Category Archives: Blog

Looking out from Balcony House

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Balcony House is one of the “marquis” attractions at Mesa Verde — you can only see it as part of a group, you have to get a timed ticket in advance, etc. But oh, is it ever worth the bother! Here’s the view looking out from just short of the “exit:”

Looking out from Balcony House

Right in the middle of the frame you can *just* see the 30-foot-tall ladder you climb to get into the site.

This shot is actually a panorama stitched together from two portrait (vertical) frames; I tried to pull as much of the resulting “fisheye” distortion out as I could, but as you can see, there’s still a bit left.

War bonnet

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Another fireworks shot from our July 4th trip down to Cortez:

War bonnet

I don’t know why, but this shot reminds me of a Plains Indian war bonnet — seemed a fitting name, at any rate.

By the way, I’m tinkering around on Google+, and it looks like a promising platform for photographers. If you’d like an invite, drop me a line!

Burst on a wave

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I took this shot at a July 4th fireworks display while we were down in the metropolis of Cortez, Colorado visiting a family friend. Of all my “accidental” images, I think it’s the one I like the best.

Burst on a wave

It’s not a multiple exposure shot, and I’ve done essentially no post processing work. Think you know how it happened? Let me tell you the tale.

Cortez isn’t a particularly large town — population was just under 10,000 at the most recent census. But when we were down there to visit our friend over the Independence Day weekend, we were expecting a good show for July 4th. A new guy in the city government had taken over job of coordinating Cortez’ yearly fireworks display, and we were hoping he’d try to make a “splash” his first time out.

Apparently a lot of the locals had the same expectation — I think the whole town turned out for the show. As a result, the four of us were sandwiched on a blanket on a little strip of grass — right next to the sidewalk that’s right next to the road that’s the line marking the safe viewing area for the display.

So we had great seats, aside from pesky pedestrians occasionally walking by right in front of us.

Now bear in mind that shooting fireworks is somewhat of a hopeful process. The round goes up, you open the shutter, and your camera captures whatever it sees in the next few seconds. Maybe you get something good, maybe you don’t.

In this particular case, I opened the shutter just before one burst went off — I thought it would be a good capture. Then a couple of young guys walked right in front of us with “glow sticks” in their hands. I was a bit annoyed at the time, obviously they’d ruined the image.

Or so I thought until I got home and could see it on my computer’s screen. As “ruined” images go, I think it turned out pretty well…

Fajada Butte — captured!

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Coming to you from Chaco Canyon in New Mexico, it’s Fajada Butte:

Fajada Butte, captured!

Fajada Butte is the site of an ancient “Sun Dagger” solar clock that marks the occurrence of the solstices and equinoxes. It’s too delicate for visitors to see in person any more (it was damaged by tourism-induced erosion, and closed to the public in 1989), but still inspiring to look at from a distance.

Echinacea, 7/09/11

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My first decent shot using an old Polaroid SX-70 camera I bought off eBay, and some Impossible Project film:

Echinacea, 7/09/11

Long-story-short, now that the Impossible Project folks are producing both color and black and white film for SX-70 cameras, I thought I’d take the plunge and start experimenting with low-fi analog photography.

Here’s a shot of echinacea in our front yard, taken with my used / new (to me) SX-70 Alpha 1 SE and Impossible Project PX 70 Color Shade film.

I think it’s going to take a while to get a hang of this — the camera works just fine, but the film is a bit… tricky. In particular, it’s REALLY light sensitive for a minute or so after it comes out of the camera — and it’s prone to over-exposure too.

Oh, and did I mention film costs about $3 per exposure? Definitely gives one cause for reflection before pushing the shutter release. Once I get this down to a more-nearly-repeatable thing, I’ll do a writeup on this film and the whole process of using it.

Turtles all the way down

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I haven’t antiqued any photos for months (if not years), so while I was playing around with black and white conversions I thought I should indulge myself and give a shot from Uxmal the full aging treatment:

Turtles all the way down

This is the House of Turtles, so named because of the little turtle figurines decorating the top of the walls.

Gone to the Palace

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I’ve been working through my Yucatan travel shots, and thought that while I was at it, should take advantage of the 15-day free trial period for “Silver Efex Pro 2.” Here’s a black and white treatment of the Palace at Kabah, on the “Puuc Route:”

Gone to the Palace

I hadn’t thought of it at the time, but old ruins like this tend to look really good in black and white. Use the right colored filter settings, and you can bring out some drama in an otherwise bland sky, too!