Our next stop and our first in southern Utah was Bryce National Park. This park was tough for me photographically*. It was still an interesting place to see in person after seeing many, many photographs.
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* The light was harsh most of the time we were there and the light in much of the canyon (which was accessible without a long steep hike) faded early, well before sunset.
Heading north from Flagstaff after our raft trip, we did not go far (maybe twenty-five miles) before stopping at the two adjacent national monuments. Sunset Crater preserves some interested and geologically recent, volcanic features. The weather the morning we were there was drab and rainy… not very good for photography of dark lava, but it was interesting none-the-less. The weather improved as the day progressed and we moved on to Wupatki which preserves a number of early Native American ruins.
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The genesis of this road trip began about three years ago, when Bernice Lewis (a singer-songwriter from Williamstown, MA) mentioned at the end of a concert, that she was organizing a raft trip down the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon. We did not think twice before saying “Sign us up!”.
The trip had a musical flavor. We traveled with guitars, ukuleles and other makers of joyful noise. Music was made each evening and a few times at stops during the day. Songs were sung most of the time and more than a few verses of, mostly doggerel, lyrics were composed while floating the river.
The rafts, guides, etc. were provided by Arizona Rafting Adventures (AZRA) out of Flagstaff, AZ. The two rafts were large motorized craft. They accommodated 29 folks, including the guides, and everything we needed (or wanted) for ten days.
One thing the rafts were not… dry! We were damp (or soaked) for most of the day while on the river. All part of the adventure!
Our guides (Jeb, Dennis, Kelly and Bert) kept us safe. entertained. educated and well fed. Thank you all.
The service provided by AZRA and our guides was first-rate. Highly recommended.
During they day, while on the water, I made relatively few photographs. The light was poor (harsh and high) and my little cameras batteries gave out some time on day four. Most of my “river photos” were made in camp, either early-ish in the morning or late in the afternoon, as we made camp for the night. The real “golden hour” light (just after sunrise or just before sunset) that landscape photographers love never reaches to the river st the bottom of a canyon. Although I knew this going in, it still took some getting used to when actually there at the bottom of the canyon.
I was most interested in making photographs showing the river in the main canyon…
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Some days, we made mid-day stops to hike side canyons…
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Sometimes the light at the “local rim” was too interesting to pass up…
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Here are some photos I made while actually on the rafts….
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Even though the colors in the canyon border on fantastical, I made some black and white photos…
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While we were at the North Rim, we camped at the Demotte Campground, a nice quiet spot, in Kaibab National Forest, about 20 miles north of the park entrance. Most mornings we headed into the park early and stayed until the light faded. One day we explored the rim overlooks accessible via the National Forest roads.
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We are back from our 2018 road trip!
We headed west on Labor Day and arrived home on Sunday… five weeks and 6940 miles total. We pulled our little teardrop camper and spent most nights camping.
The centerpiece of the trip was the Grand Canyon. We spent five days at the North Rim and then ten days rafting the Colorado River from Lee’s Ferry to Diamond Creek (more about this in another post). Both before and after the Grand Canyon, we stopped at a number of other national parks and monuments.
On the way west, we spent four days (three nights) on the interstate system before hitting the local roads somewhere west of Albuquerque, NM and heading for Canyon de Chelly National Monument along the Arizona-New Mexico border in the four corners area.
We arrived at Canyon de Chelly in the late afternoon and camped there for two nights. This was our standard operating mode for most stops, giving me two late afternoons/evenings and two mornings for photography when the sun is low(ish) in the sky.
From Canyon de Chelly, we headed to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon where we spent four nights camped in the National Forest campground just north of the park. From the North Rim, we headed to Flagstaff (and one night in a motel) to meet up with the folks we would be rafting with.
Early the next morning (15 Sept.) we were on the AZRA* bus headed for the put-in at Lee’s Ferry. We spent the next ten days floating the river and being well tended to by the guides. The take-out was on the morning of the 24th. After another bus ride (back to Flagstaff) and another night in a motel (with hot showers!), we were ready for the rest of our trip.
We did not get too far on the first day, post-raft trip… only to Sunset Crater and Wupatki National Monuments, twenty or twenty-five miles north of Flagstaff, where we camped for one night.
From there we headed for Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah (for two nights) then, with a quick daytime stop at Escalante Petrified Forest State Park, to Capitol Reef National Park (two nights). Next it was on to Hovenweep National Monument (two nights) with another quick stop at Natural Bridges National Monument on the way. After Hovenweep we headed to Mesa Verde National Park (two nights) and Great Sand Dunes National Park (one night) in southwestern Colorado, before deciding to find Interstate 70 and head home.
Of course, I took some photographs along the way…. 3263 exposures total to be exact! I have spent much time since we returned home editing this mass down to 495 frames (i.e. 15% of the total) which I “developed”. I then made a second pass at editing and have 182 photos (5.6% of the total) which will appear here on the blog. Hopefully, this is a small enough number that no one will fall asleep during the slide show!
Thus, to begin, here are the photos from Canyon de Chelly; more (from other places) will follow in subsequent posts.
Color Work
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Black and White Work
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*AZRA — Arizona Rafting Adventures (more about them in a later post)
This afternoon, I headed out on a walk down Hattie Brown Road, just to see what was up. I had not been out that way in probably almost a month. Weather-wise there were broken clouds and the temperature in the mid-70’s. There was also a nice breeze blowing… nice because it kept the mosquitoes down.
As I left the house, I noticed a small (a couple of dozen individuals) feeding swarm of darners over the yard. Feeding swarms are large congregations (dozens to hundreds of individuals) of big dragonflies (usually a mix of darner species) that gather over open spaces to feed on small flying insects. Feeding swarms form most often in late summer and in the late afternoon. I paused only briefly to watch the swarm before driving down to the bridge.
As I walked out Hattie Brown Road, the sun kept peaking out of the clouds and I saw both female autumn meadowhawks and spreadwings in some of the patches of sunlight along the road. I also saw an occasional darner cruising the road well above head height.
When I reached the beaver pond, the birds took noticed. A crow perched high in a nearby tree, being a social bird, began to call loudly announcing my presence to its compatriots. A great blue heron, being a solitary sort, silently took flight from its fishing spot near the road and headed to the other side of the pond.
As I arrived at the pond, I noticed a large dark cloud come over the ridge to the west and within a minute or two it began to rain lightly. Unsurprisingly, there were no odes to be seen. Since there was only gray sky to the west and the patches of blue to the east were rapidly receding. I decided to head back towards the truck without dallying. It rained lightly the entire walk back.
Of course, just as I arrived back at the truck the sun began to reappear and after a short interval the rain stopped.
Since the weather was looking better, I stopped at the road into the Harris Center property along Brimstone Corner Road rather than heading directly home. Parking near the gate, I walked down this road as far as the beaver dam and observed small numbers of the same odes as I saw on Hattie Brown Road. There were a couple of darners patrolling the road, a few spreadwings in sunny spots along the road and a couple of female meadowhawks at the log landing. I saw no odes out over the beaver pond itself.
Eventually, I lost the nice light as the sun disappeared over the ridge to the west. Thus, I headed back up the hill to the truck and arrived back home at 6:30, a bit more than two hours after I departed. The feeding swarm in the yard was gone.
As you might expect, I took a few photos while I was out!
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Recently. I have been working on a physical book the idea for which has been rolling around in my cranium for some time.
Back in the winter of 2016/2017 I spent some time photographing meeting houses and churches in the general “neighborhood”. I ended up with almost one hundred processed, finished photographs.
My first thought was to put together a press printed book, containing three or four dozen photos total. However, the project stalled at the photo editing stage. I simply could not cull the set of photographs down from one hundred to forty-ish. Every time I tried, I ended up with a different subset. I put prints in a folder and put the project aside in frustration.
A month or so ago, one of my photo friends* suggested that selecting a smaller number of photos and making a shorter book might actually be easier. Lo-and-behold, she was right!
I ended up with a dozen photos that I have sequenced and printed four to a 13″x19″ sheet. I have printed four set of folios on some very nice two-sided matte paper. Now all I have to do is decide on the covers and sew the covers and folios together. The decision is always harder than the sewing!
This morning, as an experiment, I spent a bit of time putting together an ebook version (as a pdf file) of this project. Here is a link to the book which is titled “White Clapboard — Winter Light“.
The ebook is best viewed by downloading the pdf file and opening it in Acrobat Viewer rather than just clicking on the link and viewing it in your browser.**
What do you think?
* We are a group of about ten photographers who meet on an irregular basis to discuss “projects and objects”… that is, our creative processes and the prints that result.
** Opening the file in most browsers will display the book one page at a time. This is OK. However, Adobe’s Acrobat Viewer will display the book as two page spreads, as I designed it.
One the the large oak trees down by the road has a large dead branch that overlooks Joan’s vegetable garden. Semi-regularly we see birds of prey, usually hawks sitting in this branch.
This morning, while eating breakfast, Joan noticed a hawk perched in “the branch”. I made a few exposures from the driveway before it decided to head off.
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In a couple of weeks (4 August to be exact) I will be teaching a workshop titled “Photography of Dragonflies and Damselflies” and cosponsored by the Vermont Center for Photography and the Bonnyvale Environmental Education Center (BEEC).
Yesterday afternoon, I made a trip to the BEEC to scout out the odes there ahead of the workshop. The temperature was in the mid-70’s F, there were a few very scattered clouds and a slight breeze blowing, just enough to add challenge to photographing insects perched on tall grasses!
There were a couple of immature (i.e. orange-ish) meadowhawks flying over the fields. While walking in a field of tall grasses, one often flushes small birds. Yesterday, was no exception. However, yesterday I also flushed a large deer. It jumped up from where it had been laying not more that twenty five feet from me and I nearly jumped out of my skin!
There is a very small (maybe twelve feet in diameter) pond in the lower field which contained dozens of bluets of two different species, including a number of ovipositing pairs. There was also a single male common whitetail that spent most of its time cruising the perimeter of the pond and only rarely perching and then for only a short interval. Very frustrating for photographers!
Across the road from the BEEC buildings and a short walk away, is another small pond. There were a number (maybe six or eight) of what I think were blue dashers out over the pond and perching on the cattails out in the middle. Having donned my rubber boots, I began to venture out into the shallow pond to photograph them. However, I quickly turned around. There was no solid bottom only that semi-solid, boot-grabbing muck that one often finds in small ponds. In the vegetation around the margin of this pond I found two male meadowhawks and a single teneral spreadwing.
I think that there will be enough ode activity for our workshop but I will be looking (with help from the BEEC staff) for another nearby site as backup.
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Friday afternoon, I spent a couple hours in the beaver-made wetland “down back” behind our house; we share this wetland with the NH Audubon Willard Pond sanctuary. The weather was warm (about 80 deg. F), very sunny and only a slight breeze.
There were a few darners flying out over the wet meadow; the first I’ve seen this season. The most common dragonfly was the frosted whiteface. There were dozens, mostly patrolling out of the open water of the pond. Additionally, I saw a single male calico pennant, a single male emerald. A Kennedy’s emerald I think, I have seen one other of these a few years back at the mill pond on the Willard Pond sanctuary, about three-quarters of a mile away. I also saw two or three female spangled skimmers.
There were small numbers of damselflies down low in the vegetation. These are always difficult to photograph. Damselflies tend to perch for only short intervals and finding clear “windows” in the vegetation though which to photograph is not easy. The most common damselflies were the sprites, both sphagnum and sedge sprites were present. Additionally, I saw one or two bluets of some sort and a similar number of spreadwings none of which I photographed.
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