About half way up the mountain, a refreshing breeze started blowing. Then it blew harder. Then it almost blew me over. I looked behind me and there was a small shower in the distance. It sure was generating a lot of wind. I was concerned about it sending some lightening my way. On a mountain is not a good place to be during a thunderstorm so I headed back down. Here's a video I made when the wind started. It's kind of noisy because of the wind.
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| Storm_2008 |
Here's the video of walking up to Calico Tanks.
I spent as much time as I could at Red Rock Canyon. It's at an altitude of over 3000 feet, which made it 10 or 15 degrees cooler than Las Vegas. Still, the time I could spend there was limited by how much heat I could take. When it's in the upper 90's and you can't get out of the sun, it's hot.
The first day out there, I hiked the Calico Tanks trail. It goes up the Calico Hills to a tinaja near the top of the hills. The rock there is formed from sand dunes that had piled sand over half a mile deep. It reminded me of Zion National Park, and it turns out that Calico Hills and Zion were formed from the same huge dune field.
Here's a video made as I walked along a narrow ledge to get around the tinaja. I really wanted to get to the other side and I thought this was the only way. I wanted a video in case I fell. Normally I wouldn't walk along a ledge like that, but there were other hikers around. I figured they could call for help (I had a cell signal up there) and my body would be out of the hills before Suzanne knew I was dead. Sorry about all the popping noises. I don't know what does that, but I've got to find out and stop it.
As I was standing on a cliff above the tinaja, a large bird landed on a ledge near by. I thought it was a red tailed hawk at the time, but I looked it up in our bird book and it's a peregrine falcon. Here's a video of the falcon getting a drink of water. Sorry it shakes so much. I was zoomed in all the way and couldn't stand still. Maybe I was still shaking from the stroll along the narrow ledge.
Sometimes (well, probably most of the time for me), pictures can't show things in perspective or how they look in relation to each other or how big or small things are. That's why I made a video walking up to the tinaja from the southeast (you approach from the northwest on the hike).
Oops, that video is broken. I've been having a lot of trouble with Google videos lately. OK, I guess I'll go on to videos I made at the Bellagio on our last morning there. The first is a cool fountain at the Conservatory.
There are several G-gauge trains set up there. Here's one.
This is a model of the Bellagio with a fountain in front.
I'm still having a lot of trouble with my video uploads. Until I get that figured out, here are the pictures.
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| Vegas_2008 |
I put a few pictures on my web album. Don't have time to get into an descriptions or explanations right now. The place I was hiking (Red Rock Canyon) is about 10 to 15 degrees cooler than Las Vegas, but it still felt pretty warm. Well, it's been around 110 in Vegas.
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| Vegas_Prev |
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| BC_2008_06 |
I have a small tripod that I use for self portraits on hikes. It takes up very little room in my backpack and weighs almost nothing. I really need a full size tripod for the Photomatix pictures, though. My full size tripod is light, but I don't think it will fit in the backpack. At this time of year, I have to have a water bottle in one hand. If I have a tripod in the other hand, I won't be able to swat at gnats (or bees). Such a dilemma.
I put captions on most of the pictures, so I'm not going to talk about them here.
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| BC_2008_06 |
I was looking for something to climb that I hadn't climbed before and found a peak that looked like a possibility. It has a "gentle" slope on one side and shear cliffs on another. I was able to drive pretty close to it, but had to park at the cliff end and hike to the other end to start climbing. It wasn't a long climb; about 570 feet. The view from the top was better than I had hoped, though. Unfortunately, it looks like some of my sweat had dripped onto the polarizing filter, so a lot of the pictures are messed up. I didn't notice it until I got home.
As I was walking around on top, taking pictures and enjoying the view and the breeze, there was a bee that kept buzzing around me. They frequently do that when I'm hiking and I used to just ignore them. I read recently, though, that before they attack, killer bees will bump a person as a warning. So I was watching this bee. It didn't seem to be bumping me. It just buzzed around and around. Once, it quit buzzing and I found it on my shirt. I decided to try to ignore it, though. I was walking back and forth getting pictures when I thought my sleeve felt funny and I brushed it. I felt a lump. I was thinking that was odd and wondering if it was a piece of a paloverde I had brushed past on the way up when I realized that I couldn't hear the bee buzzing. Ack! There's a bee in my shirt! I tried to get it out before it stung, but it was too late. When they sting, they release chemicals into the air that signal other bees to attack. I watched and listened nervously for more bees as I got my knife out to scrape the stinger off (if you grab them with your fingers, you will squeeze more of the bee venom into your skin). I had also read recently that many people who die as a result of bee attacks in Arizona, do so as a result of running off a cliff or something like that. Well, I was right next to a killer cliff. Even if I tried to run down the way I came up, it was steep. If I didn't go down exactly the way I came up, I would probably be stopped by another cliff. Well, the story has a happy ending; I didn't fall to my death. No more bees showed up. Whew!
I tried to make a couple of videos looking over the cliff. I couldn't get close enough to the edge, though. Nobody can make fun of me until they go up there and make a better video, though.
That's going to have to be all for now. It's late and I'm tired. I'll put the pictures up tomorrow.
There have been many times when I've stood looking at a scene and knew that my camera could not possibly come close to capturing what I was seeing. The eye has a much wider dynamic range of operation than a camera, as if each "pixel" seen by your eye was represented by 32 bit word for each color, but the camera only has 8 bit words. In a picture, some areas may be too bright and washed out. For example, instead of seeing the clouds in a picture, the sky will just be solid white. On the other end, instead of seeing what is in a shadow, a picture may just have a black area. You can take a picture that will show the clouds, but everything else will be too dark. You can take a picture to show what's in the shadows, but everything else will be too bright. You can't have both.
Until now. There's something called High Dynamic Range Images (HDRI), which combines pictures made at different exposures so that the entire range of brightness can be in one picture. Well, sort of. One reason cameras don't capture a wide dynamic range is because monitors cannot display a wide range, and you can't print a wide range. So after the software combines images with different exposures, it then has to "compress" the range so it can be displayed. The user can adjust parameters to get the desired effect.
The software I've been trying out is called Photomatix. Since I haven't paid for it, it puts a watermark on the pictures it produces. In some of the pictures I've used it on, I can't decide if I like the originals or the modified pictures. Maybe that's because I'm not very good at modifying them. The first picture on which I tried it seemed impressive. Here's the picture the camera would normally give you:
And here's what I got with the default settings in Photomatix:
If you look at all the pictures in that album (the final result comes from combining data from 3 pictures), you can see that none produced by the camera show near as much as the one from Photomatix.
My results with landscape photography have not been nearly as impressive, but I think that's because the conditions haven't been quite right (or wrong) to make Photomatix useful. As soon as I produce a stunning picture that I couldn't have gotten any other way, I'll buy Photomatix.
When I was up on the ridge yesterday, a couple of lesser nighthawks (aka goatsuckers) kept flying in front of me and then flopping around as if they were injured. They must have been trying to lure me away from their nest (but I never saw it). Anyway, I tried to make a video of their antics. They never flopped around after I got the camera out, though. You can hear their strange monkey-like songs, though. I was about to turn the camera off when I heard coyotes howling. They were loud enough to record, so I kept the camera going. OK, so there are some interesting sounds on the video. You have to turn your PC sound up pretty high, though. I talk quietly a couple of times during the video, but it turns out it's too loud. Sorry about that. Also, there wasn't much wind, but it's kinda loud when you turn the sound up enough to hear the birds and coyotes.
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.
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| BC_2008_06 |
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.
Oh, BTW, the answer is "snake track". The wet sand was fluffed up by an ATV, and when a snake crossed it, it left a trail. You can see the faint trail near the center of the picture, going from the lower right to the upper left. I don't know if that's the direction the snake was going, though.
There were two general topics of conversation at work today. During the morning, it was the guy who apparently committed suicide by running across the freeway. He had to run back and forth several times before he succeeded. In the afternoon, people kept talking about how hot it was. It was only in the 90's. They've already forgotten what hot is. It was only about 90 while I was hiking. The gnats still weren't very bad, either.
I didn't want to do a lot of climbing today (my legs are sore from sweeping the driveway), so I decided to walk around Horseshoe Mountain and Spooky Hill. I forgot how many washes you have to go in and out of on that hike. Oh well, it was fun.
When I was almost back to the truck, I came across something that, as far as I know, is sort of unusual. The recent rain followed by an ATV spinning its tires created the perfect conditions for it. It's difficult to see, and almost invisible in the picture. I tried adjusting color and contrast to make it stand out better. Anyway, whoever can identify it wins a framed and autographed print of the picture of their choice (taken by me). Entries must be sent to my gmail address to count. Leaving a comment on this blog or my web album will result in an email being sent to my gmail address, so that will work. Contest ends at midnight (MST) Saturday, 5/31/2008. Oh, the contest photo is the last one in the web album for this blog. It's labeled "Contest photo".
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| BC_2008_05 |
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| BC_2008_05 |
I only hiked about 2 miles, with a 650 foot elevation change, but my legs are tired. They cramped a little when I started downhill, and were about to give out by the time I got back down to level ground. I guess I got out of shape with all the weird weather last week.
I tried to get some people pictures for Suzanne. As usual, though, the only person around was a sweaty old fart who won't smile for a picture.
A really great thing about the hike is that I encountered only 1 or 2 gnats the whole time. It was amazing. Maybe they drowned in all the rain last week!
Here are a couple of videos of buzzards. I couldn't tell if they were smiling or not. In the first video, you can hear an airplane. That's an airplane. It is not buzzards making airplane noises.
Here are a lot of pictures. They don't even begin to show how pretty it is out there, though, but it's the best I can do.
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| BC_2008_05 |
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| Apache_Tra |
When I started the hike, there were not many gnats bothering me. I think it was because I wasn't fragrant enough, though. After I had been out there about 45 minutes, they moved in.
It didn't seem very hot when I started out. I wondered if my thermometer could be wrong, but my camera felt hot. Then I started to wonder if there might be something wrong with me, but I started sweating and decided I was OK. I felt fine. I decided I had better not hike too far on the first hot day of the season, though.
It was a pretty day. There were lots of birds zipping around. I made a couple of panoramas. When you are taking pictures for a panorama, it's critical to get the pictures lined up correctly. It's also when the camera shrinks the image in the viewfinder by about 50%, which makes it difficult to get the pictures correctly aligned. I don't understand that. The second panorama would look a lot better than the first, except that I didn't get the pictures lined up very good. By the time I was taking those pictures, a couple of gnats had fallen in love with my ears. Made it difficult to concentrate on pictures. Anyway, only the first panorama is in the pictures. Here they are.
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| BC_2008_05 |
I kept changing my mind about where I would go. I eventually wound up at the end of Idaho road. I started to hike around the side of some mountains, but they blocked the wind and the gnats attacked. The gnats are really bad after all the rain last winter. There were hardly any gnats last summer, but it was a lot hotter then. I'd rather have heat than gnats. Boy, I really wandered off that time.
Anyway, with the clear air and slightly stormy looking clouds, I took about 116 pictures. I took most of them on the way back to the truck. I would take several of the Superstition Mountains, take a couple of steps, and decide I needed to take a few more. I was playing around with shutter speed and aperture, trying to get the clouds and virga to show up better. I put 66 of the pictures on the web album. I hope you don't get bored.
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| Idaho_2008 |
I got pictures of other stuff, too. Here's a picture of a couple of cholla cacti. There's a bird nest in the one on the right. It all looks like one cholla at first, but if you look closer you will see that the one on the left is a hanging fruit cholla and the one on the right is a teddy bear cholla. The hanging fruit is a dead giveaway, but you will also notice that the two varieties branch differently.
Now that you know how to tell them apart, which is this? There are a couple of staghorn cholla in the picture, too.
I came across something that at first I thought was fungus. Then I started to wonder if it was one of those alien pod thingies. See if you can tell what it is.
Something has been digging a lot of holes out there lately. Here's one. This is an easily accessible area, so notice the bottle shards and .22 shells all over the place.
And, finally, here are all the pictures.
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| Meridian_2 |
I saw some of the same lizards that I saw yesterday. I didn't see the collared lizard, though. I saw a zebra tailed lizard with a forked tail. I didn't know about the tail until I got home and was looking at the pictures.
I'm going to avoid that trail for a while. The trailhead is very unpleasant right now. Some moron dumped his dead dog there. I know it was dumped because it's wrapped in a blanket. There are lots of places around town to dump things that you don't want. I can't figure out why people go all the way out there to get rid of stuff. Idiots.
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| Canyon_Lak |
I played around with taking pictures with the polarizing filter on and off. It doesn't seem to affect the quality of the pictures. I'm glad. Like Skid says, it must be the combination of the polarizer and the UV filters.
I wanted to geotag the pictures, but there is no way I can figure out where I was by looking at Google Earth. It's low resolution out there and you can barely tell where the road and the creek are. Maybe I'll go out there with my GPS some time and figure out where that trail is.
I got a picture of an eastern collared lizard today. They're very pretty. It isn't a very good picture, though. Whenever I see something like that, I stop and take a picture right away, even if it's into the sun or too dark or there's something in the way or whatever. I want to get at least one picture in case whatever it is runs away. This was a very skittish and very fast lizard. I wish I had a video of it as it ran off. It looked like it was running on its back legs. Little rocks were flying. Here are the pictures.
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| 2008_05_10 |
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| BC_2008_05 |
On the way into Bulldog Canyon I pulled over to let a Hummer load of tourists by (the road is only wide enough for one vehicle most of the way). I sat there while 6 Hummers went by. That's the most tourists I've ever seen out there. Maybe it was a wedding party or something. Hope they had a good time.
I studied Google Earth this afternoon to decide where I was going to go. Well, it's hard to tell on Google Earth if you'll be able to cross a small canyon or not. More about that later. I was on my way to a long canyon that I've been meaning to explore for several years. I was getting close to it and was following a wash when it got too rough and full of plants, so I went up the side, but that was almost too steep to walk along. Anyway, I had stopped to take pictures and catch my breath (when you carry a camera, you never have to admit you're out of breath; you just stop to take a picture) when I saw that my camera batteries were almost dead. On a cold day you can get a few more pictures by warming up the batteries, but today the batteries were already warm. I didn't want to go someplace new and wonderful and not be able to take pictures. I turned off the image stabilization to save some power. I didn't know how much further I would be able to go on that difficult terrain, anyway, so I decided to wander around near where I was. That was probably a good idea. I thought I had taken more than enough water but I only had half a liter left when I got back to the truck.
As I was wandering around, I was thinking about taking a different route back to the truck. I had enough water for that, and if it didn't work out, I would be in shade as I retraced my steps. It turns out that it didn't work out. I didn't go far before I came to a small canyon (maybe 25 feet deep) with steep sides. I could probably have gotten across, but it would not be easy and what if there was a more difficult one after that? I turned back.
The scenery was beautiful where I was wandering around. The pictures don't do it justice. You just have to stand there and look around. I made a short video of looking around, but it just isn't the same. I was hoping to get the constant background hum of hundreds of honey bees, but all you can hear in the video is the breeze and my feet crunching on rocks as I turn.
And here are the pictures.
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| BC_2008_05 |
As I was driving out of Bulldog Canyon (on a different road than when I went in), I came across two groups of people (who were not associated with each other) that had campfires going. I can't imagine having a campfire in a place with so much dry vegetation. Actually, these were more like bonfires. The flames were higher than the heads of the people standing around. Why do people need huge fires when it's in the 80's? Judging by the way they were swatting, it didn't keep the gnats away. Maybe it's for the same reason they buy F250's to commute to work; masculinity issues. Truly bizarre. I tried to get pictures as I drove by, but the camera would only focus on the bugs and dirt on my windows.
On the way back to the truck, we came across a tarantula hawk that was dragging a tarantula back to its burrow. Suzanne was grossed out and had to keep walking while I stopped to take pictures and a video. Here's the video.
There are a lot of pictures of the Superstition Mountains in the pictures. Every time I looked up at them, I felt like I needed to take a picture, so I did. Here they are.
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| Superstiti |
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