Riverton, Utah

Shooting JPG, because I inexplicably lost a CF card between house and arena, so I needed to conserve space.

Hang on to your hat, cowboy. Riverton, Utah

I like to keep my white balance at Daylight, unless I have a good reason to change it. My rationale: Velvia was daylight balanced, and we used it to capture all the changing colors of golden hour into sunset. Auto white balance would "correct" all that lovely light into something much colder. No thanks.

Graceful exit, Riverton, Utah

The landing wasn't so pretty as this picture might suggest.

Mule-power

From a recent trip to Sanpete County, driver at the helm of a mule-drawn wagon. Notice the escapee at the end of the dirt road? We didn't catch him.

Hide Racing, Riverton, Utah rodeo

I've seen hide racing before, but I still have no explanation for it. It seems to be best when your little brother is the one being towed. The crowd loves it.

D700, ISO 3200, f 3.2, 1/100th of a second. I am still exploring the low-light limits of this machine--fabulous!

End of a short ride at Morgala Days rodeo, Morgan, Utah

Sometimes the bull wins.

Scan of the original elevation of the Cathedral of the Madeleine
Before and After Photoshopping

My family heritage is Catholic, and my great-grandmother used to use the phrase "it's a mystery of the Church" to explain things to my mom when she was growing up. When I saw the best available scan of this image, I knew it would be a mystery of how I would get it publication-ready. Besides being overly dark and poor contrast, when it was photographed or copied from the original, the text on the back side of the paper bled through, leaving a very undesirable background effect. Tidying it up took some experimentation in Photoshop. My initial thought was to use the Threshold tool, which was an abject failure. I tried some variations on blending modes, and finally hit on a combination that worked.

First, I made a base layer of pure white. Then I made a reasonable selection around the outline of the building, using the Refine Edge" settings to get a visual guide for feathering. I hadn't used that particular tool in the Selection menu before, can't believe I've lived this long without it. Then I erased the background to reveal the white base layer.

I added a Brightness/Contrast adjustment layer. I have never used settings like these on my photos(!): brightness at +121 and contrast at +63. Next, I duplicated the layer with the cathedral, moved it to the top of the stack, and set the blend to Multiply at 80%. The duplicate layer has two Curves adjustment layers, set with a clipping mask to affect only the duplicate layer, that sets the black and white points. One curve is masked to the lower portion; a stronger curve was needed for the towers.

And Voila! All of this effort is on behalf of what is likely to be the reinvigorated Sagebrush Press's first book in the hands of the public. The Cathedral of the Madeleine in Salt Lake City is celebrating its 100 year anniversary in August and we are working feverishly to finish a history of the building and community by the celebration. Barring too many more unforeseen delays, I think we will make it. My friend and archivist of the diocese, Gary Topping, has written a marvelous and entertaining text and found some great historical photos. My contribution is a short photo essay of the community of faith that uses the building.

If you are in Salt Lake City and you happen to be near the cathedral, take a look upward. You'll notice that the uppermost towers were not completed according to the original plan. It's an interesting bit of history, and one I'm glad we'll be able to illustrate with this image.

P.S. The Highway 89 book is still on schedule, but as a full-color project, it's going to take longer to print. The Cathedral's anniversary is setting the schedule for that project, and Gary's book gets to be first.

Morgala Days, Morgan, UtahRide on, cowboy.

Haymaking equipment known as a "beaverslide"

For the whole time I have been working on the U.S. Highway 89 book, I have been focused on keeping the final product as affordable as possible. A fancy coffee table book would have been much easier to produce, a nice fat hardbound book that would retail for $75 or more. And ego-gratifying, unless I wanted people to actually buy and enjoy my book. No, my model of success has always been at a much lower price point. I figure that if someone picks up my book on one part of the highway, say in Yellowstone, and decides to go visit another place like Wupatki National Monument because they saw it in my book, I would have accomplished something. Which sort of means people have to be able to buy it. How many people actually buy $75 books?

Since acquiring Sagebrush Press, I have gotten a rapid education on what makes books affordable. Not everything I want can go into the book, which means some hard choices. This one didn't make it to the final round. Others did. 176 images (today, may tweak it tomorrow), but not this one, even though I can think of a thousand reasons why I like it. The story required others.

It's a better position to be in than the alternative, putting in junk to fill out the pages. I am glad to say I have all the images I need. And a few to spare. I also have some spare words, sentences that I cut to fit the copy to the layout. This highway is a big topic, all 1,600 miles of it, and everything I love about it just won't fit between two softcover, 4 color process plus gloss UV coating, perfect-bound covers (that's printer-talk for you) unless the type is really, really small. Hard choices, and I'm glad I'm the one making them. I still wish I could fit this one it though

Screen shot of my U.S. Highway 89 book

Progress, frustratingly slow, but progress nevertheless. I don't dare put a date on when it will go to press, but it is going. Here's a screen shot of the introductory spread for Chapter 8. I am very happy with how it is coming out.

There are 176 images in the book (as of today, may change tomorrow). In selecting images, I was grateful for some good advice I absorbed early on, and wished more times than I can say that I followed it more rigorously early in the project: once I have a cooperative subject and a good composition, to shoot it for a variety of crop formats. The image of Lower Yellowstone Falls, for example, I shot wide, so I could crop at an 8x10 format, and long, so I could use a 2x3. I have some that are horizontal. The rainbow lasts for only a few minutes, so it's important to have a plan to get all the different aspect ratios I might want later on.

I wasn't 100% consistent in shooting for completeness early on, and sometimes things are so fast moving, I only got one shot. Since I'm designing this book myself, I had the luxury of making my images fit to the text, but sometimes it would have been a lot easier to have a vertical image that would crop to the size I needed, rather than fitting the one I had, or settling for a horizontal one and redesigning a spread.

If I can't make a lot of shots, these days I am shooting wider, filling the shorter dimension of the frame, but leaving room for cropping on the long side since the 2x3 format is pretty restrictive. But if I can, I shoot lots of options. I get teased sometimes by other photographers for taking way more shots than others, but I have turned that old advice into hard-won experience, and a few extra electrons isn't going to hurt anyone.

As my friend Bruce Hucko says to me, "Drive on!" Just a few more mileposts to go.

P.S. If you want to get an email when this book is available, please visit my handy email email form to sign up.

Grand Canyon Voyage, Day 9

About one hour after sunset on the 9th day, I started yet another star trail. I had never done night sky photography before this trip--wasn't really interested when I shot film and the older generation digital cameras weren't going to give the results I wanted. So the dark skies of the Grand Canyon gave me a great, sleeping bag accessible venue to practice.

And practice I did. Not until the third or fourth try did I make anything that pleased me. Not because of the Nikon D700, simply operator error. I worked out a procedure that gave me this result, and it's what I'll start with on Saturday, at our next Photowalk.

• Fresh batteries
• Turn off noise reduction (NR uses as much battery as your shot, and if you run out of power in mid-shot processing, the D700 and probably every other digital camera out there, records nothing.
• ISO Low 1 on the D700, which is equivalent to 100. I used that because ISO 200 collected too much background brightness. Sensitivity on individual cameras varies enough that it needs testing, but high ISOs aren't the place to start.
• f4 aperture. Aperture is the real control in this kind of photography, and 1 stop off widest aperture is generally a very sharp choice.
• compose. I wanted to include something of the rim in my shot. This is at 28mm on a full frame sensor. I wished I had an even wider lens.
• shoot RAW
• use a manual camera release, with a locking mechanism to hold it open.
• wait. I can count on at least 45 minutes on a fresh set of 8 AA batteries at 70 degrees in the D700 battery pack. Maybe longer, but by the time I had this shot, the sliver moon lighting the canyon wall had set and I was almost out of AAs. I'll try a longer exposure on Saturday.

100% pixel crop

The details captured by the D700 is unbelievable.

For RAW processing, I used a temperature of 3400K, tint of -3, exposure +.60 (suggests using a slightly higher ISO, like Low -.7), brightness -20 (to kill background and separate the stars). For a first success, I'm quite happy, and looking forward to Saturday:

PhotowalkingUtah on Saturday, if this infernal rain stops: Stansbury Park Observatory (Not the Island)
June 13th, 2009 (Saturday)
* Starting Time: 9:00pm
* Ending Time: 11:00pm (you can stay later if desired)
All the details

The Grand Teton, tallest of them all

I counted up the photos in the nearly final layout of the Highway 89 book: 176. But not this one. I didn't do anything with this when I shot it in 2006--two other images from that same trip are in the book, including this one, that it didn't stand out at the time. My Adobe Camera Raw chops are better now too. I made this a much better image than I could have three years ago. Even though it doesn't displace anything in the Wyoming chapter, I still like it.

Three day old foal

Even though I'm about done shooting for Highway 89 project, I can't seem to get away from Sanpete County. We went down to Spring City Heritage Day, and on the way, met up with a new committee member for the Day of the American Cowboy Celebration in Mt. Pleasant (July 25). Adam has a new addition to his ranch: this three-day old filly.

Today, Rich Legg and I were doing some photo editing for the book, and drifted off into esoteric Photoshop actions. This one is supposed to mimic a platinum print. I don't know about that, but I like the effect for this timeless scene.

My nephew

I caught up on things today: packing materials to ship limited editions (thank you!), proof prints for the Day of the American Cowboy folks I'll be seeing tomorrow, and pictures from early April of and for my family. This series got sent off today. Now we return to our regularly scheduled chaos of getting Sagebrush Press's U.S. 89 project">first book in print. Drive safe this weekend.

Camp 5

Still in the Inner Gorge, we made camp early enough that I could get out all of my gear: D700 for most everything, D2X as a back-up and for wide angles (I don't have a full-frame wide angle yet), D70 for remixed IR stuff, and a review model of a Canon D10.

Not much happened with the light, win some, lose some. It was a great evening even so. I used everything in the bag, just to say I had. Actually, there was more than a bag, and despite the complexities, carrying it around was a managable bother.

Securing gear on a Colorado River trip involves as much protection from impact as from water. Those rapids toss stuff around, even if well-secured, and there's always a chance that a shipmate is going to take a tumble right onto your pack. My lo-fi strategy I used in 2006 on the Nahanni River trip wasn't going to be suitable. I debated and optimized, and ended up with a hybrid system that worked for 3 DSLR bodies and about 5 lenses (biggest was my 70-200VR).

The D700 went into a Pelican box, along with its battery grip and a flash. Later on the trip, I reverted to my standard 5 liter drybag for the D700 (without grip). From years of practice in my kayak, I can stuff a camera into a drybag really fast. (Make sure your drybag has a hard loop for a carabiner, and use this method at your own risk.)

The D2X, D70, a back-up flash, Pocket Wizards, 12-24 DX lens, 50 mm lens, Lensbaby Composer and miscellaneous junk went into the bottom of a borrowed Lowepro DryZone Rover. This bag seals with zippers like those found on drysuits, and I read about issues with the zippers not closing properly in the field, so I double bagged everything in ziplocks. This bag is not the kind you open and shut thirty times a day. The zipper worked properly or speedily, but not both at once. So the lower compartment stayed shut on the river. But it did not fail once I got it sealed correctly.

To carry the rest of my stuff, I redeployed the the DryZone's non-waterproof upper section. Intended for hiker comforts (snack, hydration, clothes), the bag's top half seals like a regular pack. I packed my 70-200 in its soft case, then stuffed that into a 5 liter drybag. Another small drybag held batteries, CF cards, and other necessaries for shots during the day. It all got through 11 days of sand, rapids, water and elements just fine.

I resisted buying a specialty pack for this trip, but liked the DryZone Rover well enough that I am replacing it for the person I borrowed it from. The dual sections made it work for me. Either of LowePro's other waterproof bags would have been too cumbersome for my shooting style, but I intend on using this bag often on more placid adventures as well as future whitewater trips.

Granite Rapid near mile 93, Grand Canyon National Park

The Inner Gorge of the Grand Canyon draws the walls closer together speeding up the current the Colorado River and making its rapids much more dangerous. John Wesley Powell's men dreaded the schist and granite rocks, their practical geology lessons burnt into them: the Inner Gorge rapids were most dangerous of all.

We, in our mighty rubber rafts, had much more leisure to entertain ourselves than Powell's crew. We also had spectacular weather, blue skies day after day. Naturally, I could have done with a little color in the skies, but I wasn't dealing the meterological cards. I show this picture not as a fantastic example of my photography, but to set the scene for our evening entertainment at Camp 4: eco-graffiti.

Eco-graffiti with a laser pointer on the Inner Gorge, no rocks were harmed for this art project.

It's still not clear why my dear husband R brought his green laser pointer in his gear, but it shot all the way across the river from camp. We selected a smooth wall for our graffiti and played away until true dark. This was the first time I really pushed the low light capabilities of the D700, and I am impressed. This is a 34 second exposure (if the metadata can be trusted; I was using a cable release) at 800 ISO, not quite dark. Our friend Scott worked the laser for this one. He planned it all through dinner. Yep, a lot of time on our hands. And a good practice session for the days (and nights) ahead.

Nankoweap Granaries

One of the reasons we chose to float the Grand Canyon in April with CRATE was the opportunity for more hiking time than a typical 8-day motorized trip. Same river distance in 11 days equates to three more days to explore, and reliably cooler weather in April.

When we rafted (with CRATE) in 1998, we did not get to stop at the Nankoweap granaries. It's a short and steep hike (there are only steep hikes in Grand Canyon), a good warm-up for the days ahead.

Trail to the Nankoweap granaries

While we were on the trail, the shadow line crossed the river from right bank to left, and I could have watched it and worked with it and the granaries all morning. Even with 11 river days, the schedule did not allow for frittering away everyone else's time for photography. Dawdling could mean losing a premium campsite to another party, and then we'd be lined up in our sleeping bags like basking seals on a narrow beach somewhere. I couldn't do that to my shipmates, all friends of friends and kind, considerate people. Instead, I scuttled back to the raft so we could make some river miles before lunch and cookie time.