Moab Photo Symposium

My first few days in Moab were spent at this photography symposium.  I am at the point where I need some additional guidance to improve my photography from "nice pictures" to art. One of my big hangups is that I tend to take the safe shots, the post cards.  I don't have a great eye for composition and I am not the most creative person in the world.  So, I am now on a mission to train myself to understand and think more about composition and to force myself to try new and different things. There's a trick, planning to be creative.

At the symposium, you got to pick from a long list of workshops to attend.  My first choice seem tailor-made for my quest.  We went to a Volkswagen parts junkyard (affectionately referred to as a museum).  You just can't walk into a junkyard with preconceived notions about the perfect picture. You try lots of different things and just see what works.

My title photo...

The cars were old and beaten.  Most had been stripped of parts.  And like all of Moab, everything was a dust bowl.

Some of the bodies had interesting rust patterns.  In the name of art, I threw them into my HDR program, Photomatrix Pro, and played with the color tones.

and a different body panel of the same car, with different HDR processing.

 For being such beaters, they were actually kind of pretty.

This was just something someone had tacked up to one of the buildings. Now I want one for our house, but perhaps a little happier.

I liked this stack of extra doors.  Nice patterns.

Another suggestion for a different look was moving the camera during a long exposure.  Move it too fast and everything was a smooth blob.  Too slow and it looked like you were trying to get a normal picture but screwed up. Just right and you start getting some interesting color flows.

Nice contrast and pretty lines, but who puts a bike rack on a VM bug?

Then I found reflections.  As I kept digging through the yard, I realized how many shiny surfaces there are on the old VWs.

It's hard to see in a small photo, but you can really identify a lot in the reflections, even on small surfaces.

And you can even find panoramas with a curved bumper.

This photo was oddly complex.  There are many layers going on. Windows. Reflections from them. Views through them.  Reflections off the reflections.

How to make your VW more badass?  A little skull on the hood.   Sadly, I am guessing cat.

And the closing photo from that workshop.  There's definitely something about old VWs, both vans and beetles.

My next workshop was taught by an incredible young man named Dan Ballard.  It's wonderful to run across people with so much natural talent.  I hope to find more opportunities to work with him.

He would give us ideas of a good composition and then send us out to quickly come back with something.  For our first effort, we had to find something very, very simple, but yet still interesting.  It is amazingly difficult to keep clutter out of a photo without having something bland.  We were shooting these in a Moab city park.

The next project was to find some with strong lines leading the eye to the subject.  I laid on my back to try and get the curve of the ramp.  Nice picture, but a failure. 

Then I found a cooperative young lady on the playground and took this.  Interesting, but I still failed to find a nice line.

I finally had some success with a bad picture, but a good line, looking from the fingertips of a person in a yoga pose, following her arm up to her face.  I did it so quickly to avoid bothering her any more than I already was that I screwed up the exposure. Oh well, it is just a learning exercise.

From there we headed off to Dead Horse Point State Park. The intent was to capture the sunset using our new focus on lines and simplicity.  I found some decent places to try things, but sometimes you get nice lighting in the canyon and sometimes you don't.  This was a "don't".

There was a lot of haze and dust in the air as the jumbo Super Moon came up.  It almost disappeared until it got a good ways above the horizon. Unfortunately, that makes for much less interesting moon photos.  I was much happier with the ones I shot the day before.

The symposium was a good one.  It was well run, very social, and much less expensive than I would have expected.  Of course the Moab area is an incredible source for interesting photos.

Moab - Animals

The animals in Moab? Quite frankly I don't think there are that many.  Even being out very early and very late, we still didn't see much beyond people's pet dogs and cats.

Well, except lizards. And we saw hundreds and hundreds of lizards. They didn't photograph well because with few exceptions, they took off running when they saw you approach.  This caused great turmoil between the hikers (us) and the dog (Jasper) who instinctively reacted to every running lizard with a desire to pursue. Our greatest fear was Jasper's lack of understanding of the protective system of cacti.

When you did get closer to a brave lizard, they would start doing this hilarious little dance to warn you off.  My best description would be disco-lizard-pushups.

This little creature must be the result of a caterpillar mating with a cactus.  Even though he was out in the open, no other animals seemed to bother him. Go figure.

No coyotes, rabbits or tortoises. No bears or mountain lion.  Just one rattlesnake in a bush at night, and he wasn't posing for a photo.  I would not suggest a trip to Moab for the wildlife.

Moab - Flowers

I won't spend time describing each of the flowers below, but it was pretty amazing to see what can grow in the desert climate.  Going way beyond just surviving, these plants all have beautiful blooms!

This barrel-shaped cactus was my favorite.  The flowers were stunning.

Moab - Sunrises and Sunsets

The beauty of the Moab area is all about the rock.  Although it takes numerous shapes and sizes, it is consistently the orange/red color that makes it special.  In the middle of a sunny day, the rock is so reflective that it almost appears white.  On a cloudy day, it seems to be a dark, burnt red. However, catch it in the very first or last light of the day and you get a real treat. 

This picture is taken in Arches National Park.  You are looking through North Window at Turret Arch.  Sunrise in May is about 6:15, which means dragging out of bed around 5:15 to get to the park in time.

We were lucky to have a full moon while we were in Moab.  Not just any moon, but a Super Moon, when it is supposed to appear larger than normal.  Taking photos of the moon is always a bugger because the moon is so much brighter than everything else.  Expose for the moon and everything else is a black shadow.  Expose for anything else, and the moon is an over-exposed white blob.

This trip I tried to get my photos the day before the full moon.  It's not quite as large, but because it rises about an hour later each day, you can get about an hour overlap of the moon rising and the sun setting, solving some of the differences in lighting.

This isn't a great photo, but I am beginning to get the techniques and timing down so that now I just need to find the right place at the right moon for a great shot.

I was heading back to the parking lot, glanced over my shoulder and saw this.  Decided it was worth a photo. Probably would have been better than the picture above if I caught the moon as it popped up.

Still, walking back to the parking lot when I noticed that the sky was looking better.  Of course, I took this about 50 feet past the point where I startled the rattlesnake.  At least he was kind enough to buzz from his spot in the bushes, about 18 inches off the path.

I posted this earlier in the week, but it's one of my favorites.  The entire sky was dark and cloudy, with no interesting light, except right behind Balanced Rock.  The trick was getting a good shot without my tripod blowing over.

Julie and I hiked up to Delicate Arch for a sunset.  It was pretty, but I have seen much better in a lot of photos.  In May, the mountains behind the arch are normally snow capped.  This years sparse snow is showing.  The one lonely cloud just refused to have any colors other than white, and then dark grey. If you haven't seen it, this is the arch that is on the Utah license plates.

I was in the Courthouse area of Arches for sunrise. The big full moon was days old, somewhere in its waning gibbous phase, but it was still pretty to see the sun come up as the moon set.

This was the first night we got a lot of color in the sky.  I have mentioned this before on the blog, but when I first started photography I had the impression that nothing beat a day with clear blue skies.  Now those are down at the bottom of my list.  Almost anything but rain is better.

These formations are all over 75 feet tall.  I love how they stand out so well in the open desert.

Several lessons from my photography symposium:

• Keep it very, very simple. Less confusion. Less distraction in the photo.
• Pay more attention to the foreground and background.
• Be there for every sunrise and sunset.

I was trying to practice those things and make them habit.  I love these tangled old Juniper trees.  This one must be 100 years old.

The Colorado river is an ugly green, probably from all the fertilizer and nutrients that leach into it every day.  However, catch it on a calm morning with no sun on the river, but bright sun on the cliffs behind, and you get some spectacular reflections.

... and one more.

Tomorrow we will look at flowers, mostly the blooming cacti in the desert.

Trip to Moab - Part 1

A week and a half ago I headed down to the Moab Photography Symposium.  It was a three day event and I learned a fair amount.  More on that, and some photos, in a future blog post.

On Saturday evening, Julie rolled into Moab and I moved from my hotel room to our rented condo.  Julie got the pleasure of driving the 4-5 hours with Jasper and Cosette.  This is the only trip we do with the dog and cat, but it seems to work fairly well.

When you are in Moab, you have to get out and enjoy the outdoors.  For us, this means a lot of hiking and photography.  Here's Julie on the Fisher Towers hike, which was a newly discovered favorite for us.

From the Portal Overlook hike, you get to see the disgustingly green Colorado River and the lush green appearance of the town of Moab.  Actually, we were confused because when were staying down in town, it sure doesn't feel green.  In fact, one of our complaints is that Moab is one of the most dog unfriendly places we have been to.  The only places that seem to have grass are sporting fields and city parks and dogs are absolutely prohibited.  Their city dog park is a bone dry dust bowl with a few trees.  We took Jasper there once last year, but he was such a dusty mess when we left that we have never returned.

When hiking around Moab, it is all about the rock.  This is Corona Arch, on the appropriately named Corona Arch Trail. You have to look carefully, but there is a little spec standing under the arch. That would be Julie.  There are hundreds of arches like this outside the Arches National Park.  We like those hikes because the dog can join us.  No dogs wandering around the national parks.

The interesting rock faces show the massive forces at work.  Something slid across this rock face over the years, leaving deep curving gouges as it went.  There's nothing in the photo to give you perspective, but from top to bottom, the photo covers about 100 feet.  Those are big long scrapes.

Even the man-made rock formations are interesting.  This is the rail line that parallels the Colorado River.  It's quite an accomplishment to squeeze a track into a place with so many massive rock formations. 

When you aren't out hiking, you can always just go to a national park with a picnic, wine, and a sunset.  Julie met Joan at work at Deer Valley.  She and her husband Richard have a condo in Moab.  We enjoyed a trip to Arches with them and hope to do some Deer Valley concerts with them this summer.  Always great to find new friends!

Moab is full of outdoor activities we have chosen not to do.  The biggest is the motorized off road trekking.  Jeeps, Hummers, dune buggies, motorcycles, and any form of ATV are hugely popular in the red rock country, but that just aren't our style.

Mountain biking would be more interesting, but this might not be the place to get started again.  The photo below is one of the rough parts of a hiking trail we took.  It is also a mountain biking trail, and we could see signs of people having ridden down it.  Yes, you are really looking at the path.

Higher up on the trail is the sign suggesting you get your butt off the bike and walk.  To reinforce the idea, they mention that three bicyclists have died here.  It's a narrow, rocky trail with about 500 feet of drop.

Another thing to see and do in Moab is to visit the petroglyphs. This ancient rock art is surprisingly well preserved, but Julie and I don't go searching it out. I think it would take a better understanding of all the history and interpretations to make it more interesting, and we haven't invested the time and energy yet.

We used to do a fair amount of rock climbing, but that's a distant history.  There are lots of climbs around Moab and we just step running across climbers.  This guy is in Arches.  He's looking ok, but couldn't get all the way up and had to drop back down.  The girl behind him succeeded.  A wee nick in the pride.....

We ran across this guy in the Fisher Towers area just as he was finishing a climb of a spire.

And right up the hill from him, a woman just finished her climb of the really odd looking spire on the left.  Look closely, she's standing on top of it.

We had a great week of weather and the pets behaved as well as we can ask.  Moab is definitely going to be a fairly frequent return trip and offers a great way to bug out of Park City during the cold weeks of spring Mud Season.

Lots more photos on the blog over the next few days.

Trying to hack my Google account

This morning I got the following email:

Steve,

Someone recently tried to sign in to your Google Account, sjoyce@gmail.com. We prevented the sign-in attempt in case this was a hijacker trying to access your account. Please review the details of the sign-in attempt:

May 13, 2012 8:45am GMT
IP Address: 94.249.119.133
Location: Amman, Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan 

I'm pretty sure that I was in Moab and not the Middle East.  It is annoying to have to go around and start changing login passwords. It's kind of like having to change your credit card when someone rips it off.  At least Google was watching and froze the account.

Down in Moab

I came down to Moab, Utah on Thursday to attend the Moab Photo Symposium.  It was a fairly small event, maybe 150 people, but was extremely well run.  On Saturday evening, Julie drove down with Jasper and Cosette and the entire Joyce family is spending a week here.

I've been shooting tons of pictures, but haven't had time to process many.  They will show up here over the next week or so.

Julie is wonderfully patient with my photography efforts.  Last night we headed up into Arches National Park for the sunset, even though it was cloudy, raining in spots, and the wind was blowing at 40+ mph.  Everywhere you looked was grey and very cloudy.

Except right here, in a tiny spot right on the horizon, which we managed to line up with Balanced Rock.  At least there was some little reward for our travels.

More of our travels as I get time.  Off to grab some breakfast.

Signs of spring

How do you know it is spring in Park City?  There are blue skies above, but clouds down in town.  Even though you can see sun, it was drizzling and sleeting where I was standing.  They say if you want different weather, wait an hour.  I would offer that for spring, if you want different weather, just look the other direction. Saves an hour.

But Jasper's first real sign of spring is when the llamas return to the field near the Home Depot. They weren't quite ready to come sniff him, but by the next visit I'm sure they will be buds.

Another animal on April Mountain

We have seen a lot of different animals around our house; moose, deer, racoons, chipmunks, fox, hawks, and quite a bit more.

This evening I was letting Jasper out onto the deck when I heard a very distinct call.  It took me a few calls to really believe what I was hearing.  A Sandhill Crane was somewhere up in our neighborhood.

I took a ton of pictures last May of a pair of cranes and their little colt.All of those were down in the swampy area where the cranes belong.  We live about 600 feet higher, up on a small mountain. There's no water and no swamp, just a bunch of scrub oaks.

Sure enough, there he was.

 It was hard to get nice shots between all the trees and my wobbly hands.  Hand holding a 500mm lens is a bit of a challenge.

 After calling over and over for about 30 minutes, he finally took off.

 I hope he found a much more suitable place to hang out.