Picture Canyon is Saved!

I am really pleased to announce that a local Flagstaff cultural resource called Picture Canyon has been permanently preserved for future generations and protected from vandalism and environmental degradation. For years picture canyon has fallen through the cracks and has been subject to paint ball damage, litter and protective limbo. The canyon is really Flagstaff's only local waterfall.

Adding to the value of the site are the ancient Sinaguan petroglyphs scribed in the stone adjacent to the unique water features. The last few years have seen a resurgence in a grassroots effort to not only clean up the vandalism, but removal of old tires, trash and the invasive Scotch Thistle. A core group of local volunteer have successfully lobbied the City of Flagstaff to purchase the 4800 acre area with the aid of an Arizona State Parks Department grant and a 2004 voter approved open space bond.



Even after living here in Flagstaff for 28 years, I had only heard of Picture Canyon. I found out about the canyon after reading an article in the Arizona Daily Sun. I met one of the organizers of the clean up efforts and quizzed him on the location of the area. For those who don't know, you take Old Route 66 behind the mall and take a left at the Wildcat water treatment plant. You continue down the road and it is on the right hand side. After parking on the top of the hill, you weave your way down the canyon through the boulders until you see the waterfalls. I first visited the canyon in March of 2011 and instantly fell in love with the unique features, practically in our back yard.



City Councilmember Celia Barotz who worked for more than two years on the purchase and preservation of Picture Canyon says: “This acquisition is a true testament to the vision and tenacity of the group of Flagstaff residents who years ago imagined that Picture Canyon could one day be permanently protected. I am thrilled that the City Council has authorized the use of 2004 open space bonds to complete this long-awaited purchase and will make this unique historical, cultural, archaeological, recreational and educational resource available for present and future generations to enjoy,” Arizona Daily Sun, Tuesday Oct. 30, 2012.

This makes me proud to be a Flagstaff resident. Things like this really renew my faith that a grassroots campaign can effectively enact real change. Congratulations Flagstaff, and well done.

Feeling Your Way to Great Photography

Great photography is more than just taking pretty pictures. It's more than snapshots of your last vacation. Sure, they can be pretty and in some exotic location.  But really effective photography has that extra element. It tells a story. It portrays emotion.  It embodies life, and living.  You know those photos when you see them. They reach out and capture your imagination.  They whisk you away to another land, another time, or another life. They have that certain feeling. But how is it some photos are snapshots and others ethereal?  How can a static picture emote feeling to the viewer?  The answer lies within the eye of the artist. The artist has not just the tools and technical knowledge but the motivation and the passion to convey that feeling.  Start first by calling yourself an artist. Getting yourself in that mindset is the only way to get where you want to go.  Don't worry about what other people think about your art.  They will be subjective and judgmental.  While people are deciding whether or not they like it, make more art, as Andy Warhol would say.  There is nothing you can do to make them like it.  Find your creative muse. Shakespeare wasn't always inspired to write brilliant sonnets. His passion lied with women, and was motivated to write out of his passion for them.   Wear your heart on your sleeve. Put yourself out there to be seen.  Choose a subject.  Let it be your muse. It could be a flower, or the sun, or a colorful cloud. Whatever it is, it has to mean something to you.   See it.  Feel like doing something with it. Create some tension. Juxtapose it. Expose it or leave it mysterious. Make bold choices. Get close to the ground. Use leading lines into the photo. Plan it. Stalk it.  Visualize it. What will it look like in different light?  Will it look different with a long exposure?  Whatever you do with your subject experiment with it. It will be clear to your audience that feeling you had.

Mesa Arch & HDR

The first time I saw a photo of Mesa Arch, I knew I had to go there and experience it. I loved the different layers, and even the second arch in the distance. Now, it has become a bit of a photographer's mecca, drawing photographers from all directions of the planet.  I went last May during what was the most beautiful weather with really nice clouds the entire trip.  Many photographers have a love/hate relationship with icons such as this.  Icons are icons because they are amazingly beautiful. The problem is that they can be photographed to death, eliminating any originality.  Unless you are prepared to travel to the ends of the earth, finding an original epic landscape is becoming more and more difficult. We have to settle on re-interpreting those icons trying to find an original composition to stay away from the cliche. My philosophy is that if I haven't shot the icon before, than it is not yet cliche. I will have my personal vision and creativity to keep the mundane at bay.  We'll see if you agree. 

I arrived at the arch at about 4:30 in the morning, and some people had been there for hours already. I wasn't sure what to expect, but there were 5 photographers lined up and waiting for sunrise. With an hour to kill I began to talk to the people, after setting up my tripod on 'the line.'  One person had been there since 2 am, and another had been there the morning before, saying they had to comeback due to heavy cloud cover.  I had no idea where the sun was going to rise, but since I was late to the party, I happily positioned myself for the big moment, ready to press the shutter when it was time. I had an idea in my head of what I wanted out of the shot, it definitely had to have a sunburst in it. Just as the sun came up a tour bus arrived with about 50 Chinese tourists.  They swarmed the place and at one point a guy with a long lens set it on my shoulder to take a photo. I turned my head and hit my face on the lens. He backed off and with out an apology went about his business of machine gunning the scene.  A few female tourists started to climb to pose on the arch. This was met with an angry reaction from the more serious photographers.  A white guy on 'the line' with the Phase One spoke Mandarin and cursed them all out, in Chinese.  He he.   Fortunately within about ten minutes they all disappeared back into their tour bus and took off.

I was able to work the scene, taking turns with the others at an intimate or original perspective, if one could be had. All the minor aggravations aside, it really was a bit of fun.  Hanging out with like minded individuals, sharing each other's shots and anecdotes left me with a feeling of camaraderie. The mob mentality directed toward the inconsiderate tourists was entertaining as well. 

My Pentax K5 has pretty good dynamic range, but I chose to bracket my shots +/-1.3 Ev so in post I could have more choices on how to process them. As a study on HDR techniques I processed the shots three different ways, on three different shots to see what each process had to offer.  It wasn't totally dark before sunrise, as moon was quite large and setting in the opposite direction. It gave some light on the front of the arch, but left the rock face with a bit of blue tint to it.  The first shot here was done with Tony Kuyper's luminosity masks. His way of dealing with high dynamic range is quite complex and involves masking different luminosities from separate exposures in several layers in photoshop.  See the link in the right side bar titled "Good Light Journal" for more information. His methods of HDR among other things are cutting edge in modern processing. His method gives the photographer complete control of color and light.  The second image shown here was simply loaded into Photomatix, an HDR program that uses algorithms to extrapolate the highest luminosity values into one image.  I used three exposures, again at +/- 1.3 Ev then loaded them into Photomatix. Typically they come out more saturated than natural, as this image ended up being. I had to selectively remove some purple fringing in the sunburst afterward.  The third image is just one image chosen out of the three I bracketed. The rock face is a bit dark and blue, which I felt might have been accurate to how the scene actually was since it was the earliest shot and the moon was still quite bright.

Each technique produces quite a different result, as you can see. Having displayed different images it might be a bit difficult to choose a preferred method based on my findings here, but any image should be processed differently from another based on it's own merits or weakness anyway. The artist's feeling and mood have to be considered before processing as well. Over all, I would choose the first method over the others. It is definitely more work, but the results are more realistic looking, and the artist has much more control of every facet.   The other methods are easier, but may reflect the artist's vision better.  What do you think?

South Rim Monsoon

Living only 80 miles from the south rim of the Grand Canyon, you would think I have a huge library of the canyon from every vanatage point and weather condition. Well, I'm working on it. It takes a bit of effort to get there for either sunset or sunrise, which is the time of day that best captures the colors and moods of the canyon. I made a bit of a push this year to get the canyon under some summer monsoon. You have to pick a spot, get there early and work the scene for a couple of hours, then you're done. You pretty much have to be prepared to spend the night, to catch both sunset and sunrise. Photographing even in early morning light leaves the canyon washed out, and flat. Not ideal for photography.



The summer around Northern Arizona is blessed with what we call the Monsoons. Basically we enter into a weather pattern that pushes up moisture from the south and for about a month give us life giving and much needed rain. Oh, and the skies with the big puffy clouds light up with the last rays of the day. In late August the monsoons are winding down, blue skies give way to large storm cells that move around dropping rain in isolated areas.



The storms can be quite fierce in those areas, but often times they last a few hours and move off. It's quite a spectacle and seeing them day after day, leaves me gazing at the clouds and dreaming about all the sunsets I could be capturing. On this day I got my wish and got up there just after a cloud burst, and just before sunset. There were still storm cells hovering along the horizon. I chose Grandview point as my muse, because, well, it is a grand view. The layers of the canyon, and the iconic Vishnu's Temple, plus the various foreground options make for good photography. I made my way to a stack of rock that had some depressions filled with water called rain pockets. I used those as a foreground element, and waited until the sun was low enough to the horizon to get the rays skipping across the top.



I had enough time to work the area and get some more shots of Vishnu's Temple and some spectators. Although the sun went down the light kept on commin'. Just as I was packing up the distant storm clouds lit up and my last shots of the day were a close up on those. We camped just outside the park off a forest service road for the evening. I had every intention of getting back to the rim for sunrise the next morning, so consulted my iPhone to get sunrise times.



Although I was 20 minutes early according to the data, I was more like 20 minutes late according to the sun. When I got to Mather Point the sun was already over Vishnu's Temple, but the light was still good. I got a couple of shots off that I was happy with either way. I guess the rule still stands: show up an hour before sunrise!

Twisted Forest Startrails

Most people are familiar with the Bristlecone Pines in the White Mountain area of California, but small enclaves of forest can be found in Arizona, Nevada and Utah. The Twisted Forest Bristlecone Pines are the Great Basin variety found around the Cedar Breaks National Monument in Southern Utah. I always like speaking to the Ranger to get some inside information. There is a Bristlecone Pine trail within the park but, after speaking to him I decided to find another trail he told me of outside the park in a small wilderness area. There you can camp much closer.

I got directions and began my quest. What he didn't tell me was that you had to get there through the Brianhead ski resort. Literally you have to drive to the top of the ski runs and back down the back side. It would definitely be more fun on skis. Originally I wasn't going to spend the night, but since it took some doing to get there, and the trees were so cool, I really wanted to spend some more time and make some images. The Bristlecones got their name from the dark purple female cones that have curved in prickles that don't really resemble bristles. It's the arrangement of the pine needles that resemble a bristle brush. Some trees in the White Mountains have been ring dated by dendrochronologists to be well over 4500 years old. The trees in this particular area are believed to be only 2500 years old, but if Moses was still around, they could swap a lot of stories together. The tree attributes it's longevity to its dense and resinous wood which maintains resistance to insects and fungi.

As soon as I hiked among the twisted and gnarled trees I knew that a star trail photograph would be in order. I began to investigate each tree and it's position to Polaris. This normally couldn't be done during the day with out a compass,  and then only generally, but the techo-geek in me had the iPhone app 'Star Tracker' installed and ready to go for occasions like this. I simply held up the phone to the north and using cell tower telemetry narrowed the position of the North Star to a small window. I was then able to find the star in relation to the perfect tree. It was tall enough, and on the top of a ridge so I could get close to the ground and look up through the branches to Polaris.  The ridge line eliminated any background hills and forest. I then set up the tripod and made note of it's position so when I returned after dark I could easily find the correct composition.  As dusk started to roll around I took some images with the low warm light of the sun, then packed up and headed back to camp.

After dinner I consulted the iPhone again and realized that the moon was soon to rise dead north. That would certainly put the kibosh on any star trails right after dark, at least with Polaris in it.  It just meant that I could have a few extra beers and catch some zzz's before heading back up the hill. I deduced that about 3 in the morning would give me enough time before the light of dawn and allow the moon to reposition from behind the tree to in front, giving me natural light so I didn't have to use a flash light to illuminate.  My alarm went off at 2:30 and I packed up my gear and headed back up the ridge.  I felt pretty good having gotten some sleep, at least a lot better than staying up until exhaustion like on other occasions. I set my gear up at the spot then did a test exposure at iso1600, first at 25 seconds, then another at 20 seconds. The second exposure had the better lighting on the tree, so I then calculated down to iso100 and determined that 2.66 minutes would get me the right exposure on the tree. For simplicity I  set my intervolometer to 3 minutes for 20 frames.


The rest was a waiting game.  Again my iPhone came out and I read some eBooks about photography while I waited on a flat stump for the hour. I spent a little more time shooting then packed up, hiked back down the hill and went back to bed.  A little pre-visualization and preparation plus gadgetry equals some favorable results in this case.

Peyto Lake & Glaciers

The first time I saw a photo of Peyto Lake, I was amazed. The color of the water and beautiful mountainous surroundings left me aching to go there. It was one of those places you have to go if you are in the area. The day was cloudy, and rainy, and sunny. Kind of a nice combination. If what you wanted to shoot was in direct sunlight you could wait a bit and a cloud would come by and diffuse the harsh light a bit. Conversely when something was shrouded in clouds, just by waiting a bit some sunlight would peek out and illuminate a portion of the scene. We began the day by driving north on the old frontage road to the Trans-Canadian Highway. We thought it was the most scenic route and it didn't dissapoint. There was an elk grazing on the side of the road, and some people getting dangerously close. Eventually we had to get onto the major highway, and stopped at all the pull outs to look at the glaciers. Another big reason we decided to visit Banff, was because of the quickly dissappearing glaciers. Call it what you will, global warming, climate change, Bush's fault, or whatever, the glaciers are quickly becoming extinct. There is no better place than Banff to see the effects. Peyto Lake has a large interprative sign with photos of the glacier. Now, cameras have been around only as long as a blink in geologic time. Within that time we, or the climate, have managed to melt them into oblivion. I wanted to be able to say that I've seen a Glacier in my life time. I don't have any kids or grandkids, so I'm not sure who I'll say those words to. At least I'll have had the pleasure of seeing them.

The parking lot there was divided between passenger cars and tour busses. Being on our own we parked in the lower lot and took the nature walk pathway. It offered intrepretive signs and plant life IDs. At the view point there is a huge wooden deck provided to take the typical snap shot of the lake. There are more intrepretive signs describing how the lake gets it's wild blue color. The glacial silt gets more and more pulverized to the point of the consistancy of flour. The combination of the emulsified silt and reflection of light gives it the light aqua color. Just as we approached the viewing platform a tour bus of young students arrived and it became an instant mob scene. I got a bit frustrated and wanted badly to get away from the people so I could have a little personal time with the view and compose a shot that was more than the typical platform view. Fortunately there was a trail that went down and to the left, eventually reaching the headwaters of the lake. We walked down the trail and detoured a couple of times to grab some views. There my blood pressure began to return to normal. We got to see a pika up close. Pikas are little mouse looking mammals that live in the rocks of high altitudes. They are so aclimated to the cold, that temperatures above the high 70s could cause them to die. They are usually very shy creatures, so hearing one peep is much more prevalant than seeing one. The image of the lake I was most happy with was taken after our little hike and off the main trail. I wanted the rocky foreground, but also wanted some sunlight dappling on the mountain and lake. I took many images, and finally the clouds broke a bit giving me the light I was looking for.

Lake Louise and the Tea Houses

Only about 4 days prior in Waterton the temperature was 90 degrees Fahrenheit. The morning we wanted to hike around Lake Louise it snowed. We were a bit trepidatious to what we would find when we got there, but it turned out to be a beautiful day. The trail started off at the hotel and we decided to take the route that headed up toward the Beehive and onward to the Lake Agnes Tea house. There was about an inch of snow on the ground when we started and as the day wore on it quickly melted off, leaving a bit of mud in selected places. We had a couple of false starts, having to deal with bathroom breaks, and cleaning up after our dogs. The trail proceeded up immediately and into the fir forest. We took a short detour to see Mirror Lake, which was little more than a pond, and circled around the base of The Beehive, which was a small peak that resembled the beehive you see on those Utah highway sign posts. Soon enough we arrived at a stair case that ascended to the first tea house at Lake Agnes. You don't get a feeling of how beautiful it is right until the top where you reach the tea house.

As you come around the corner you see Lake Agnes and the reflections of the peaks surrounding it. The tea house overlooks the lake on one side and Bow Valley on the other. Then there is the beautiful cascading water fall that flows out of Lake Agnes. It was a bit too early to grab some food at the tea house, so I decided to get a closer look at the water fall and try to get a good composition. I found one, and soon other people saw where I had gone and actually lined up on the precarious cliff edge to take their shot. Continuing on the trail we encountered another long stair way back down a bit. The trail then traversed the mountain, again through thick and green fir forests. At the trail curves around, you grab wonderful views high up on the Lake Louise valley. Slowly the trail gains altitude and heads toward the Plain of Six Glaciers Tea House. Set below (and safely away) from the glaciers that feed Lake Louise, the tea house offers sandwiches, soups, and cake all hand made from scratch. They receive supplies either by horse back, or by a beginning of the season air drop. All their trash is taken down by hand or horse. There is no running water or trash cans, you have to pack your own in and out here. The two story log cabin was built sometime in the 20s. Just as we arrived a bit of snow began to fall, so we had to put our raincoats on to cut the chill. It was quite busy up there, and we were quite lucky to get a table. Fortunately for us they took American currency, we didn't think to go to the bank before we headed out for the hike. Warm soup really hit the spot.

We would have liked to linger longer, but felt we needed to relinquish our table for the line of incoming guests. The hike down treated us to long valley views of the lake and hotel. The trail soon levels out to a flat easy stroll along Lake Louise. As we approached the hotel foot traffic elevated to super-highway style crowds. We passed some people rock climbing on the left, and stopped to watch for a bit. The hike took almost all day, and we didn't want it to end. I kept taking pictures and saw an opportunity to snap some pics of the red canoes that were for rent. We kept looking up the valley to the Six Glaciers, with a dreamy sparkle in our eyes.