I went down to Farmington Bay in search of bald eagles.  It was an ok day but a bit of a disappointment. Even though it was clear in Park City and even in most of the Salt Lake valley, the area around the Great Salt Lake was caked in a dense fog.

The fog was Salt Lake's normal combination of real fog and pollution. I snapped this shot of the oil and gas refineries in town as I drove by.  Yuck!

There was a good bit of wildlife wandering around, like this coyote, but you can see how fuzzy he looks when shot through the fog.

I ran across this Harrier, happily nibbling at his frozen McCarpcicle.  Nasty looking, but he seemed happy.

He was really having to work to get decent sized chunks.  I guess that's why the eagles go for freshly caught carp.

When enough people decided to stop and take his picture, he flew off.  I have learned that Farmington Bay can be foggy when everywhere else is clear and that Saturdays are way too busy for photography.  I gave up on my eagles and took off for Antelope Island.

Down by the farm I found the pair of Great Horned Owls that are often seen there.  The male was hidden so deeply in the branches that I couldn't get his picture.  The female was more cooperative.  In just a few weeks, the park service will rope off the area to give the owls privacy when breeding and then raising the owlets.

I normally see hundreds of bison around the park.  I don't know where they were hanging out but I only saw two bulls.

When there are no leaves on the trees, the porcupines are easy to spot.  I saw four of them along the island.

I saw more pheasants on this trip than I ever have.  The only one that got really close nearly hit my truck when flying by.  No photo of him, but the others were fun to watch.

One last pair of photos from back at Farmington.  I liked the icy tree along the snow packed road.  I was starting to take the picture when I noticed something coming out of the fog, and it didn't look like a car.

It was four mountain bikers, out riding in the snow on a 15 degree, foggy morning.  Sorry, but this just seems insane.

Not a great day of photos, but such is life when you need Mother Nature and wildlife to cooperate.

Snowboarding in the PCMR Halfpipe

This weekend there were a lot of big snow sporting events going on in Park City.  They all draw the top competitors in the world and they are all free to watch.  How cool is that?

On Friday I went over to PCMR to watch the snowboarders compete in the Halfpipe.  It was a nice sunny day without much wind.  That probably helps the competitors and it was certainly a plus for the spectators.

I can't imagine popping up out of a 22 foot pipe, turning around and dropping back in again. The idea of doing Shaun White's Double McTwist 1260 is beyond my comprehension. This 55 second video is from 2010 when he first started doing it. It won him a gold medal.

Some riders had an impressive style.

This one looked like he was flying into town.  Nice exposure.

But the thing that really impresses me the most is how far they come out of the pipe.  This gives you some sense of how far he has rocketed into the air.  The photographers in the bottom right corner are around 6 feet tall and they are standing on the edge, 22 feet above the bottom of the pipe.

The ladies don't tend to get out of the pipe as far, but they do tricks that make my head spin.

I think the yoga people call this Warrior Pose?

No big surprise here.  After falling on his first round, Shaun White came back with an awesome second run to win, yet again.

Meanwhile, the alternative competition was going on right next to the pipe.  There was a line of kids struggling to climb up the back side of a huge jump.

Then they seemed to compete on who could wear out their ski clothing the fastest.

And for style, who could eat the most snow while doing it.

This little sweetheart was very upset that she couldn't make it up the steep incline with the older kids.  Between crying and pouting, she managed to get in some smaller slides.

You sure can't beat the entertainment for the price!

Skiing and such

I have been very busy and getting way behind on my blogging. Such is life.

First, we got a glorious powder day of skiing with Bill, Loris, Miriam and Greg. We voted it our second best day of the year.

Then, the Kahn family came to town.  We have been skiing with Bruce and Carol and their daughters Hilary and Hannah for over 20 years.  They lived in Park City when we moved here, but now live down in Townsville, Australia.  We got to hang with the whole family for a bit, but didn't get out to ski with everyone. Just poor scheduling.

Carol, the girls, and Hilary's Australian boyfriend headed back down under, at which point Bruce came over and stayed with use for a few days.

One of those days, we headed over to Snowbasin for some skiing.  It seemed like a good idea.  They had received a lot more snow than Park City in the last storm and the skies were clearing up nicely.  Wrong!

 The last 6" of snow had come down wet and was wind loaded, making it thick and tough to ski through.  At least we look colorful!

 As much as the valley had cleared up nicely, the very tops of the mountains were all heavily socked in.  We did a number of runs through that grey soup, but we finally gave up and stayed lower.  Julie fell off a cat track (no damage) because you literally couldn't see the run at all.  I made a wrong turn and had to hike back up through 2-3 feet of powder.  Finally, off Strawberry, it took us 15 minutes of mostly guess work to get down to where we could see.  If I was a beginner in those clouds, I would probably still be up there.

The picture makes it look like you can see the tops, but you should realize that you are only looking at the bottom half.

 I also got out skiing on a day with mediocre visibility with Chad Rexroad.  We were over at Canyons doing a lot of bump and tree runs in search of powder.  Unfortunately, Chad is younger than I am, stronger than I am, and a more talented skier.  He was a lot more adept at blasting through bumps by feel.

At least he was kind enough to wait for me. Over and over.

Many more things have been going on.  I got photos of a big mogul ski competition, a half pipe snowboard competition, and some birds down at Antelope Island. Lots to process.

Rock climbing phenom

It has been years since I did any rock climbing and I was never that good at it.  However, I did it enough to really appreciate when I saw someone excel. Here is one of those one-in-a-billion people, on a track most of us can't imagine. She's so normal, and yet completely beyond us all.

The Wave at Coyote Buttes

I got an invite last week to join a few other guys heading down to northern Arizona to photograph a famous area called The Wave.  I've seen pictures but never given it a lot of thought.  We left on Monday, driving down to Kanab, Utah.  I was riding along with TJ Lenahan. He and I have a lot of photography likes and dislikes in common and it was pretty obvious immediately.

I saw a Bald Eagle a ways off the road.  TJ immediately turned up a side road and we started trying to figure out where we would have to be to get the eagle and the moon in one picture.

The answer was to drag through two feet of snow, climb a barbwire fence into someone's field, and then trudge through some more snow. And of course, do this with a big tripod attached to some very serious camera equipment.  TJ got the worst end of it when his shoe pulled off in a snow filled ditch.

That's not an optical illusion.  His Canon 800mm is really that big.

We got the pictures and even with wet socks, we agreed it was well worth it.  That's my kind of photographer.  Another shot before leaving.

When we got into Kanab we had some time to kill before dinner.  We drove down scenic Johnson Canyon and stumbled on these collapsing buildings.  An old farm?  Perhaps a tiny little town?  Actually it was an old set for Gunsmoke, the TV show.  You couldn't get very close to it.  I'm sure it would be dangerous to poke around in. It looked like a fairly elaborate set, so I'm surprised it wasn't preserved as a tourist trap.

Just down the road were some petraglyphs, but none I found that interesting. Right next to the rock art was an old shack, which I found much more compelling.

This is the gang getting ready to start our morning trek.  From left to right:

• Will, from Dreamland Safari Tours. He was our paid guide and did an excellent job of getting us around to the right places.  I can't remember ever having a guide before, but having one for The Wave is nice.
• Dick Pick
• TJ Lenehan
• Steve Casey

I checked the weather for Kanab before I left Park City. Consistent highs in the 50s, lows in the mid-20s.  That would be great except that our hike was starting about 30 miles east of Kanab.  There the temperature was down in single digits which meant a brisk start to our hike.  Once the sun came up life was a lot better.

Most of what we were hiking on was sand.  With the snow from a week ago slowly melting, there was enough moisture in the sand to freeze hard.  It made the hiking easier and the scenery much more interesting.

The Wave is an area of Navajo sandstone from the Jurassic period.  It was formed into layers and shaped into curves before the lithification of the sand into sandstone.  No, I didn't know what lithification meant before I went. The sandstone was eroded over the years by water and wind.  What results is gorgeous, colored, curved rock that looks like it took an artist years to create.

The Wave is more considerate than most photo sites.  On almost every trip I take, we are up long before the sun to be in the right place before sunrise.  You get about 15 minutes of near perfect light and then the party is over.

To shoot the Wave, you need to wait until the sun is high enough overhead to get rid of all the shadows. We still got there early enough to scout around and get a feel for the place before the ideal lighting occurred, but I can't imagine having to hike in before sunrise.

Once all the shadows are gone, it is hard to remember to keep taking pictures.  The place is spectacular.

The area is fairly small, maybe 50 feet by 100 feet. It's astounding to see how this one little area developed differently that almost anywhere you will ever visit.

Access to the area is controlled by two things.  First, you have to have a BLM permit, and they only give out permits for 40 people per day. Second, you drive out into the middle of nowhere and then hike three miles through rocks and desert. There is no path, so navigation can be a bit difficult, hence Will the guide.

This is me right outside the Wave. The smart agile photographer only takes exactly what he needs for a trip like this:  a light tripod, a DSLR camera, and two wide angle lenses.  This makes the hike much more comfortable.  Me?  Hell no.  I had a tripod, a camera, a backup camera, a flash, 5 lenses, a teleconverter, filters, lunch, three bottles of water, ....  My "day pack" weighed in at something close to 35 pounds.

While The Wave was unique and as spectacular as advertised, I was equally impressed with everything else around me.

This is an area in the sandstone that had lichen growing on it.  The lichen apparently resulted in some acidic reaction and even though it is dead and gone, its print is etched in forever.

For these next two photos, you really need to double click on them to see all the incredible details and patterns. These are the rocks above a small wash.  They look like they were applied with a cake decorating bag.

Even though it isn't a great photo, this was my favorite view.  In this one picture, you can see so many different colors, shapes, patterns, and directions. It looked like God made all the local rock formations and then just dumped all his extra materials in this one spot.

This is the group hiking along in a formation that was so boring, no one bothered to stop and take a photo. Anywhere else, this would have a crowd around it.

You'll notice that there are only three other people in this photo.  That's because one of our team wandered up to an area high above The Wave to get some photos of other rock formations.  Unfortunately, the way he planned to come down involved hundreds of feet of sheer cliffs.  No radios.  No phone service.  One missing photographer.  We spent the next 2.5 hours looking for him, hoping we wouldn't have to call Search and Rescue.  In an area with so many hazards, going off by yourself with no method of communication was not the brightest idea. In the end, everyone was safe but we did lose some prime photography time.

This picture was taken in an area called the Bone Yard.  It's a flat area right next to some fairly steep cliffs.  The rocks from the top of the cliffs are composed of very different  material from the base.  They break lose and tumble down where they sit out in the open and ever so slowly, get eroded by the wind.

Their structure doesn't erode like normal rocks though.They have vertical and horizontal layers of very resilient stone, mixed in with fairly soft sandstone.  The middle gets eroded leaving a lattice structure that looks a lot like weathered, sun-bleached bones. This one even has its own naturally eroded base to sit on.

Once we were all back together and returned to the cars, Dick and the other Steve headed back to Park City.  TJ and I were staying another night so we could shoot some other things on the way home the next morning.

We started by driving through Zion National Park.  We weren't going to spend much time there and the cloudy day wasn't great anyway, but Zion is still spectacular. I may have to try and get there right after a winter snow.

There's no perspective but that's about 2,000 feet of cliff you're looking at.

From Zion, we headed to St George.  There's a nature center there whose pond has had wintering Wood Ducks before.  They are one of the most colorful ducks around.  If you haven't seen one, here is a random link with some good pictures.

The bad news is that there weren't any there this year.  We still killed a few hours shooting whatever interesting things we saw.  This is a Hooded Merganser.  Sadly, I was set up to take pictures of ducks politely sitting around posing, not flying off at high speed.  That explains the "bonus" blurring. Slowly but surely, I get smarter about photography. Slowly though.

Now we have a more cooperative bird, a Ring Necked Duck. I have to wonder what moonshine the ornithologists drink when they are naming birds. He has an astoundingly obvious ring around his bill, and no ring whatsoever around his neck. 

If you have heard the expression "like water off a duck's back", just take a look at this guy.  Having just popped back up from a dive, the water was beading on his waterproof back.

Pictures of floating ducks get boring. The trick is to get them when they are doing something like taking off, landing, fighting, or just flapping around to dry off and fluff up.

The bashful little guy that kept our attention is a Bufflehead.  When the sun made its brief appearances, you could really catch the iridescent colors. Not quite as pretty and colorful as a Wood Duck, but he was ok.  However, he's just floating.

We found that he would dive for food for a while and then kick back to do some preening.  Almost every time, once the preening was complete, he would do a brief dance to fluff up. So much of good photography, whether people, wildlife, sports, ..., is about having a good understanding of your subject.  How do they behave?  Where will they go next?  Is it about to fly?  What jokes make the person smile?

Once again, the Southwest has provided interesting and beautiful things to photograph.  For my future trips and anyone interested in going to The Wave, here are some trip reminders:

• Stay in Kenab at the Quail Park Lodge.  It's a little 14 room hotel that has been remodeled to be surprisingly upscale.  While it gets a lot more expensive in the summer, the winter rates were less than $70 per night. I get my old guy AARP discount. Their little breakfast was nice, but 7:00 is too late for photographers.
• Learn about the BLM's permitting process for The Wave.  Some permits are done in a lottery in advance. Others are given out the day before.  There aren't many.  Local tour companies may have permits as part of their offering.  They have to go through the same lottery though.
• The hike is fairly rigorous.  Three miles each way plus a few miles of wandering around, especially if you have to search for a member of your group. It isn't that bad, but it certainly isn't the normal National Park paved paths. Wear good boots and dress for a wide range of temperatures.  Bring lots of water.
• You don't need a telephoto lens.  I shot almost everything with my 24-70 zoom on a full frame camera.  You might want a really wide angle as well.  Wish I owned the 14-24 zoom.  
• You are only about 30 minutes from the back entrance to Zion.  Add a day and visit.
• In winter, you have the advantage of having very few people around. I think we saw 6 people that weren't in our group and we were there for about 8-9 hours.  The downside is that the sun doesn't come up as high which gives you a lot more shadows in the rock formations.  It might be interesting to try something like late-April.
• Nedras serves some nice, inexpensive Mexican food although I am tired of finding these places without a liquor license.  What kind of Mexican place doesn't have margaritas?
• The Cowboy Butte Grill in Fredonia was recommended. However, this was a steak place that didn't even serve beer so we just left.  No idea how the food was.
• We didn't see signs of any mammals bigger than a mouse (tracks) or any birds.  

Enjoy!