12 photos… Just 12 photos… now in Black and White...

I like to take photographs…  I have for some time… back in the days of silver chloride and silver bromide and dark rooms and such… I own two enlargers… trays… tanks and reels and such… all mostly obsolete…mostly in the attic...

I was lucky to go to a high school, and later colleges with photography programs… In high school we had darkrooms and studios and two full time photo teachers… we learned the technology, the chemistry, the rules of lighting and composition…

I have thousands of black and white negatives… many still waiting their turn to be printed… Some just record events… but some, even many are images… taken as art…    (not my father Art… art as art… )

Black and white turned to color slides… and eventually to digital… trading silver for silicon chips…

Changing technology has challenged my understanding of the technology… of control of the medium… but not my understanding of what makes a good image…  good composition, interesting lighting…  but the changing technology makes capturing the image more difficult… I have more to learn…  a new challenge…

If I learned anything, it was go out, take photos, look at the photos you have taken… be critical, and learn from what you see…

Now, with more time, I am revisiting the older images… liking what I have found… Some just family photos, but some more… I am scanning the good prints… I will be moving to either scanning negatives, or alternately printing and scanning prints of negatives.  Currently my slide scanner doesn’t like my operating system, so I will likely be buying third party softwear…

I have for several years had a rule (or at least a personal challenge)  to limit my albums to 12 photos… 12 photos are a good measure… 12 good photos… no more than 12 good photos…  These are not the hours long slide shows of National Lampoon’s Summer Vacation… they are 12 photos that speak to a place or time…   the first of the B&W images (B&W images is a link... just saying) is up…   A collection of photos of LA, and trips north… 

Randy

Rainy day thoughts

It’s raining…Here in the land of endless sun…

No, It’s not raining, it’s pouring…  and we welcome it… Here in northern California this is notable… we haven’t see rain in some time…  months… we are in a drought… Likely still in a drought after this rain…
 
Yesterday the daughter and I went to the local Safeway... on a grocery run... we encountered two accidents in the 4 or so mile trip... the first a one car roll over... on slick, rain damp streets... (everyone ok) the second a two car accident a block from the first... rain = slick streets = cars go bump...

Tioga Pass closed at 8:00 last night… It may reopen if we don’t get more rain… but for now it is closed…

By my measurements, we are somewhere around an inch… in an hour…

Here in the west our vision of rain and drought is different… drought is not a local phenomena… if it never rained here we might still have water…  such is the way of a dry place on the coast with high mountains about 100 miles away to catch snow…   snow that will be our water some months or years later…

But any rain is welcome… and this rain is bringing snow to the high Sierra… Tioga pass may have closed last night and I may have noted its closing earlier… in this post.

In a week I will be in Yosemite… and drive past the turn off for Tioga Pass at Crane Flat… I can check the status for myself… next week… I will check the devastation from the Rim fire as well… sometimes eyes on the ground are what is needed to understand the issues… The Rim fire was in part a result of the drought… but also the result of 100 years of forest management… bad forest management… I note that reports suggest that the fire was less intense, more natural within Yosemite National Park… a park with a long standing well thought out fire management plan…

Outside the rain is slowing… I went out and swept off the driveway in the rain, using the free water to help clean the yard…   The yard is dry… in need of water… the plants holding on, living on the water I measure out from a rubber hose (rubber is much better than vinyl or other plastics… )

I have a bit of fire wood on hand… I need more… the rain suggests winter and the change of seasons…

Randy

New Years trip planning...

Tina, Step and I are headed to Tucson for a party on Saturday, December 29^th…  We plan to drive to Paso Robles on the 26^th… then to Tucson… then home… Steph is flying home…

We need places to stop… Important places…  I may be thinking about where to stop… I may be consulting Road Trip America… a site dedicated to wonderful wacky places… http://www.roadsideamerica.com/

Day 1, There isn’t much in the Salinas Valley…  we will save our time for wine tasting in Paso…

Day 2, Heading from Paso Robles to Tucson,

On Hwy 46, at the jct of Hwy 33 the last place James Dean stopped for gas… I think a photo is in order…

We could stop at Original McDonald's Site, Museum…  Bonus: Behind the museum Juan Pollo gag delivery cars.    Address:  1398 North E St., San Bernardino, CA

A easy one is the Cabazon Dinosaurs atop Beaumont Pass   We may just want to wave, but they reportedly have a shop in the belly of one of them…

Shields Date Garden in the Date Capital of the World…  They have date milk shakes…80225 US Highway 111, Indio, CA   this is likely a “must do”  We have been talking about date shakes for years… according to some the movie… The Sex Life of Dates it particularly special… I am going for a shake…

General Patton Memorial Museum… Chiriaco Summit, CA - http://generalpattonmuseum.com/  I doubt we will stop, but we can wave at the tanks displayed outside…

There are airplanes on sticks and a silly sign in Gila Bend…

(Time out for a family gathering, a party… in Tucson… )

Now day 4, On the way back… Now just Tina and I... Steph has flown home... Leaving Tucson towards Kingman… beyond Phoenix… things start to get interesting…..

Wikieup Trading Post… with a jail cell photo op… and other tacky things…   Nearby there is rocket on a stick with snoopy riding it cowboy style…18040 S Highway 93, Wikieup, AZ

Kingman, Arizona  We will spend the night here... local attractions inclued the 3,333.33 Feet Above Sea Level Marker  (Power House Museum)  The museum complex includes a room dedicated to Andy Devine… a whole room…  I figure Mexican food for dinner… maybe a diner for breakfast…

Day 5, As we head north we will encounter the Ruins of Santa Land… 13 miles north of Kingman on Hwy 93 – this should be worth a stop…

A bit further… Cloride AZ….   Rock and junk art…. A bit off the hwy…  Not sure if we will make this one…

Once we reach Nevada,  we can stop in Boulder City, Nevada…  to see the  Statue of a Belatedly Appreciated Outhouse Cleaner  Alabam was a Hoover Dam worker who cleaned and restocked the outhouses. The bronze statue depicts him as he often looked in life, with rolls of toilet paper draped over his shoulder.  Address:   600 Nevada Way, Boulder City, NV

We will head out of Las Vegas on Hwy 95… At Hwy 373 we head south to get to Death Valley Jct… but as we turn at the Junction of Hwy I-95 and Hwy 373 we will find the Area 51 Alien Center – Really a Truck stop, painted an unfortunate shade of bright green, with a whore house out back…  Nearby is the world’s largest firecracker… 

There is a giant fiberglass cow along 373 as we head into Death Valley…  I am fond of the Amagosa Hotel (and Opera House) and Death Valley Jct… It dates back to the railroad and there plan to create a tourist center in the Valley about 1929…

Day 6, The next day we will visit Death Valley Scotty’s Castle… beyond we will loop through Beatty… with a casino parking sign without a casino…

Outside of town is the ghost town of Rhyolite, with a real bottle house… and the Goldwell Open Air Museum… and the 30’ tall pink lego woman… before heading into Titus Canyon…

We will spend New Years evening, sunset on the dunes… I will have a bottle of something bubbly… we will sit and watch the sun go down for the last time in 2013… and toast 2014.  We will spend the night at Stovepipe Wells…

Day 7, New Years… Homeward bound… Leaving Death Valley on New Years day, heading  to the Owens Valley (the alternative via Trona has been washed out since September) we can visit the Joshua Tree from The Joshua Tree (U2 album cover…) of course THE tree has died and fallen, but there are memorials to the tree and the band…

If Tioga pass is open we will visit Yosemite and the high country… I am torn… If we can go Tioga the ongoing drought is bad… but what a drive…   More likely Tioga will be closed and we will drive Walker Pass, to Isabella and the Kern River canyon… If there is lots of snow (hopefully) we will go over the Tehachapi’s, then north, home…

At least that is the plan…  I suspect you may be able to read about it hear in early January....

Road Trip Planning and a giant Penguin

I have been participating in a discussion on the Travel Advisor boards on how to plan a road trip…

Personally, I use Google maps and a spread sheet… with lots of options… lots of versions, but usually have a paper map on hand as well.  I mostly use the web, but have AAA guidebooks at hand… The spread sheet drives the planning… My spread sheet self calculates time and distance at various speeds… I look for transits that will get me where I need to be… at a speed (and resulting time) I am comfortable with… I make a differentiation between transits… getting somewhere and road trips… wandering along a route…

The first two or three plans don’t survive… they don’t stand the test of distance and time, and things along the way, or nearby… easy detours…  are found to distract…  and add time ruining a otherwise good plan… but also distance starts to veto transits… we need to be realistic… 

I like weird stops, and check http://www.roadsideamerica.com/ for sites along my route…   AAA guide books are good, once you have an idea of where you are going…   If you have any specific interests, search for sights related… I will search for house museums… for railroad museums…  (I will miss most.. but I like to know what I am missing…)

I try to say aware of sunset… Unless headed home or on a hard drive to get away from home I generally stop before sunset.  

You need to know how far you are willing to go in a day, and allow sufficient time to go to places you want to visit to avoid the dreaded sightseeing drive by…  “Wow… there is a historic marker… pull over… wow… I didn’t know that… hit the road we are losing time….”

Of course, there is always too little time and too much to see… 

Currently the lovely Tina and I are planning a couple of trips… In the near term to Tucson for a family gathering, then on the way back via Death Valley… The first day exploring some back country trails in the Jeep…  We will spend New Years eve in Death Valley… I plan on taking a bottle of champagne and sitting on the sand dunes near Stove Pipe Wells for sunset… sunset is probably our midnight… our New Years… followed by a fast trip home via Walker Pass…

The second trip is more complicated, with more decisions…

That trip is to Glacier National Park… in late July… Glacier is some distance from San Mateo (aka “Home”)… two days at least… Since I have retired (and the lovely Tina has not…) I will drive to Spokane Washington… She will fly…  I will take three days or so for the journey… she will take a few hours…  From Spokane it is a day, with distractions to get to the vicinity of Glacier National Park… We are planning to drive I-90, with a visit to the National Buffalo Reserve on the way…  We like buffalo…

We have run 3 spreadsheets to plan the travel… we are not done, but the trip is taking shape… the spread sheets… (spread sheet version 2.2 or so… ) drove possible travel dates… reservations at Glacier Park Hotels drove the exact dates (at least while in Glacier… the before and after are still in play)  We will spend the night near Glacier in Kalispell… at the local old school grand hotel… the Kalispell Grand… I have a good feeling about the place… it has taken 3 emails to work out the details but we have a reservation… the interaction only made the feeling better… it was a conversation, not filling out a form… and we have a reservation… 

Beyond Kalispell we will wander Glacier National Park… to East Glacier and the Glacier Park Lodge...  The Prince of Wales Hotel (Canada... a different country... ) Many Glaciers Hotel and Lake McDonald...

Once done with Glacier (can you ever be done with any National Park, much less one as grand as Glacier…???   Probably not… just done until next visit… ) but beyond we have decisions…

Our trip beyond Glacier is in its 5^th or 6^th revision… Originally Tina was to fly home from Montana… then from Salt Lake after a drive along the Bitteroot Highway…  Now, we are likely to drive home together via Ely and Tioga pass… after transiting the Bittteroot Highway and Hayden Valley in Yellowstone, with a dinner at a brewpub in Jackson…  

Beyond Glacier the trip is now revolving around the Bitteroot Highway… and a 26’ tall talking penguin statue in Cut Bank, Montana.  I am also looking forward to the brew pub in Jackson.

The travel planning is as much fun and lasts longer than the trip…  and nightmares of penguins last longer that anything else...