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.

WOW who would have known it was there all along.

One day I was looking at some of pictures that I had taken almost two years earlier at a scout camp and was trying out some new techniques that I had learned in photoshop from a book by Scott Kelby called "7-Point System". It was a technique where you convert to LAB color and intensify the colors and then scale back the opacity to where you like the color and convert back to RGB. Well, while trying it on a random shot of a common weed that we have around Utah. I had cropped in on a part of the plant and suddenly saw something that had never been a part of my vision of the image before. The first image today is the image I was playing with and the second one is the image that jumped out at me as I cropped in on the first. Isn't it great when sometimes you have to be awakened to something in an unusual manner in order to see it. You know at that point that someone far greater than you is mindful of and loves you and wants you to learn something new when you are least expecting it.  Now I look at every image totally different than before and will often crop in on images just to see what may be lingering inside.
To convert to LAB color go to Image-Mode-LAB. Then to Image-Apply Image. AT that point select from the Channel section either Lab, a or b. And in the Blending section select either overlay or Soft light. Play with different combinations of those selection until you find the color combination that you like and if it is too strong then drop the opacity down to where it looks good to you. At that point go to Image-Mode-RGB to convert back into RGB to continue working on your image.

I love thunder storms.

In 1981 I worked for a company called Signetics. I worked a swing shift and would travel home to from Orem Utah to Spanish Fork, Utah after I got off work around 12:30 AM. One night there was a very lightning active storm and as I traveled along the freeway toward home I counted almost to the second a lightning strike every 20 seconds.  So when I got home I decided for the first time in my life to try and photograph the strikes. I grabbed my camera and tripod and ran to a cement ditch near the subdivision where we were living at the time and got into the ditch so that I would lessen my chances of becoming a lightning rod. (The tripod already was a good enough start on that.) I felt fairly secure though since the storm was all to the west and also north of me about four or five miles away. Well I shot an entire roll of 24 images at 30 second exposures each while trying to capture the lightning. I would see a strike and try to get it but of course by then it was over so I would position the camera to where I thought the next strike might occur and open the shutter and wait the 30 seconds. Well when the film came back I had a total of two images with lightning in them but one of them was with 3 strikes and has been a favorite of mine since then. I don't have a copy of that image currently so that I can show it but have since then photographed many storms and with increasing ability to capture the strikes. Below are some examples of one storm shot from the comfort of my front porch during the storm in late August.  I think these photos were taken in 2004.

Not all lightning storm images have to have strikes in them to be impressive to me. I have learned over the years of photographing lightning that sometimes the clouds lit up by sheet lightning can also make for some impressive images. As in the image above.




The morning following this storm I learned that a horse had been hit and killed by a direct strike. Judging from the location of the field where it was and my home I have always wondered if this was the guilty strike so I have called it "The Horse Killer".

Always aware

My images today I choose due to the nature of what they are and how a person can capture them. I have learned over the years that if you want to photograph something that you particularly like then you had better be watching and ready for it since the opportunity comes only once in a while. These two images for instance were taken up Hobble Creek canyon at an activity that was being held in doors on a somewhat cold evening. I kept a close watch though through the west facing windows and was not disappointed when the sunset I thought might happen did. 

I remember one summer evening when I was still of high school age first understanding the changing nature of a sunset. I took a roll of film and my camera and went to the west side of the bench where I grew up and photographed the sunset taking pictures every few minutes as the sun slowly descending changed the colors of the clouds from which it was being reflected. I had never realized prior to that time that a sunset could be so different from beginning to end. It was such a revelation to me so that now I don't just go take a picture of a pretty sunset, I sit and watch it taking several pictures as the sun slowly descends. In the two images today just look closely at the differences between the two. I really liked in the bottom image how the light reflected from the clouds and then the snow on the west side of the mountains lit the east side of the mountains where normally I would have expected the land to be dark like it is in the top image.

Always be aware of the time of day and the changes that can occur because that is when you will most likely not just get one great shot but possibly several.