Postcard from a Dream

It is in a dream…the perfect place to find peace and contentment. It is a lake high in the mountains in autumn…still warm enough to sit outside and read…quiet except for the birds. The sights and sounds tempt us to just sit and stare at the absolute beauty of this place.

In the dream, when the sun begins to set, it’s time head into the cabin to light a warm fire and watch the sun set through the window. It has been the perfect day of peace and solitude…time to gather one’s thoughts and ponder moving forward.

It is a dream, but real enough to want it for a short time. No one can stay here long, but we all dream of that perfect place to rest our body and spirit…to revive our hopes, then move forward to the next step of life’s journey.

It is just a dream.

Postcard from Tucson

Yes, this is Tucson…the very east side of town actually. The photo was taken at Saguaro National Park, Eastside (There is also a West version of the park, not far from where I live) about one year ago.

The mountains in the background are the Santa Catalina’s, obviously the day after a snow storm. You can make out portions of the east side of the city in the background. To the right of this photo (where you can’t see) are the Rincon Mountains. This portion of Saguaro NP is up against those mountains. As I may have mentioned before, Tucson is nearly surrounded by mountains, even though most of the city is in the flatlands.

I still find it interesting that one can photograph a Saguaro cactus in the desert and still have snow in the photo. Actually, it’s rare, but Tucson has been known to get some snow. It is a great place to live for so many reason and I am very glad to be here…especially in the Spring. Stay tuned for the first photos of desert wildflowers…it won’t be long now.

Postcard from Long Canyon

Sometimes I wonder at my luck at arriving in the right place at the right time, with camera in hand. More often, it is the wrong time of day, wrong light, wrong sky, wrong everything. But, in my journey through Long Canyon I got lucky. A rain storm had just ended, the clouds were breaking up, and the light was almost perfect.

I’ve written about Long Canyon before…but to refresh your memory, it is along the Burr Trail, which is off of Highway 12 in Utah. I believe I have already shown you some of my better pictures from here, but I thought I would put another one on-line.

This is a gorgeous canyon, off of the beaten track, but still easy to get to. There is a plethora of photo opportunities along its 6 mile trek. I just got lucky that day with everything being right… and thank God for that.

Postcard from Oak Creek Canyon

Every day I pray to God
To turn my mind into a serenity-flower,
My heart into a purity-flower
And my life into a simplicity-flower.

Happiness means
The serenity
Of the mind.

Where is Heaven,
If not in the serenity of the mind,
Purity of the heart
And simplicity of the life?

Sri Chinmoy

Postcard from Olympic National Park

This is another of those peaceful places I found in my travels. It is the lower portion of Bunch Falls…located at the southern most entrance to Olympic National Park, on the rain forest side of the park. You get to it by driving past Quinault Lake and staying on the dirt road heading east. It is right at the entrance sign to the park.

I got lucky this day as it did not rain…which is saying something as this portion of Washington gets about 140-170 inches of rain per year. It is a true rain forest, but all that water keeps the forest green and the falls and creeks flowing. One can really appreciate a beautiful place like this on a day without precipitation as they are few and far between.

There are many peaceful places to be discovered at this beautiful national park, especially on the western side. But check the weather forecast before you go so the rain doesn’t interrupt those special moments of tranquility.

Postcard from Glacier – The Adams Grove

In the spirit of my last blog tribute to Ansel Adams, I thought I would share this black and white photo I took a couple of years ago in Glacier National Park. I knew when I took it I had seen some similar photos done by the master many years previous. I saw two of those similar photos last week at the Ansel Adams exhibit.

This is my attempt to at something similar, not only in subject and composition, but also in the final approach to making the print…contrasts, sharpness and use of his Zone System. As I said, his influence is always with me.

Postcard from Tucson – Ansel Adams

I spent Thursday afternoon at the Tucson Museum of Art enjoying a large print exhibition Ansel Adams photography. The prints, from a private collection and are all original prints done by the master in his darkroom. The exhibition covered the gamut of his work from Yosemite and other national parks to oceanscapes, photos of San Francisco, portraits and close-ups in nature. Some works I had never seen before.

He was a master of the black and white negative and print. Much of his life’s work is housed at the Center for Creative Photography here on the campus of the University of Arizona. But these prints were not from there.

I’ve known about Ansel Adams most of my life…mainly because we tread many of the same paths. He lived and loved San Francisco as did I. He became a master photographer in Yosemite National Park, where I spent much of my youth. We both visited and photographed many of the same places in the West, not because I was trying to copy him, but because we shared a love of the same country.

He was my inspiration during my early days of photography, both with a camera and in the darkroom. I make no claim to being a master photographer as he was, but if I have any decent qualities about my work, it is due in large part to him.

If you’ve read this blog for any length of time, you know I love black and white photography. Adams wrote many books on the subject and created the Zone System. Believe it or not, black and white photography is much harder than color, even in the digital darkroom. So, seeing his work again the other day was a reminder of how great he was and how is work will endure as long as there are photographers. Personally, he is the baseline in which I measure my own skills in black and white prints.

You know this blog is mostly about me, my photography and paintings, and my travels. But today, I make way for a real master of the art form and show you one of his beautiful prints of Half Dome.

Postcard from Canyonlands – Peace by a Lake

Sometimes, with luck, peaceful places can be found in grand settings. Last blog, I showed you a very small place inside Zion where it just seemed so peaceful. But I found that same feeling of peace on the shores of this lake set deep inside red rock country.

It was getting towards late afternoon when I found this lake. It was right near the one and only road into the Needles section of Canyonlands National Park. It was late November, long after the tourist season ended, but before the first winter snow storms. There was no one on the road but me.

I stopped to photograph the scene, but quickly realized the quiet beauty of this place. I stopped to take it all in and think about where I was, what I was doing and why I was here. I was traveling then, with no home address, sleeping in my van, and seeing all new sites every day. I was discovering new places and learning new things about myself. My new life was before me, the future was unknown, and I was at peace.

Postcard from Zion – Peaceful Places

When traveling in nature’s realm, I look for places that reflects peace…by that I mean a quiet little corner where I can sit alone and feel absolutely at peace with the world…a momentary slice of paradise.

Here is a quiet nook I found in Zion National Park. Many places that I find peaceful often have a stream flowing through them. This one has the additional benefit of beautiful contrasting colors not often found in one tiny locale.

It is nice to be able to sit in a place like this and let your mind wander…to get away from all the craziness of normal life to find some measure of inner peace, even if only briefly. Life is for learning and peaceful places like this let you reflect on what you have learned without knowing you are doing so.

Postcard from Zion – A Slightly Off-Color Slot Canyon

One of the popular features of the American Southwest are slot canyons. These often very narrow canyons are a source for hikers, explorers, and photographers.

By definition, courtesy of Wikipedia, “a slot canyon is a narrow canyon, formed by the wear of water rushing through rock. A slot canyon is significantly deeper than it is wide. Some slot canyons can measure less than 3 ft across at the top but drop more than 100 ft to the floor of the canyon. Most slot canyons are formed in sandstone and limestone rock.”

The slot canyon shown here was photographed from up on high. Sadly, I could not find a safe way down to explore it, so I had to settle for this single photograph. But, of course, I could not leave well enough alone. As I am want to do, I played around in Photoshop to see where I could take it. I ended up working with some bizarre colorings. These colors, while false, are only weird enhancements of the original colors.

The result is a strangely likable image that borders on an abstract painting. I think that is what I like about it the most…one is not quite sure what one is looking at. But that is the fun of it…stretching the mind in both creation and observation. Enjoy…I hope!

Postcard from Tucson – The Macro

Now, we move into the very extreme close-up, where the subjects are bigger than life. Its called a macro. In this photo, I got as close as is possible with a normal lens, although one can get even closer with a special macro lens.

While I don’t have one of these for my digital camera yet, I did own one for my film cameras. In this shot, I moved in as close as I could with my zoom lens, first taking the focus to its closest point, then moving the camera until the flower was in focus. Although I did this without a tripod, one is strongly recommended. Like the close-up in the last blog, the depth of field here is almost next to nothing, so precise focusing is critical.

The real joy of a macro photograph is an enlarged print. When you do this, the flower and the bee become bigger than life, thereby grabbing the attention of the viewer. The is no foreground or background to worry about…the subject is all that counts.

There is an exciting new feature in Photoshop that allows you to first take a series of pictures with your camera, changing the focus ever so slightly each time. The Photoshop will take all the images and combine them into one image so that everything is in focus. I haven’t tried it yet, but will do so one of these days. To take all these images requires a tripod, and absolute control over exposure and color temperature. But the results I have seen are amazing.

I hope you have enjoyed this mini-series on capturing your images from the widest angle to the tiniest flower and bee. We started with a wide field view of Bryce canyon and worked our way down to a honeybee in a flower. The purpose of this exercise was to get your eyes and mind working toward looking at a scene as a whole, then narrowing you vision down and down and down until you find the part of the scene that makes the most artistic sense.

Actually, I could get even tighter with my images, showing you the molecular structure of the bee’s knees, but someone would have to lend me their scanning electron microscope.