Ann-alog, a Pixel Remix, where Ann Torrence blogs about photographing for a book on U.S. Highway 89, the greatest road trip route in America. Photography tips, locations, trip reports, and real life.

Dancers from Montezuma Creek Elementary School

The Festival of Cultures was going on in Moab last weekend at the same time as the Photo Symposium, but I did get out at the lunch break to see the Navajo dancers from Montezuma Creek Elementary School. So very cute. This is one of my favorite photos from their performance. I like how the feet, halfway off the edge of the stage, gives the sense of how excited they were to be performing.

The divers light up in a three-blink sequence, finishing with a splash

I spotted this sign on my first December trip to AZ, nabbed the photo on New Year's Day during the second trip. I've been smiling about it ever since. When I found it (in the daylight) on my way back from the Biosphere, I had no idea that there would be so many neon colors. Or if it even still lit up.

I've started planning the next trip south, sometime in March. Have another neon sign on my mind, along with wildflowers (if it rains), and mariachi bands. A kaleidoscope of spring color, which I'm looking forward to while I'm huddled up next to my space heater, sending out proposals and writing sentences. The book project has progressed from preliminary to production. It's fun to say I'm working on one. Then I have to go work on it. And make my own splash. Blink, blink, blink.

A dollop of glass is twisted into the hanging loop

That one's mine. I helped make it at the Sonoran Glass Art Academy on my Tucson trip. It's yellow and hyacinth, with a twist. The process was fascinating, although Lee, Sarah and Eve were careful to do the hot, dangerous work themselves.

Taxi from front yard to the Junction airport.

I met Bob on one of my earlier photo adventures - he's a former Navy pilot and Bryce Canyon park ranger, who has "retired" in Junction with a collection of fabulous toys and projects. Like breeding horses. A power parachute. And this ultralight.

Detail of San Xavier del Bac Mission

2010 miles from start to finish, Salt Lake to Nogales, and I am still making sense of everything I learned on this trip. Certain details stay with me, like this decorative element at the mission. Maybe I returned to it because I like spirals, or for the shadows it cast.

San Xavier del Bac continues to host an active congregation on the San Xavier Indian reservation, with an adjacent school. I visited it three times in four days. This morning I saw the nuns walking from their quarters to the school. The photographers weren't too thick, probably because it's not photo season in AZ, and because the church is undergoing an extensive renovation that "ruins" the exterior.

Still drawing in customers with this neon sign in central Tucson.

I've traversed Arizona from north to south on this trip, from Page to Nogales, making pictures and some new friends. I happen to love old neon, couldn't resist this one a block from my hotel.

Mt. Nebo in the Wasatach Range tossing up a huge cloud

The weather turned deeply cold along the Wasatch range on Thursday, after the big snow storm, and all the peaks were forming lenticular clouds, this one being the most spectacular. It got colder as I headed south, down to 5 deg F in Richfield UT at 11 in the morning. When I stopped for gas in Panguitch, the fuel pumped strangely slowly. A woman pumping next to me said it was because the temperature had dropped to -10F the night before.

We gas pumpers witnessed a peculiar display of human emotion: an older man in his Porsche Cayenne screaming at the woman inside to unlock the doors, with liberal use of foul language. Not something you hear on the streets in Panguitch very often. The woman next to me said something like "I'd never put up with that!" as the fellow shouted that he wasn't going to let his passenger get what she wanted out of the convenience store and roared away. Even more oddly, they were back a few minutes later (gas still slowly pumping) and the woman made her purchase while he stayed in the car. Just goes to show you can't buy style from a car dealer, and you have no idea what someone else's troubles might be.

I remembered on the road somewhere around Kanab about the first lenticular cloud I saw and photographed. It was in Mt Rainier, probably in 1988. I was getting interested in photography, and I had splurged on one roll of black and white film along with my regular snapshot film. I used it on moonlight exposures on the peak and cloud in the rising full moon. I didn't have access to a darkroom, or know what to do in one, so I took it to my neighborhood film lab in Houston. This wasn't a drugstore, but a place that should know the drill. They processed that film, printed a contact sheet, and lost the negative. The contact sheet about broke my heart. For a beginner, the exposures were right on, the concepts worked and the cloud/mountain/moonlight/star combination was amazing. It hurt. I still wonder if someone stole that film. Never found, and for some strange reason, I let the loss discourage me for a long time. It took me a long time to learn how to get back in the saddle and shoot again.

Street vendor wares in San Martin de los Andes

The drive from Bariloche to San Martin de los Andes is publicized as the seven lakes road, crossing a pass in the Andes and between all these lakes. We planned to do it as a long day trip, but R's friend Nick arranged for us to stay in a private condo in San Martin.

Thinking on one's feet: traditional Argentine tango dancers improvise their steps

The conference R attended has a tradition of wrapping up with a grand finale banquet that showcases the local culture. At the 2004 meeting in Perth, the dinner was in a museum housing contemporary Aboriginal paintings and we were greeted with a traditional eucalyptus leaf smoke purification ceremony and didgeridoo music, then a modern dance interpretation of aboriginal themes.

Sunset over the Andes.

The Andes are wide in the Bariloche area. and this is looking northward, across Lake Nahuel Huapi, and broadside from the waves breaking 6-8 feet high on the waterfront. This is the best place to see a romantic sunset, but stay in your car, out of the Patagonian wind.

That's only half the lambs prepared for the asado - the rest are cooking on the other side of the patio

Yesterday at R's conference, the scientificos and "accompanying persons" (that's me) went on an all-day tour on Lake Nahuel Huapi and the adjoining national park. Unlike most of the last week, the winds were light yesterday, and we cruised in a protected bay of the lake, alleviating any lingering concerns about seasickness amongst the passengers.

Pub crawling the night away

If Argentinos see the dawn, it's because they haven't been to bed. Saturday morning, we encountered this crew as they stumbled out of the bar on the same street as our hotel. A street vendor was preparing hamburgers for them; they seem to have brought the beer themselves.

This morning, R and I went out at dawn to photograph the sunrise over the Andes. Right outside our hotel, at 6:30, we encountered a group of (mostly) boys spilling out of the club, big beers in hand. A street vendor was cooking them burgers, and we were all amused by my photographing them.

Another mystery explained - why we kept waking up to music and shouts at 3:00 am. That would be when the club OPENs. The people going home crossed paths with the people arriving to open the shops. Speaking of shop openings, we still can´t figure out which kinds of business close for siesta, and what's open when.

We completed 20 hours of classes and the Spanish has come along sufficienlty such that we can shop, understand the signs, and ask questions of the patient good people of Bariloche. (Which is redundant 'che' means people in the tribal linguistic groups here. ) R and I were greatly pleased with ourselves to understand the jokes on our paper placemats at a cafeteria. Ok, maybe they were meant for kids, but the Brazilians at the table next to us were reading theirs too.

I despair of ever being able to roll my 'rr' sound. R can do it perfectly - his pronunciation is wonderful. Perro means dog, and there are tons of them on the streets, looking for handouts. This morning in the park, we were adopted by a pack of dogs as we walked along the waterfront. The ran ahead and waited for us, criss-crossed every street I did in my rambling abut for photo angles, went up the hill to the central plaza and didn't leave us until we ran into a vegetable truck unloading at a supermarket. For a long ways, a great big Husky walked at my side like an old friend. And I really can't explain it, but when I was photographing a statue of the wolf nusing the sons of Rome, one of the dogs starting barking in a frenzy AT the statue. That has been there forever in dog years. There's a lot here that has yet to make sense

We shift hotels tomorrow, should be able to upload photos with computer access in our room. Until then, hasta luego.

Hola!

No pictures yet, have not found a wi-fi location. Have found chocolate, dental floss and a glacier. The last was the easiest - we took an all-day bus ride to El Cerro Tronador (the thunderer), the highest peak in this part of Patagonia, on the border with Chile. The ice cracked and groaned tremendously, the tour guide fell asleep in the sunshine on the grounds of the restaurant, and we saw a CONDOR, actually several huge birds soaring over El Tronador himself. The only flowers we saw were dandelions and daffodils. The Argentinians had a difficult time getting Spanish-heritage immigrants to move to Patagonia, so many of the local symbols relate to the Welsh, Germans, Swiss pioneers. Today I saw an actual St. Bernard dog with barrel under the chin.

One of five brides and some flower girl mischief spotted in Sydney on 1 September 2004, traditionally the first day of spring in Australia.

My bridespotting game has three "rules":

Snow on Signal Mountain

The snow started yesterday just as we entered the park and blew with a lake effect off Jackson Lake for most of the afternoon. It was so tempting to lie abed, because the storm wasn't predicted to lift until late today. But we did not. Went out to the Oxbow, because it was simple, fought off the hordes and got skunked by Mt. Moran, which should look like this or this.

So I found this instead. I really liked the rim of snow on the trees, and waited until the photography workshop and the other serious - oh so serious photographers left. In the meantime, I climbed up the ridge to clear some willows and waited. Until the sun came out. And this is the result.

Mutton bustin'

Mt. Pleasant hosts a two day rodeo, complete with bull-riding and rodeo clowns, for the Fourth of July holidays. Even with the serious riders looking for prize money, the hometown crowd gets to participate, and they start them young. Every kid got a blue ribbon and a high-five from the rodeo clown.

At the Ogden Mountain Man Rendezvous

Trappers wintered in Ogden in 1825-26, and they also had a real rendezvous the next summer at Bear Lake. Kerry, from Battle Mountain, took second in this shooting competition.

Litto's Hubcap Ranch, in eastern Napa Valley, Calif., is perhaps the West's flashiest roadide attraction, with more than 5,000 chrome hubcaps strung up along aong a quarter mile of fence (and trees and sheds). This collection - state landmark No. 939 - started in the 1930s, when Litto Damonte began setting out caps knocked loose by the area's roads; drivers added more. Today, his grandson tends the ranch and welcomes visitors and their picnics. 6654 Pope Valley Rd, off Highway 29.

Via Magazine

Pinnacles in Nambung National Park, Western Australia

Bridespotting in Sydney, Australia.

On a one day outing in Sydney, we observed five separate weddings, the first Saturday in September being the traditional beginning of spring. The friends of the groom at this wedding came on motor bikes; the flower girls were waiting almost patiently for the best man to run back from the limo with the wedding rings.