park. Most of the more interesting features in this area are located at the end of a long hike or by making a rough four-wheel drive trip. I was able to drive fairly close to this location.

Those Dang Pine Beetles!

2009-09-02T20:11:00.000-07:00

Seems like I just got back from a pair of shows in Colorado, but on Aug 26th I went to the airport and jumped on a plane to Denver. My wife had a week off so we had quickly planned a week of camping in the cool mountains of Colorado. I had heard about the damage that Pine Beetles were causing and had seen quite a few dead trees on the mountains near Frisco and Vail two weeks earlier but I got a good look at just how bad it was on this trip. The first three campgrounds we headed to had all been clear cut because the beetles had killed all the trees. Around the western entrance to Rocky Mountain National Park (Lake Granby and Grand Lake) about 90% of the pine trees are dead. We were planning to camp a couple of nights just inside the west entrance to the park at the Timber Creek Campground. When I saw it had been clear cut and had numerous piles of trees scattered about, my frustrations hit their limit. We went back to the town of Hot Sulphur Springs and got a room. I hadn't showered in three days so it was probably a good idea to get a room anyway. It was quite depressing to see the number of trees that had died in that area.
The next day we drove through the park and found a campsite at the Glacier Basin Campground. Most of the trees were still alive where we camped but one large loop of the campground was closed and they had cut most of the trees down. The top two pictures are of that area.

The eastern section of the park didn't have near the damage as the western side. Only about 10 or 15% of the trees were lost. The two images above were from a mornings shoot at Sprague Lake. You can see a few of the dead rust colored trees on the opposite shoreline.

These last two images were actually from the first day of our trip. We rented a car in Denver and drove to the top of 14,240 foot Mount Evans. The first was from Summit Lake which is not actually at the summit but it is well above timberline. We continued on and right after reaching the top of Mount Evans it began to sleet... and kept sleeting. The temperature was 38 degrees so it was melting. We started down from the mountain but quickly had to pull over to photograph the last scene. I may have created a better image of this scene if the darn sleet hadn't gotten the front of the lens wet.
Our trip was soon over and as we drove back to Denver on Monday evening I thought...why is it so dark already. Sunset is around 7:35PM and its only 7:00PM. While watching TV later in our room I got the answer. The fires in California! When we flew back home the next day we could really see the layer of smoke that was in the area. We had a stop in Amarillo and it also appeared pretty hazy there. I haven't officially heard this on the news but it seemed quite hazy in the Dallas area today also.

That's Why They Call it Art!

2009-08-21T10:09:00.000-07:00

The three images today are actually three versions of the same digital file. I shoot all my images digitally and have my camera set to create a RAW file of the scene. A perfectly exposed RAW file doesn't necessarily give you an accurate representation of what you were looking at but it does give you most of the information to re-create it accurately. Then again, what law says you have to re-create it accurately and besides, you only have your memory of what it looked like to go by now. More than ever, the final image has become your interpretation of what you want it to be. The new version of Camera Raw has an abundance of adjustments that can be made before you even open an image up in Photoshop. Color balance, color saturation, contrast, shadow detail, and many others are all under your control.
These images were made during a 30 second exposure where I gave each car a pop of a flash with a red gel in front of it. The top image is close to the way it opened up in Photoshop without many changes in Camera Raw. On the second one, I adjusted the color balance in CR to neutralize the red cast from the flash. This added blue to the sky, which I liked. I did want some of the warm cast back in the cars, but at the same time I didn't want to lose the blue in the sky. The bottom image was created by combing the first two images. Image one was added as a layer in front of image two. I decreased the opacity to about 58% in order to allow some of the neutral color of the bottom layered cars to come through. I then masked the sky so it was about 85% the rich blue of the bottom layer.
This is a great example of why photography is art! I controlled every aspect of the creation of this image from the time of day, the composition, the light, and the final color. The camera only did what I told it to do, and nothing more.

From Texas to Colorado!

2009-08-20T20:50:00.000-07:00

I will probably spend weeks editing and processing images from my trip to Colorado. I'm also a big believer that you should look back at your images a year or two later when you have a clear mind and can take a fresh new look at the images you created. Your memories and preconceived ideas you had have all but faded away. You can now connect with them the way everyone else connects or does not connect to them.
The first image is a little different view of the Petrified Wood Station in Decatur. I know I've shown pics of it before but they have all been HDR images. This is from one exposure. The adjustments you can make in camera raw are quite amazing these days. The adjustment brush and the fill light slider really helped get the most out of this one.
The next two images were shot at sunset up in the high country of Colorado. I just wish the clouds would have pinked up the way they did this evening at my home in Texas. It would have kicked up their appeal a couple of notches. We came across the mule deer buck while on an evening drive from Reudi Reservoir. The bottom photo of aspens was created by vertically moving the camera during a one second exposure.

Turning my storm picture into a scary monster!

2009-08-17T19:56:00.000-07:00

The other day I got an email that included a picture of a really menacing looking black cloud. It got me to thinking...I can make the one I took last week look that scary, so I got out my Photoshop and made a quick adjustment with the curves tool. I also masked the ground so it didn't get much darker than it was. It almost looks like a giant tornado now.

Where were you 40 years ago?

2009-08-16T11:39:00.001-07:00

Forty years ago I was getting ready to start my senior year in high school. I grew up in the fairly upscale North Dallas neighborhood of Preston Hollow. My father was a well respected surgeon at Baylor Hospital. I was a captain of the Golf Team, a cheerleader, and class favorite. Life was good! Hillcrest High School Seniors 70!
I didn't know much about Woodstock until the movie was released March 26, 1970. I'm not sure when the Soundtrack (album) was released but I owned one and listened to it about a jillion times. It's still out in the garage with all my other records, but no way to play them right now. I also saw the movie a bunch of times and just programmed to record it tonight between 10pm and 2AM. I can't wait. Have you ever noticed how the music of a period brings back so many other memories from that time? If its good memories then its a good thing.
Soooooooo. What was your favorite performance at Woodstock? After seeing this I may have to go with Joe Cocker. http://www.elwp.com/Joe%20Cocker.html
It's dang funny if nothing else. Realistically though, I'm not sure I could just pick one. The Who, Hendrix, Santana's "Soul Sacrifice", Country Joe's "The Fish Cheer"? I probably have a soft spot for Ten Years Afters's "I'm Goin' Home" because I could lip sink and air guitar the whole thing to perfection.
Check this out also. http://bit.ly/4DZFQl After all, this is a photography blog.

A morning at Maroon Bells!

2009-08-15T20:54:00.000-07:00

During my recent trip to Colorado I spent a morning at one of the most photographed locations in the country, Maroon Bells. It is not hard to see why this area just outside of Aspen is so popular. Majestic mountain peaks with a clear mountain lake to reflect a mirror image of the scene. This was my second time to spend a morning at MB. Both times the lake has been perfectly calm until about 15 minutes before sunrise then the wind came up and bye-bye reflection. I did create a pre-dawn HDR image of the scene before the wind came up. Once the reflections were gone I decided to move to the field on the north side of the lake and use some of the wildflowers as a foreground. The first two images were both made from a series of three exposures.
As the sun rose higher in the sky I hiked a short distance above Maroon Lake where I could use Maroon Creek in the foreground of the last image. As pretty as it is in August , it still doesn't compare with late September when the cool fall weather changes the Aspen trees to bright shades of yellow.

Something is eating my tomato plants!

2009-08-13T08:33:00.000-07:00

I arrived back home from my Colorado trip on Tuesday afternoon. After unloading most of my stuff and sitting a spell I went out in the back yard to check on my three tomato plants. Only one of the three has produced anything but that particular plant has about 40 small tomatoes growing on it right now. I looked at it and thought "whats happened to all the leaves". I soon saw the answer...Tomato or Tobacco Horn worms. Five of them. Two of them were huge. One of them was in the process of eating one of the tomatoes. I decided to take some photographs before getting rid of them. After getting a few nice shots, I realized I might want to shoot a few more in the morning. Unfortunately, most of the eating so far had been on the productive plant. I set them over on the un-productive plants until morning. I figured that could be their punishment for not producing tomatoes.

I took the image below on the following morning. There was still a lot of leaves on this plant and the back-lighting even made the horn worm glow a little. Right after taking this one of the big worms became active. Through my 180mm macro lens I watched him eat a whole leaf. He ate it like you would eat corn on the cob, but much faster. In less than five minutes the leaf and stem were gone. But I still had to decide what to with these little eating machines. I couldn't help remembering a conversation with our Navajo Guide, Tom, years ago. He was taking us on a morning tour of Monument Valley. While we were talking he mentioned the bugs that were eating some of his small corn crop. I said "why don't you just spray and get rid of them?" He replied "they have a right to live, too". Hmmmmm. Well, I didn't kill the horn worms, but I did throw them over the fence into the neighbors yard! It's a rent house and there probably isn't much to eat over there except the dead grass and the dog poop.

From Colorado back to Texas!

2009-08-12T14:27:00.000-07:00

After a long drive from Colorado, I finally arrived home yesterday afternoon. Since then I have been trying to get caught up on things but did squeeze in some time to work on some of the images from the trip. These first two were taken about 20 miles south of Eagle, Colorado.

On the drive back to Texas we stopped a few times to photograph different things.The pink Cadillac and the Betty Boop waitress were found at a diner which had closed in Clayton, New Mexico. Betty would have been nothing but reflections if I had not used a polarizing filter.

The Cadillac Ranch is located about 8 miles west of Amarillo, Texas just off the south side of I40. We arrived shortly before sunset. People were everywhere, but finally about dark they all left. The shot below is two images that were combined. If my flash would re-charge itself a little quicker I probably could have created this with a single thirty second exposure.
Thirteen days earlier when we had driven through Electra, Texas we started to see lightning. Yesterday it happened again. As we approached Electra, we watched a small rain cloud up ahead of us grow into a mean looking storm within a period of about 10 minutes. Lightning appeared to strike a tower near Electra. We pulled over and photographed the storm which seemed to have low dark clouds which were rotating around the whole system. One of the neatest looking thunderstorms I have seen.

A few more days in Colorado!

2009-08-08T20:35:00.000-07:00

Today was the first day of the Frisco Art Festival. Set up started at 5:00am and I have been up since 4:45am. Why I'm still awake is a mystery to me, but I did have a few images from this trip I wanted to post. The top one is from Maroon Bells near Aspen. We drove there on Wednesday morning for a shoot. Not many clouds but other than that it was pretty good conditions. On Thursday evening we went to the Shrine Mountain Pass where I shot the panoramic image below. It was one of those evenings where I set my camera in position and then waited for the light to do something neat. The sky clouded up and looked like nothing would happen at sunset. Suddenly, the sun hit the distant mountains. It only lasted for about a minute. I was shooting a series of six images to stitch together and created what you see below.
We stayed several days at the Gore Creek campground just outside of Vail. Lots of flowers and aspens nearby. The image below was created by zooming the lens and vertically panning the camera during a one second exposure.
After the show today my brother and I spent some time photographing two old trucks and a couple of old log cabins. And where were they were located? Behind the porta-potties. The trucks looked like they had been sitting and deteriorating for years. This license plate is a year older than I am. Wow!

A little fun with the foxes!

2009-08-06T12:54:00.001-07:00

I have been spending the last few days camping in the mountains of Colorado. What better way to kill some time waiting for my next show in Frisco. On Monday, while driving through a small settlement near Ruedi Reservoir, we couldn't help but notice the signs which said "Slow Baby Fox". The next day we decided to ask where they were and if they could be photographed. We were told the den was just ahead in some rocks on the right, but they also like to climb around on the rocks and dirt on the opposite side of the road. As we parked the car, we caught a quick look at a red fox as it hid in the rocks. After about fifteen minutes we saw nothing else. I said "let's give them until 6pm" which would be an additional 15 minutes. Suddenly about 5:58 a fox walked across the street to my truck as if to check it out. We spent the next hour photographing several different foxes. They would move around and pose as if they had been trained by a professional modeling agency. Most of the time they were in shade or overcast but occasionally they would get in some good light. I would love to be at this same place in early winter when they have grown a little more and have on a full winter coat.
We haven't photographed much other wildlife but we have seen quite a variety of species.
1) A Moose that was about to go under I70 in Glenwood Canyon. A huge surprise!
2) Lots of deer.
3) We spooked a herd of Elk on one of our evening photo hunts.
4) We saw a Bear at 4:30am as we drove to Maroon Bells.
5) I got a lousy photograph of a Beaver.
6) Unidentified animal. Had the body shape of a Badger or Wolverine.
7) Raccoon.
8) A skunk roaming around the center of Basalt at 5am across the street from the Fly Shop.

Now I'm in Colorado!

2009-08-01T22:04:00.000-07:00

Seems like I was just on South Padre Island watching the sun go down. I spent most of the day Monday driving home from South Texas. Late on Wednesday afternoon I picked up my brother and we were off to Colorado. We grabbed some dinner in Decatur and decided to shoot the Petrified Wood Station after it got dark. My brother had never been there but I had already shot it several times this year. I wondered what I could do different this time. When I saw the puddle on the side of the road, I had my answer.
I usually drive until about 11:30pm or so and then start looking for a room. While driving through (of all places) Electra, Texas we started to see quite a lightning show ahead of us. We stopped a little ways down the road and photographed some of the lightning. Soon we were in some heavy rain and decided we better just get a room in Vernon which is only about three hours driving from home. We spent all day Thursday driving the rest of the way to Colorado. Friday morning I was in Beaver Creek setting up my booth. Saturday, the show went fairly well and today looks quite promising. The last two afternoons we have taken a drive up into the mountains. The lower image was taken near Eagle, Colorado.

Off to South Texas!

2009-07-25T20:22:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine said I was a superman for having 24 shows on my schedule this year so I thought I would post this picture of me busting through a steel wall. Actually, this was taken on my way to my show in South Padre Island, Texas. Thursday I took all day to make the drive, stopping numerous times to take some pictures. My first stop was at a place called the Car Connection. I had noticed this place just north of Waco off of I 35. It looked like they had some old cars and signs so I stopped and asked if I could take some pictures. They said OK and proceeded to show me a garage full of old signs. They had an old Coca Cola sign and a Miller Beer sign. The neon still worked on both. They also had this old Superman busting through the wall. Cool! Behind the place was more than 100 old cars. I could have stayed there much longer than I did. The image below was taken through the missing back window of an old vehicle. I shot five different exposures which were combined and tone mapped with Photomatix Pro. I also did a few other layer tricks to give it a more surreal look than I usually go for.
After leaving the Car Connection, I headed to San Marcus to check out Dick's Classic Garage. This is the newly opened museum of 60 classic cars owned and refurbished by businessman Dick Burdick. All are painted and polished like new, including a 1929 Duesenberg. He also started the Central Texas Museum of Automobile History in Rozansky where he has more than 130 vehicles. The image below is the hood ornament of one of the DCG vehicles.
I was hoping to spend the night in Harlingen so I needed to keep driving. While passing through Three Rivers around dusk I stopped to take this image of the Valero Refinery. The whole place is fenced off and I felt that surely someone would come ask me what I was doing. Places like this are real paranoid about pictures being taken. The funny thing is, I would learn more about the place by looking at it on Google Earth if I was up to no good.

This last one is my booth at the Beachcombers Art Show in South Padre Island. Good thing I took this Friday after setting up because many of them have now headed for new homes in South Texas.

More ridiculous rules for photography!

2009-07-16T18:58:00.000-07:00

The Bar Harbor Maine Fine Arts Festival has in their rules...

*Note about photography: Because of the spread of digital and other "mass produced" means, photography does not fall under the guidelines for original, one-of-a-kind or true limited edition art. However, due to "popular demand" it has been decided to allow photography to be exhibited provided the artist certifies that the image will be part of a true limited edition. In other words, a provenance must be included with each individual image certifying that the image will be reproduced in only a limited number edition of 250 or less after which the creator/master files will be destroyed.

Oooooooooh ppppleeeeeeeeeeeeeease! Allow photography to be exhibited!!!!!!This is just another ridiculous rule written by people who don't have a clue about how complex digital photography and digital printing can be at a professional level. They have this stupid notion that you just push a few buttons on the computer and everything magically happens, perfect every time. Rules like this dictate not only how you market your work at their show but it would lock you in to marketing those images in the same manner everywhere else. I don't have a big problem with the 250 part because quite frankly its hard to sell that many of an image, especially when they come in large expensive sizes. However, NO PHOTOGRAPHER DESTROYS THEIR MASTER FILES! I sure don't know any that do. Not a chance in hell that I'm going to start doing it either. Why don't they try and tell Ansel Adams to start destroying his negatives that have all hit the 250 print mark. Good Luck!

OK...I'll quit bitch'n and tell you about these pictures. Tuesday night I went to an opening reception for a photography exhibit that my friend Gary Kelly has at the Gallery of the Uptown Theater in Grand Prairie. If you follow this blog you may remember that Gary and I did a partial Route 66 trip back in January. Many of the images in his exhibit were from that trip. About dusk I pulled my own camera out to do some shooting of my own. The image at the top is from the street in front of the theater looking through the windows where his work is hanging. These bottom two are examples to show you how simple it is to quickly create great images every time. Actually, I'm being a little sarcastic here because learning how to approach an image, knowing what you can do, and then learning how to do it takes some effort. This type of learning curve with digital is never ending by the way.

The image on the left was created from 5 exposures that were processed in Photomatix Pro. Sometimes PP gets it right and sometimes it needs some help. I guess if I always knew the perfect tone mapping settings I would nail it everytime. Didn't nail this one. For one the sky wasn't quite right and some areas lacked the contrast they needed. To make the image on the right, I processed a raw image that had the best sky and good detail in some other important areas. I made another layer from it and masked off parts of it that I didn't want. I also processed another raw image in order to use the part of the marque that said September 26th. Again I masked everything except the part of the marque that I wanted. I also ended up with three different curves adjustment layers that had various parts of them masked. More than likely when I actually print one I will end up tweeking it some more. Maybe someday they will have a "Make it perfect" button in Photoshop and I can just punch it and then print 250 of them out real quick.
So what's the significance of September 26th? A group called Beatlegras will be playing that night at the Uptown. It's also my birthday!

Spending a little time in Fort Worth!

2009-07-14T07:31:00.000-07:00

I spent Saturday over in nearby Fort Worth looking at the Amon Carter Museum and the Modern Art Museum. Before driving home we looked at an old theater and several old gas stations. My friend, Dan Meredith and I decided to come back Sunday evening and shoot several of the locations. The first two images were taken at a business which has several restored gravity pumps out front. It also has a metal fence around the whole place and you can barely fit a lens through the openings. It limited the compositions we could shoot because you had to shoot straight ahead from each opening. I took the top image with my 24 mm tilt-shift lens. It was also multiple images combined in Photomatix Pro.
We stopped at this bottom location twice. The evening light came in nicely on this station and I was able to get this shot. I like the red and green that repeats itself on the doors. Our theater location didn't have any lights on so we stopped back here while driving back to Big D after sunset. The only light on was the globe of the pump. We just kept driving. Oh well.

Images from Omaha trip!

2009-07-10T08:10:00.000-07:00

You would think that images shot when I went to Omaha would be shown before images I took while on my Rockport trip. Well, it seems that I am editing things a little out of order and just now sat down and took a good look at the work from the Omaha trip. The top image was taken at a run down Car Museum in northern Oklahoma. It is full of neat old cars but they are dusty and the building needs some work. I almost wish it had fewer cars with more room to work and photograph around each one. Not much light either, but that can be a good thing at times. The image below was found in another small town in the area. This old truck is just about to be completely covered up with vines.

After the first day of the Omaha show ended on Friday evening, I decided to stop and look at the Thomas Mangelsen Galler y. It is located right behind a parking garage where I had left my vehicle all day. Some pretty cool nature and wildlife photography. I also noticed The Diner which was in the same block. I decided to shoot it after the show was over on Saturday night. I tried to get there before it was completely dark and shot five exposures which were combined with Photomatix Pro. The bottom image was taken in Galena, Kansas which is just west of Joplin, Missouri. It was about 10:00pm when I took this and any light from sunset was long gone. I shot numerous compositions with a variety of exposures. During the long exposures I used some flash and even some colored gels with some of the flash. After looking at what I had shot, I decided that I liked a natural look the best.

Busy, busy, busy

2009-07-07T20:18:00.000-07:00

Wow... has it been crazy the last two weeks. My show in Omaha, Nebraska on June 26-28 went very well. It took most of the following Monday to drive home. This only left about three days to replace quite a bit of inventory that I would need for my next show in Rockport, Texas which would be held over 4th of July weekend. It seemed like I worked almost non-stop printing and stretching canvas but Thursday evening I was loaded up again and was off for Rockport. My brother, Allen, went with me. We made a stop in Salado around dusk to photograph the "City Garage". I had photographed it back in May but felt I could do some more with it. The first 2 images are from our stop at City Garage. Both are HDR images that were created in Photomatix Pro from multiple exposures. The top image still needed some manual blending of exposures to get it looking its best. Its also a challenge to decide what color balance to use because its a mixture of fluorescent, incandescent, and natural light. Auto white balance on the camera did a poor job. The white balance of the "81" sign is quite different in these 2 images.
Yesterday was spent driving home from another successful show in Rockport. We took the back roads and looked for interesting things to photograph. It seemed for awhile that every small town had a Rialto Theater. We found some other interesting subjects but I'm not sure if I got anything I would consider outstanding. The bottom image was taken in Sinton, Texas.

Life at the Pond goes on!

2009-06-18T16:39:00.001-07:00

Summer is almost upon us and all kinds of activity is happening around our backyard pond. I got a surprise yesterday when I looked out at the lily pads and there were two new frogs sitting on them. About two weeks ago we purchased four bullfrog tadpoles. We tried to get ones that were already developing legs but I am surprised they already made the transformation into frogs. When we have had bullfrog tadpoles in the past it seemed to take longer for them to grow legs and lose their tails. The top image is one of the many water lilies that are blooming in the pond. The image below is of one of the new frogs. He is only about 3 0r 4 inches long.
About six weeks ago we had a major toad breeding in the pond and it has been full of their small tadpoles ever since. The eggs hatch within 2 days. The toad tadpoles are tiny compared to the frog tadpoles and seem to develop much faster. We are now seeing lots of little toads jumping in the grass around the pond. The lower image shows you just how tiny they are.

Shame, Shame, Shame!

2009-06-03T09:07:00.001-07:00

As a photographer who primarily sells my work at Art Shows, I occasionally will comment about the art show world. Today I'm going to give you a link to a blog which comments about two shows that should receive some criticism for their recent actions. http://artshowtips.blogspot.com/ Look at June 2 & 3.
The two images today are from my Utah trip back in April. The first one is a cropped portion of The Organ and Three Gossips. I like it but not sure how big I should print it. The lower image was taken at the Fire House Ruin west of Blanding, Utah. I have a vertical version that has been in the print bin at recent shows. For some reason I keep seeing people look at it upside down and have found it put back in the print bin that way. Does anyone have a problem telling which way is up in this version?

Travelin' Home!

2009-05-26T19:42:00.000-07:00

After a successful Memorial Day at the show in Kerrville, I packed everything up and was on the road just after 6:00pm. I didn't have any definite plans. Just drive until I see something I want to photograph. That happened just on the outskirts of Llano and I took the first image. Five weeks of wet weather had the area quite green and wildflowers were still blooming. Actually it was probably much greener now than it was in early April when the flowers are usually blooming their best.
On the square in Llano is the old Lantex theater. I arrived just before sunset and decided to photograph it in the waning light. About 45 minutes later I figured I had done about all I could with it. I started to drive away and noticed the lights under the entrance had just come on. I circled back and parked the truck where I had just been. I got my camera back out and took this image. The others weren't the same without the added lighting.
After leaving Llano I figured I could make it to Temple before getting a room. This would also give me a chance to check out the City Garage in Salado, about 20 miles from Temple. I got there about 10:55. The lights were on so I got out and started shooting. I like this image but I do want to get there some other day to shoot it before the sky goes completely black. At 11:03 I was shooting one more composition and suddenly the lights went off. On a timer I guess. I had arrived there just in time.
The last image was taken this morning after leaving Temple. Too bad the field in the foreground wasn't covered in wildflowers. Oh well. Maybe next time.

New images from Kerrville!

2009-05-23T21:01:00.001-07:00

Today was the first day of the Texas Arts and Crafts Festival in Kerrville. Usually I grab something to eat after the show ends for the day and after that will go crash in my motel for the rest of the evening. I did go feast on some fajitas but after that I decided to go find something to photograph. I came across the old Arcadia theater in downtown Kerrville. Both of these images were created from a series of different exposures that were combined with Photomatix Pro. I like both but I especially dig the Ticket Booth. Anyone out there second that motion?
The show went well today despite receiving some rain and hail in the afternoon. It was quite a storm. My booth is under a large tent that contains about 12 spaces. I am set up in 2 of the spaces. The sides of the big tent are open. The front of my display is 10 feet from the edge of the tent which puts the back walls of my display about 20 feet from the edge of the tent. The wind blew so hard that about half of my work hanging on the back wall got wet from rain which blew in. Some things got very wet, but the clear UV coating did its job and nothing was damaged. However there was some damage to other booths in the show. Some artists are in there own 10x10 tents. An area in the parking lot had about a dozen tents this morning. This afternoon when I left I only saw three. Several mangled EZ-Up tent frames were laying off to the side. Sadly, I heard a potter lost all his work.

Off to Kerrville!

2009-05-22T18:44:00.000-07:00

I decided to camp out at Enchanted Rock State Natural Area on my way to my show in Kerrville. This would also help me avoid driving the whole distance this morning and then setting up at the show soon after arrival. These two images were taken this morning, showing the first light of the day hitting this big granite dome. I am surprised at how green it is in the Hill Country right now but I guess it has rained a lot in the last month. I may spend another day photographing after the show. There are actually a lot of flowers that have bloomed. Its not the bluebonnets and paintbrush that you get in April but its something.
Thank God set up was very easy today because I hardly slept at all last night. College kids should be forbidden from camping in a public campground. A group of them were at the park and didn't quit making noise until 4am. I did manage to here some of the wildlife sounds that I like to here while camping. About 2:30am I heard some snarling and hissing that I think was 2 raccoons fighting in a tree about 30 feet from my tent. I also heard some other funny sounds being made during this confrontation. About an hour later I heard a pair of owls talking to each other. At daybreak the dove all started cooing and I heard some wild turkeys in the distance. I saw some deer while a hiked to the area where I photographed. When I finally got to my hotel this afternoon I took a nap.

Omaha makes NAIA Hall of Fame!

2009-05-20T09:35:00.000-07:00

This was posted last year on the NAIA website.

The 2008 Omaha Summer Arts Festival was hit hard by a severe storm Friday afternoon of the 3 day show. Wind speed was over 70 mph. Many booths toppled or flew through the air, thousands of dollars of art was destroyed, but no one was hurt. Several years ago the Omaha show staff created a well thought-out and detailed Emergency Plan. Having a plan in place and following it before, during and after the disaster no doubt saved lives and limited damage.

During set-up, palettes of free sand bags were available for every artist to help secure their booth. Artists, patrons and vendors were warned of the oncoming storm about 25 minutes before it hit. Immediately after that warning they all were informed of mandatory evacuation. After the storm, the show held a meeting with all the artists and vendors to discuss recovery plans. Clean up had already begun in ernest. Giant lights, like those used at night for freeway construction, were brought to every intersection in the show. Artists were able to work late into the night to prepare for the remaining two days of the show while the main stage was completely rebuilt and debris was cleared.

Award judging had not been completed before the storm so at artists' suggestions, the show donated the award money to the nearby Boy Scout camp recently demolished by a tornado which also killed four Boy Scouts at the camp.

All exhibitors from the 2008 show are invited jury-free to the 2009 show.

"For being fully prepared with an excellent emergency plan, for following through with the plan to protect lives and property and for making compassionate decisions regarding award money and next year's show jury NAIA is honoring the 2008 Omaha Summer Arts Festival staff as our first entry into the newly created NAIA Hall of Fame."

Thank you and Congratulations!

I might add a little praise of my own to this. I straightened everything up after the storm on Friday and was set back up by 11pm. It wasn't as stable as it used to be, but it was up. Saturday was nice weather and rain had just about been taken out of the forecast. However, when I left the show about 9pm I noticed some low clouds just north of Omaha. I went to get something to eat at a Red Lobster near my hotel which was about 10 minutes away. Nothing has been said about the storm which moved through on Saturday night but for about 30 or 40 minutes it rained hard and the wind blew quite a bit. The festival staff was still keeping up with things pretty well. When I was paying my bill at Red Lobster about 9:50pm my cell phone rang. It was Carly Barth with the festival. Apparently they thought I may have had some things knocked over in the storm. Although this news just about ruined my dinner, I was impressed that they had their act together this well. After the call I drove back over to the show to check on my things. Several panels had come loose and fallen over but nothing was really hurt. For the second night in a row it was about 11pm before I left the show and was done for the day. I did hear about some artist's work being damaged on Saturday night but it was nothing compared to Friday.

Storms in Omaha Revisited!

2009-05-19T08:43:00.000-07:00

Well, its getting to be that time of year when you never know when some nasty weather is going to show up. Last year I got a big dose of it at the Omaha Summer Arts Festival. On Friday afternoon, June 27, 2008, a storm rolled in and 85 MPH winds were reported. The first 2 images are what it did to my tent and display. I have had a lot of time to analyze this storm and another storm that I experienced the following weekend in Rockport, Texas. Could I have done anything different to have kept my tent upright? Maybe. I now use the canopy hooks that Propanels came out with last year. They secure the top of my display panels to the tent frame. I also replaced the velcro on the panels. After 6 years of use the stuff just didn't grip very good anymore. I now try to always to have the bottom sta bars attached on my Trimline tent. I then zip-tie the legs of the Propanels to them. I also use the zip-ties in the corners instead of velcro. Support bars from Propanels help keep it all square. I might add that fabric walls do nothing to strengthen the tent. Once all this is together there is very little movement from the tent or display when pushed on by myself or the wind. I've always had big weights on each leg of the tent and I'm not sure if more weight would have made a difference at Omaha. I feel that where you are located during a storm can have an effect on how well you survive it. You will notice that the line of tents to the left of me made it through the storm. The wind was coming from the left. Those tents were all side by side with only one of their sides exposed to the wind. My location was different. I only had the one tent next to me and that tent ended up behind me on the sidewalk. This left me totally exposed to the wind. Also, my tent is almost 2 feet taller than the normal height tent so that made it even more exposed. During the storm I ended up with nothing around me to deflect the wind or help hold me up.

Most of the artists were sent to the basement of a large office building during the storm. Finally they allowed us to leave and check on any damage to our work. The image above shows whats left of the big commercial tents near the music stage. What you can't see off to the right is part of the tent that is sticking into a second story window. This is the area of the show that we first saw after the storm. My booth was located about 50 yards from where this was taken at the intersection with Farnam Street which is where all the artists tents are located. I was a corner booth. The last artist tent before the intersection. The bottom image is looking down Farnam Street in the opposite direction from the picture of my tent. The upside down tents came from across the street while dragging large concrete weights. These weights were so heavy that they used a fork lift to load them after the show ended. To see a map of the area go here.
So! How did the rest of the show go? I got a lot of help picking up everything and cleaning it off from people I didn't even know. I hope I told them all how thankful I was. Then I found a place where I could bend my tent poles so they were reasonably straight. By 11:00 that night I had it all set back up. Some inventory was ruined but I still had enough to get by and have a good show.

Thanks to Christine Hauber for the photos. See her work at http://www.workingintheusa.com/

Lucky day for a one-eyed goldfish!

2009-05-17T18:49:00.000-07:00

The prickly pear cactus is blooming in my neighborhood. On the corner, about seven houses down is a big cactus that is covered with blooms. About three blocks away is another one. Most of the time I see yellow blooms on a prickly pear, but about half of the blooms on this plant are orange. The honey bees were having a blast rolling around in the pollen. The third image today was taken on my recent trip to Utah. It was taken at Goosenecks State Park near Mexican Hat, Utah.
OK, so whats a goldfish got to do with these photos? Nuthin! But lets go back a couple of weeks. Thats when I put a picture of the big bullfrog that lives in our backyard pond on this blog. The last time I saw him was a couple of days after that. Did the full moon cause him to go looking for love? Did he get eaten by the black cat I saw in the yard? Did a raccoon grab him during the night? Did we have another visit from a Great Blue Heron? Usually the fish hide for about 3 or 4 days after a heron raid and we haven't noticed that happening. I now think I have a good idea what may have happened to mr. frog. Today I spent most of the morning in my back yard office. My computer is about 15 feet from the pond. Its a small pond in a fairly small yard with an 8 foot fence around it. About noon I went in the house, showered, dressed and then walked through the den on my way to the kitchen. The room has a window where you can see the back yard. Thats when that surreal feeling hit me again. I need to back up and take another look in the backyard. Did I see what I thought I saw standing by the pond? OOOOOOOOOh s......t!!!!! And he's already got a fish in his beak. I tried to quickly grab my camera and get a picture, but failed. The heron started walking toward the far corner of the yard as soon as he saw me watching him through the window. I opened the back door and was heading toward him before he flew away and dropped the fish about 30 feet from the pond. The fish landed in the grass but was still alive and flopping about. At first glance I thought he was injured. Then I realized it was the goldfish that only had one eye and that was his bad side that was facing me. I picked him up and threw him back in the pond where he swam away and hid with the rest of the fish. To my surprise the fish did come out and get some food this evening. I think I spotted old one-eye with them.

Drive-in home from Tulsa!

2009-05-15T19:20:00.000-07:00

I have posted another version of the old theater that I photographed yesterday. A little reflection helped this one. Today I drove back from Tulsa. I didn't stop much but I did take a few images. These three are parts of an old mural that was on the side of a restaurant in Colgate, Oklahoma. Things like this get better when the paint is peeling but not peeling so much that you can't tell what it is.
Tomorrow morning I will probably sleep late in my own bed. Shouldn't I be off at some show selling my work? That's usually what I'm doing. This is usually my best weekend in May. Last year I had a ridiculously tough decision to make as to where I would show my work. I had applied and was accepted to Tulsa where I had been the previous three years. Just in case I didn't get in Tulsa and also as a long shot, I had applied to Art on the Square. Art on the Square was the #1 rated show in the Art Fair Source Book last year. Average sales were reported to be over 10K. I was quite surprised when I received an acceptance letter from Art on the Square. I hated to decline Tulsa but wouldn't I have been nuts not to take a shot at my piece of that 10K. Well, I had a decent show but nevertheless I did pull that 10K average down quite a bit. This year I didn't apply to Art on the Square. Good thing because they put in a new rule not allowing photos on canvas to be hung. They had to be put in a bin and labeled reproductions. Go back to my post about giclees if you want some more of my thoughts about this type of BS. This year I only applied to Tulsa and got wait listed. Most shows these days have plenty of cancellations and chances are still good you will get in a show. Not this weekend at Tulsa. I didn't get in.
Although I dislike not being accepted to a show, I do realize that rejection is a big part of being an art show artist. Every artist that does what I do gets plenty of rejections. I really shouldn't feel that bad about being wait listed for Tulsa. I walked the show yesterday. In the visual artist area of the show there was 22 jewelers. Only 5 photographers were juried in and they were mainly black and white photographers only showing a few pieces that were color. There probably should have been another 4 or 5 photographers and I would bet that more of the applicants had color work than black and white. The jurying seemed a little biased and out of balance to me. Fortunately, for the buying public, a color photographer got one of the few spots that became available. Unfortunately, it wasn't me.

Didn't you reserve your spot from last year?

2009-05-14T21:07:00.000-07:00

Most of my day was spent in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Around noon I went into Lou's delicatessen and ordered an avocado salad for my lunch. Lou asked me "where is your booth located this year"? I went on to tell him that I don't actually have one yet. I had been "wait listed" and was hoping to get a spot in the show because someone canceled or if they had a "no show". He then asked me "didn't you reserve your spot from last year"? Hmmmmmm... That is when I gave him a quick explanation of the jury process and how it works. Most people don't realize how competitive it is to get into most of the decent art shows these days. Six hundred artists may apply and only 120 spots are available. The great majority of 480 artists get rejected and don't get in the show. A few of these will be wait listed. If you have been wait listed, the show may call you if there is a cancellation or you can show up the day of set up and be given a spot at the last minute if something becomes available. That is what I unsuccessfully tried today.

About 4pm I decided it was silly to wait around any longer. My camera gear was with me so I decided to drive out west of town along part of old Route 66. While driving through Sapulpa, Oklahoma I noticed some neat old cars in a parking lot. A car club was meeting and having a picnic. I stopped and photographed for a while and created the top image. A little exploring and I found a sign to an old skating rink. Right before sundown I found an old deserted theater to photograph. I will probably shoot my way back to Texas tomorrow.

More Route 66 trip!

2009-05-11T19:13:00.000-07:00

When is the best time to process images when you return from a trip? Immediately, weeks later, months later, or years later. All of the above could be correct. Usually, I immediately work on the images that I am most excited about. I may print a few and take them to my next show. I then get busy and will occasionally look a them again when I get a chance. As time goes by my preconceived ideas about the images when I took them will gradually fade and I will see them in a little different light. Sometimes I have processed an excellent image years after I have taken it. Anyway, these were taken about 4 months ago but I didn't process them until today.
These are some images from my Route 66 trip back in January. The Route 66 Restaurant was taken in Clinton, Oklahoma across the street from the Route 66 Museum. http://www.route66.org/index2.html The next image was taken in Shamrock, Texas. The old car and the painted sign were in a couple of small towns that we drove through in Oklahoma.

Toads in Love!

2009-05-07T08:09:00.001-07:00

These events seems to get bigger every year. I say "these" because it will happen again in June, July, and August right before the full moon. More little toads are created in the pond each summer and more seem to appear out of nowhere to breed when the time is right. It started up again right after dark last night. One cute couple skipped the calling, the preliminaries, the foreplay and everything else and were already locked up laying eggs about 9:00PM. The usual routine is to start calling after dark. Check this out! This attracts more toads as the night goes on. There is a lot of jumping in and out of the pond and a lot of jumping on each other. Eventually a male gets paired with a female in a posture called "amplexus". Eggs are fertilized as they are laid in the water. This morning there was five pair of toads laying eggs in the pond. The party appears to be over now but the pond is full of eggs. Soon it will be full of tadpoles.

Toadfest 2009 has begun!

2009-05-06T07:43:00.000-07:00

I got a glimpse of the moon last night as I got in the car about 9:30 to go home from a camera club meeting. The moon was almost full. I thought to myself....the toads should start doing their thing any day now. It started sooner than I imagined. While sitting at the computer in my backyard office about an hour later, I heard a slow speed version of the mating call I have grown so familiar with the last couple of years. Click here to here the toad call! The troops are gathering already! When I went back in the house about 11:00 four of the little guys were sitting around the pond taking turns calling. Tonight I bet I will count at least 8 or 10 around the pond. They will make this noise until about 4 or 5 in the morning. What gets me is ... where are all these toads the rest of the year? We never see any. I guess they are hiding in the bushes and under the deck.
These 2 shots were taken last year. I will be ready with my camera tonight though. The bottom image is quite interesting because the calling was sending out vibration waves in the water.

Strange things in the desert!

2009-05-04T19:11:00.000-07:00

Ok! No more complaining about the rain. I did have some time this evening to look at some of my images from February's trip to Arizona. These are some that were taken while at the Desert Botanical Gardens in Phoenix. An exhibition of Chihuly glass was set up amongst the cactus and other plants. Quite an interesting mix. I also got a shot of one of the strangest shaped Saguaros you will see. Someone must have given it some of that fertilizer that they make over near the toxic waste dump.

Hey! I'm trying to get some sleep here!

2009-05-03T05:59:00.000-07:00

Laying in bed.
3:15 am I hear thunder in the distance.
3:45 The rumble of thunder is much closer.
3:50 My eyes are shut but I still see the flash of lightning which lights up the room.
3:55 Another flash which is followed by a very quick and loud crack of thunder. As it starts to rain heavily the flashes are many.
4:15 It seems to be quieting down.
4:30 A very bright flash with an immediate loud crack of thunder which rumbles for another 15 seconds afterwards. I hear car alarms go off in the neighborhood.
4:35 Silence at last? No. I here a slight tapping in the house water pipes which tells me that the automatic sprinklers have come on. The yard is already flooded. I get up and turn them off.
7:55 I get up. Check the radar on the internet. No rain west of here. I better head to Cottonwood. They will put straw everywhere to give us something dry to stand on. If we don't get anymore rain we may be able to have a good turn out this afternoon. Sweet!!!!! Now if I can just stay awake the whole day.

A river runs through it!

2009-05-02T19:35:00.000-07:00

Years ago I saw a movie called "A River Runs Through it". Today I got to see it happen in my tent during the Cottonwood Art Festival.

About 3:00pm it started to rain. The aisles between the tents became flooded with water and lots of it decided to drain right through my tent. Usually the inside of the tent will remain dry since it is covered but not where I was located at. The show was done for the day at this point. It rained quite hard after I got home about 6:30. Its now almost 10pm and I here it starting to come down again. The weather guys said it may stop raining in the morning and clear off by tomorrow afternoon. I hope the stop part of that forecast is correct. Maybe we can still have a little bit of an Art show tomorrow.
The images you see today were taken in Arizona back in February. I took them at Tumacacori National Historic Park which is just south of Tubac, Arizona.

A previous road trip!

2009-05-01T07:15:00.000-07:00

Although I haven't touched my camera since shooting my frog, I did pull out a few images from a few months back. A friend of mine had a new digital camera he was anxious to try out so we spent an afternoon driving up to Decatur, Texas and shooting some stuff. Just off the square is an old Coca Cola mural. Good thing they don't still cost 5 cents or I really would drink too many of them. A few blocks away is an old gas station that was turned into a barber shop. The other mural is on a wall in Justin, Texas. We talked to the artist that was painting on it. He has seen my work at Cottonwood and is on my mailing list. Cool!
Speaking of Cottonwood, the show starts tomorrow. I am in a new location, booth 187. I hope its a good weekend but between the swine flu and the chances of rain, who knows how it will go. While setting up yesterday I hear on the radio that Mayfest in Fort Worth was cancelled. Artists and food vendors were already set up. What a drag to do that to them and what an overreaction to things in my opinion. Take a few precautions but lets get on with our lives. The normal flu we have each year effects thousands of people and there tragically are some deaths from it, but I heard there was only 130 confirmed cases in the US. No reason to panic. Bring your umbrella and come out to Cottonwood.

There is a frog on my blog!

2009-04-29T15:26:00.000-07:00

I have had so much to do lately I haven't had time to pick up my camera or post to my blog. The ruler of our pond did make it easy for me to catch a quick shot of him a little while ago. In previous years we would only see him at night. He would sit in or around the pond and wait for the lights to attract a meal. However, I have seen him a lot during the day this year. He has grown so big that he has probably realized that "ain't nuthin gonna mess with me" so now its not unusual to see him sitting on top of the rocks at the edge of the pond during the day. I can't tell that he has moved in the last 6 hours. He's also getting quite chubby. The June bugs are already out and can be caught around the front and back porch lights after dark. My wife and I throw some to him in the pond every night but might should stop for awhile and let him catch his own food.
Why have I been so busy? Since returning from my trip to Utah, I have had shows on both weekends and have to get ready for the Cottonwood Art Festival this weekend. San Antonio and Southlake were both quite successful for me. When this happens I have about 3 or 4 days to print and replace some of my inventory. Its a good problem to have but there's no golf, no fishin, and no day off. I did spend a lot of time yesterday working on a 6 image stitch of "Daybreak at Dead Horse Point". I like this one but there are several variations I am working on from the morning I spent there and I'm still undecided which one I will print and bring to a show in the near future. Some of my other new images have been well received. I did sell a large canvas of "Mittens and Rainbow" and "Alley of the Oaks" at Southlake. Yahoo!

"Daybreak at Dead Horse Point"