Santa Elena Canyon

 A nice place to visit and camp is in Big Bend Texas. The National park is in one of the most isolated regions in the country, located in the Southwest area of Texas. The park consists of thousands of acres along the Rio Grande River that separates the U.S. from Mexico.  Santa Elena Canyon is a short hike that takes you into a narrow canyon where the Rio Grande Rivers flows.  In this picture the United States is on the right and Mexico on the left. The river and the steep cliffs are the only things that divides the two countries.  If you like to hike in a quiet wilderness landscape, Big Bend Texas is the place. The image was taken in late afternoon as the sun was setting.  As with all landscape photography it is always good to plan your hike to take advantage of the best light.  We made this hike earlier in the day and found the scene was too contrasty with the intense sun shinning on the cliff wall on the right. This image was made with a Canon 5D11 camera and 24~105 zoom lens.

http://www.nps.gov/bibe/planyourvisit/secyn.htm

Graffiti

                                  Indian Petroglyphs - Sears Point Az.

                                  Steel door - Mexico

                                                   Tattoo Artist- Mexico

Graffiti is an expression mankind has done since its origin. It is evident with the ancient petroglyphs  that can be found around the world.  These rock art panels show symbols that were typical of ordinary life at that time. The meaning of many of symbols are left to our imaginations.  I am certain that there are many people that would take offense with my equating ancient petroglyphs with graffiti, but if you look around our world today you will see that the need for human expression using symbols is very much alive as it was thousands of years ago. Today our cultural expression is done with tattoos on bodies and painting highway overpasses. To paint up a building or mark your skin is a modern form of cultural expression we tolerate as a norm in society.  When we look at petroglyphs that were created thousands of years ago we instantly develop a respect for them as being markings from an ancient civilization.  If someone today was to mark up a canyon wall with modern day rock carvings we would call it graffiti, a destructive act.  Our current method of making human symbols can be debated by some as an art form and by others as a destructive act. 

Equivalents

I call these images Mother and Child.  The first image was taken at Point Lobos in Ca. and the second  a number of years later in Natchez Ms. Each image although taken many years and miles apart still have an emotional connection.  One represents birth and the other death or separation.  After many years of photography I have numerous images that connect to each other on an emotional and spiritual level, yet can be very different in subject matter.  All of us connect things together in our lives either consciously or in our subconscious minds.

http://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=571
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natchez,_Mississippi

Sailplane

Last summer we were back home in our former little town of Big Flats, N.Y.  and took a trip up to Harris Hill.  At the top of the hill there is a beautiful scenic overlook of the valley we use to visit to watch the sailplanes take off from Harris Hill.  Living in this area for many years we were use to seeing sailplanes taking off and gliding in the skies over the valley.  It was always a sure sign of summer to see the first sailplane in the sky after a long N.Y. winter.  I made this five minute exposure  using a -13 ND filter pack.  It was a windy day with some interesting storm clouds in the sky. The sailplane was tethered to the ground but it still rocked back and forth with a good gust of wind.  Even though the sailplane would occationally rock to one side and back during the exposure the image was sharp.  This is because a long exposure doesn't record a shore duration of movement.
If you are ever in the area you should visit the Harris Hill Soaring Museum and take a ride in a sailplane. It is thrilling experience.


http://www.soaringmuseum.org/

http://www.harrishillsoaring.org/HHSC/Home.html

Sunrise on the sand dunes

If you have followed my blog you probably already know how much I enjoy being in Death Valley Ca.  The early light on the dunes is magical, and to watch it change so quickly has always amazed me. When I worked with a large format camera and film, I knew I had time for three or four possible setups as the sun came up.  It was a lot of work to fine the location and choose the proper fixed lens to fill the frame with the area of interest. I always worked with black and white film and would use a spot meter to determine the exposure. Most of the time I would meter the shadow area and base that value for my exposure.  I used a red filter many times to increase contrast, and quite often would over develop the negative to gain even more contrast.  The dunes at sunrise can fool your eye into thinking that there is a lot of contrast in the scene.  In reality there are about four stops of light between the bright sunlit side of the dune and the shadow side.  The reason being that there is so much light being reflected back into the shadows from the adjacent dunes.  Working with large format equipment alway posed a challenge when being on the dunes.  Extreme care must be taken to prevent dust and the sand from getting into the film holder or the camera.  I always worked in a slow and methodical process to insure my negatives would be properly exposed and as dust free as possible.  The above image was taken with a digital camera and much of the processing of the image is done long after the image was taken.  Working with a zoom lens means I don't have to change lenses as often and gives me the opportunity to create many more interesting compositions at sunrise.  I have made many fine images of the dunes with a digital camera, but appreciate the ones I made with a large format camera more, knowing the hard work that was involved in achieving them.

Traveling the road from Jalpan

Traveling in central Mexico can take you into some beautiful mountains. My wife and I spent many days wondering around these wonderful places in search of small towns and historic locations. On this day we were returning from spending a few days in the mountain town of Jalpan.  I stopped to make a photo of the rugged terrain and noticed a road running up through the mountains. It can be seen in the upper right side of the above photograph. We found the road and went to a beautiful mountain town called San Joaquin.  It is a long and winding road that takes you to the top of the mountain where the town is located, and that is where the road ends. We found San Joaquin to be a delightful town and have made several return trips. We have a friend that lived full time in his RV in Mexico for many years and wrote a wonder blog of his adventures. I had read on one his blog post of his adventures of traveling up and down the mountain to visit the town of San Joaquin. After making the trip in a car I am amazed he ventured out to a high mountain area with his rig.  Reading his blog of traveling in Mexico in an RV gave us the desire to make the trip. Those days we some of the best in our travels. Many thanks to George the "Vagabond Supreme" and his blog.


https://www.visitmexico.com/en/magicaltowns/center-region/jalpan-de-serra

https://www.visitmexico.com/en/magicaltowns/center-region/jalpan-de-serra

Rock Art

Being in the Saguaro National Park in July is probably not the smartest time for a visit, but you can be certain you will have the place to yourself.  We were in Tucson Arizona this past summer and decided to revisit the Saguaro National Park.  It is a fascinating place that we have visited many times over the years. This was our first visit in the middle of summer and the heat was scorching.  The day we made the short hike to these petroglyphs it was 115*.  As I climb among the boulders in search of the petroglyphs I kept my eye open for rattlesnakes that most certainly were hiding in the rocks. Setting up a tripod and composing an image in the intense heat was exhausting.  I was able to spend about an hour before I felt the heat overwhelming me. After I made my last image I turned to step down over the rocks and had one roll out from under me. I went down head first and hit hard but somehow kept my camera held high and it never smashed into a rocks or the ground. Certainly the good lord was looking after me.  I had a pair of new glasses that flew off my head and went down into the deep pockets among the rocks. I sat up and dusted myself off and took inventory of my situation. I had some scrapes and marks on the tripod but not much more. I thought about my glasses down in the dark hole before me and decided that they could stay there.  Sometimes it is easy to forget where you are when making photographs or become affected by the elements you are working in. I was fortunate to not have broken a bone or damaged my equipment with this fall.  I used a 17~40 zoom lens with a polarizing filter when making this photograph.

http://www.nps.gov/sagu/index.htm
http://www.yelp.com/biz/saguaro-national-park-west-tucson