Cloud Facination

I don't get to fly very often but when I do I really enjoy seeing the clouds from this different angle.
I really like the hole in this one and it reminds me of depictions of the creation.

They change shapes so constantly that I think I could probably take the same cloud several times and never realize it is the same one. You can see part of the airplane wing in this picture because I was seated just in front of it. I was a bit nervous watching it bounce up and down so had to watch the clouds instead.




Now this one is my favorite since it almost appears to be a little bear on the back of a larger one. Yes, it takes a bit of imagination but that is what is so fun about watching clouds anyway. To me it seems to have it's paws over the eyes of the larger one.

All of these were taken on the same flight from Dallas Texas to Salt Lake City several years ago.

A look from on top

These shots were taken through the window of an airplane as I was returning to Salt Lake City, Utah from Dallas, Texas. It was fun for me since I don't fly a lot to recognize areas in Utah of which I am familiar after flying for hours over land where I could only guess where I might be located. The following images were of the Kennecot Open Pit mine near Salt Lake City. (Actually I could be wrong so if anyone knows better I would gladly stand corrected.) I had visited this site as a young man but never seen it from the air and was amazed at how huge it was but of course it was a lot bigger on this trip than when I was there around 40 years earlier.


I can't explain why the colors were so rich in these images other than maybe it had something to do with the windows of the plane. I didn't even saturate them but maybe should have desaturated a little.

Something about a fire

As a young man when I was in Scouts I remember all of our summer camps were held in the High Uintahs in a basin known as the Granddaddy Basin. It was only a short drive from Duchesne where I grew up and wasn't a real bad hike to get into even though at the time my feelings about that were quite different. From the start of the trail it was less than 6 miles into the lakes where we camped. There were probably only two lakes that we liked apparently because every camp I went on seemed to be at those two, Palisades and Govenor. We would have a base camp and then go to different lakes during the day for the rest of the week. 

Well one year I remember our troop making this small fire shown above. It was probably only 4 feet tall but it was still taller than me. I took a picture of it because it was so big and now wish that I had a fellow scout standing beside it since it really doesn't look as big as I remember it being. It did start me on a life long love of campfires however that I have now photographed many times. The fun part about a campfire is the changing faces that it provides just like a sunset. From the initial huge flames (if you dare do them that high anymore considering the fire dangers) to the last embers burning well into the night before water is finally used to put it clear out. (I used to remember leaving it burning through the night but won't even think of it anymore since I now know the dangers that exist, especially around Boy Scouts. It is easier to make them start a new one than put out a forest that is on fire.) I guess the thing that I like to photograph the most though with a fire are the late stages that look like a city landscape at night from a plane. All the little glowing embers that sparkle like city lights. However the easiest to photograph are long before that when the main flames are almost gone but the light from the fire still produces light sufficient to take the photograph without having to use a tripod to steady the camera for a long exposure.  

Now I said that I like small fires now but when one happens in your backyard that involves an entire mountain then I will photograph it as well. However I didn't realize when doing it that I would see the Chief watching the fire as well. 


I have one more image to share from my youth in the mountains on scout camps. I didn't ever remember where I hikes very well t that time since I just followed the other scouts as we scouted out lakes to fish at during the day. However I always had my camera (Kodak Brownie Instamatic) with me even then. I saw this tree and it intrigued me so I took a picture of it. Well it always stuck with me in my mind and 27 years later as a Scout Master I took my own troop back into the Granddaddies for a camping trip to last 6 days. I wondered where that tree was and how it would look now since I knew thousands of campfires had been started in all those years and it appeared to have a lot of good firewood on it. I didn't know where it was but due to a lack of communication with an assistant scoutmaster on where we were to camp we ended up for the week at a lake I had never camped at as a scout. However after I secured maps of the entire basin I found it to be only a sort half mile hike through the forest from where I spent the camps of my youth. So one day in preparation of a hike I would do with the troop later in the week I followed the maps and went to the lake I knew so well, Palisades. I spent some peaceful time wandering around the lake, no scouts were with me, and then started to go back by following one of the trails that would bring me back to camp from the opposite direction of how we had hiked in the day before. (There were some strange tracks that I wanted to follow that I believed to be Llama so that was the main reason for my traveling the other direction.) Anyway I never did catch up to the animal that made the tracks but as I got to within a hundred or so yards of camp (I knew I was close, I could hear the scouts) I noticed that same tree that I had photographed all those years before still looking almost as it had when I took the first image of it. I took another picture and compared it when I got home and the only differences were in the fact that a lot of the smaller branches were gone and the trees in the back were totally different. I would have never guessed it would still be so close to the same as it was those 27 years earlier. I decided that it must take a long time for those trees to break down and rot away and wondered how long some of the real rotted ones must have been laying there.

Eye on the rear view mirror

OK another "be alert" type blog. My family had traveled to Arizona one year and from that trip came this photo that has been one of my all time favorite. The lighting isn't the best but that seems to be what makes it fun. We traveled to Arizona by way of Las Vegas and then returned through Monument Valley to Utah. It was getting well into the afternoon as we were coming across the park when I looked in my rear view mirror and saw this scene. I stopped the car and took the picture. That simple but had I not been driving I would probably never have noticed it. So I guess two things can be learned here. One, always be alert when you are driving and second, if you are not the driver ask that person to watch for something pretty as well, you may end up helping them develop a talent also. 

I have often driven this road since that time and have even wondered where it was taken, until the last time we came across the park in the afternoon and I found it again in my rear view mirror. I had always thought I was looking North when I took the picture originally, yes that tells how observant I can be as well, but instead found I had been looking Southwest toward the sunset. I could easily find the same spot now but it would still depend greatly on Mother Nature as to whether I could replicate the image or not. I think next time though I would walk into the middle of the road before I snapped the picture.

Not really any technical data other than I did apply LAB color to this photo and it seemed to bring out some of the more subtle colors.

A little blast from the past

I was looking quickly through some of the images that I have recently been backing up to a hard drive after discovering that my CD's are going bad. (I have found that the run of the mill CD will last about 5 years and then you will start having problems reading them. So I have been in the long process of copying all of my backup CD and DVD storage to 500 gig hard drives. They could fail also but at least I will then have two possible bad backup copies. Technology is great isn't it.) Anyway I found this image taken in 1973 or 4. It was while I was in Texas and the apartment we were in had pretty poor insulation but excellent circulation. We could stand outside of this little shack in Midland and look through to the other side of the two bedroom place without using the windows.  Typically it wasn't a problem but during this winter it was and this was an image taken one morning after I got up and crawled out from under all of my extra clothes that I was using as a blanket each night. The frost IS on the inside not outside. 

No technical stuff today with this image just being thankful I have a good home with good insulation and spring trying to come with fantastic weather like we had yesterday. It was warm but not too warm with a slight breeze, not a heavy one, that was cool and not cold. Could have sat out and enjoyed that for hours.