Autumn Eye Candy

I've been really involved with the reconstruction of my main web site and probably will be for a few more weeks, but at last I'm making some good progress after finally deciding on the design and functions that I want. Designing stuff for myself is always way harder than doing it for someone else, and if things remain a little slow here at the blog, now you know why... getting out to shoot is kind of on hold until I get this project to a certain point.
It's also a useful process in another way, because it's forcing me to go back through each and every image (a huge task) and re-evaluate all of them, edit out some of the less than ideal ones from my "official" collection, and create comments and keywords for the rest, to make everything search-engine friendly. Self-editing is difficult, but I think very important.. no one at any level creates a perfect gem every time and knowing when to say "nope... not quite good enough" is tough.  Anyway, when it's far enough along that I'm comfortable for people to see it, I will switch my domain over and let every one know to go and take a look.
This one here is from last fall... and might look familiar because it is a variation of one that I posted previously in my article about  film a few months back, but this is a more polished version. I had many others from this trip that I was going to post, but kind of got sidetracked as I often do.  If the rocks look volcanic in nature, they indeed are.. there are many large, amazing lava fields of black volcanic rock in this area, most thickly covered with aspens and SO beautifully colorful in the fall.  This stream is the outflow below a small lake and was a great location to shoot in the early morning... the trees and rocks are nice in themselves, but having moving water in the scene always adds something extra.

SkyWatch: Desert Light

I've been struggling to clear out from last weekend's huge snow storm all week, so today I felt like a little break from the winter stuff....
This one goes back to January and is the result of one of those "holy crap!" moments when some magic light just happens and the whole situation changes instantly.  After working all afternoon on a rather cloudy and overcast day, I made the mistake of packing up my gear for the ride home and was actually heading out of the park (yes, this is Joshua Tree N.P.), when the sun broke through a small crack in the clouds just at the horizon, casting a spell over the whole area. I could tell it was only going to last a matter of minutes, if that, and I wasn't really in an ideal spot subject-wise, but I decided that something was better than nothing so I pulled over, set up as fast as I could and managed to frame a few quick shots before it went dull for good. If I had a digital camera on the seat beside me as I might normally, it would have been easy.. but as I was shooting film, I had to unpack, set up the tripod, compose something, spot meter the scene and shoot, all in probably less than 2 minutes... pretty happy that I got something decent out of that situation:) It was definitely my pleasant surprise of the day.

Check out the SkyWatch homepage every weekend for more great sky images from all around the world.

Pure and Simple

It's back... Winter that is.  Being February, most of you will say: "What do you mean back?.. it never left where we are!"  Well, we like our variety of climate here in southern California.  After a few weeks of warm and dry weather, we got hammered with over a foot of snow at our house and much more a bit higher up... and out in the forest, where I spent the whole day on Sunday stomping around in pristine white powder with my cameras. In fact, after the last shot of the day and towards dusk, I still had to hike quite a bit uphill to get back to the road and was really struggling the last bit. Walking around in the snow loaded with gear starts to take it toll.. it sure felt a lot harder going up late than it did going down earlier:)
I was working for a while early with my digital camera and then switched later to film, so we'll have to wait a week or two to see what I got there.  I'm pretty pleased with 4-5 of these digital shots, though... especially this one.  I think it does pretty well what I am always aiming for (with mixed success, of course).. pure design, texture and tone.  Looks like a watercolor painting, doesn't it? (And quite a contrast to the subject of my last few posts.)
I shot this vertically too; it seems to work in any format.. horizontal, vertical or square and I can see this one on the wall printed *large*.
I'm still digging out day by day from this storm.. just got the driveway shoveled and the car back into the garage tonight!

Palm Canyons: from the Inside Out

And finally, a view into the lush, shaded world found underneath these thick palm tree groves. A very surprising sight if you have only seen the more typical views of this extremely hot and dry desert region in southern California. No wonder the native people settled in this area, with it's shade and reliable water supply.
Seems like the almost spring-like weather we have enjoyed up in the mountains for the past few weeks is about to end, with rain and snow moving in for the remainder of the week.  It's been nice, but on the other hand I've been missing the chance to work on some more wintery-type images. Hope I'm not too busy digging out to get out and about for some good shooting.
Even if I get stuck in the house for a few days, that's o.k. too because I am busy doing a complete, from-the-ground-up redesign of my main web site... something I've been putting off for quite a while.  It's going to be REALLY nice, with a full, user friendly shopping cart integrated right into the galleries for print purchasing/licensing, a keyword search function and clean new interface.  I am reviewing, titling and captioning every image.  I've known since we moved away from the city (and my main outlet to sell work), that I need to do this, but it's a big project so it's been easier to procrastinate. I am still debating whether or not to open a physical gallery this year.. depends on available local space and the economic outlook, but at least I will have a state of the art website in the near future.