SB Sunset #22
I happened to be working in Santa Barbara during the last week, and caught a couple nights of stunning sunsets. I didn’t go out the first night with the camera, we just sat on Patty and Jeff’s deck and watched it. But tonight, I couldn’t “not go”. I drove down to Shoreline Park (on the Mesa) along with a few thousand other appreciative souls, and took the pictures below.
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Steamboat Barn, painted with light
Gregg and I tried an experiment “painting” the Steamboat Barn with light tonight. It was 15 degrees out there, about a half hour after sundown. Gregg brought a halogen spotlight and “painted” the barn while we shot exposures about 30 seconds in length. Gregg’s shots on his D90 turned out WAY better than mine, for reasons we haven’t determined yet.
I did get a couple that are acceptable (the third one showing stars and constellations is pretty nice), but not quite what I wanted…. See below.
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The Wedding Party
I was asked to help out a friend and shoot pictures for her wedding (a few pics appear after the break). Little did I know it would be 102 in San Jose that weekend, but I did it anyway. Luckily it was not a suit-type wedding, or we would have had to turn on the sprinklers to prevent heat stroke.
Congratulations to Shawn and Michele Mouser!!!
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The album for Friday night, if you just want to see the pictures (only a couple are linked in this story).
Here are Gregg Lowrimore’s pictures and PhotoBlog, and Lori Stone’s Pictures from the same trip.
Up again at 5:15 to head for the Courthouse Towers and sunrise. We weren’t exactly sure where we were going, went a little too far, and ended up at the northern base of “The Organ” looking at “The Tower of Babel” for sunrise.
The only clouds in the entire sky were sitting just to the south of the La Salle Mountains, and it took an additional 30 minutes for the sun to clear those and start lighting up the area around us. The moment it broke, however, the Three Gossips threw some really beautiful shadows.
For the future, taking sunrise shots from the southern end of Park Avenue might have been nice, but since you’re not supposed to walk in the desert, you might not be able to get far enough away todo it justice.
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The album for Friday night, if you just want to see the pictures (only a couple are linked in this story).
Here are Gregg Lowrimore’s pictures and PhotoBlog, and Lori Stone’s Pictures from the same trip.
We got up at the standard photographers sunrise time of of 5:15am to start driving to Mesa Arch for sunrise.
By the time we got there, it resembled standard weekend combat photography (people standing shoulder to shoulder). , passed on the trail by a rather rude individual running in. About 10 people already there, shoulder to shoulder.
All but one of them were literally taking shot after shot of the same exact thing from the same exact place. Gregg, Lori and I were all over the place, shooting many different angles. I just don’t understand how come people aren’t looking for anything but the one shot
About 10 minutes after sunrise, everybody else left, and we stayed and shot for a good hour or more. The visuals were stunning, the terrain was amazing.
Walking back to the parking lot, we got our first look at Cryptobiological soil. Very weird, and everywhere. We also got our first look and the two ravens who would appear to follow us everywhere for the next couple days.
From there, we took a quick, short drive down to Buck Canyon, where I got to stand on my first of quite a few cliff walls. Lori wanted none of this, and tended to walk away when I did this.
From there, we drove all the way south to Grand View Point Overview. Boy, is Grand View Point a misstatement. But I supposed “Staggeringly beautiful vistas from 1000 feet above unbelievable colors and sights” was too hard to fit on the signs!
Curiosity got the best of us as we drove back to see what the heck an Upheaval Dome is. It was a short walk in but, while worth the walk, very hard to convey in pictures. The part I can’t believe is that they still don’t know whether it was caused by an upthrust of a salt deposit from a magma chamber, or a meteor exploding over the area. Really. They still don’t know which of those are the cause.
From the Upheaval Dome, we drove over to the Green River Overlook. It was a serious panorama vista point, and I have some work to do joining some images for the panorama images.
From the Green River Overlook, we drove over to Dead Horse Point State Park, scouting for sunset shooting locations. It was an interesting location, but for a state park, it was pretty small. From the overlook, you’re looking straight down over 2000 feet at the Colorado River.
Unfortunately, while scouting for locations, I stepped on rock the wrong way, and rolled my left ankle (tearing two tendons in the process). The echos of my yelps of pain echoed off the canyon walls while I sat down and quickly tightened up my boot as much as I could bear, knowing that was going to be a necessity to get back to the truck. Thankfully I had the tripod for the camera there to use as a partial crutch. I hobbled back to the truck, and we threw what ice we had in a bag, threw the bag on my ankle and headed back into Moab (which was the plan anyway) rest until sunset (and buy a new ankle brace 
Unfortunately we weren’t thinking straight about lighting in a 2000 foot deep canyon with vertical walls, so we got back for sunset about 30 minutes too late. We got a couple good pictures, but not necessarily of the views. This Bonsai tree at the point was beautiful in the fading sunlight, though.
We stopped for dinner on the way home at the Moab Brewery. They had good food (although our waiter left quite a bit to be desired), a great Oatmeal Stout, and a decent musician. Of course, they put us as far from the front door as possible so I’d have to limp my way in to the back corner
We got back to our townhouse, took my boot off, and found half a baseball on my left ankle. I threw more ice on it, started processing pictures, and when I realized that I wasn’t really all with it, took two Advil, crawled up the stairs, and went to bed about 9:30pm
One trip I want to take next time I come up is up Potash Road to look “up” at the bluffs, maybe even on the White Rim Road (a 4×4 trail on the East of the park). I also want to get down into the Needles area, as I’ve heard that’s a fantastic location similar to, but not similar to Bryce. But it was a hundred miles in “the other direction”.
The album for Friday night, if you just want to see the pictures (only a couple are linked in this story).
Here are Gregg Lowrimore’s pictures and PhotoBlog, and Lori Stone’s Pictures from the same trip.
About a year ago, Gregg mentioned that our photography group needed to do a photo trip to Canyonlands and Arches National Park. Finally, we decided to just pick a weekend, and Presidents Day weekend seemed like a good time since everybody usually skis that weekend. We got very lucky in that it snowed quite a bit the Wednesday before we got there, so we had the combination of red rock, white snow and blue sky. Very patriotic! It would have been great to be there for the full lunar eclipse this week, but maybe in 2010 for the next one…
Lori Stone flew in from Seattle for the trip. I picked up Lori from the airport, came back to the house and picked up Gregg, and headed out about 11:30am. For ths part of the trip, we didn’t really ned the GPS. The directions are basically “Drive 350 miles West on I-70, then 25 miles south on 191.
On our way into Moab, we still had a little sunlight left so we took a right turn and headed up into Canyonlands. We didn’t know much about locations or what to look for, so we we stoped and took pictures of the bluffs, and a set of monoliths called Monitor and Merrimack. They were impressive, but we should have kept going. Live ‘n’ Learn….
We got to the Visitor’s Center, parked the truck, and walked east towards the dropoff. With every step, forward, I kept saying “WOW”, “OH WOW”, “HOLY SMOKES”, “UNBELIEVABLE”. We were on the edge of the cliffs, looking down a thousand feet at the white mesa, and then another thousand feet to where the Colorado River flowed.
We got a few nice pictures, but it would have been great if we got there 30 minutes earlier.
When it got dark, we headed down into Moab, stopping for dinner at Eddie McStiffs Brewery. It was OK, but I’d recommend the place we ate the following night.
Most people who know me know that I sign emails, letters, and other notes with the initials SRP. Little did I know they’d name an entire company after me!
SRP working at SRP (Salt River Project) in Phoenix, AZ.
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