Niagara moon
The best view of Niagara Falls is of the American side viewed from Canada. The American Falls above are illuminated in the evenings and colored spotlights turn the falls all colors of the rainbow.
Niagara Falls, Canada
Tag Archives: Sunrise
Devils Tower National Monument
It seems to me, anybody who saw the 1977 Steven Spielberg film “Close Encounters of a Third Kind” and who had never visited the filming location, would certainly wish to do so. Devils Tower National Monument in Wyoming finally got checked off my list this summer. Unfortunately, most of the area was covered in a smoky haze from the many raging forest fires in California and Oregon. As a side note, it seems as if Smoky the Bear may have had it wrong. We are now paying the price, an unintended consequence, for the many years when the US Forest Service tried to put out every fire.
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Moab, Utah
Moab, Utah was just one of many small towns dotting my route as I frequently traveled between the University of Utah and my home town of Los Alamos, New Mexico. Stopping to explore this impressive landscape was never considered. Time was always short, rushing to get back to school, go skiing or to get home on a vacation. Now that I have nuttin’ but time on my hands I rented a VRBO cottage in downtown Moab. This great location did little good as many of the shops, restaurants and both photo galleries I wished to visit were closed, as February is considered the off season. Some shops were scheduled to open up the day we departed for Colorado. Many times while dining we were the only tourists in the cafe. It was fun listening to the business owners in town discuss the issues of the day. They seemed to look upon the inevitable onslaught of tourists starting in March with both great anticipation and trepidation. Goodbye to their quiet little town.
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Death Valley, California
This was my fourth or fifth trip into Death Valley. It is understandable how someone might quickly drive through the main roads of this national park and not see the beauty hidden in this barren land. The sights worth seeing in Death Valley often require one to get up for sunrise or wait until sunset. On the plus side, you also are not going to get the Yosemite type traffic jams. At midday much of this land looks like a xero landscaped yard in an upscale part of Arizona, with not a single green sprig to be seen and the hard ground covered with smooth tumbled rocks. Yet within this arid desert one can always find some water and, hopefully, some beautiful sunsets and memorable reflections.
When you click on “Continue Reading” a slide show of eleven photos will play at the top of the article.
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Isle of Skye, Scotland
For some unknown reason we only scheduled four days in the beautiful Isle of Skye, yet an entire week was spent in Edinburgh and a week in York. This planning was a bit backwards in hindsight. Much more time could have been spent in this stunning island countryside. The one day available to hike to the beautiful and unique Old Man of Storr provided only very dumpy light (photography speak), so I turned around and explored other parts of the island rather than devote an entire day to a single spot. The Old Man of Storr is the monolith in the distant background of the lead photo above.
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Photo Manipulation – Ansel Adams, “The Making of 40 Photographs”
(Six in Series of Six discussions on Photo Manipulation)
This is a wonderful book written by Ansel Adams in 1983. He selected 40 of his well-known photographs and goes into several pages of description for each of how he came upon the scene, went about capturing it as well as printing details and difficulties. Keep in mind that if every photo was printed without adjustments or manipulation, there would be no printing issues to discuss, since one would simply expose the photo paper for a few seconds and that would be it.
Winter Sunrise, the Sierra Nevada, from Lone Pine, California 1944
©The Trustees of the Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust
Scan courtesy of Masters of Photography