Granary Camp

Let's see a show of hands... Who among you wants to be sitting in front of this view from a remote camp on the Colorado Plateau?

I've got good news... You are!

It's such good news, that I feel like sharing it twice.  Remember?  This is what it looked like yesterday evening.

Colour Shift at the National Memorial Arch

Still culling works out of the Valley Forge trip.  It was an amazing day!  We only spent about five hours there, but I walked away with a huge library of images. Of course, when you're out shooting with someone who isn't another photographer, you should at least choose someone with patients.

This is the National Memorial Arch at Valley Forge Park.  It was erected to commemorate the founding of the park.  The park itself is dedicated to the commemoration of the efforts and suffering of anyone who has had to fight to stay alive in Philadelphia. Well, OK, the park does mention a very specific group of people who used this area as a camping spot and had a miserable time.  Camping is now prohibited and most folks seem to have a pleasant enough visit.  Anyway, this arch occupies a prominent spot at the top of a hill.  There isn't much of a view, as I might define it, so getting a clean background and composing a solid story is problematic.  Luckily, there isn't any shortage of historic material covering the events that took place here, so I could go about making pretty pictures.

Great Green Wetland Preserve

It is very difficult for me to stay on a path.  The easier the path is to walk on the sooner I'm likely to veer in another direction.  This is probably some very telling detail into my personality, but it's also a plainly stated truth.  By contrast, the more difficult the path, the more likely I am to watch my footing and not look around at everything else.  The "undeveloped trail" I was ambling along here was better than most forest roads in my current state of residence.  When I spotted this submerged area, it was a flash of yellow/green light way off the trail and through a bunch of weeds.  It was also deep in the cover, where there wasn't a breath of wind to disturb the surface of the water.  The sun was going in & out of cloud cover, so, I just had to wait and swat mosquitos until it came back out and gave this great highlight again.  If you're wondering about the title, there were little flags around this area denoting "wetland preserve" status.  It's already inside a National Park, so I guess now it's double protected.

What Happens Above Moab

Oops... had the post ready to go, but the publish time was incorrect!  Stupid AM/PM setting... 

After thirty six hours of incredibly strong wind, everything calmed down and cleared out for our last night at camp.  I happily set up to shoot some stars and drain a battery.  In this photograph you're looking due East toward the LaSal Mountains from our camp high above the Moab Fault.  In the foreground is the city of Moab, UT glowing white on the left and the thin yellow glow on the right is from the potash mining operation.  The heavy concentration of star trails from the middle to the top is an arm of the Milky Way.  There was still a lot of dust hanging in the air (see the red sky in yesterday's post) and the light pollution was just enough to give the sky a slight orange colour cast.  During my test shots, I kept adjusting the white balance until the city lights went white (Tungsten A6) and that's why the sky appears green instead of blue.  Before the colour correction, the horizon was an indiscernible scribble along the base of the photo, but afterward you can now clearly see the snow line on the distant peaks and a little separation in the foreground hills.
That's enough geeking out for a Friday.  Here's hoping you can find a neat spot this weekend to stare through the troposphere.  Cheers!

Ominous Decoder

A tremendous wind started during the night and by dawn everyone had scattered from camp auspiciously seeking refuge.  Without any hope my party loaded the Jeep and descended the rim toward the fault, committed to check any turn, as every promise is often better than the truth.  As is the case with truth, so it is with the wind; pervasive, invasive & tenacious.

Here is a place easy to find, along a path long stolen from the wild.  Travelled by a removed and indolent population buzzing along seemingly content to remain unaware.  Some will linger here to mark a box on a list, some to claim connection, others, like myself, are knowingly lost.  Back into the storm we drove, past the tenement camps and diorama shelters of a people who believe they understand nature because they have stood near a marquee exclaiming it's power and beauty.  My own people, whose language, I have struggled to learn that we may speak as friends.

I suppose there is a story to be read on this rock.  If you are imaginative and slightly literate in a visual way the rock is no more than a billboard.  Mostly, that is, except for this detail.  Here I feel as though I am a stranger, invasive, this was not meant for me and the spirits on the wind have turned the sky red that I may not feel welcome.
My own language tells of a truth that glows in the stone, screams with the wind.  The spirits of the land demand that we learn to understand now in the face of an uncertain future.

Another sort of Twinpod

These twinpods were everywhere at one of our recent camps on the Colorado Plateau.  We arrived at the end of the seasonal bloom so most of the plants only had the seedpods.  This one, however, has both flowers and pods!  It was growing very close to the access road I was using and I nearly parked right on top of it.  Sometimes you just get lucky.  Normally, I try to give the full common name and the Latin name, but I have to use a guide to identify this sort of stuff and it wasn't very helpful.  Botany wasn't an elective at my art school, either, so I'm kind of stuck.  Chime in with a comment if you have any ideas.

The Banks of the Poudre

This lovely photograph was taken a couple of weeks ago on an early morning and early spring stroll at Sterling Natural Area in Fort Collins.  The Poudre River forms the Western Boundary of the Natural Area, more or less, and to get this shot I stood ankle deep in the gloppy river sediment.  On top of the embankment in the right of the photo I found the remains of a mature fox, obviously eaten, several days later there were reports of a mountain lion in the area.  Better the fox than the school kids, I guess.  Well, none of that is depicted here, you get to enjoy the calm reflective beauty of a river as it flows into spring.

Storming Through Valley Forge

Out for a walk in Valley Forge NP with my mom, we didn't get twenty steps from the car before this squall opened on us.  You can see from the lighting on the grass throughout the photo how the rain came in heavy waves.  The areas of lighter grass are also areas of lighter rain activity!  How cool is that?  Thankfully, my mom carries a huge umbrella and was able to shelter us both while I made this photo.  If she had a standard or compact umbrella she would have gotten totally soaked.  I'm willing to bet everyone is tired of the rain photos on this blog, but hang in there everybody, the sun will probably come out tomorrow.
It's the first Monday of the month and that means it's also wallpaper day! The above photograph can be downloaded here, sized 2530x1600 so it'll fit anything you want it to, enjoy.  I'm willing to bet everyone is tired of the rain photos on this blog, but hang in there everybody, the sun will probably come out tomorrow.

The Pig & The Millstone

The blog will be quiet for the next few days, so I wanted to give you all something meaty to chew on while I'm away.  Typically I shy away from verbalizing these kind of arguments, but you're a quiet and contemplative audience, so I think you can handle it.  If you, too, are traveling someplace this long holiday weekend, I hope it's someplace nice and you have a safe and pleasant time.

The Pig & The Millstone... Abundance and Work... what can we take from this?  A large fattened pig sculpture placed near a worn granite millstone.

The path leads to the millstone (work), a cul-de-sac of toil.  Progress (hapiness) is obviously not the purpose of the path, the option is the circle or the way back (regression).  All the while observed by a lucid fattened sow (abundance).

I am torn, in my own interpretation of the nature of abundance.  Does she look on in mockery or promise?   Is it possible that her presence is more permanent than her meaning?

For our own answers, we must first ask, "Why the hell am I on this path, anyway?"

Droplets in Green

Droplets in Green, a photo by McF Studios on Flickr.

Seems like it's been raining for a weeks. Probably because it has been raining for weeks. After months of winter tan, we're seeing the glowing green of spring. In some places it seems to be glowing, and a walk through a green light bath is very theraputic for me.

City Whitetail

City Whitetail, a photo by McF Studios on Flickr.

PALETTE CLEANSER!!!!!!! (Wait… "Palette" refers to the slab I mix my paints on, and "Palate" refers to the roof of my mouth and sense of taste. Hmm...? I'm sticking with the painter's tool.)

Just a Whitetail in a National Park. One more inhabitant of the city. But this spot is a bit more hidden and you'll have to get wet and muddy to find it. Just my kind of place!

The Philly Frenetic

When I was a kid, I made a list of places I should live.  Places one could make great works of art full of nobility, meaning, and permanence.  It only occurs to me now, years after my departure, that the city of my childhood was never on that list.  That place was only ever a launch pad, the beginning.  Those who know me, regard my comments about Philly as a certain disdain.  Not so, I'd argue, my career is a path, Philly is where it began.

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  The center of Broad Street at the intersection of Walnut.  Three blocks from the college I attended, one block from my old apartment, fifteen years in the past, congested and wet.  There was a romance to the city at one time.  It's horn-song and vocal polyphony swooning the young pie-eyed artist with the lure and con of history as culture.  A temporary condition, horrible, but necessary and I would soon feel compelled to leave the confining city streets in favour of more verdant destinations.  Photos of which are forthcoming... THANKFULLY!

Alpine Lake Reflection

What a strange week.  Makes me want to sit here a second and consider where I am.  Lakeside, on a morning that might bring an end to the rain.  Big banks of clouds were still looming all around.  I set up for a much bigger reflection in anticipation of alpenglow on the background.   However, the clouds that snuck past in the night were still making their presence known.

{Drat!}

When that sunbeam hit the wall in the middle ground, I floated my camera about an inch above the lake to make this composition.  One of my favourite things about this is its asymmetry.  I think it tells a more true story with something missing.  Maybe I'm having a Dorian Gray moment.

Hope you all get out someplace pleasant this weekend.

Evening Ducks in Motion

Mine are the wild ones,

Unaware of what they are,

Ignorant of shame and fear.

Moving ahead always lost

from the path, our footfalls

deliberate and wary.

Harrumbph

Everyone I've met, no matter how jaded, has a talisman of some fancy.  This is one of mine.

In 1996, while sweating away in a foundry, I made this figure to embellish my chasing station.  It was welded to my bench & stared while I worked.  One day my boss came around and said "you'll never get anywhere doing your best work on someone else's ideas."  When that job came to an end, I took this statuette with me.  It's sitting on the edge of a bookshelf today, staring at me still.

Flashing the Bell

Every idea should be acted upon and considered later.  Following this logic I got up very early and went out into the cold morning in a down coat, gloves and hat.  Had the full kit of camera stuff, including three flashes.  Got right to playing and ended up making two hundred exposures before the sun made it to this spot.  I really wanted that specularity in this composition, so much I wan't paying any attention to how warm it was getting.  But that's what stopped me!  I was sweating in the now very warm morning, and the red faced joggers were looking at ME like I was the silly one.

So anyway, those little yellow flowers dotted throughout this photograph are more Physsaria belli.  Kind of hard to see (they're really tiny) but I was more interested in artfully recording the habitat.  There's a closeup here.

The Big Cement Pier at OB

When I get bored, I go for a walk.  When I'm a city, I get bored quickly so I see a lot of a places, sometimes more than once.  Most of the time popular places like this fill up with people, so I'll wander off and see what the restaurants are like. Earlier in the day I watched a a huge flock of cormorants attack a bait ball in the rain.  Eventually the rain stopped and the crowds came back.  If you ever find yourself on this pier looking for an easy exit go straight to the pizzeria/brewery.  If you have several draughts of "Junk in the Trunkel Dunkel" you'll need to walk around bit afterward, so head back to the pier, it should be nearing sunset, which is when tourists get hungry.  This photo was made about twenty minutes afterward.  I rested the camera on the railing which was painted and sticky with fish guts, gull poop, and salt air.  I washed my hands, but no the camera.

Polarizing Play

Polarizing Play, a photo by McF Studios on Flickr.

I began this photograph in the fall of 2009 and have tried various ways of producing it, but couldn't get it right without a lot of heavy manipulation. When I made the source exposures I was having fun with my polarizer (hence the title), but later couldn't bring it all together in the studio with that sense of platonic realism I strive toward. While I was working on the recent panoramic HDRs something occured to me to try on this. I think it came out very nice, showing the various levels at which the objects exist while celebrating their luminance. Not bad for a couple of rocks stuck in the mud.

A Stump to Fish By

A Stump to Fish By, a photo by McF Studios on Flickr.

Exploring a local park, I found this scene. The little stump seems to mimic the shape of what I imagine is placed there most often. The rebar and cement blocks are typical of our cities "natural areas", very telltale of the reclaimation efforts.

Safer in the Water

Safer in the Water, a photo by McF Studios on Flickr.

That's San Diego, CA from the pacific ocean. I loved being out in the monotone blue, and that's as close as I ever want to be to a city.

Fog in the Park

Fog in the Park, a photo by McF Studios on Flickr.

I understand the irony of complaining about an "endless winter" then posting shots of winter during these fantastic spring days. Couldn't be helped, though, this one was next.
On a foggy winter morning, I made my way through commuting undergrads to City Park in Fort Collins, CO. After shooting the compositions I had planned, I crunched around the frozen snow for a while. The great golden light and contrasting blue shadows were very intriguiging. Something mysterious may have been happening just over there...

West from Trinidad

West from Trinidad, originally uploaded by McF Studios.

If you've spent time in the high desert you've no doubt seen rain fall from clouds without touching the ground.  It was happening all day in evey direction!  By the time evening rolled through, however, the clouds, with their strange behaviour, all but disappeared.  Oh well, if I could make or predict the weather, I wouldn't have to earn a living anymore.

Leucocrinum montanum

Sorry the blog's late today.  I spent the last two days cooped up in the studio dealing with an over-stuffed and disorganized image library.  After briefly contemplating deleting the whole thing and starting over, I settled on going out and making more images this morning.  Please accept this bouquet of Sand Lilies, beautiful native wildflowers, as an offer of my gratitude that any of you come around here at all.

Physsaria bellii

Bell's twinpod (Physsaria bellii) is endemic to certain limestone and shale ridges in Larimer, Boulder and Jefferson counties in Colorado, USA.  It's just begun to bloom, the characteristic seed pods will be along soon enough.

Blue Hour Composition

Let's start the week off with a calm moment.

This photograph was made during the blue hour before dawn in a hard blowing wind.  In the presence of all that turbulence the surface of the water was chaotic and this pattern of rocks was lost in the texture.  But a good long patient exposure of five seconds was enough to clarify the moment.  Maybe this is a lesson that can be applied somewhere else.

For the first time on this blog, I'm making an image available as a free wallpaper.  Maybe I will do this on a regularly scheduled basis.  The above photograph can be downloaded here, sized 2530x1600 so it'll fit anything you want it to, enjoy.

Crayolapaho

I shot this with a dead battery.  Lithium batteries are temperamental.  Next time you have a battery die in the cold, put it in your jacket or under your hat, and leave it there as long as you can.  If it's charge is not completely exhausted, you may be able to salvage enough juice to shoot a few more.
After all the toneless gray I've endured the last few days, I wasn't ready to drive home  so I ambled around in the fading light.  Fifteen minutes later, I pulled the battery from it's sauna and was able to make three more images.  YAY!
Then I went home and had some soup for supper.  Happy Friday to all!

Armageddon at Arapaho Bend

After four days of solid grey skies, a small tear in the cloud blanket ran along the Northern Front Range, just enough to shift my inertia.  Hastily, I grabbed the camera, already mounted to the tripod, and sprinted down to Arapaho Bend Natural Area.  When I parked the whole area was awash in sunshine.  Being a hedonist, I just stood there enjoying the warmth.  The tear was soon sewn shut, again, of course, but a little sun poked through itching to play and neither of us could resist those clouds!  I took a few seconds to level everything out and strated shooting for another large pano.   By the third set my bettery was dead, first time that's ever happened, to me.  Guess I should have grabbed the camera bag too!

The Bridge at Riverbend Ponds Natural Area

This image is viewable at close to it's native resolution for those of you with a veritable surplus of time for art viewing.  Click here for the redirect, the viewer has it's own controls for navigation.  Enjoy!

I like the idea of large panoramic photographs, though they seem a bit impractical.  This photo is roughly 80 megapixels and 500MB, on paper it would measure to 78 inches long at 18 inches high.  I captured 240 exposures, of which I used 168, then compiled and tonemapped those down to 24 (7-stop brackets) to create this 180 degree view.  That may seem like overkill but I used art school math and Kentucky windage to hedge my bets.  Processing all those photos and stitching them all together was quite the experience as well.  If you experienced the lights dimming or sudden black-outs in your neighborhood, it's probably my fault.  Anyway, I think it turned out very pretty and strange.  This wooziness I'm feeling is most likely the result of number cruntching with an artist's brain.  Time to get some fresh air, perhaps I'll go for a walk.  Maybe you'd like to do the same?

Standing On The

Sometimes you have to ignore the facts.  Maybe you are standing on a poorly made floating deck on a manmade lake that smells of dead carp next to a colourless suburban cul-de-sac under skies that won't rain across from trees that won't bloom enduring a winter that just won't end.  Or maybe you are beginning a voyage on a rickety little raft you made from the debris of mankind pushed out into the green water of nowhere as the clouds compile their disdain.

Madame, I'm Death

An example of the pitch tubes that have become the all-to-grim calling card of Dendroctonus ponderosae. Much of North America is affected by this infestation, and great swaths of forest are filled with dead trees.  But the forests were dying anyway, and the beetles are just as opportunistic as any greedy human industry or corporation.  At least, this is as natural an act as could have happened.  When I cautiously walk in the ravaged forest, I am grateful to have known it's company, to have shared it's life and death.  I hope to share it's rebirth and know it anew.

Wind, Stars & Sandthrax

On the last night of an eight day camp in central Utah, I got the camera out to celebrate the only cloud free and windless night of the trip.  I'm pretty tough on my gear, but 70 knot guts of sand are a bit outside my tolerance.  Photography was (at most) a tertiary purpose for the trip, so the wind wasn't a huge problem, just an inconvience.  As a precaution, I used the little hook on the bottom of my tripod to set a guy rope on a sand stake as an anchor and then stood very anxiously by with a large trash bag in case the wind storms that plagued us returned.  My nerves could only handle the hour and a half it took to collect these images.
Greater background illumination via half moon in the west, full tree illumination was arranged by a gigantic campfire.  The shapes of the cottonwoods silhouetted against the sky piqued my initial interest, but in the end the warm orange light against the blue sky was too much to resist.

Away

When I was in art school, I had a several instructors that were not affraid of breaking or cutting your work apart.  This was a valuable lesson to me.  Often those professors would hand the severed piece back to the student with the quote "this part is very good, do more like this and less like that".  What I took from this, was if the idea you are chasing doesn't manifest, you may have to abandon it in favour of something better.  In this case, I was chasing that huge moon, but clouds and serious wind weren't going to let me catch that idea.  This combined with my frenetic response to shooting with other people around gave the night a very charged ambiance. After a couple of test shots, this idea popped in my head.  {single exposure, ISO200, f/8, 30sec - if you can barely see the red-orange in the lower frame your screen is too dark, if you cannot see thin line of the spinning windmill it may be too bright, about midway seems just right on my screen}

Along the Salt Lick

The persistent, prevalent overcast skies are punctuating my productivity!  Hiking in Red Mountain Open Space, Larimer County, Colorado.

Foot Bridge to the Moon

Scouting for the Perigee, I saw the little bugger rising at what I thought was about 45 minutes early!  Grrr...  Glad I was in a good spot to take advantage.

Middle Ground Past

Before emabarking on an epic journey for objects of foreground interest, our intrepid, though spastic, correspondant noted something curious along the Eastern border of Norther Larimer County.  Further investigation may one day yeild the Anasazigiptian connection.  Until then, we are all condemed to wonder what the hell I'm talking about.

Prairie Perigee

Doing the best I could, where I was, with what was there.  The tremendous amount of light and pollution gives this perigee moonrise the appearance of a  dark and gloomy sunrise.  Not exactly the image I was chasing, but an interesting result nonetheless.
{shot note: the little red lights at the base of this windmill are from a scourge of prairie herpes infecting unprotected tracts of land around the globe}

An Hour in the Eye

Typical of late winter in Northern Colorado, we started this day off with sunny warm skies and by the time we finished our three hour loop hike the sun gave way to the wind that brought the rain that became snow.  I love being outside!
It's difficult to know exactly why I choose certain compositions.  Maybe one interesting detail, maybe the larger view.  The prominent elliptical lines here are certainly important.  It wasn't until later, after much staring, that I could see the eye.  What eye?  The Eye of Horus... Ancient Egyptian sky god, baby!  How cool is that?
Obtuse heiroglyphic halucinations and peculiar weather patterns not withstanding, when I see a view like this, my eye scans for the farthest little bush and my legs begin to twitch toward the horizon.

Goofing with the Gander

It looks like these two are pretending to be Osprey.  I do that, sometimes.  You might see me circling the tripod in a widening gyre, arms extended, happily floating on imaginary thermals.
Do Osprey do that, circles and such?
Whatever.  Someday's I'd pretend I was a city pidgeon just to not be earth bound.  Next time, maybe, I'm going to pretend to be a goose pretending to be an Osprey.  Ought to be good for a midday laugh... Wonder where I'll go?

The Sardine Fleet

Spooky clouds roll through the docks, as a lone photographer skitters among the crabs.

Box Canyon Pool

Here be the last photograph from my recent trip to Ouray, CO.  Box Canyon Falls is a local tourist attraction, but it's free during winter, which fits my budget.  One cloudy afternoon, I was chasing an abstract composition along the lower box canyon trellises.  Deliberately moving slowly because ahead of me was a group of folks playing with cameras, too.  While I waited for them to do whatever they were taking so long to do, I noticed all of the colour in this grotto at the bottom of the falls.  Normally I use a tripod to manage my pace while working, this day I was gifted with the forced patience that comes from understanding that mountains (and tourists) move in a geologic and glacial timeframe.  This canyon sees very little direct sunlight in the winter, but that frozen fill flash is just enough to bring some detail out of the shadows.  I'm also a sucker for that wonderful turquoise against grey.

The Irony of Winter Sun

Blue Mesa Reservoir is Colorado's largest body of water and the largest Kokanee Salmon fishery in the United States.  I've always been curious how places get their names.  To my mind there ought to be a "Blue Mesa" close by, maybe there is and I just haven't found it.  Maybe it's from the abundance of blue light in the area, certainly a striking feature.  I almost drove through this area without stopping because of the huge exposure range.  Then I started to think of it as a challenge.
Standing on the hillside in a full wind attarcted to the quality of blue in the water, I started shooting for the ice and wave patterns, but kept looking up to the hill in the background.  So, I shivered left and right until finding this large textured ice in the foreground thinking it might balance the larger scene.  The square format is an anomaly around here, to be sure.  But this composition had to be shot telephoto to maintain the compression, which meant two exposures to maintain the foreground.  There's something added by that compositing scheme which allows the photo to be considered in several parts as well as the whole.  My eye yo-yos up & down when I look at this, much like when I was standing there.

Gem of the Rockies

Ouray Colorado under a mostly clear night sky.  Took about a half an hour to figure out how to make this shot happen.  I have seen a lot of photos from this overlook, but none that really captures that special feeling of winter in a mountain town.  I know there are a lot of hotels here, but it still seems like someone has left a light on for me while I was away.  How many light sources can you count?

Featured!

Today's featured image on the NewWest.net website is from my recent ice colour studies!  Check it out, here.

Confluence

Several ideas are coming together, but art making can have a timeline similar to geologic events.  It's a long, slow, grinding, pressured force, until the catastrophic moment of fractured release.  I know that doesn't really tell you much, but if you look at the image, you'll know as much as I do.

Tree Lights

Trees near the Fort Collins Public Lirbary.  I don't often shoot at super high ISOs, but I was in a playful mood and curious.  In order to hand hold this, I had to push up to ISO6400, f1.4 and that gave me 1/60th of a second.  Doubt it's going to be a go to setting, but in the right composition may yeild interesting results.

Color Study Tryptic: Shift, Pebbles, Veins

Taking advantage of the frozen conditions, I broke a "non-Photographic" rule and ventured out on the ice to make photographs of the awesome colour and texture happening in the the extended civil-twilight as the sun rose behind high thin clouds.

Even though I was a little dissapointed with the lackluster sunrise.  This progression of colour across the ice was fantastic and gave my creativity a boost for the day.

Happy Friday!

Edge of the Bend

The sun rose into high thin clouds providing very diffuse light.  I took this as an opportuniy to play with shape and colour.

Ponderance Place

These little benches dot the shoreline of Arapaho Bend Natural Area.  They are so small that, only one person can sit on them at any one time.  For me, it's always a choice of using it for my camera bag, or as a subject.