More Grand Canyon (in Sepia)

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Not a lot of things to talk about today, mainly just photos of the Grand Canyon. Having already covered the Tower at Desert View, I though that today I'd post the ones that I think turned out better in sepia. This still leaves a lot of full color pictures, but I like these the best.

As always,
you can click any picture
to see a full size image.

I found myself
playing around with the shades of sepia.
What worked on one photo
didn't work on another.

I will say, we were really lucky
to have such a great sky
for our one day visit.

I'm always drawn
to bare wood against scenery.

And this
is some pretty spectacular scenery.

I didn't catch a shot,
but there were
people who had hiked out
onto this outcropping.
We thought the wind might
blow them over the edge.

One good thing about the wind,
it pushes the clouds
and makes wonderful patterns
on the ground.
I call them cloud shadows.

More bare wood
against the sky.

If you blow this one up
and look really close,
you can see the bird
soaring over the canyon.
And if you look off into the distance,
you'll see a whole other
set of cliffs.

There's wood like this
at many of the turnouts.
I have to wonder
is it natural or placed there by the staff?
Whatever, it makes for great pictures,

As the clouds thickened,
when the sun would peek through,
it was so gorgeous.
We both took tons of shots like this one.

The wind was so bad that day
(I40 was closed due to dust storms),
as the day wore on,
the canyon began to fill with dust.

That said,
the dust made for wonderful shadows.

We had a great day.

On Aging, and Again, the Grand Canyon

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Today I am 62 years old.

I remember when that seemed so old.

But now? Not so much.

I feel terrific. Alive, vibrant and supremely happy with my life, is that not the most wonderful thing? I have the life I've chosen for myself, and I have a wonderful man who loves me completely.

I guess 62 isn't so bad, at least from where I'm standing.

Okay, enough about me, on to some more pictures of the Grand Canyon.

In looking a my shots, I can't even begin to imagine how many pictures I would have taken if we had stayed longer than just a few hours!

Since I have so many pictures, I thought I'd start at the end of our trip. Don't ask why, I just will.

That will be at the Watchtower.
This was our first sighting of the Tower

This is one of my favorite places
at the Grand Canyon

Built in 1932
by Fred Harvey and the Santa Fe Railroad
it's a truly beautiful structure.

And it was designed by a woman!
Her name was Mary Elizabeth Jane Colter.

Every time I've been to the Grand Canyon
I've always visited this Tower.

It's at the eastern end of the southern rim,
but always worth the drive.

The Tower is 70 feet high.
Each floor offers a cornucopia
of art and design.

As you travel up the staircase
each floor offers
a different view of the Canyon
as well as different
Native American artwork.

Not only does the artwork differ
from floor to floor,
but as you climb
higher into the Tower,
your views of the artwork change.

My pictures really can't do it justice.

I'm particularly fascinated
by the way the angles of the Tower
interact with the artwork
to create a whole different presentation.

Remember that you can click
on any picture for a larger view.

The color on some of these pictures
is way off,
but I chose not to use my flash.
I often find I like the effect better.

One more shot of the dazzling colors.

It was a lot of work going up the stairs,
but really scary coming down.
They're really narrow and steep.

I really liked these signs,
they're scattered throughout the Tower.
I like how they look old and funky
instead of all bright and shiny and new.
They fit right in
with the décor of the Tower.

One last shot as we were walking away.

The weather was cold and windy
and towards the end of the day
we could see these
black clouds approaching.
They made for great light.

I thought I should include
at least one picture of the Canyon itself.

In the next couple of days,
I'll try to post some more pictures
of our day at the Grand Canyon.

Hopefully, you won't get tired of them!

Changes . . .

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We've moved up to Santa Fe and have spent the last couple of days visiting friends and generally enjoying the city.

Regular readers know that we were planning on spending the summer at Ghost Ranch, but once again, our plans have changed. That seems to happen to us a lot, and you know what? We always find a new adventure and are now looking forward to what lies down the road.

It's exciting.

For a bit longer, we will be in Santa Fe, then we'll decide what to do next. Or, as so often happens, something will fall in to our laps.

Because I haven't taken many pictures lately, I though I'd share a panoramic shot I took when we spent the day at the Grand Canyon (using my Panasonic Lumix FZ35).

Make sure to click on the image and enlarge your window to see all the detail.


I still have a lot of photos from the Grand Canyon and hopefully, I'll get them posted in the next couple of days.

Photographic Studies of the Grand Canyon (via the iPhone)

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We are back safe and sound in Cholula Red.

We had a wonderful time, got our business finished lickety split and got to spend a day at the Grand Canyon. I took thousands of pictures, using my Canon 7D, my Panasonic Lumix FZ35 and my iPhone.

It will take days to get them all processed.

Since I took the fewest shots with the iPhone, I'll start there. I haven't posted many of my iPhone pictures lately, but I must say, I continue to be impressed with this little camera. It works well, but what really bumps it up are the thousands of aps you can get that manipulate your pictures and truly turn them into art of another sort.

I decided to use one I haven't played with before called HD Camera. You may remember my other HD pictures were taken using TrueHDR. The difference in the two aps is that TrueHDR requires you to take two photos, one focusing on the lightest part of the picture and the other focusing on the darkest part of the scene. Then the application merges the two, and, especially in high contrast situations, you get impressive results.

But HD Camera is another beast entirely. It automatically processes one photo into High Definition, plus, it takes the standard 3mp of the iPhone camera and somehow magically turns them into 7mp images. It certainly seems like magic to me!

Now, back to the Grand Canyon. I've been there several times, and every time, it's always kind of a shock to realize that that the clarity of the canyon is somewhat compromised. I don't know if it's just the fact that the damn thing is so big, or if it's a weather phenomenon, perhaps creeping pollution or what, but, beautiful as it is, there is always a sort of haze, especially when taking a long view.

So, in my mind, all those pictures I see that are bright and vibrant must have been manipulated, either in the darkroom, or in camera. I don't mind this, but like I say, when I've seen it in person (over the last 50+ years) the haze always comes as a surprise.

With this in mind, I knew I would have some manipulation ahead of me. But you know what? That's what I love to do, so no big deal.

I downloaded all the pictures from the three cameras, and the surprise came when I looked at the iPhone pictures captured using HD Camera. Somehow, the algorithms used in the in-phone processing automatically did away with the haze!

Way cool.

One note before the photos. As always, you can click any scene and see a larger, usually clearer, image. Also, some of these are duplicates, with the original from the iPhone (using HD Camera), then manipulated in Photoshop for different effects.

If I haven't already bored you to tears, here we go with the pictures.

Enjoy!

This first shot is SOOC
(straight out of the camera)

a slightly different angle
SOOC.
Don't these remind you
of these old
Kodachrome linen postcards?

Yet another sightly different angle
(sorry, I like them all)

This is the same shot as above
but slightly more detail

Again, the same shot,
slightly softened.
I like this effect a lot.

OK, be prepared,
there are lots of versions of this one.
This is the original SOOC.
I love the hazy light.

But I hated the railing,
so I removed it.

This has some darkening
and color changes.

Changes in light.

This looks like
it might have been taken
years and years ago,
but has now suffered
the ravages of time.

Also a vintage look
but with more detail.

In sepia.

Desaturated.

By this time,
I had done so many changes
I don't even remember
what I did to get this effect
But I like it

One final shot
from the iPhone.

Unfortunately,
I didn't even remember the iPhone
till we were almost out of the park,
but I'm glad I got the shots I did.

I will definitely be using it
more in the future.

What a great trip we had,