For pictures

When I got home from work today, there was nobody else in the house. Nobody. I can't remember that last time that's happened. It's been at least since Thanksgiving. I thought it would be nice to have the house to myself. I turned on the tv and was watching a 1965 vintage vampire movie. The acting was lame. The script was lame. I asked myself why I was watching it and didn't have a good answer, so I went out to take some pictures.

When I went out into the desert yesterday, it was to enjoy some relaxing peace and quiet. I didn't get any notable pictures. Well, maybe I never do. But today I wanted to at least try to get some good pictures. Since I didn't want to have to rely too much on skill, I went to a place where just about any tourist can get a decent picture.

The Goldfield Mountains always seem to look nice.

Yes, that's the Salt River.

Remember me blabbering a few days ago (at least let me finish my sentence before you nod so vigorously) about how saguaros in a location seem to share some characteristics? Several along the Salt River have something unnatural in common. I let you figure out what it is.

Lots of people fish along here. There's a well-worn path and lots of beer cans and bottles.

Some of these look worse than saguaros along the road. I guess it's easier to shoot a saguaro if you aren't in a moving car.

I found a nice spot to get pictures of the river and mountains.

I can't decide if I like this one or not

Oops, got a power line.

Thin clouds toned down the sunshine a little

Click below to see all of the pictures (I got some lions!).

2009_10_09

Back to the desert, at last

It's been a while since I've been able to go for a hike. I was involved in a week long fire drill at work, which included the weekend. Things are about back to normal, except that I'm still trying to remember exactly what I was doing before the interruption.

It was really annoying that I didn't have time to get outside. It's been really cool lately; high's in the 80's. I think it was in the 70's when I parked near Canyon Lake late this afternoon. The air was calm, and it was very, very quiet. If I stirred up a bird as I walked along, it slipped away as quietly as it could.

I think I'll climb that mountain on the right this weekend.

I went to a place I had been a few weeks ago to get some pictures of Canyon Lake. I didn't climb the same hill, though, and I didn't have a view of the lake this time. I was on a nice cliff edge that had a wonderful light breeze blowing up it.

I had a view of the Superstition Mountains.

Little Bunny Foo-Foo made an appearance.

It was a very relaxing and refreshing hike. Just what I needed. As I drove back towards town, I came upon 3 deer on the side of the road. At least two of them were bucks. Their antlers were surprisingly big, and still had the felt on them. I didn't think they would hang around for pictures if I stopped, so I didn't even try.

Click below for all of the pictures.

2009_10_08

A cloudy day

We had some storms on Sunday. It rained pretty hard around noon, with some hail thrown in. There were a lot of pretty clouds around, so I spent the afternoon driving around taking pictures of them. I had to drive around so I could get different foregrounds for the clouds. Also, I was trying to get pictures of the snow on Four Peaks, but the clouds never lifted from there.

If you follow the blog, you'll see some places you recognize, but they'll have clouds for a change.

2009_02_08

Guess where ...

Yep, Bulldog Canyon. This morning I was looking at some pictures from yesterday and it looked like it would be easy to get up on a ridge to the northeast. Well, I just proved that you can't tell how hard it will be to go somewhere from so far away. I didn't get on top of the ridge, but my legs were tired from yesterday. Maybe I could have done it if I'd been fresh. I was standing there looking across a ravine and thinking "I should have gone that way", but I was too tired to do it.

I sat at the base of a cliff taking pictures for several minutes. During that time, my GPS data logger seems to have wandered around by itself. Suzanne said that maybe one of the hawks took it for a ride. The trip statistics say that my average speed was 8 kph and my maximum speed was 5 kph. I don't know how that's possible. Maybe because I was moving so much when I wasn't moving. Also, my minimum altitude was 91 meters below sea level. Blub, blub. Maybe being next to a cliff in a canyon blocked most of the GPS satellite signals.

I used to have the data logger set up to log my position every 6 seconds. I bumped it up to 10 seconds and that seemed to double how long the battery should last. I was thinking that might be because it doesn't write to EEPROM as often, but maybe it's because it shuts down the receiver for longer logging intervals and doesn't get as good of a fix when it comes back on. Anyway, I set it back to 6 seconds and we'll see how it does on my next adventure.

BC_2008_11_16

A pretty day

It was much cooler today than it has been for a while. It only got up the the mid 70's or so. There were no lines when I went to vote, so when I got home I decided to go for a short ride. I went out to the Broadway trailhead and took a few pictures of the mountains and clouds. I wasn't planning to make HDRI's, but I reviewed some of the pictures I took and with the bright clouds and mountains in shadows, HDRI was the only way to go. Here are a couple of examples showing the best plain vanilla picture and the HDRI of the same view.

From 2008_11_04

From 2008_11_04

From 2008_11_04

From 2008_11_04

Here's what most of the pictures turned out like. Yuck.

From 2008_11_04

A desert stroll

For the past 2 or 3 years, the air was looking noticeably more polluted than it did when I first moved out here (which was only 5.5 years ago). There were times I wouldn't go hiking because the air looked too bad to get any good pictures. I started to think it might be bad for my lungs, too. Either that or the cold I had was taking months to completely go away. This past summer, though, it's looked clearer than it has for a long time. I read in the paper that it's because of the economic slowdown. Construction in the valley has dropped off almost to nothing, and it must be construction that stirs up most of the dust. Without all the construction, we can see a lot better. So as we head into the worst recession since the seventies, at least we have a better view of the mountains now. Gosh, when will I ever get to have my cake and eat it, too?

It was a pretty day and I didn't have anything else (much) that I had to do, and I was missing the quiet of the desert, so I went out to the middle of Bulldog Canyon. It was very nice. No mosquitoes or little green bugs; just the usual flies and gnats. (I thumped a few flies.) The sun sets pretty early these days, so I didn't wander far or take many pictures.

Lately when I hike, I carry both cameras with me. They each have features that I like, or capabilities that the other doesn't have. I don't want to be out on a trail and wish I had the camera I didn't have so I could get a picture that I couldn't without it. It's that cake thing again, but in this case I can have them both. I just look like a dork. Oh, well, there's usually nobody there to see me, and I don't give a hoot anyway. But I digress. Back to the cameras. There have been times (usually just before sunset) when I just didn't like the way the pictures I took of the mountains with my S3 IS looked. Here's an example:

From BC_2008_10_17

I wasn't thinking about comparing results, so these pictures aren't of exactly the same thing, but they're pretty close. Here's the picture taken by the Rebel:

From BC_2008_10_17

I think it looks a LOT better. The bright spots aren't washed out, and in general the color is much better. The main reason I got the Rebel was so I could get better landscape pictures. Looks like that will pan out.

I made a couple of HDRIs. This first one is an example of trying to make a picture look good that just shouldn't be taken in the first place. It just turns out looking bizarre.

From BC_2008_10_17

The moral of the picture is that HDRI cannot make everything look good or interesting.

Speaking of interesting, I was talking about small particulate matter in the valley atmosphere a little while ago, which is not interesting but I used to take pictures of it. It's called the "brown cloud". I haven't seen it much this summer. I did see it today, though, as it blew north over Fountain Hills. Here's the best plain vanilla picture I could get of it with my best (depending on what you want to do) camera.

From BC_2008_10_17

Here is an HDRI of the same view. It isn't black on the bottom and white on the top. It's still a bad picture, but it shows what I wanted to show and you can see other stuff (like, uh, power lines...), too.

From BC_2008_10_17

OK, maybe that wasn't very interesting, but the tarantula was. It was not moving (I think it might have been hoping I hadn't seen it). I was wondering what a tarantula feels like, so I was moving my finger very slowly towards it. I was thinking that maybe I should be making a video and I wish I had, because it hissed at me. At least I think it did. A gnat was buzzing in my left ear at the time so it was hard to hear. Anyway, it started walking away and I did not touch it. I don't think it's a good idea to touch things that hiss at you. Cats taught me that at a tender age. And that reminds me of an article I read the other day that said that until they are in their late teens, people do not learn from negative experiences. Based on personal experience, I find that hard to believe, though it would explain why there are so many videos on YouTube of teenagers grinding down hand rails and then smashing their faces on concrete, even though their previous 20 attempts resulted in numerous small abrasions, contusions, and torn clothes. But, once again, I digress. It's the beer (not the cake). Click below to see all of the pictures, unless you can't stand tarantulas, in which case you'll just have to wonder what you are missing.

BC_2008_10_17

Almost...

I tried to get to the top of another ridge in Bulldog Canyon this afternoon. I came to some cliffs that I couldn't get past, though. Still, it was fun and the scenery was spectacular, as usual.

As soon as I got out of the truck I knew why I had to be there. It was silent. No cars, no air conditioners, no planes (though a few flew over later), to TVs, no dogs barking, no dogs barking, no dogs barking. I don't like barking dogs. There were not any out there. None.

There were a lot of birds hanging around the puddles from last weeks storms. I also managed to get some pictures of a lizard, the first with my new camera. I don't have a telephoto lens yet, so the lizards run away before I get close enough. Except for this one.

There were a few puffy little clouds around when I got out there. Of course, I had to include them in the pictures. Here is a picture exposed for the mountains. The clouds look washed out.

Here it is exposed for the clouds. The mountains are dark.

Here's a pseudo HDR image produced from a single RAW image file.

It looks pretty good, though I have noticed something about the HDR images that is annoying (but I'm not going to tell you what).

I also saw a few mushrooms (they're springing up all over town after the rain). I'll have to work on most of the pictures tomorrow. Click below to see a few of them for now.

BC_2008_09_01

A short stroll at the end of Idaho road

Suzanne was out running errands today and called to let me know that the clouds looked beautiful. So I drove out to the (north) end of Idaho Road to get some pictures. There were some nice clouds. I was not going to do any HDR pictures. I didn't even carry the tripod. I was afraid the clouds wouldn't look good, though, so I did take some exposure bracketed pictures. Fortunately, Photomatix is pretty good at correcting for camera movement between exposures. See if you can tell which pictures are HDR and which ones aren't.

Idaho_2008_08_30

The end of Meridian Road

I've been really lazy lately. Once excuse I'm using is that I don't like hiking if I can't take pictures, and I can't take pictures unless I have someplace to download them. My hard drive is *full*. I ordered another one. It should be here in a couple of days. In the mean time, I made room to squeeze a few more pictures on the old drive.

Since I can't stand being away from the desert for too long, I went out to the end of Meridian road late today. I was just going to wander around a little, but I wound up climbing a hill to try to get sunset pictures. The last time I was on that hill was in winter. The sun sets further south then. Today it set behind some some other hills. No good sunset pictures. It was quite a struggle getting up there before the sun set, too. Here's a picture I snapped from the hill I was on, looking down at the hill I should have been on. I was in the shade; it's in the sun.

Here's the sun disappearing behind some hills just as I got down to that other hill top.

Then some fighter jets flew over in a loose formation. Here's a bad picture of them.

At least that didn't take up much disk space. Here are all of the pictures. Nothing spectacular tonight.

Meridian_2008_08_17

Clouds

We watched Beowulf this afternoon. While we were watching it, I noticed that it would get dark outside every now and then. Clouds. Maybe there was a storm building. Turns out that they were, but they were up around Flagstaff. We just had puffy little clouds here. They were pretty.

I drove out Meridian road a little ways to get some pictures of the clouds (without houses in the way). Got some pictures of a hanging fruit cholla flower, too. While I was taking pictures of the flower, I wondered if I could make movies in super macro mode. I made a very short movie of the flower, thinking I might get the ant crawling on it. Well, it turns out that I can make movies in super macro mode. It also turns out that there were a lot of ants behind that flower that I hadn't seen, and some of them can move very fast. If you look close, you will see them zipping around. There are some moving slowly, some moving fast, and one or two moving very very fast.

Click below to see the pictures.

Clouds_2008_07_26

A slightly cooler day

Yesterday it was very windy. There was a lot of dust in the air as a result. Today there was only a light breeze. I guess the wind had blown some of the pollution away, because the air was very clear. I hiked up to a ridge in Bulldog Canyon. It was very quiet. Not as many bees buzzing around, though I did smell some very sweet flowers now and then.

I saw some lesser nighthawks up on the ridge. They seem to make their nests on the ground. They would fly 20 feet or so and then flop around on the ground as if they were injured. I figured their nest was near by and they were trying to draw me away from it. I tried to make a video of them but they didn't flop around any more. You can hear them making some of their peculiar noises, though. Then, when I was about to stop the camera, coyotes started howling down at the base of the ridge. They were loud enough to get recorded. Anyway, it's late and I'm tired so I'm not going to get the video uploaded tonight. I also have a lot of picture processing to do. I'm trying out some software that I'm thinking about buying. Anyway here are a couple of pictures for now.

BC_2008_06_05

Atempts at a self portrait

I've been lazy lately. And don't say, "Lately?". I didn't hike all weekend because it was "too hot". It barely got to 100. By this afternoon I was determined to get outside, even if it was hot. It was only about 93 by the time I parked the truck, though.

I went out to Bulldog Canyon. When I was just about to the place I was going to park, I spotted a large lizard up ahead, furiously doing push ups. I decided I had better take a couple of pictures through the windshield in case opening the door scared him away. It was in a pretty shady spot, and he was doing push ups pretty fast, so the pictures are blurred. Of course, he did run off when I opened the door.

There's a pretty, rocky mountain ridge where I parked. I was tempted to take a picture, but I have hundreds of pictures of it. I decided to just go sit on it. When I got up there, I decided to take some pictures of myself sitting there not taking picture. I set up the intervalometer to take a picture every minute. The first one is when I started it.

Then I got in the picture. When I use the timer to get pictures of myself, I usually don't have time to get in position. These are a minute apart, so I didn't know when the camera was going to take a picture.

I tried counting to 60 and posing at the right time. My eyes were drying out. ...64, 65, 66, what the heck, I gotta blink.

I was almost ready for this one. I forgot about this being the pair of jeans that are really worn out.

I can't count to 60 with these gnats distracting me.

Speaking of gnats, there's one in my nose now!

Working at avoiding dehydration results in other situations. Actually I'm just enjoying the scenery.

Then I got a phone call.

There are lots of sharp things in the desert. Seconds before this picture was taken, a humming bird was hovering in front of me, looking like it was trying to decide if I was a big, ugly flower. I wish it had hung around for a few more seconds.

43, 44, what's that over there? 56, elebenty 23, huh? where was I? CLICK.

I think that was the last picture. CLICK.

It's just darn difficult to get pictures of some people. Even if any of these had turned out OK, it was too late in the day and everything but the sky is red. Oh, well, I'll try again some day.