Mesa Arch Sunrise I

Kelly and I spent a long weekend in Moab. Kelly is a coach for Team in Training, and we were in Moab for the Canyonlands Half Marathon.

As soon as we arrived in Moab on Thursday, we headed to Arches National Park to run the Devil's Garden Trailhead. What a great place for a trail run.

Friday morning, I awoke early to attempt a sunrise shot of Mesa Arch in Canyonlands. Unfortunately, the sunrise was a bust due to the heavy cloud cover. A rain/snow storm blew in later that day. This wasn't a waste though, as I got to experiment with various compositions and angles.

Instead of watching the marathon on Saturday, I again headed to Mesa Arch for the sunrise. This time the dawn skies were clear. When I arrived, I found 6-7 other photographers already setup. Luckily once the action started, we all moved around a lot to try various angles.

Afterwards, I went for another run along the Murphy's Point trail.

What a glorious day!

Sunrise on Pikes Peak and the Kissing Camels

I just returned from a long vacation in the Moab area, and a longer break from photography. There are a number of "reasons" for the break. I'm trying to take up running again, Kelly and I have been taking dance lessons, and I'm recovering from some surgery on my wrist. The surgery was no big deal, but it did leave me one-handed for awhile. To be honest, I'd have to say I've been a bit lazy as well.

This photo is not from the Moab area. It is from Colorado Springs. I'm only now posting it because I'm trying to learn how to use some new tools. I've been using Adobe Photoshop for a couple of years now. Recently, I got a very good deal on Lightroom and PS CS4. Currently its taking me much longer to do many tasks. However, I believe once I learn the tools, I'll be much faster.  For instance, I never had to take this photo into Photoshop.

One of the really nice things about Elements was the easy integration with uploading photos to Flickr or Smugmug. To do this with Lightroom 2, one must down load a plugin (for each sight).

Oh well, progress marches onward.