Gourds

I'm back at home from my travels. I got a 'ginormous' number of photos to process as well as a multitude of other minor choirs to accomplish before returning to work.

I'll write a post (or a number of posts) summarizing the travels.

In the meantime, here's a photo of a gourd that my mother made. She made a number of gourds to be used as center pieces at Nicole and David's wedding. At the wedding, the gourds had beautiful orchids placed in them.

While I was visiting my parents, I help them make a simple DIY lightbox. Then I photographed a lot of my mom's gourds and my dad's carvings. I'm really happy with the photos of the gourds, but didn't like the photos of the carvings. I think the the carvings should be captured with a black background and directional light.

Click on the image to view a slide show of the centerpiece gourds. 

Click here to see a slide show of all the photos I've taken of family art.

Angel's Landing

This morning I did the Angel's Landing hike. What a beautiful trail. It goes 2.5mi from the valley floor up 1488 ft to the top of a knife edge ridge. What a view!!

As I was descending, I came across a number of people crawling up on their hand and knees. At least they are trying.



iPhone photo from the top. See the stretch of road 1200ft below? The prominent shadow at 10:30AM gives a good idea of the depth of the canyon.

Tomorrow I'll tour around the area by car and do a little bike riding. Then on Wednesday, I'll hike the Narrows to the famous "Wall Street" - a place in the canyon that is 22ft wide and 1500ft deep.


-- Post From My iPhone

Added Gallery

I've added a link to my SmugMug gallery in the galleries section.

SmugMug

I signed up for a 14-day trail on SmugMug.com.

I like the look and feel and features. I really like the following:

• Order DVD/CD of my photos. This means I can use the service as a backup.


• Builtin support on Elements - I can upload directly from there. Sweet!


• Supports Google Map (I like Google Map better than the others)


• People can buy prints.


• I can customize the look - why on earth would you display a photo against a white background?

Here is a link to the gallery (ask me for the password)

Here's a cool picture of the results of an exploding water ballon:

photoGRAPHICA

I entered a couple of pictures (the rose displayed in the last post, and this one - a favorite of mine) into photoGRAPHICA challenge. I'm bluehiker on that site.


Canon G2, 1/15s, f/5.0, 21mm

Boy, its hard to put them out for public scrutiny. It helps getting positive feedback. Now its my turn to offer comments on others. I find that difficult also!