Sometimes you just have to be flexible!

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!

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!

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!

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

A successful show at Hidden Glen!

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!

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!

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.