Canyonlands day 3

After doing all of the short trails, we decided to take the trail out into the Needles to Chesler Park. The trail is a 6 mile round trip over slickrock, through stream beds and generally going through a broad selection of them possible terrain in the area.

The trail starts at the base of Elephant hill and goes up a bit before leveling out for a while.



This is the view from the rock ledge where we ate lunch.



It took a while to find a place where we could sit and eat. The problem was the cyanobiotic crust. Stepping on it damages the crust and it take decades to repair itself. You can see it at the bottom of the photo of the park area. It kinda looks like a blackish crust.



Still, the hike was well worth it. The view once you cross into the park is of a green oasis in the middle of the red sand desert.

After we spent about an hour eating and walking bout we headed back. This is the last part of the climb out of Elephant creek. It is a steep ascent, but not overly difficult. Although I would recommend a hiking staff to help with balance and bracing.



The next section was what is called the Wedge. It's a narrow crack in the ridge about 3' at the narrowist and maybe 20-30' high. It was really easy to pass through and was actually one of the most fun places on the trail. For me.

One of the things that made this hike so interesting was that you got views like this after passing through the ridges. A new ridge meant a new and different view.



There was one other spot where the trail narrowed. The trail passed through a short narrow spot in a rock. It was so narrow I had to turn sideways to fit through.



The next two are examples of the scenery along the trail.





And finally, our last evening. I've already showed out the view from our campsite to the west. Here is the view to the east and a fond fair well, at least until the next trip :)

Day 2 Needles Unit

Both Sal and I can't believe that it took us so long to visit here. I can guarantee that we won't wait so long for a return trip. If you want to know more about Canyonlands I suggest that you try to site at www.nps.gov as a starting point.

Now, first there are a couple of warnings. First, it's a desert folks. There is NO water. Bring lots and Drink it! Second, the best stuff in the park requires hiking...in the desert...where it is rocky...and there is NO water, or cell phone coverage either. So come prepared.

So after stopping at the visitor center and asking the nice folks there about the park, we decided to start by taking all of the short hikes. In the Needles there are four. I'll describe them in the order in which we did them.

First was roadside ruin. It's probably the shortest and easiest of the hikes. The map said it was about .3 of a mile. But it seemed shorter. It's a good introduction to the area and you get a chance to see local plants (helpfully labeled in many cases) and some of the wildlife.



The trail takes you into a shallow wash and to a small ruin. The ruin is Puebloan and is a granary. It's also pretty much the only ruin that you can see without a long hike.



The second hike was Cave spring. The hike is .6 of a mile. Here you get to see an actual cowboy line camp. For you non-westerners, a line camp was a semi permanent camp or cabin that was used when the hands were out on the far edges of a ranch and needed a place to base camp while dealing with the cattle. In this case the line camp was placed under an overhang of rock near a small spring. From what I recall from the sign, the camp was in use from the 1890's until the 1960's.



The next thing that you get to see is a series of petroglyphs. There was no information on them. But here they are.



The rest of the loop continues up and out of the canyon onto the slickrock and then back into the canyon.

After lunch we took the longest of the 4 trails. Slickrock is a 2.4 mile loop. The recommended time is 2 hours. It will take that long. Hiking on the slickrock is like hiking on lava. It looks smooth from a distance but isn't. For those taking the hike, keep an eye out for Desert bighorn sheep as they are known to frequent his area. Although your chances to see one are slim at best.

This shot should give you an small idea of what the slickrock is like. And this is a smooth stretch :)



The final short trail is Pothole point. The trail is .6 of a mile. The best part of this isn't the views...



But the chance to see things like the Fairy shrimp.



Fairy shrimp are a species that lives breeds and dies during the rainy season. They live in vernal ponds (or in this case potholes in the rock). It was pretty cool getting to see one and to see the other small red shrimp and the snails.

The last place that we stopped was Newspaper rock. Its not in the park but on BLM land on the road leading to the park. I'll just let the photo show you one small part.



And on a final note, here is what the sunset looked like from our campsite.



And a look at the stars as well :)

Day 1

Today is a travel day. It's about 13 hours (without stops). So, of couse we had to stop. The only major stop was Monument valley. Its definitely a must stop and see on any trip through this area.



We even met a little friend while eating lunch in the parking lot of the visitors center.



We finally arrived in Canyonlands late in the afternoon. Only to find out that the campground was full. Fortunately there are a fair amount of options available. We decided to stay at Needles Outpost campground. If you can't get in the park this is the place to stay. it's 1 1/2 miles from the park entrance and right next to the park boundary. There are 20 sites with showers ($3 for campers, $7 for others) and a small store. The owners are good folks. Our campsite had an incredible view to the west and was up against a huge red bluff.

(insert site photo)

Thus endeth the first day :)
.

Canyonlands National Park

So, on my way to Canyonlands. This is my first trip to this particular park. Its a 13 hour trip. We're going to stop for the night in Phoenix and head in tomorrow. We expect to explore the southern unit, the Needles. The campgrounds are on a first come basis.



I don't know how often I'll be able to post since I don't expect to get much of a signal. We'll see :)

Day 44

So, I'm finally caught up. (there is no day 45 shot)

Last night I went down to the Pt. Loma Sport Fishing Docks for dinner with friends. We sat out at the rail at the Hudson Bay Seafood restaurant. The food was good. I like the crabcakes :)

While we sat there I played with the camera and was adjusting for exposure using the brow. The Auo exposure had this shot as bright as daylight. So I stopped the speed down until I got an exposure I liked.



There are 2 elements that I really like about this one. The subtle colors and shadows. And the pattern.

Now, I could crop to better accentuate the pattern. And I think that I'll try that. Just to see what happens. But not tonight :)

Day 43

I really don't like this photo. The only reason it's here is so the folks in it can download it if they want to. I really botched this one.

Day 42

Well, somewhere in here I lost about 25 photos. For the life of me I can't figure out what the hell I did with them. If I find them I'll fill in the missing days. This is days 37 to 41. Oh well.

So on to day 42.

There are 2 photos today. We were in Torrey Pines State park. I caugt a picture of the Cliffside buckwheat.



I like this one for 2 reasons. The color of the ripening head is brighter than the other buckwheat I shot. And I didn't even realize that there was a species that grew only within a few feet of the cliffs edge overlooking the ocean. So I though I'd share.

The second shot was of new growth on a Coastal Prickly Pear (Opuntia littoralis).



I like the combination of the colors, composition (it just looks right to me), and detail (the silk strand).

Day 31 and 32

Ok, so I lied in the last post. I decided to do 1 photo from each day.

Day 31. Since this was the friday open practice, we went out after for food. I caught this photo of Erik as he sat next to me.



I like the expression on his face. The color adds a certain urgency to the photo as well :) This was just playing around. So you should call this a snapshot. But hey, a good snapshot can be a photograph is you're lucky.

Day 32.

I took this shot of the dinner table. I really liked the pattern that the candles and napkins made.



I used a narrow depth of field to add to the feeling of a long table. I like this one.

Day 30-35

Well, I was shooting here. Mostly is was for our annual seminar. While I'll post photos, I don't think that I'll blog them. I was pretty busy :)

Day 29

Once more I was playing with the in camera controls for this series. For this group I was trying the Picture controls. There are 4 of them:

Standard - DSC_1729.jpg
Neutral - DSC_1730.jpg
Vivid - DSC_1731.jpg
Monochrome - DSC_1732.jpg



As you can see there are some differences :)

I think what I'll need to do is find a better subject and try this one again.

Day 28

Another shot of Buckwheat. Well, it is what's blooming at the moment. This one was taken at Torrey Pines SP.



So what is better about this one? Let's see... the background is dark. This sets the subjet apart. It also is more buckwheat. This helps establish both continuity of subject and environment. It keeps the subject grounded and isolates it, but doesn't remove it from it's habitat.

What could be better? Depth of field. This would have benefited from a bit deeper DoF and a tripod.

Still, It is an improvement over the last one.

Day 26/27

No post

Day 25

Day 25
Originally uploaded by bmorris1313

I'm trying something new. Flickr has a function to blog the photo straight to a site. So let's try it out and see what happens.


This photo was taken as a curiosity because of this jokers bad parking. I thought the ticket was funny. Although the author could have left off the comment about the car.


Man, What a bad job of html. I think I'll stick to using the blogs editor for now.

Day 24

We're in La Jolla for lunch. I'd been playing with the in camera controls and wasn't happy with the previous photos I was playing with. The Quality was set to RAW and jpeg fine. As we pulled up to a light I saw the lady at the bus stop. So I grabbed a quick shot and started to play with it in the camera.



What attracted me to this was the street quality to the situation. If I hadn't mentioned La Jolla, you could have placed this at any bus stop.

So the first setting that I played with was Monochrome. Once I changed it I saved. That gave me 2 jpegs of the scene. Then I tried the crop. Especially since there was a lot of extraneous crap around the edges. As I went through the setting I found that I could do only use 3 settings: 4/3, 5/4, 3/2. I chose 5/4ths. I tried to crop vertical but there is no setting for that. It would be a useful thing to have I think.

Still, it really is pretty usefull to be able to do corrections and basic editing right in the camera.

Day 23

So, I got hungry and decided to get a snack. So I go to Wendy's to get some fries and they tell me to please pull forward. Guess what I see?



As I sat around waiting I decided to try a bit more gritty look that I'm used to. So I used the 5 minutes to play with various settings and took a bunch of exposures. I wanted a darker more saturated feel to this one. So I dropped down the ISO and aperture until I had several exposures that looked adequate in the camera. One I got a chance to look at them in Lightroom I chose this one. I think I at least captured some of the feel I was looking for.

Day 22

Right now we're at the tail end of the blooming of our local Bottlebrush trees. We also have quite a large hive of honeybees around here as well. For the past couple of months the bees have been really going after the pollen from these trees. You can hear the buzzing and it's pretty loud.

Since most of the blossoms have fallen. I decided to try to get a macro of a bee on the flower.



The problem with this is...

I wasn't using a tripod.
The bees were moving quick.
The focus kept going for the outer edges of the flowers while the bees were down inside.
I had the depth of field too shallow.

So the lessons are...

Use a tripod (duh)
Patience
Watch the focus and use manual if necessary
Watch the depth of field
Use a ladder

Day 21

I've finally got more than 2 days in a row. Its going to be busy this weekend so I'll try to put up a couple of posts tonight.

The photo today is of ripening buckwheat. Or at least that's what I remember this as.



This was taken in Mission Trails park. At the moment there are thousands of these plants going from white to golden brown. The first few attempts were to try to get the feel of the broad swaths of color and texture these plants show. Unfortunately I didn't get it. So I tried to do the next step. It goes something like this (in my brain anyway :) ):

"What is it about this that attracted my attention? Was it the color? Form? Pattern? Light? The image is too busy. Simplify. I like the golden brown. Maybe just a head?"

And that was it. I chimped a few to check composition and exposure and then shot around what I thought was a good setting. As it turned out it kinda captured what was the simplest image.

I also like the brown over the green background.

Is it great...no. But it is adequate. And I do like it.

Day 20

Missed.

But on the bright side I did get 3 posts in tonight.

Day 19

I tried once again to get a shot of a white flower.



I can't seem to figure out how to get a decent shot of something white. I'm going to have to try to find some techniques that work eventually. Maybe buy a flowering plant as a prop would help.

Day 17/18

Once again we get to skip another day. I won't go into details on these. It'll take up too much time and sound like an excuse.

Day 18.

I was walking the dog when these 2 flew up out of the grass.



I guess I caught them making little butterflies. While it isn't much of a shot. It was the closest I could get to these 2 without using a long lens. And I didn't want to disturb them more than we already had.

I did crop this one down to better show the butterflies.