I was caught off guard at how white the arch presented in infrared. Generally, items that are green, especially leaves and plants, become white in an  infrared capture.The natural color of the arch is more earthtoned, with a  yellow/brown/red mixture. I need to do a bit more research. Green and red are color opposites, and I’m wondering if the fact that both can display as white in the infrared spectrum depends on whether they derive their color by reflecting or absorbing light.

Beyond that, I was pleasantly surprised even to find this image last night as I scanned my catalog from the nXnw trip, because I have no memory of taking it. First, I did not remember using my infrared camera at this location. Second, this seems to be from a different perspective than where I remember being situated. Yet here it is.

Have a great weekend and see you back on Monday.

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Strictly speaking, the adjective “metropolitan” simply means having the characteristics or features of a city and its surrounding areas. But it has also carried a connotation of sophistication and perhaps even glamour.

Well, this scene from Metropolitan Avenue just on the Brooklyn side of the Brooklyn/Queens border lives up to the strict definition, but not my gloss. Metropolitan Avenue run the length of Brooklyn from the waterfront to Queens, and covers maybe 2/3 of Queens before merging into Jamaica Avenue. It covers a broad range – industrial, commercial, and residential, upscale, downscale, hip and timeless.

This is in an industrial section. In my experience, it is somewhat uncommon to see so much home-made signage in New York, especially so ornate and colorful.

I will probably resume the national park images with a new photo from Utah tomorrow.

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This is a view of St. Mary’s Church in Yonkers, NY, aka the Church of the Immaculate Conception, which has been featured numerous times here before. This is taken from the raised pulpit, which I believe might be more properly called an ambo in the a Catholic church. I like the raised, but lower than balcony perspective this provides.

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From the last scenic location that the  nXnw crew and I visited before leaving Moab — Shafer Canyon in Canyonlands National Park. On the whole, I do not think I did the location justice. I think I was just too exhausted. But that does not mean I left without any good photos.  Some places just don’t let you leave without anything worthwhile.

UPDATE: I was not fully pleased with this image as I posted it, so I revised it and replaced it the next morning. It is the same photo, with some slightly different processing.

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Another image from the abandoned ghost town of Cisco, Utah, with a couple of notes.

First, I haven’t done a formal search but I am reasonably certain that this is the first ever image I have posted using a fisheye lens. I rented one for this trip, and used it somewhat sparingly. The lens has never held the fascination for me that it has for many of my friends. I I do not dislike it, and I cannot articulate why, but that is the reality. I broke it out in Cisco because it seemed to accent the alternative reality feel of a ghost town.

Second, I processed this using the HDRSoft Photomatix 32-bit Lightroom plugin, that creates a single 32-bit Floating Point TIFF file. I do not fully grasp the technology, but do know that instead of creating a stnadard tonemapped HDR file, it creates a file with enormous dynamic range, that you manually tonemap using various controls in Lightroom, mostly highlights and shadows, plus brushes for dodging and urning. It tends to create a more realistic look than the regular tonemapping process. It also works only through Lightroom, which is complicating my decision to remain in Aperture and not switch to Lightroom.

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The weekend that the nXnw crew visited the Utah Parks, there was a classic car show in Moab. I spent a little time walking around the cars on Saturday afternoon. It’s hard to get good shots of a complete car at such shows, as you need a pretty wide angel lens PLUS a fair bit of room PLUS the cooperation of everyone not to walk into your shot. Unless you want to spend a lot of time asking people to move for your personal needs, its easiest to focus on detail shots.

This is the front hood of a 2005 Ford GT.

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“Excuse-me-the-light-is-really-amazing-right-now-I’ll-be-right-back.”

I wanted to start mixing in non-Moab photos this week, both to add some variety to the blog and to make the Moab trip photos last longer, but I had trouble deciding  what to feature. Then Justin Balog, who was on that trip with me, posted an image yesterday of a restaurant he recently visited in Belize, and he discussed how he ran outside after ordering to get the shot. His story made ms smile, because it immediately reminded me of when I got this image.

This is from my recent trip to Walt Disney World with my family. We ate dinner one night at Cat Cora’s restaurant Kouzzina, located in the Boardwalk Villas resort just outside Epcot. For those of you familiar with Epcot, Boardwalk Villas is one of the resorts accessible through the back entrance to the Park set between the England and France pavilions  The other resorts are the Beach Club and the Yacht Club resorts. By the way, Kouzzina is amazing. Consider it the next time you visit WDW, but get reservations ahead of time, when you plan your trip. It is generally hard to get reservations for dinner to the best restaurants in Disney World for the same day or even same week. Some restaurants even fully book months in advance.

Anyway, we’re sitting at the restaurant, and had just ordered dessert when I noticed the amazing evening light hitting this sign for Boardwalk Joe’s margarita stand.  I mentally calculated whether I had enough time to finish dessert and handle the check before I lost this light. I figured that until the sun went below the horizon, the light would just keep getting better so I would wait. But then my dessert was delayed, and I started getting itchy, so I mumbled my excuses to my patient wife and ran outside with my Fuji to grab some shots.  When I got outside I thought I was too late, but it was some trick of the light. I’m very pleased with the image, and when I returned to my seat the light again looked amazing. Fortunately, the restaurant windows somehow accented the light enough to draw my eye to this photo opportunity.

While I researched this post, I discovered that Boardwalk Joe’s has recently undergone a makeover. Until this year, it had been a coffee stand, not a margarita stand. Read the comments on that article, and you’ll see that some people are unhappy with the change. Personally, I had never been there before so I cannot miss the old version, and looking at the signage I must admit that I prefer the new look for photo purposes at least. I doubt the old one would have caught the light so well.

So like Justin, let me encourage you to grab those photo opportunities when you can. If you explain yourself, and don’t abuse the privilege, your family, friends, and even the wait staff will probably understand, and you’ll grab an image and secure a memory.

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As amazing as my trip to Moab was, and as happy as I am with the photographs I captured, I am starting to discover what I missed, and what mistakes I made while there. I’m not dwelling on these negatives, or beating myself up, but I am trying to organize lessons for future trips of this nature. One problem I think I had was that I sometimes became too enamored and overwhelmed by the beauty I faced. As a result, I didn’t make a sufficient effort to seek out the details, or unusual compositions, that make a photograph unique.

This photo is, I think, something of an exception. This was our first evening in Arches National Park, and this is the Turret Arch.  I had two advantages here. One was that being early in the trip I had more energy. I definitely believe I see diminished energy and creativity as the weekend progressed. The second advantage is that this particular spot, although visually interesting, is not overwhelming in its absolute scope and beauty. As a result, I was able to give my attention to the details.

Almost everyone in my group climbed through that arch and walked across a ridge. I climbed up, got about 3/4 of the way across the ridge, and decided to turn back. I’m not sure why. I then spent some time, mostly alone, investigating this side of the Arch.

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This was the capstone to an amazing day. This is the Delicate Arch in Arches National Park near Moab, Utah, about which much more later when I show some photos of it during sunset. For now, I’ll simply note that getting up to see this wonder is s bit of a climb and leave it at that. Our NXNW group plan for the evening was to wait out the other folks who made the trek to view this beauty at sunset, then do some light painting after dark. We knew we had a few short hours after sunset and before moon rise to get shots like this.

What we did not anticipate was that another group  would have the same idea. While we were still situated higher up above this bowl get shots of the arch at sunset, Justin Balog ran into big deal Sports Photographer Dave Black. It was our second run-in with Dave, who was leading a 3-day workshop in the area. We previously ran into his group when we were in Cisco. Justin spoke with Dave, found out that Dave was planning to lead his group on a light painting workshop, and Justin told him we had been planning on light painting ourselves.  Dave very graciously told Justin that our group could tag along with his. Dave is a mensch.

So we found our way to this bowl and set up at a respectful distance from the folks who paid for Dave’s expertise.  Instead of using our own light painting gear, we let Dave handle the honors. He stood up just outside the top left of the frame, and called out instructions. “4500 kelvin white balance, 30 seconds,  f/11.”   Then when everyone was set he called out “OPEN!”and you head a few dozen shutters “CLACK” open all at once.  Then 30 seconds of silence while Dave used a pair of special flash lights to “paint” the arch and the bowl in front of us with some light. It didn’t have to be silent, but it somehow seemed wrong to speak. Then another set of “CLICKS” as the shutters all closed within moments of each other. We did this maybe a dozen times or so, making adjustments to the camera settings, and Dave made adjustments to how he wielded the lights. I think this is my best image of the set.

Afterwards we walked down the same trail we came up, and while it was easier to go down than up, doing so in pitch black was a bit sketchy even with our own flashlights or headlamps.

But we weren’t done. We said good-bye to Dave Black at the bottom of the trail back by the cars, but then our little group decided we needed even more cowbell, so we drove to the Double Arches in the same park. There we  came upon yet another small group — I think it was a husband/wife team — already in place near the end of a very long exposure. I think they said it was 20 minutes, but maybe even 30, and our group nearly ruined it with our flashlights as we approached but we barely managed to avoid that catastrophe. We waited for them to finish, chatting and resting, and then tried to create more of our own magic. Unfortunately, my magic quotient for the day was full. My focus for the shots at the Double Arches was off. Way off. And while I can understand and excuse it due to it being pitch black and I was dead tired, it’s still a bit disappointing. But others got some great shots. Chris Nitz wielded our light source, which was supplied by Rick Louie. You can see shots from both Delicate Arch and the Double Arches From Bob Lussier and Michael Criswell. Justin also has a great shot of the Double Arch, as does Dave Wilson.

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Cisco, Utah is a ghost town near the intersection of I-70 and Utah State Route 128, the latter of which connects I-70 to Moab. Cisco was originally a water refilling station for the railroad, and the town’s demise came with the obsolescence of the steam engine. The railroad still passes through. A number of decrepit old buildings survive, mixed in with some newer additions, including several abandoned cars, trucks, motor homes and buses. I do not quite get why someone would bother to drive to a ghost town to abandon a vehicle, but some people apparently find it compelling.  What is left is catnip for photographers and, sadly, vandals.

The store referenced in the sign still stands, and is for some reason behind a fence. I thought I had a photo, but cannot find it in my set of images from the trip. Last week Justn Balog posted some images from our stop in Cisco, and included the “recipe” of filters he used to process all of them in Nik’s Color Efex Pro. You can find his post with that download link here, I used his recipe on one of my images, but not this one. I’ll post that image later this week, together with some more images from Cisco. I’ve also been working on my own recipe for these images, and I will post that as well if I get it nailed down.

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