Postcard from Zion

This is one of the few photos of Autumn colors that I was able to capture in Zion’s high country. The reason…most of Autumn was finished up high. The real Autumn colors you’ve seen before from my last trip were from down in the Zion Canyon itself.

I titled this photo, “In the Crevice.” Sadly, it is hard to determine how narrow this crevice actually is as you can’t see the rest of the mountains. Trust me…when seen as a whole, this crevice is very small…and as you might determine, these trees are very tall.

But for me, the joy of this photo is the colors…and the survival of the yellow tree in such a small place. I found a few places in Zion where trees were growing under the most adverse conditions. But, as I heard somewhere once in a movie, life always finds a way.

(To see a larger version of this photo, just click on the image)

To see more of my work, both in photography and digital painting, please visit my website, www.corkrum.com.

If you subscribe to this blog by e-mail and wish to purchase a print or send a free e-mail greeting card using this image, click this link to the main Postcard Blog Site. Don’t forget, e-mail greeting cards are free.

Postcard from Southeastern Utah

This is an arch in the making. If we come back in several thousand years, or longer, it will be completed…and if we wait even longer, it will be gone…collapsed into ruble by gravity and the forces of nature. Its like most all things in nature…they are born, they live, they die….they just take a little longer than humans.

But for now, it is just a lovely alcove carved into a huge rock by combinations of water, wind, and hot and cold temperatures. High above the alcove you will most likely find sinkholes, holding rainwater. Eventually, those holes will deepen and break through the back of the alcove…then let the real arch begin to form!

The alcove’s beautiful shape and layers are enhanced by the black desert varnish (aka “rock varnish” and “desert patina”). You find this material in many locations in the Southwest. It is mostly composed of clay, which arrives by wind. Clay, then, acts as a substrate to catch additional substances that chemically react together when the rock reaches high temperatures in the desert sun. Wetting by dew is also an important part of the process.

I photographed this alcove inside Long Canyon, along the Burr Trail, off of Highway 12 in Utah. In the past, you have seen other images from Long Canyon…one of Utah’s most beautiful spots. It is one of my favorite places in the state and hope I can get back there again…especially just after a rainstorm, which is when I photographed here. Enjoy.

(To see a larger version of this photo, just click on the image)

To see more of my work, both in photography and digital painting, please visit my website, www.corkrum.com.

If you subscribe to this blog by e-mail and wish to purchase a print or send a free e-mail greeting card using this image, click this link to the main Postcard Blog Site. Don’t forget, e-mail greeting cards are free.

Postcard from my iPad

 

This may be the most boring, inartistic photo of mine ever published. And I apologize for that…but this is the first photograph ever taken with my new iPad (aka iPad 3). It is completely unretouched…no Photoshop, Lightroom, iPhoto, or any other software was used here. It went from my iPod to this blog (via Flickr).

If you read my Rants and Raves tech blog yesterday, you know the full story of how I wound up at my local Apple Store on Sunday and surprise myself by buying this remarkable tablet. The highlight is its amazing Retina display…2048x1536. It has a million more pixels than an HDTV so its resolution is stunning. So, if you think the quality of this photo is good, it is even more amazing when seen on the iPad.

Included with the tablet is a 5 megapixel camera with advanced optics, auto white balance, image stabilization and more. Now, it is definitely weird to hold a tablet up to take a photograph…and I probably won’t do it very often…but as with all new toys, I had to try it out. I was surprised by the full range of light that I was able to capture here…from the blue sky with white clouds all the way to shadows with great clarity across the board.

By the way, the photo is of the swimming pool area in my apartment complex in Tucson. The fellow in the picture is trying to retrieve his basketball which you see floating in the pool. Happens a lot here as the basketball court is off to the left of the photo.

But wait, there’s more! The new iPad will take 1080P movies as well…and I did shoot a short 12 second movie of the pool’s waterfall which was pretty good, once I moved my finger away from the lens. Still learning here.

I don’t mean for this blog to be a commercial for Apple, but I love this new iPad and all that it does. I doubt you will be seeing any more photos taken with it, but from now on, I bet you will see more and more people using one as a camera. I’ve seen a few already, one of which was during my last photo trip to Zion in November.

A new trick I learned just today, is I can automatically transmit all future photos from the iPad directly to my desktop computer via Apple’s iCloud…even though I use a Windows PC. Now, I can’t do all the other things that Apple computer and iPhone users can do with the iCloud…wish I could. Microsoft really needs to get with the program here.

(To see a larger version of this photo, just click on the image)

To see more of my work, both in photography and digital painting, please visit my website, www.corkrum.com.

If you subscribe to this blog by e-mail and wish to purchase a print or send a free e-mail greeting card using this image, click this link to the main Postcard Blog Site. Don’t forget, e-mail greeting cards are free.

Postcard from Alba

I did this digital engraving from a photograph I took a few years ago in the charming medieval town of Alba…located in the Piedmont region of Northern Italy. If you look on a map, you will find it located about an hour south of the major city of Torino (Turin). This area is known for its white truffles, peaches, and most especially, its fine wines. I know because I have downed many a glass of their fine reds (squisito!).

The city is an old one, dating back before the rise of the Roman empire. During the days of the empire, the city was known as Alba Pompeia. Although most of the Roman ruins are gone, you can find a few here and there. 

Back in medieval times, Alba was once known as the “city with a hundred towers.” Some are still left. This image shows one side of the Piazza Duomo (known as a “Portici” in Italian). On the other side of the piazza is the Alba Cathedral of San Lorenzo, which was built in the 12th century and has been “remodeled” several times over the centuries. In Italian, Duomo means dome, hence the name of the piazza.

I love simple scenes like this one, and one of my favorite all-time art forms is wood engravings. Very simply, an image is carved by the artist on special type of wood, then used to make a print. Almost all engravings are printed in black and white, but there have been a handful done in color.

Is been fun for me to try and recreate the art form digitally, and this image is one of my very few successes. But I will keep plugging away.

(To see a larger version of this photo, just click on the image)

To see more of my work, both in photography and digital painting, please visit my website, www.corkrum.com.

If you subscribe to this blog by e-mail and wish to purchase a print or send a free e-mail greeting card using this image, click this link to the main Postcard Blog Site. Don’t forget, e-mail greeting cards are free.

Postcard from Highway 12

As Highway 12 climbed higher and higher toward Boulder Mountain, I left the September summer behind and entered Autumn. The first aspens were just beginning to turn, but the the higher I ascended, the more the colors grew in intensity…until I reached the summit when most of the trees had achieved their full Autumn glory. It was a very special and unexpected sight.

Soon, I would start back down again toward Capitol Reef National Park, and summer would return. But, on that highway, I saw the fall season begin, then peak, then disappear until a later date, all in one morning.

Highway 12 in Utah is one of the most beautiful byways in America, as I have documented here before. I did this digital painting in an impressionist style to show the light and the colors up on Boulder Mountain that early September day. I do so much like to experiment with digital paints using different techniques...and the original photo seemed so right for a painting.

(To see a larger version of this photo, just click on the image)

To see more of my work, both in photography and digital painting, please visit my website, www.corkrum.com.

If you subscribe to this blog by e-mail and wish to purchase a print or send a free e-mail greeting card using this image, click this link to the main Postcard Blog Site. Don’t forget, e-mail greeting cards are free.

Postcard from Tucson

I am just back from the the annual Tucson Book Festival. It is arguably my favorite event in Tucson. Too bad it only happens once a year. This was the 4th year and it is now in the top 3 book festivals in the US. This year, well over 450 published authors, such as J.A. Jance, Elmore Leonard, T. Jefferson Parker and many more, came here for the two day celebration of books of all types…from mysteries to history…from thrillers to cookbooks, all genres were represented.

As you can see, there were a boatload of tents all over the University of Arizona Mall where you can purchase books, attend seminars, eat lunch, meet authors, get your books autographed, and visit many other publishing-related vendors. The photo above shows you just some of tents outside…there are many more off to the right.

For me, the best part of the festival are the author talks and workshops that occur in classrooms, auditoriums and tents on the U of A campus. There are hundreds of them, but sadly you can only do five a day as they are held in the same time slots. When the lists come out, I spend hours going over them and narrowing down the ones I want to see…then finally make my final selections. Sadly there are always two or three events held at the same time and I have to make a hard choice. As always, I carry the list on my smartphone so I knew where to go for each event.

One of the other fun things, at least for me, is discovering new authors. While researching events, I look up their names in Amazon and Wikipedia to see what kind of books they write. This year, I made many new discoveries and have started reading their books. It always makes the book better after you have attended an interview or panel discussion with the author.

The events I attended had such diverse titles as, “Nasty Nazis, “Queen Elizabeth I and her World,” “Books in High Gear,”and “The O.K. Corral Gunfight and the Alamo in History and Legend,” just to name a few.

Like last year, C-Span 2 was also here showing live book talks on both Saturday and Sunday. I attended two of those and got on camera as I was one of the questioners during the discussion of the OK Corral. I hope I sounded intelligent.

In such a short space as this, it is difficult to explain how much I love this festival. If you are an avid reader such as me, look for a festival like this somewhere near you.  Or next year, plan to come down to Tucson and see this one.  By the way, the weather was perfect, in the mid 70’s.

Postcard from the Oregon Coast

I mentioned in a previous blog that I am in the middle of a major Website update…and it is going quite well. One of the benefits of doing that is discovering photos that have been overlooked. What you see here is one of those photos.

I took this image in June of 2007, and although it was on my hard drive and cataloged in Lightroom, I never did anything with it…in fact I pretty much ignored the whole catalog from that shoot. How great it was to find it.

Another thing I found in redoing my site was I had never posted any photos from the Oregon Coast. Of course, that was immediately rectified and now you can see some of my best photos from those various expeditions. There are also some other new galleries on the site, and of course new photos in older galleries that have not been posted before. More on that in future editions.

I was lucky on this 2007 expedition to get this photo. It was taken in Ecola State Park near Cannon Beach, OR...one of my favorite spots on the fabulous Oregon Coast. I know we have fabulous sunsets here in Arizona, and you have seen a few of them over the years. But, a good sunset photo on an ocean beach is worth its weight in gold. I am so happy to have “rediscovered” this work.

Sadly, it may be quite a while before I see the Oregon Coast again, if ever, But I have great memories of trips down Highway 101, all the way from Astoria to the California border. I remember one trip that took almost four days…the last day being Super Bowl Sunday…driving in the rain, trying to find a radio station so I could listen to the game. I finally got a hotel room in Gold Beach and watched the 4th quarter there. I don’t know why that memory sticks in my head…probably because it is the only Super Bowl I nearly missed.

But, I do know that I have more pictures squirreled away on hard drives and backup CD’s that I will get to one day and post on my Web site…so stay tuned.

(To see a larger version of this photo, just click on the image)

To see more of my work, both in photography and digital painting, please visit my website, www.corkrum.com.

If you subscribe to this blog by e-mail and wish to purchase a print or send a free e-mail greeting card using this image, click this link to the main Postcard Blog Site. Don’t forget, e-mail greeting cards are free.

Postcard from Yosemite

I’ve been fortunate in the last few years to visit Yosemite in May, especially in those years when they had record-setting snowfalls during the preceding winter. Of course that means a lovely green Springtime with full waterfalls, streams and rivers.

Such was the case in the Spring of 2007 when I took this photo. This is Bridalveil Creek, which flows directly from the famous and beautiful Bridalveil Falls. This section of the creek is just below the falls. I love how the light plays on the moss on the trees and how full the creek is. Even if you’ve never been here, I think you can feel how fast the creek is flowing.

This picture was taken along the trail that goes from the parking area to the falls. That year, I never got near the falls as there was so much mist created by the massive amounts of water pounding the rocks at the bottom of the falls. One would have been drenched in seconds. Not a great idea for someone with expensive camera equipment.

I’ve also been in Yosemite in late Autumn, when the rivers are low and many famous waterfalls don’t even exist…Yosemite Falls for instance. But Bridalveil never seems to dry up, although I have seen it pretty low.

I’ve been working hard of late posting new photos on my Web site. The current galleries have now been updated with new photos…and I have a few more new galleries to add.  This particular photo has only gone up in the last few days as well as other photos from Yosemite being seen for the first time. I hope you will stop by and take a look at the Yosemite photos as well as the other galleries.

(To see a larger version of this photo, just click on the image)

To see more of my work, both in photography and digital painting, please visit my website, www.corkrum.com.

If you subscribe to this blog by e-mail and wish to purchase a print or send a free e-mail greeting card using this image, click this link to the main Postcard Blog Site. Don’t forget, e-mail greeting cards are free.

Postcard from Port Townsend

In my last blog, I wrote about that moment of creation when an artist completes a work that he knows is exactly right. Well, just like the special image of Chicago in the last blog, the same can be said of this work. It is a photo I took a few years ago while spending part of a day in Port Townsend, WA.

Such a lovely town on the Northeast corner of the Olympic Peninsula, across the Puget Sound from the cities and countryside just north of Seattle. At first, I thought this unique structure might be a bed-and-breakfast. But I could find no mention of it anywhere, so it may just be a private residence.

But it made for a lovely photograph…or so I thought until I looked at it on my computer during post processing. It had some nice artistic qualities to it, but it just sort of laid there, if you know what I mean. So I did nothing to it for a couple of years…occasionally looking at it and trying some things, but none very successful.

Finally I realized there was just not enough color to make it interesting and the light left something to be desired. So, I converted it to black and white, then started using some of my other Photoshop plug-ins to enhance the sharpness while still giving it a bit of a sketch quality. Again, when I got it right, I knew it immediately. But, like most of my work, I let it sit for a while, occasionally going back and taking a look to see if I still liked it.

Well I did…and still do. In fact it is hanging on the wall opposite from where I write this blog. It is one of the “chosen few” photos that adorn the walls of my home. Maybe that is the ultimate proof of whether or not I really love one of my works.

And speaking of Port Townsend, you can view all my six of my best photos from that charming little city at my Website. In fact, I have been working on a major revision of my site for some time now. A long ways to go, but several of the revised and updated photo galleries are now on-line and I invite you to pay a visit. Several new works have been added and more are on their way. 

(To see a larger version of this photo, just click on the image)

To see more of my work, both in photography and digital painting, please visit my website, www.corkrum.com.