Coronado National Forest

Here's another view of the field of flowers growing in the remains of a past forest fire. This photos show some more interesting mountains in the background. Those mountains are near Portal, AZ - a world famous birding location.

Tomorrow, I'll be leaving Sierra Vista to visit my parents and other friends up in the Phoenix area.

Cactus in Bloom

Cactus in bloom in the Tuscon Mountain County Park, AZ.

Life, Renewed

I've spent the last few day camping in the Chiricahua mountains.

This iPhone photo shows a field of flowers growing in the remind of an old forest fire near the Rustlers Park campground.



I now understand the term islands in the sky. These mountains rise up above the surrounding desert. I really enjoyed waking up to 40 F mornings.

While up there, I saw two black bears, wild turkeys, and a lot of white tail deer. Nearby, I saw coatimundi and javalina. Both first time sightings.

Here's an iPhone photo of the area.



More later...

-- Post From My iPhone

Oasis

I've spent much of my life in hot climates. Since 2001, I've lived in Colorado except for one year. I guess that I've gotten really accustomed to cool weather. This summer at home was very cool. I think we hit 90 F maybe once. In fact, I hear that we had snow on the ground at home a couple of days ago.

This photo was taken at the Tucson Mountain Museum. We got there around 8:30 AM and it was already 88 F. Yikes. Before we left Tucson, it was 104 F. That's a good temperature for a soak in a hot spring on a chilly day - not for walking around.

Tomorrow, I'm heading up to the Chiricahua mountains to camp for the next 5 days. I sure hope it cooler up there! The current issue of Arizona Highways, has a great photo of colorful maple leaves surrounding a small stream. I suspect it still to warm to see something similar.

Concentration

Today is the first chance that I've had to process any photos. Since Friday, I've been spending a lot of time with my family in Arizona. Saturday, I went to the 2009 Tucson ATA Taekwondo tournament to watch my brother's family compete. They all did very well. This is one of my nieces performing her weapons form.

Arizona Sunset

This is my first post from my iPhone (using iPhone camera as well). Hopefully, this works, else I won't be posting much over the few weeks.



I wished to take photos at Whitesands as I passed through the area. Sadly, it was closed today due to a missle test. So, I drove on to southern Arizona.

At least they can't close the sunset.

Moss Garden

Be sure to visit Wordless Wednesday.

Belvedere Blues Fest

I finished processing photos from the Belvedere Blues Festival:

Johnny O

Late post today. Here it is the first day of my sabbatical, and I spent all day doing chores. Included in that was processing some pictures taken at the 2009 Belvedere Blues Festival. As stated in Saturday's post, I was invited by one of the organizers to take pictures of the event. The organizer knows my wife, and I sent him some pictures that I took at the Brew Ha-Ha festival from earlier this year (click here for one photo). I guess he liked them.

It was very flattering and a very intimidating. I think that I'm a good landscape photographer, and I'm trying to learn how to photograph people. But the idea shooting three days at a festival was a bit overwhelming.

All in all, it has a great learning experience. I also got to see some great bands as well.  This is by far the best musical experience I've had since leaving Austin, TX. This photo is of the very talented Johnny O Band out of Boulder, CO.

Be sure to visit Monochrome Weekly.

Goats and Flowers

Mountain goats in a field of wild flowers at Glacier National Park.

Be sure to visit Camera Critters.

My Ears are still Ringing

Last night, I went down to Belvedere Blues Festival in Canon City, Colorado to take photos. The goal of the festival is as fundraiser dedicated to improving the quality of life in Fremont County, Colorado.

The first band I saw was Colorado Spring's Jake Loggins Band. Jake Loggins, the lead guitarist is an amazing guitarist and singer.

I took around 600 pictures of the first two bands (and crowd). This photo of Desmond Washington and Noel MacFarlane is my favorite so far.

Before I head down today, I think I'll buy some ear plugs. Its tough standing in front of those speakers!

Skies above Waterton

The sky above Waterton Lake in Waterton Lake National Park, Canada.

While in Waterton, we took a boat tour down to the southern end of the lake which is in Glacier National Park in the USA.  Incredibly beautiful!

Strangely enough, "they" cut down all the trees along the border between Canada and the USA.  There is a point on the lake where one can actually see the border between the two countries. Heck of a lot of work! [Edit] You can see the border Google Maps.

On other news, I was invited to attend the Belvedere Blues Festival in order to take photos of the 3-day event.  Pretty cool, that!  I'll be sure to post a few of those photos on this blog.

Be sure to visit Sky Watch Fridays.

Have Camera, Will Travel

Close up of the Lake McDonald beach.

For the next two months I'll be posting intermittently. I have a good excuse - I'm starting a sabbatical next week. During my sabbatical, I'll be traveling around the Southwest USA. For the first month, I'll be spending a lot of time with family and friends. But for the second month, I'll be hanging about the sights of southern Utah and Northern Arizona. As I'll be camping a lot, I'll have a hard time connecting to the internet on a regular basis. I will probably use my iPhone to post photos taken on the iPhone (limited by available 3G cell connections).

My rough itinerary, photographically speaking, is as follows:

• Whitesands National Monument, NM
• Chiricahua National Monument, AZ
• Saguaro National Park, AZ
• Joshua Tree National Park, CA
• Santa Catalina Island, CA
• Las Vegas NV area
• Zion National Park, UT
• Bryce National Park, UT
• North Rim Grand Canyon, AZ
• Arches National Park, UT
• Monument Valley, AZ

Any suggestions of other "can't miss" locations?

A bit chilly

Be sure to visit Wordless Wednesday.

Ballons

Labor day weekend in Colorado Springs means the Colorado Balloon Classic. This year was the 33rd edition of this balloon festival. Apparently, its the largest and longest running balloon festival in the rocky mountain region.

I attended the event on Saturday. Unfortunately, the weather was such that they canceled the mass ascension. However, they did inflate most of the balloons. Watching a lot of crews inflate their balloons was very interesting.

Although I've lived near a few different balloon festivals, this was the first time that I've actually attended one. Walking around in a field surrounded by a dozen or more inflated hot air balloons is an impressive experience. Anybody out there with a balloon willing to give me a ride? :)

That was my world this weekend. Be sure to visit My World Tuesdays

Blue Morning

Early morning at Avalanche lake in Glacier National Park. This was the last, and only morning that I got up early for photo. The next morning I work up with the flu. There went my motivation for the next few days.

This is another HDR made up of a set of 6 images. The parameters were chosen to push the image towards the more surreal end of the spectrum.

Be sure to visit Scenic Sundays.

Organic Clouds

Professional photographers will tell you to only display your best work, your most compelling images. I suppose that in marketing speak that would be called 'building a brand'.

For today's Skywatch Friday, I break that rule. This image is not good. There is no real subject, its chaotic and its rather boring.

That is, perhaps, until it is explained. Call this a documentary photo rather than an art photo.

What you see here are clouds of small flying bugs back lit by the westering sun. We saw these bugs on an evening drive through Waterton Park in Canada. This cloud went for miles! I can truthfully say that I've never seen anything like this.

Be sure to visit Skywatch Friday for less buggy skies.

Painting Hidden Lake

While hiking the Hidden Lake trail in Glacier National Park, we came across this painter painting the lake. What a skill to have! I've considered taking a painting or drawing class. I don't think that I would be any good, but I do think that some of the art theory taught would be very useful when composing a photo.

Make sure to visit Sepia Scenes.

Click here to see other photos from our trip.

Avalanche Creek

This is Avalanche Creek in Glacier National park somewhere along the Trail of the Cedars. I was surprised at how wet Glacier National park is. Apparently, it's considered to be western most extreme of the Pacific Northwest's temperate rain forest.

A couple of days before this shot, we hiked up to Avalanche Lake (in the dark) to grab some sunrise shots. On the way back down, I saw this creek and knew that I had to return when there was more light. It looked like a perfect opportunity to use HDR, or High Dynamic Range, techniques. I took 6 different shots from EV -3 to EV 2 (i.e. very underexposed to very overexposed). At home, software is used to combine the images into this.

I'm still very much a novice using the software. It has lots of controls to tweak in order to adjust the image. To be truthful, I'm not sure that I like this result. I hope to have time to go back an play with other versions and see if I can get something better.

Be sure to visit Water Wednesday.

My other camera...

During our trip to Glacier National Park, I got to play with a new toy - an iPhone, or, more specifically, the iPhone's camera. It's not a great camera, but can be used to great effect. I found that a number of artist are using the iPhone (and other small point&shoots) to take great photos. For example, check out Chase Jarvis or Greg Schmigel or even one of Flickr's iPhone groups. After seeing these and others like them, I wondered what I could do with my new iPhone.

During the trip I took a lot of photos on my iPhone. Starting out, the pictures were not so good. The first thing I needed to learn was of what this little camera was capable. For instance, this camera seems to have a very limited dynamic range, so scenes with a lot of contrast are problematic.

The Custer National Cemetery at the Little Bighorn National Monument in Montana.

There are a number of applications for the iPhone which allows one to edit a photo. Obviously due to the form factor, the edits are pretty minimal. This photo was converted to look like it was taken from a Lolo camera.

Traffic Jam on Going to the Road highway due to road construction.

The other aspect of the iPhone is that is relatively wide-angle. This greatly effects what types of compositions work.

Dead tree with tavertine from the Mammoth Hotsprings growing around it.

Given the wide-angle of the camera, and a panorama application, it is fairly easy to make decent panos.

Panorama of the Mammoth Hotsprings in Yellowstone National Park

Another thing I was interested was the ability to take a photo and immediately post via the phones internet connection. I posted a few photos to Facebook during the trip, but, I'm still looking for a good way to post to the blog from the iPhone. Of course this ability is somewhat limited due to my propensity of going to wilderness area (not many wi-fi connections in the boonies!)

Grand Tetons and Snake River

The iPhone's camera will never replace my Canon 40D. During the trip, I brought back about 600 photos taken on the 40D, but on about 50 on the iPhone.

However, it does provide another creative outlet and, hopefully, reminds me that making good images are made in the mind, not by the tools.

That's my world seen through an iPhone. Be sure to visit My World Tuesday.