Arizona & Utah, Day 5

In a pattern we’ve almost gotten used to, we’re up and out the door again before dawn.

(I say almost because one of our number – who shall again, remain nameless – was a little slow out of the blocks that morning and nearly missed the ride.)

We cannonballed out to Canyonlands, just making it to Dead Horse Point in time for sunrise. Similar to Horseshoe Bend, there was nothing protecting us from a long fall but our own good sense.

It was a beautiful sunrise, lighting up the red rocks as we tried to capture them for the people at home.

It was a short hike from the parking lot out to the point – just long enough on the way back to make me wish I could stay a bit longer, even though I knew it was time to go home.

Back at the hotel, our group went its separate ways – I had to get back to Texas, and Ian’s wife was kind enough to give me a ride to the Moab airport.

A bumpy puddle-jump to Denver and a hop to Dallas later, I was walking out of the airport with some of Arnie’s words ringing in my ears.

“This isn’t a photo trip – this is an adventure.”

Postscript: After I came home and started editing my images, I posted a few on Facebook. The event co-ordinator at the San Antonio Public Library saw them and asked if I would be interested in having a photo show in the library’s gallery.

It was the second time my photos were shown publicly – I had a small show at my wife’s library, but there wasn’t a reception. For this one, we decided to pull out all the stops. It was entered in FotoSeptiembre USA, an international photography festival.

We had a big reception (for which I lavishly overbought in food and booze - seriously, we've still got wine from this event), and it was a great time.

Postscript II: I’ve still got some Utah pictures to go through, but these are some of my favorite pictures. I hope you’ve enjoyed the tale – if you’ve got any questions or thoughts, feel free to drop me a line.

Arizona & Utah, Day 4

  Heading into Arches National Park, we all craned our necks to look up at the huge red stone building blocks and the – yay! – blue sky beyond.

We start with Balanced Rock, and shoot steadily for an hour or so. That stop resulted in one of my favorite shots from the trip:

Those wisps of clouds started to thicken into the deadly flat white sky as we reached the Windows, big almost-matching arches.

There were a lot of tourists, but Chris and I avoided them by walking through the arch and doing our best Spider-Man impersonation on the ledges on the other side, reaching a small ledge where we perched to shoot back through the arch at land formations on the other side.

After making our way down, we headed over to Double Arch, two huge arches that had tourists climbing all over the base.

We set up near the trail nearby. With some advice from Ian, I pulled out the big zoom I rented for the trip and got some nice detail shots of the arches intersecting – thereby cropping out the myriad of tourists below.

All this time, it’s getting darker…

After lunch, we took a siesta, and I wandered the streets. As rain began to patter down, I realized I had forgotten a raincoat, and picked one up, along with a new Otterbox for my phone.

I keep all my notes for stories on my phone – both written and in voice memos – and the black casing – the most reliable phone case I’ve ever had - had finally worn out. When I peeled it off, grains of red sand from our adventures pattered on the countertop in the store.

The rain continued, but we braved it, heading back into Canyonlands in a storm that swept through the canyons, slowing us down at times to a walking speed.

At one point, we see a storm sweeping across an open plain to our right. Braving the rain, Chris, Ian and I dashed out to the cliff’s edge, setting up and shooting while trying to keep our gear dry with middling success.

The rain broke again as we headed for Mesa Arch – one of the most photographed arches, and really a unique challenge compositionally. The rock detail is amazing, but the view through it – to the plains and mountains beyond  - requires a very high f-stop.

And oh, by the way – the arch is right on the edge of a thousand-foot drop. It’s been photographed a lot and by the best, but it’s still stunning.

After Mesa, we hauled back to the car and headed for the Green River Overlook again, hoping to get one shaft of sunlight to break through the morass of storm clouds.

We waited.

And waited.

While we were waiting, I turned around for a moment and looked behind us. This rainbow appeared, centered over the old, worn tree.

I shivered – but that might have been the rain and falling temperatures.

And….the waiting finally paid off.

At the last gasp, one beam of sunlight broke through and lit up the canyon walls on the far side of the overlook. We all shot furiously, trying to capture it in the few seconds before it was gone.

Day 5: Heading home

Arizona & Utah, Day Three

My photography bucket list took a beating the first two days of our trip – Horseshoe Bend and Antelope Canyon had been on it from the first scrawl.

One shot that I’ve been wanting to get for a long time is a star trail show – those nifty pictures of stars swirling around the North Star.

Since I live in the light-polluted environs of San Antonio, I don’t often get out to areas where the skies are dark enough for such a shot.

Waking up at three a.m. on the top of a mesa, I thought I’d have the perfect chance. Groggily, I unzipped my tent and took a look outside.

It was dark, all right. Black. 100C, 100Y, 100M, 100K, for any print folks out there. Which meant that it was too dark for any chance of a starlight shot.

Foiled, I tried to get back to sleep, but ended up reading a new Harry Dresden novel until the rest of the crew rolled out. Sadly, no magic could make the sun burst through the filmy gray clouds.

Headed off the mesa, we stopped at Spider Arch, the first of the big arches we see. Chris and I carefully climbed up the rock face to a closer spot, while Bob and Arnold stayed closer (and probably safer) to the ground.

Down the mesa we went in the truck, nearly nose first at times, but Ray pulled us through. We transferred our gear to Ian’s truck and headed north to Moab, a three-hour trek.

Arriving in town, our first stop was lunch. A bar and grill filled with the neon and carbon fiber of exuberant mountain sports yuppies was a jarring contrast to the poverty we saw in the Navajo town of Kayenta.

After lunch, we dropped off most of our gear at the hotel and headed out to Canyonlands National Park and the Green River Overlook. The clouds stayed and darkened through the afternoon – not giving us any dynamic frames, but gave us a chance to look at some of these viewpoints as people, and not just photographers. (Yes, there is a difference.)

Equipment-related digression: For this trip, I rented two lenses to go with my Sony A99 body – a Zeiss f2.8 16-35mm lens, and a Sony f4-5.6 70-400mm zoom. Since this was my first trip into the area, I wasn’t sure what I was going to need.

I was hoping for a rattlesnake sighting that would give me reason to pull out the big zoom, but it was close to a waste of money. I only took it out once or twice, instead relying heavily on the 16-35, which I was very happy with.

My Sony tripod was iffy for a lot of the trip – I had to spend too much time tweaking it and making sure it didn’t slide on me. The Gorillapod was useful, but I think next time I’ll invest in a Manfrotto tripod and ball head. The images were processed using Photoshop 6 and Nik software.

Day Four: Drip, drip, drip…

Arizona & Utah, Day 2

We’re up with our friend O:DarkThirty again, heading out to Horseshoe Bend, one of the most recognizable canyons in the world.

It’s funny – in some areas, places like this would probably have ropes or fences keeping you from the edge.

There is nothing between you and the edge at Horseshoe Canyon. And it is a long way down – nearly 1000 feet - to the tiny boat landing on the inside of the curve where we saw people camping.

One of our tribe – I won’t embarrass him by calling him out by name – was more than a little nervous about being that close to the edge. I don’t blame him, either, but I had seen a shot like the one above of Horseshoe many times, and I wanted one of my own.

So I made an effort not to look to closely at the river at the bottom of the canyon, crept up to the edge, and shot.

I wasn’t the only one, either – thousands of dollars in camera gear was inches from hundreds of feet of flight as we lined the rim, photographer crows on our perches.

After the sun came up, we made our way back to town for breakfast. Page is a mid-sized town – Ian said there were 17 churches, but I didn’t get a chance to count them. As we drove through the center of town and past a high school, baseball players were dragging the field, red dust puffing up behind them.

After breakfast, we headed out to Lower Antelope Canyon. The parking lot is on the other side of the road from Upper Antelope Canyon.

In Upper Antelope, you walk straight into a cliff face cracked by the slot canyon. In Lower Antelope, you walk down some stone steps and small ladders to the canyon floor.

As our group waited for its turn to go down in the caves, we got a bit of a chuckle listening to the guide give people instructions on taking pictures in the canyon.

He repeatedly told people to use “Beach Mode” on their cameras, and it quickly became our catchphrase for the rest of the trip.

“Got that in focus?” “Yep – got it in Beach Mode. I’m good.”

Lower Antelope proved to be more narrow in spots than Upper Antelope – less than three feet wide in places, making for some bending and twisting.

The canyon walls were lighter and more colorful. Bracketing our exposures – shooting the same frame with multiple exposures - was important here to get the rich colors and shadows in detail.

Thanks to Ian, we hit the Keyhole – a hole in the rock façade that has a beam of light shine through it for about 15 minutes during the day – just in time to capture that. Ian played the part of Sandman, bringing the light into sharper focus.

As we progressed through the canyon, crowds were noticeably less than in Upper Antelope, but the narrow pathway made even a steady single-file stream seem busy.

We came to a steep, nearly vertical metal stairway/ladder, and then a switchback metal stairway to climb out, with about a 15 minute walk across sand back to the parking lot.

Post lunch, we packed up and headed east to Hunts Mesa in Monument Valley.

As we rolled into the valley, it felt like we were entering the domain of giants. Huge red monsters loomed over the landscape.

After a pit stop, we met our guide, Ray, who took us around Monument Valley and through Kayenta, AZ. (You can’t get to the mesa from the park by road…in fact, unless you’re hiking or ready for some off-roading, you can’t get there at all.)

Bull-rushing across dunes, with sand kicking up as high as the windows, there were a few white knuckle moments as Ray whipsawed the truck to keep it moving.

Once past the dunes, we did a slow crawl up the narrow trail to the mesa’s peak, just in time to catch the last few minutes of daylight.

It was short-lived, though – a blanket of clouds descended and took the glowing hills away. Unfazed, we channeled our inner Ansel Adams (with the help of a flask or two) and went for black and white moments.

Ray and his assistants were excellent campfire books, and we crashed early, hoping the clouds would clear off in the night.

DAY THREE: Arch hunting

Arizona and Utah, Day 1

After far too much time, I’m finally getting around to recapping the five-day photo trip I took in May 2013 to Arizona and Utah.

This area has always been high on my photography bucket list – when I drew up my first list, the glowing depths of Antelope Canyon was the first thing I wrote down.

I had a hard time giving myself permission to take the trip, though. Even though I was making some good money freelancing stories and photos for the local newspaper (on top of the Day Job), it seemed like an extravagance.

Talking it out with my wife helped me realize that not only could I go, I could take the next step and set up my own company, marketing outdoor recreation and travel stories with photography.

On New Year’s Eve, I was looking at various photo tours in the Arizona/Utah region when I came across Ian Whitehead. I had seen his site before when daydreaming about these trips, but now that it was more serious, I reached out to him to see what tours he had available.

Five days, four people, Antelope Canyon, Alstrom Point, Hunts Mesa/Monument Valley, and the parks around Moab. Perfect.

I might have pelted him with e-mails to the point of drowning, but he was very patient with me, advising me on all the gear I needed.

Before I knew it, it was early May, and I was flying in Flagstaff. We pick up the story at 0:DarkThirty…

Day 1: Sedona, Arizona-Page, Arizona Or, it would have been O:DarkThirty, but by the time the O finished yawning and it got to Dark, we were on the road and headed for Page, a two-hour-plus drive.

After a late night flight into Flagstaff and drive into Sedona the night before, it was a slightly sleepy me that got into Ian’s truck for the ride north with the three other photographers – Chris, Bob and Arnold.

With a breakfast stop for sugar and caffeine though, we were good to go.

One of the quirks about traveling through Arizona is the difference in times. I live in Central Time, and Arizona is on Mountain Time, but it doesn’t recognize Daylight Savings. Navajo Nation – the parts of three states that fall under the Native Americans - does support Daylight Savings Time, but Hopi Nation – a smaller state within Navajo Nation – does not.

Coordinate your timepieces. And your codpieces.

Our first day’s schedule was busy – Rattlesnake Canyon, Upper Antelope Canyon and Alstrom Point. We didn’t waste any time hustling up the road to Page, our headquarters for the next couple of nights.

Getting to Antelope Canyon itself can’t be done on your own – you need to hire a Navajo guide. We arrived at the wide spot in the road outside of Page where the tours start and transferred to a large truck.

The truck drove into a big, sandy wash for between one and two miles from the parking lot to our first stop – Rattlesnake Canyon.

Rattlesnake and Antelope canyons are what are known as slot canyons – narrow clefts in the rock that allow for thin beams of sunlight to slip down to the canyon floor, making for some elegant lighting and beautiful images.

Rattlesnake was a good introduction to photographing these – there were virtually no crowds (or room for any crowds). Climbing up a couple of ladders to the shallow slot, we squeezed our way through the narrow passage one at a time, trying to protect lenses and tripods from the walls and each other.

I was using a Sony tripod at this point, but for this canyon, I’d probably use a Gorillapod to save on space.

After about an hour, we drove the rest of the way down the wash to Upper Antelope Canyon – a photographer’s mecca.

There are good things and bad things about meccas – they are wonderful places, and they draw armies of people.

Surrounded by people toting iPods, iPads, point-and-shoots, DSLRS of every make and model, large-format cameras - probably even pinhole cameras - we walked into Upper Antelope Canyon.

The Navajo guides do a fairly good job keeping the groups separated – only rarely did someone from another group stumble into my frame. This was a place where Ian definitely earned his keep, too – getting his group to the right places for dynamic frames, offering exposure tips and making sure we weren’t rushed and/or blocking traffic.

It was tight quarters, though – there are areas where photographers were lined up in murderer’s rows, tripod to tripod with the person next to them.

--SPOILER ALERT-- I’m going to spill a secret here – those beautiful light beams that filter down, framed in swirling dust? That dust doesn’t get there by itself, folks. The guides spend a lot of time lining people up in good photography spots, then dashing over to the side of the lightbeam (out of the frame, usually) and tossing handfuls of sand into the light as we snap away. --END SPOILER--

After two hours, we found our way out, cameras full of cool images. Also noticeably dehydrated – it wasn’t baking hot, but the moisture does disappear from the body noticeably out there.

We had a needed siesta, then headed out to Alstrom Point for sunset. Alstrom Point is a remote spot that requires a four-wheel-drive with sturdy tires to get to.

Our four-wheel-drive was lacking in sturdy tires, popping a rear wheel about halfway there. Ian again came to the rescue, changing the tire and getting us out to the point in plenty of time for sunset.

The point overlooks Lake Powell and Gunsight Butte – with just the five of us spread out along the point and no service, it was easy to feel like we were on a different planet.

After sunset, we crawled back into town, exhausted at the end of a long day. We shoveled in food at a local steakhouse and tried to catch some sleep, despite the atrocious karaoke/cover band combination polluting the air from across the street. DAY 2: Into the Canyon and Up to the Mesa

How my feet survived our European vacation, and other thoughts

Four quick takeaways from a fantastic trip to Italy:NO BLISTERS: I can’t explain how much of an improvement it was on the vacation experience to not have any blisters on my feet. When we went to London and Paris four years ago, my feet were red and raw by the end of the second day.

Two weeks of pounding our feet on the cobblestones and slate of Venice, Rome and the little towns on the Amalfi Coast, and nothing this time.

I wore sock liners every day (except flying days) and heavy Thorlo hiking socks over fairly new (less than a month old) Teva low-cut hiking boots. Thorlos are expensive, but worth their weight in gold. Highly recommended.

CROSSING THE STREET: Our vacation experience went up 10 points by crossing Via Veneto in Rome – but it completely leveled up in Naples.

We didn’t see any streetlights in a six-block walk around the train station in Naples. The resulting chaos was beyond epic. Taking our lives in our hands, we walked out and waited for them to stop – amazingly, they did.

Luckily, the pizza we had at Da Pellone More than made up for it. If you're going to eat pizza, eat it where they invented pizza.

PHOTOGRAPHING THE ICONS: Some of my favorite shots are iconic buildings at night. With stops in Rome and Venice, there were more than a few opportunities for me to try cool night shots.

However, the hustlers shilling their colored light gizmos tend to wander in front of the camera during the long exposures, which can result in some interesting effects, but more often result in annoying crap and lots of time in Photoshop, if not a junked image.

However, they will usually – not always – get out of the way once they see what you are doing.

THE BEST VIEWS: This was a tough call. We had a great view from the top of St. Peter’s Basilica, but it was very crowded. Castel Sant’Angelo was less crowded, had a great view and we got a better sunset. Win.

New Camera, New Zoo

Some people have work-related hazards such as ergonomically incorrect keyboards or desks that leave them bent in uncomfortable positions.

Others are Iike Maricela, the nice lady at the San Antonio Zoo in charge of the parrot cage. While most of the streaking rainbows buzzed around the cage, Snowflake sat on her shoulder, nibbled on her shirt collar, then finally nestled into her hair.

Finally, Maricela was forced to swing her head side-to-side to shake the nesting bird loose.

The parrot, dislodged but unruffled, promptly hopped back onto her outstretched hand and headed back toward her shirt collar, nibbling on the button hole.

The parrot cage, and the zoo as a whole, is my go-to place for testing new camera gear. In this case, it was my new Sony A99.

My initial verdict is very positive. The images are very, very sharp. It's a little disconcerting to have the LED viewfinder show the image I just shot before going back to live action, but I was getting used to it by the end if the day.

The manual focus option is also different - it can be locked in through a menu, or if you just want it for one shot, hold a button on the back of the body and focus. Take your thumb off the button, though, and it snaps back to auto.

I found the light sensors to be a vast improvement over my A-350, which is forgiving in its own right. Having a sunny day helped, but on shots in dark shade, I was getting good results at ISO 100.

It had been at least two years since I had been to the zoo, and I was more than a little impressed with the number of improvements and additions it has made. The interactivity has increased a lot, especially in the birds area - I nearly stepped on a couple of tiny birds on a walkway through one of the cages.

Zoos are always a little sad after a while - I like to see animals in nature rather than behind steel mesh. But in comparison to other zoos, San Antonio has one to be proud of. The rest of my zoo pictures can be seen here.

My Favorites from 2012

Choosing your favorite pictures is like choosing which Avenger you'd rather be. One or two get to be in the movies - the rest are stuck with sly nods in the TV shows and maybe a cameo in Iron Man #1 in Marvel Now.

Without further ado - some of my favorite pictures from 2012.

Big Bend VI - Shaking the Dust From Our Boots...

Just in case you didn’t know what you wanted for Christmas – this fine item is available, posted on the wall of a store in Terlingua. Congratulations to the couple who got engaged at the top of the Lost Mine trail while we were hiking. We saw them coming down, and they looked gloriously happy.

Thank you, again, to FedEx and SuperFriend Dana, who saved my bacon.

Hey, gas station guy – you might want to try civilization for a while. You’ve spent a little too much time in the company of your own thoughts.

How big are tarantulas? Big enough that when you’re driving 60 mph on the highway, you can see them crossing the road. Think about that.

The kids on our rafting trip were a lot of fun – but I’m glad I didn’t have to drive them home. Mud EVERYWHERE.

Okay, lady – we get it, you wanted to go to Santa Elena Canyon. We all did. But after the sights and extra time we got on Colorado Canyon, you can’t think we got a bad deal. Oh wait…you still do.

“Planting a flag” in Mexico is definitely a euphemism. Thankfully, not one I had to endure.

I can’t wait to go back and have breakfast at India’s Café again.

Hearing the stories from the river guides about bureaucratic border nonsense makes me want to bang my head against a wall. Or a margarita.

One of the prettiest sunrises I’ve seen was an early morning at the Chisos Mountain Lodge. Glorious.

The tug-of-war rages – with this jewel of a park, I want the Big Bend area to succeed. But if they become too successful, the area could lose the remoteness that makes it special.

The walls of Santa Elena Canyon could double for the Wall in Game of Thrones – without the ice.

Big Bend V - It's getting dark out here...

One important lesson was reinforced during our hiking trips in Big Bend – always ask the park rangers before you believe any printed material. According to our guidebook, Balanced Rock was an easy hike. And the flyers in our room claimed it is a wonderful place to watch the sunset.

Um, no...and oh wait. No.

With the sun heading toward the horizon, we bounced over six miles of rutted road, headed for the trailhead. The rented SUV proved its worth here - my gas-efficient Matchbox car would have been beached more than once.

We pulled into the parking lot to find a trail leading through a narrow valley, with steep hillsides already growing dark.

It was our last night in the park, so we started double-timing it along the trail, hoping to catch the sunset. Hustling along the trail, which switched from gravel to sand and back again, we reached what looked like the end.

Or not.

A small arrow pointed us up a rock wall to a goat path of rock outcroppings. Stretching and reaching from one spot to the next, we monkeyed up the path, winding our way across the rock on little more than a hiking boot's width in spots.

After about 15 minutes of this, with the light dimming all the while, we reached Balanced Rock. The rock is balanced on two other boulders, and the mountain rises behind it.

On the west side.

Where the sunset was.

We had a nice view to the east, and in 12 hours, it would be a lovely sunrise. And if we stayed out there all night, we'd be rattlesnake snacks.

So down the hill we went, feeling our way along in the quickening dark from rock step to rock step. Finally, we got to the bottom and trudged back to the car in the dark. One turn nearly led us out into the desert, but we made it back without any mishaps.

A much more relaxed and pleasant hike was up the Lost Mine trail. The trail, starting from the road leading to the Chisos Mountain Lodge, winds up into the mountains encircling the lodge.

It's a walk with a little challenge to it - the mountains are steep and there is altitude - but it was a gorgeous day. Recent rainfall had the mountainsides covered in yellow blooms.

There are benches along the path, and you can stop anywhere along the second half of the trail for gorgeous views of Casa Grande - a huge rock formation looming over the surrounding hills.

The cool breeze at the top felt like it came straight from the Rocky Mountains. The trail immediately leapt into my top five hikes I've been on in Texas.

Next up - a few odds and ends...

Big Bend IV - Or, A Little Banjo Music

When we walked into the Starlight Theater in Terlingua after our rafting trip, I thought they’d play both kinds of music there – country AND western.

Then the cowboy-hat wearing guitarslinger behind the mic started playing Cole Porter songs. The stuffed goat with a Lone Star in its jaws seemed unimpressed.

Terlingua is one of the more interesting small towns I’ve ever visited. As it was described by one person, it’s where the hippies from Austin came after life started getting too intense there.

Bikers, tourists, river guides and others hung out on the porch connecting the Starlight with the Terlingua General Store, a small town scene if I’ve ever seen one. Strangers five minutes ago, we chewed the fat with another transplanted New Englander who was attracted by my New Hampshire t-shirt.

After a steak, we sat on the porch for a bit as the sun started to set behind us, lighting the Chisos Mountains in golden tones. A pickup band of banjo pickers brought back the country sound, with classic Willie and Waylon tunes.

Terlingua was originally a mining town, and the ghost-filled remains of ruined stone huts sit in front of the general store, covering the slope down to the graveyard.

The scattered piles of stones glowed in the evening light, the yellow and orange rocks keeping their warm hue. Fresh wood and plastic toys showed that a few huts are still being used, even with roofs held down by tires and rope to keep them from blowing away.

Rubble sprawled across the ground, spraying in worn and weathered lumps. Walls yawned from fatigue, getting a little closer to joining those on the earth. The rocks leaned downhill, as if all they wanted was to roll off the hillside and down into the cinnebar mines.

The wear of desert wind and weather is visible on every surface. Some of the older graves are as featureless as if they had endured decades of New England winters, but here they’ve been wiped clean by the sand. Splintered and shattered crosses lean defiantly – others lie broken, their post lost. In the fading light, it’s a mournful vision.

And yet…the banjo notes float across these tombs, calling the workers to come up from the mines and out from their huts, calling the children to laugh and run and play, calling us to dance, to love, to live.

Next up: Climbing the peaks

Big Bend, Part II - Or, That's as Close to Lightning as I Need to Be

As I carried the box holding my camera bag back to my room, lightning flashed to the south. Backing up for a second – the Chisos Mountain Lodge sits in a big bowl in the mountains. The Window is a crack in the west side of the bowl, making a beautiful spot for sunsets – or lightning watching, if you’re into that kind of thing.

From where I was standing, lightning buzzed and flashed through the clouds to the west – still far enough away that it wasn’t raining, but making for some great views through the Window.

Racing back to my room, I pulled out my bag and tripod and headed for a small scenic overlook trail in front of the lodge. The storm seemed to be drifting to the left of the Window, behind the mountains, but some long exposures helped me capture a couple of lightning strikes.

After about 20 minutes of shooting, I went back to the room to see what Superwife’s plans were for the evening. We had talked about going for an evening hike, and I was hoping to find a place where we could continue to watch the storm.

Not a problem, as it turned out.

We packed our gear, stepped out of our room, and found a cloud monster had eaten the surrounding mountains.

The storm had shifted course, bringing the lightning and rain right into the bowl around us. The wind picked up fast, blowing hats off and sending papers swirling. Rain began to pelt us, hard drops that sprayed off the ground. Thunder boomed around the timpani drum of the mountains.

Immediately giving up on the hike, we started for the lodge. I stopped in amazement as the clouds rolled down the mountain behind our building, disappearing the trees and rock formations.

I stopped to try and capture the swarming clouds, but the wind and rain made it almost impossible. I shot one frame:

And then we ran for the lodge, where we sat and felt very small as the storm raged around us.

The turning point was a sudden change in tone from the roof and windows. Quarter-sized hail started bouncing off the deck and dinging the cars in the parking lot.

After about 15 minutes of that, the storm lessened quickly, leaving a watercolor-smeared sky.

Next – Why all that rain in a desert isn’t necessarily a good thing.

Big Bend, Part 1

I’ve wanted to go to Big Bend National Park for the last eight years – since the day we decided we were moving to Texas, in other words.

The mountains, the rivers, the rugged edge of the back of beyond – I was all over it. The idea of photographing that level of wilderness was making my camera salivate.

Thus, it was a trifle distressing that three hours into the eight-hour drive out to the park, I realized I FORGOT MY FRIGGING CAMERA BAG.

Commence head-to-steering wheel connections, made early, often and with many expletives.

Lemme ‘splain.

When I was packing the truck we rented for the trip, I took my camera bag off my shoulder in the bedroom before carrying another bag out to the truck. When I went back to help Superwife with her bag, she was already out of the bedroom, meaning I didn’t go back in, and THE BAG was left on the bed.

On a lunch stop in Del Rio, three hours drive from home base in San Antonio and four hours to Big Bend, I opened the back door to find…no bag. Meaning no camera. Meaning all the photographic dreams that I had had of Big Bend…just disappeared.

Commence headbanging, to the tune of “You’re a Dumbass.”

As we ate lunch, we kicked around our options. Drive back and get the bag. Get The Friend with The Key to ship us the bag overnight. Bite the bullet and do without.

I hoped to sell stories and photos from this trip to help offset the cost, so biting the bullet didn’t work. We had finished lunch and started heading east when we finally were able to raise a FedEx office. Yes, they were open late. Yes, they could get the bag there tomorrow.

Thankfully, we had a Friend. Said Friend went far, far above and beyond the call, driving out to our house, finding the bag and schlepping to the Fed Ex store, where for $200, they flew it from San Antonio to Memphis to El Paso before finally putting it on a truck for the Chiso Mountain Lodge in Big Bend.

Conflicting reports had it arriving anywhere from 10 in the morning to five in the afternoon. When it didn’t show up by 10, we decided to take the least scenic hike possible and still get a taste of Big Bend – a walk through the Chihuahuan Desert to the rock formations called the Chimneys.

Hiking out, I expected the family from The Hills Have Eyes to come stumbling down the hillside at any moment – it’s scenic, but once you’re out of sight of the road, you can forget civilization even exists. The hike is a relatively flat walk through a giant bowl, and before long we started to feel very small.

Returning to the lodge, I found that my camera bag had arrived…and then the thunderstorm rolled in.

Continued In Part II…

Seeking a cool breeze...

Lots of swimming thoughts, but nothing cohering into much length. It's summertime, and the thinking ain't easy.

The specimen above was one of 96 tiny Kemp-Ridley turtles I saw get released into the Gulf of Mexico on Father's Day.

The Oreo-sized reptiles gamely pushed their way across the 25 feet of sand from their release point to the water's edge. The staffers fluttered around, alternately swinging plastic pipes to ward off the gulls and picking up the turtles and showing them to the crowd gathered behind a line.

Photography note: The workers will take cameras down to the turtles to get close-ups of them making their way to the ocean. A better bet, however, is to wait for one of the workers to bring one of the Kemp-Ridley hatchlings by your spot.

This release was on Malaquite Beach - the beach I took my parents to on my dad's only trip to Texas before he passed away.

Was it sappy to think he was there watching, protecting these small forms as they struggled out into the world? Yep. Was I thinking it? Of course.

Work in the works: The San Antonio Express-News published a piece I wrote last fall on the Canadian Rockies. More work is in the pipeline...

Summer sports: The Red Sox are terribly mediocre. That is all.

Book of the moment: Chad Marbach's The Art of Fielding. I've been listening to it for the past 10 days' commute, and it's getting harder and harder to get out of the car when I pull into the parking lot or the garage. Edit: I finally finished it by bringing the last three discs into work and listening to them there.

Summer movie count: The most recent movie we've seen is Brave, the latest installment from Pixar. I'm normally a big Pixar fan, but this was definitely aimed more at a mother/daughter relationship. Still, I found it entertaining, and the animation was fantastic as ever. Less than two weeks until THE DARK KNIGHT RISES.

Energy and apathy

Massive celebrations! I've got my first photo show!

How, you ask? (Humor me and ask, would you?)

One of the local libraries has a summer reading program centered on London (the hook is London is hosting the Summer Olympics this year). The Amazing Superwife happens to work at this library, and knew I had a collection of London photos from our trip there a couple of years ago.

(Yes, that's inside information. No, I'm not ashamed.)

I called my show "Toasting London" and put it up last weekend at the Brook Hollow Public Library here in San Antonio. It's a fairly small show - 17 pieces, in total - but it ended up fitting the space well. I did a lot of re-correction and re-cropping of images, and found some new shots in there that I hadn't seen before, which was very rewarding.

How did I celebrate this milestone? (If I was some corporate cliche machine, I'd roll out some nonsense about millstones becoming milestones with enough effort. But I'm not, so nyeah.)

Massive brain-suck! I spent the rest of the weekend playing Skyrim.

Aside from a carnitas burrito from Los Robertos, my celebration was getting sucked into Skyrim. It was an inexpensive celebration, but perhaps lacking in the celebrate. But there was a reason for that.

Sidebar: Skyrim is a prime example of why I rent games before buying.

If it sucks, I can take it back with minimal loss. If it's so damn addicting I can barely leave the couch, I can take it back and remove the temptation from the house. (But it might have snuck onto my Amazon wish list.)

But what this was, really, was recharging and dealing with the post-project hangover. I find that after a big project is completed, I don't want to do anything for at least a couple of days. With several projects winding up at once - stories I've been working on, photo shoots, this photo show - unplugging from work and plugging into something else - was necessary.

So, the celebration continues unabated (the photo show hangs through the end of the summer) and I'm feeling better for having zoned out for a bit.

Movies update: Prometheus was the best thing I've seen this summer since Avengers. All kinds of creepy alien goodness. Men in Black III was agreeable, but didn't really make an impression. Snow White and the Huntsman was decidedly average, on an extreme curve - the visuals were great, but Kristen Stewart was not.

Work update: I've had a new story published by the San Antonio Express-News about our time in Ogunquit after my sister's wedding. There are several other projects on the burner, too.

What, you ask? All in good time...all in good time. As long as I can stay out of Skyrim.

Playing a home-and-home

You can't go home again. - Thomas Wolfe Who says you can't go home? - Jon Bon Jovi

After moving thousands of miles from where I grew up, I've found home has several meanings.

There's the home where I live now. There's home in the sense of the region I grew up in.

And then there's the actual home I grew up in - a cabin deep in the woods of northern New Hampshire. Only one or two of my oldest friends have ever seen that house - we moved when I was 12, and the memory most of my high school friends have of my house is the place we moved to (which hosted a tremendous high school graduation party, but that's a story for another day).

This house was our first home. My father, uncles and grandfather carved a road into the woods and built all the homes on it (except for the newest one, which my aunt lives in). My mother and father built this house when they were young - my dad laughs as he builds in yellowed Kodachromes.

I'm home this week - visiting my mother, and helping my sister with her wedding plans. She's getting married tomorrow, and the chaos has been, well, chaotic. But it's (mostly) been the happy kind of chaos.

I escaped for a bit yesterday afternoon and drove out to the old house, along winding gravel roads and through thick pine forests. The trees looked bigger and the road smaller than I remembered them.

I've still got family on this road, but that house - sold, then abandoned - is going to rack and ruin. Some holes in the roof are covered with blue and gray tarpaulin - others sag open, filled with leaves and pine needles.

A family of satellite dishes is aging in the front yard - two small ones, and one big, black pterodactyl - all postdating our time there. Some goober cut down the giant pine tree in the back yard that I used for a rope swing, dropping the top of the tree on the barn and crushing the side where Mom raised rabbits and pigs. The side that held cows and horses is still standing, but time and weather have taken their toll on the glass.

(I still remember my dad climbing that tree to hang the rope - now I can imagine him ripping into the joker who misplaced the tree's landing spot. "Pretty friggin' poor," he'd say.)

Old nails still jut out of a beam in a shed where I'd hang a punching bag after watching one of the Rocky movies on one of our three channels. A section of wall on the front porch is still scarred from where I was careless with the front porch swing while daydreaming of Prydain or Narnia.

Inside, ticks scurry about, looking for legs to latch onto. (There was an Army-style scrubdown after we got back to the "new" house.) The bookshelves in my old bedroom are empty, with only dust where my pre-teenager baseball cards, books and music once were.

The strongest memories are around the kitchen island - made by my dad, a thick block of wood, dark with oil and Crisco before people worried about cholesterol and grooved from mom's kitchen knife peeling vegetables she just picked out of her garden (with my help).

The wall where I raced Tyco cars with my uncle - the hallway where dad and I would wrestle - the fireplace mom and dad built with granite rocks and concrete...it's been 25 years since I've been in this house, but every piece still holds a story.

Daydreaming about canyon hunting

With the sands of another semester trickling through an educational hourglass, I’ve reached that point where the pile of work looks enormous and the last day seems to be far, far away. While I’d love to blow things off and bury myself in Civilization:Revolution, that’s not how world domination is achieved.

Part of surviving the grind of schoolwork/regular work/freelance work is finding ways to pick up little bursts of inspiration and happiness. For me, that can range from listening to the Red Sox win a game to getting out with my camera and taking pictures of something new.

Another source of inspiration is seeing what other photographers are working on. My fascination for the last couple of weeks has been a blog called A Curious Endeavor.

Written by Kate Lockhart, she's an accomplished photographer and a good writer. Recently, she’s been on a road trip through the Southwest, stopping at some of photography’s holy grails: Monument Valley, the Grand Canyon, and my personal favorites, Upper and Lower Antelope Canyon.

These canyons, which are nestled against the Utah border outside of Page, Arizona, are the source of some of the most famous photographs ever taken. She does a great job capturing the magic of these spots, and her writing is very helpful to photographers planning to visit these places - it’s filled with tips about what to watch for and how to reach certain spots.

One of my photography dreams is to travel the Southwest on a road trip like that. My only taste of it so far has been an afternoon at the Grand Canyon, and it’s only whetted my appetite.

Bring on that homework – the canyons await!

Trains keep a-rollin'

Deep thoughts for a moment…

As life progresses, some patterns seem to appear. Every few months or few years, some subject or person will pop up again that I haven’t thought about or talked to in what seems like forever.

One of those things for me is trains.

It’s funny – railroads are a relative cipher on the American landscape compared to their heyday, but the romantic nature remains. While planes have replaced them for long-distance passenger travel, air travel doesn’t have the visual impact of the passing countryside and the steaming locomotive.

That impact is still felt, too. When I was a rookie reporter, my first big writing project was about trains. I got more feedback from that piece than for anything else I’ve ever written or designed.

Afterward, I was happy to put my notes away and concentrate on new stories, but the subject kept coming back to me.

My father-in-law, who I met just after finishing the train project, is a railroad enthusiast. On a couple of trips back to New England, I’ve taken the train from Boston to his house. When driving to Phoenix from San Antonio, the road ran next to the railroad for miles.

It’s been enough to keep railroads on the periphery of my world.

Over the weekend, I took a train trip from Cedar Park to Burnet. The Hill Country Flyer is a nice little scenic rail trip meant for tourists and people of a certain generation remembering their youth.

While the number of memories floating around the car was perhaps not unexpected, what struck me was the number of adults waving at the train and urging their children to cheer as it passed by.

These adults have lived almost their entire lives with planes and cars as the primary forms of transportation in this country, yet trains still have a nostalgic grip on them, fueled by memories from parents and grandparents.

One grandmother I met this weekend talked about going to the depot after her chores were done and watching the trains come in on Saturday nights with her mother. “That was exciting!” she said, looking for a moment like that young girl.

It still is, and hopefully always will be.

Photography: While I enjoyed the train trip, I'm kind of disappointed in the resulting photos. I may need a dedicated photo project to really get myself back in gear.

Game of Thrones premiere: I'm happy with it, but I hope all the set up they did pays off with more action soon. It seemed as if the whole episode was catching up with everyone. I've read the books, so I know it's a set-up to awesome, but they need to make with the pay-offs to keep the newbies involved.

Opening day: Is this week! Bring on the baseball!

Movie watch: We've started catching up on the Avengers-related movies, starting with Capt. America. The sound on the blu-ray is fantastic. Next up: Iron Man.

Living in Fantasyland

“Zack (*^%ing Grienke!!”

The big man’s forehead reddened, then purpled. “&^(&, Steve*, you do this to me every year! $&*@!”

As we roared in laughter, he paced around the room, crumpling pieces of paper and throwing them in different directions, fuming. Empty Styrofoam cups and plastic bags went flying, before he finally calmed down.

Ah, the raging torrents of emotion, wrought to the surface by fantasy baseball.

It’s one of the touchstones of spring, for me - flowers start to bloom, the air conditioning starts to run constantly, and I get together with a small group of friends to hash out our fantasy baseball auction.

Without delving too deeply into the nerdity, it’s a group of eight guys – one brought his girlfriend one year, and hasn’t lived it down since – sitting around bidding on their favorite American League baseball players. This is New England, after all - none of that National League crap goes here.

This has been my first fantasy league, and the only one that’s ever stuck. The group’s core is made of people I worked with at my first real job – a reporter and editor at a small newspaper in southern New Hampshire.

One of the clichés about newspapers is the camaraderie – long hours, low pay and high stress forge a deeper working relationship than other jobs. These guys are my proof that it exists, and it’s why I fly 1,500 miles to hang out with them for a few hours.

Distance makes it harder now – I’ve only made it one of the last three years, and I can’t remember the last time I saw Steve (the guy who seems to win it EVERY YEAR).

I’m not a charter member of the league – there are a couple of those left – but I’ve been part of it long enough to see most notepads give way to laptops. During the most recent auction, held just a couple of days ago, we retired an old easel and huge sketch pad in favor of a high-definition TV and Google Docs to keep track of who chose which player.

Red Sox players are always expensive – it is New England, after all – but it’s the only time Yankees players might be valued just as highly. Old jokes are revived about Nomaaaaaah, new stories told about the latest indignities of the newspaper business, and the bids go round in circles.

Ironically, the process gets more competitive later in the game – the outburst above was during the last stage of the auction, when a promising pitcher was taken before the outburster’s next pick.

It’s become part of the history of this group, rolled out any time someone gets too excited about losing a bidding war.

After a rousing third-place finish last season, I’m hopeful about this year’s team – since, hope, like baseball, springs eternal.

*Names changed to protect the outburster and bursted-upon.

Jokers to the left of me, clowns to the right...and me with an iPoint-and-shoot

Sometimes being a photography nerd can be painful.

Painful in the wallet when your camera is getting fixed.

Painful when your camera is stuck in a Laredo warehouse, waiting for a part.

And painful when you’re faced with a smorgasbord of photo opportunities and are sitting there empty handed.

Such was my situation this past weekend, with day trips to Padre Island National Seashore and the Sherwood Forest Renaissance Faire.

Malaquite Beach – part of the national seashore – is a peaceful stretch of sand that is rarely busy. I’ve never seen it as busy as nearby Port Aransas. It’s where Superwife and I go when we need to get away from it all, and all we have is a day.

Renaissance faires are a blast to photograph, in my opinion. Everyone is in costume, they’re showing off, there are tons of performances, all kinds of animals – it’s photo heaven. If you can’t see a good photo, you aren’t trying.

Without my trusty Sony, I was forced to rely on my iPhone. Now, this was supposed to be one of the ailments of civilization the iPhone was going to cure – people would always have cameras in their pockets.

Frankly, after a weekend with my iPhone 4, I’m not that impressed. I know for some people I’m verging into heresy here, but I found it pretty average – there was a lot of grain on the pictures, particularly when dealing with less than open sunlight. The zoom resulted in soft focus, too.

Now, I didn’t use the multitude of apps that promise to improve the quality of iPhone photos, and they could make a significant difference. I’ll have to investigate the possibilities there to make a real judgment.

That being said, there were a couple of decent images that came from the day at the beach, including the one above. I like this image because of the sand’s swirling movement headed toward the water. It’s empty, but it leaves room for the viewer.

I like empty space photography – it makes you stop and take a second look, perhaps realizing life isn’t always full of beeping, blinking things.