After our early morning sunrise shoot, my son and I went on another short scouting expedition.
Of course, I made a few shots during our little hike, scouting the area for possible sunrise or sunset shoots, but the two in this post are the only ones that I deemed presentable.
Until next time,
Ken
This is the second part of our final sunset shoot in March 2023 in Valley of Fire State Park, Nevada.
I’m always amazed at the rock sculpture nature provides for us to enjoy.
There is definitely a wary looking face in this rock that appears to be watching me as I make this image. Maybe this rock has had bad experiences with humans in the past.
While the image may not be a greatly attractive scene, I found it interesting enough to take time to capture it. There is much texture, interesting rock shapes and lines running through the rock. The image name is for the narrow wash in the center that has an accumulation of sand at the bottom center.
I moved to the right from the last composition to make this image, which shows off some of the more interesting features in the rock. The rock at the top, with its concave erosional form reminds me of a baseball catcher’s mitt. With the Texas Rangers clinching a berth in the 2023 World Series, maybe this is an appropriate time to post this image.
A close up, color version, of the “Catcher’s Mitt”.
Erosion has created holes in these rocks that I can imagine animals or ancient people using as shelters. Modern day man might even take temporary shelter in one of these in an emergency.
To be continued,
Ken
I’ve decided to move on to our final sunset shoot in Valley of Fire State Park, Nevada, rather than write another blog on our early morning shoot near our campground. But I will include one more image from that early morning shoot here.
Initially, I did not think highly of this image, but the more I looked at it, the better I liked it. The shadows, colors and features in the foreground rock with its ridge leading into the background were the impetus for this composition. Maybe my thought process leading to this composition was ok, after all.
Moving on…
The earliest photos shot while scouting and anticipating golden hour are seldom the (my) best, many do not even get processed and sometimes I’m grasping to just find something in these shots worthy of posting anywhere. So I apologize in advance, if my images chosen for this post are of little interest to readers.
And there is a better composition here, but I did not see it until near the end of this sunset shoot. Sometime one must move around more to see the obvious. I will return to this location in another post with much better compositions at this location.
Wandering about, I walked down a narrow passageway between two massive rock features, noted the nooks, holes and vertical feature in one of those rocks and I had to stop to capture this with late day sun on features in the background.
To be continued,
Ken
My son and I decided to walk from our campsite into the nearby area for a sunrise shoot on our final day in Valley of Fire State Park. The scenery near the campground is not as impressive as in other areas in the park, so I was not sure how this would turn out.
The early morning light enhanced the color in the rock features and highlighted the desert grasses, but as I edited the photos, I felt that a monochromatic treatment was more appropriate for many of the scenes that I captured.
The early morning light was good, the color in the rocks good and I always like the way the low elevation sunlight highlights the desert vegetation. To be sure the light quality was what drives us to get up early to photograph the landscape, but maybe it was the lack of spectacular features and the clear, bland sky that inspired me to go with monochrome for these few selected photos.
I’m still trying to decide whether to post other photos from this morning’s shoot or move on to our final sunset shoot. My indecision and the need to review more images, plus other distractions, might create an interruption of my goal of posting twice weekly.
Indecisively yours,
Ken
This is a continuation of hiking and exploration in Valley of Fire State Park and nearby areas, Nevada. All of the photos in this post were shot with an iPhone 14 and converted to monochrome.
This “Dark Shelter” is not in Valley of fire. This is along a 4 wheel drive road outside the park.
More from the Nevada desert later,
Ken
One morning before going out for the day, I walked just less than a mile down the country roadway that went past our cabin. I knew there was an old barn in the neighborhood that I had passed by many times and never taken time to photograph.
After conversion to black and white, I use selective colorization to bring out a little of the fall color in the nearby trees and a little color on the barn.
We had friends with us for the first week of this fall visit to Indiana. I wanted to show them at least one covered bridge, since they had never seen one. They did not want to spend hours in a vehicle to get to an area with lots of covered bridges, but there was one small covered bridge just a few minutes away, one that I had seen on a previous visit to this area.
This bridge is located along a narrow country roadway, where there is limited space to pull over and turn around. Our friends were driving today. I routed them to the bridge along the best part of the access roadway, but turning around to get back out was a challenge for their minivan. Continuing without turning around would have presented other problems, if another vehicle came along going in the opposite direction.
More Indiana Fall later,
Ken
Visits to Indiana with my wife always require visits to local, and sometimes not so local, antique stores. To occupy my time I look for interesting photo subjects for my camera phone.
I used such equipment as this waveform generator in a physics lab.
To be continued,
Ken
Nashville, Indiana is the nearest town to the cabin we stay in while visiting Indiana in the fall. It is a quaint tourist town with all that such towns offer – lots of tourist, crowds, expensive stores selling all kinds of goods, expensive restaurants, limited parking.
I am not a fan of such places, but it is always mandatory to take in some of this tourist town on each visit. I usually end up pacing the sidewalk, while my wife shops.
Sometimes I shoot a few photographs of the local scene with my iPhone camera.
Decorative grass and flowers are common along the streets of downtown Nashville. The sunlight highlighting the plumes on this one inspired me to shoot it, cropping in close to exclude the street scene.
Nashville is most popular in the fall with the nearby Brown County State Park a draw for leaf peepers. Artwork and crafts related to fall are common place.
This is a small portion of an alleyway wall mural.
That’s it for today,
Ken
Continued from Part 6:
That’s it for the old autos.
Ken
I do not recall seeing, or even being aware of, a Frazer automobile prior to finding several in a parking lot at an antique/junk place in Edinburg, Indiana. The one in the photo above is in rather good condition for its age.
I included Sunburst Master in the title of the photograph, because of the many (more than 20) sunburst reflections in the chrome.
There were lots of unsightly distractions around the automobiles here, so I did my best to exclude those in my images, which greatly restricted how I could photograph the vehicles.
Those wanting to learn more about these antique autos can learn about them at these (and other websites via online search): Frazer, DeSoto, Rover 75, Ford PU Truck, Packard.To be continued,
Ken
