Giving me the bird

I spent some time chatting with volunteers at the Caballo Lake State Park while I was there.  Among other nuggets of information, such as where prospectors nearby were currently finding gold, they told me about a bald eagle that was frequenting the part of the Park below the dam.  Apparently, most mid-days would find a bald eagle hanging about.  Sometimes it would be in a dead tree near the entrance to the camping area.  Sometimes, it would be on a bluff across the Rio Grande.

I eagerly set off with camera gear.  On my first trip, high on the bluff I saw a large bird, clearly NOT a bald eagle.  I took a few hand-held shots which, because of the distance and hand holding, were fuzzy.  They were clear enough, however, to let me identify the bird as a large red tailed hawk.

The next day, I saw a bald eagle up on the bluff, about 600 feet away (per Google Earth).  I set up my tripod and put on the big lens.  With full magnification, I still needed to crop the shot and it was a bit fuzzy, but was worth keeping.  From my vantage point, he was silhouetted against the sky.

I took the shot, then moved downstream and closer, until I was about 400 feet away, as close as I could get.  From this point, he was no longer silhouetted against the sky.  He had the bluff behind him.  The white-painted rock to the right and below him suggests that this is a favored roost for him.  Another shot, and I sat and watched him for about 20 minutes, until he took off and flew west until he was out of sight.

Although I went back several times a day thereafter, armed with two tripods and both still and video cameras, I did not see him again.  Maybe next winter...

Reminiscences - Autumn in New Jersey

New Jersey is not a state renowned for its autumn color.  Nevertheless, there is nice color when the summer weather cooperates.  One year, I watched a sole branch from a maple tree, draped in front of a white pine in my back yard, edge closer and closer to nice colors.  Finally, I grabbed my camera and from morning to evening, shot several slides of the intermix of dark green from the pine with the reds and yellows of the maple leaves. 

I kept this slide and scanned it.  It is now the only photo I have of where I used to live.

Reminiscences - Pink Beach

The ABC Islands are Aruba, Curacao and Bonaire.  Aruba is renowned for its beautiful fine white sand beaches.  The fine sand can reduce the clarity of the water, making Bonaire, with very few beaches, more popular with divers. 

For many years, I would vacation in Bonaire.  For years, I was captivated by, but failed to capture with my camera the rich blue hues that are turquoise in the shallow, sandy bottomed areas and a navy blue in deeper water.  Photo after photo was rejected, as not showing the colors with anything approaching how I saw them.

I loved the clarity and warmth of the water, and I learned a lot about how the ecosystem worked.  To illustrate, there is a type of fish called parrotfish.  They feed using chisel-like teeth on dead coral, scraping the surface and ingesting a mixture of algae and coral remnants.  They digest the algae and excrete the very fine particles of coral, which forms the fine white sand so treasured in Aruba.  I wonder how the tourists would feel about the beaches if they knew they were stretched out on parrotfish poop?

Bonaire does have a few beaches.  One, at the south end of the island, is known as Pink Beach. Its name is rumored to come from many sources, including claims of an effect produced by very fine white sand reflecting a pink color near sundown.

Years ago, as Hurricane Lennie moved through the northern Caribbean, it set up a series of unusually large waves.  This wave system struck Bonaire, doing considerable damage to structures along the shore and to shallow reef structure.  At Pink Beach, the fine white sand was washed away.

In an effort to restore the beach, construction equipment was used to try to dredge up offshore sand and replace the beach.  It did not work.  The result had many broken bits of coral, and the dredged-up sand disappeared either to the wind, to the waves or between the coarser pieces of coral.  It is no longer a fine sand beach that glows with a faint pink hue near sunset, but it is still a picturesque spot.  Not too long after Hurricane Lennie, I captured a shot at Pink Beach that I think shows the colors in the water fairly well.

Frozen Southwest

The storm that pounded so much of the Country so hard was gentler here in southern New Mexico.  We got some very high winds and cold temperatures, but only a dusting of snow.

This morning was neat.  When I woke at dawn, it was -3 degrees outside.  The air was very calm, with almost no movement.  I am next to a very large lake formed on the Rio Grande River called Elephant Butte Lake.  It is about 40 to 50 degrees warmer than the air this morning.  The result is mist forming at the surface of the lake and rising slowly into the air.

What is REALLY neat is that as the mist rises, the air is moving, very slowly, south.  The moisture continues to condense in the much colder air and a cloud is formed.  To the north, there is no cloud, and little mist because I am near the upper reaches of the lake.  To the south, there is a string of small clouds that have formed and, as they gain altitude and distance from the lake, slowly evaporate in the very dry air.  The result is a number of columns of mist, topped by a tiny cloud at their southern extent, surrounded by clear skies.

Canyon de Chelly

The cliffs of the Grand Canyon dropped mostly at an angle formed of a series of steps, vertical cliffs and slopes.  Canyon de Chelly, near the eastern edge of Arizona, is a red rock canyon that is more manageable in scale but has sides that tend more toward the vertical.  The bottom of the canyon is almost flat, giving the canyon a rather boxy shape in cross section.  Through the bottom of the canyon runs a stream that contributed to the forming of the canyon.

Thousands of years ago, this canyon was the home of the Anasazi people.  They had some cluster homes set against the cliff face, such as Antelope House.

 

The cliffs loom 600 to 800 feet above the community house, providing shelter and seclusion.

Antelope House gets its name from the art on the cliff wall nearby.  The art dates back perhaps 150 to 200 years, and is attributed to an artist from the Hopi Nation.  Set above a ledge perhaps 50 feet above the canyon floor, the art is drawn, life-sized, from a precarious perch that most of us would feel uncomfortable getting to, much less working on.

Those vertical walls became home to the Anasazi people.  Just east of Antelope House is a formation called (if I remember correctly) Fortress Rock, on the left side of the photo below.  On its face are holes into which wooden stakes could be placed.  The Anasazi could then climb these stakes, removing them as they go, providing escape and shelter from their enemies.

The canyon floor was not the only area used for living.  There were many places on the cliffs themselves where the foundations and some walls of these community homes remain.

To give you a sense of scale, that house is located in a horizontal seam midway up the cliff face.  The image below is a base-to-top view of that wall with the dwelling remnants in the center. 

Imagine having to climb that wall to get to your home, carrying all your food, water and fuel.  I guess you would get irritated if you forgot something...

I think I will return to Canyon de Chelly.  First, I want to get some early morning and late afternoon shots from the rim.  Second, there is a jeep tour through the base of the canyon.  I want to do that.  It leaves at 9:00, and when I was there last week, I just was not about to get up early enough to be ready for a jeep tour at 9.  As both MacArthur and Arnold S. said, I'll be back.

Grand Canyon

This was hard. 

First, the Canyon is big.  Really big.  Grand...  I was at an exhibit at Grand Canyon Village and a tourist wondered where Skywalk was.  When I told him it was 200 miles and a 5 hour drive to the west, he didn't believe me.  It took reinforcement by a Ranger before he began to have a sense of scale, and we were near the center of the Canyon, not at its easterly limit.

Its scale means that when you look at it, you cannot see all that is before you.  Your eye picks out a succession of formations, taking in the view a piece at a time.

The camera does not do that.  It will either grab a wide angle image of multiple formations, a series of cliffs and chasms, or it will select a small component.  Shadows are black if you expose for a sunlit wall, and my strobe is just not strong enough to light a ravine a few miles away.  The sunlit areas bleach out if you expose for shadows.

My shooting was an evolution.  First, I tried for big views, using an exposure tending toward the lit areas and using post-production to bring up the shadows.

Next I tried to capture prominent features and colors set against the far expanses.

I tried using natural features to frame the canyon.

I tried selecting prominent natural or unique features.

Layers -

Whatever you shoot, you are shooting down - way down - unless you are able to descend into the Canyon.

Finally, I accepted that the Grand Canyon is too grand for me to capture with my little camera and lens.  I picked a few points that allowed me to show them confined in a way that I could grasp the image with my eye.

Grand Canyon sunrise

This morning I got up early to watch the dawn in the canyon.  I was VERY glad I knew how to dress.  I was wearing 4 layers of fleece and poly.  Even so, the pre-dawn temps and the wind at the rim made it cold, though tolerable.

Join me to watch the dawning sunlight drop into the canyon.

 

 Moment by moment, the light changed, bringing points and walls out of the shadow, lighting them crimson and yellow in the rising sun.

Once the sun was up a bit, it lit, beautifully, the buttress upon which I was standing at Mather Point.

The daytime colors of the canyon began to emerge.

Cool stuff!