Monumental

It was a day of dentistry and the unpacking of new technology. So no new pictures, but another from Valley of Fire. I like this one because it has an ambiguous sense of scale: how big are those trees/bushes, that bunch of rocks, the mountains in the distance?

In An Unusual Light

I haven't done much photographing of people in a long, long time (once upon a time, it was my livelihood). I'd quite like to get back to it, in an exploratory way.

I'm a huge fan of light that bounces off of windows or mirrors onto otherwise nondescript surfaces, thereby transforming them. In this instance, I was lucky enough to have a pedestrian illuminated as well.

Valley of Fire

I spent a wonderful couple of hours wandering around this state park with Bob. These images are a small sample of the wonders to be seen. This location will surely reward multiple visits.



This barrier was intended only for motor vehicles.



We stayed until sunset. A nearly full moon was rising in the East.

Disorientation

I continue to be wobbly and a little woozy. I've got some sort of ear infection, I think.

Confusing Passage

I'm in Las Vegas and I've been feeling unwell for a couple of days… lightheaded and woozy. This image gives a sense of the problem.

Amphitheater

I'm traveling for a week or so; it's possible I may miss a few days' posting. And when I do post, it may be from the stockpile, like this one from last Sunday's visit to Arlington Cemetery.

Grain and Flakes

Two different distressed surfaces, and some metal.

Arlington House

I spent several hours on Sunday wandering around Arlington Cemetary. The Custis-Lee Mansion is stuck partway through renovation, for lack of funds, which I find absolutely preposterous and shameful.

Glen Echo

Glen Echo Park is a strange hybrid of a place. The oddest thing about it is a bunch of loving restorations that are not being used at all (never mind for their intended purposes).

They have a lively art workshop scene, and in the summer it apparently runs riot with children. But no bumper cars, and no actual crystal pool.

No Weight

You know my eye was caught by the arrow, the numbers, and that tasty tasty rust.

Under Construction

I've been thinking a lot about technical matters, because I'm going to have to rebuild this blog soon, and I'll probably want to mix some other stuff into the SomeBeaut site. It's all going to be a boatload of work.

I'm gradually beefing up my technology infrastructure though, so at least the "But my computer sucks!" excuse will not longer apply. April will officially be Full Steam Ahead Month.

Autumn Leaves Before Spring

Glorious weather today almost made me believe that winter is done and Spring is waiting next door for permission to enter. Looking at this picture, you might imagine that somehow we skipped winter altogether.

If only.

Melt

Only the presence of 60+ degree sunshine could make this scene beautiful.

Curves

Okay, I confess: this image was not taken in the last 72 hours. Anyone can see that. After all, there is clearly some SUNLIGHT showing in this picture.

Worst. Winter. EVAR.

In A Glass

There's always a frame, and there's always distortion. Some are just more easily spotted than others.

Zones

Some transitions are more clearly delineated than others.

Nature v. Nurture

Another image from the grounds of the Katzen Art Center.

Elliptical

It's been a while since I looked at sculpture. Several years ago, the Katzen Art Center opened just up Massachusetts Avenue from me. It's about a quarter mile away. Have I been inside yet? NO. (Muttering. Shame. Embarrrassment.)

Finally, I went by and gave the exterior, complete with staircases, fountains, and sculpture garden, a thorough going-over. And I actually liked quite a bit of what I saw.

Can the interior be far behind?

After The Flood

I like to think this shows the aftermath of high water as Dürer might have portrayed it. If he'd had a camera. Okay, and a computer. WHATEVER.

Please make sure to look at the larger version of this, because it's all about the details.

A Natural Mess

Sometimes a walk in the woods doesn't reveal any pattern of orderliness. Nature is frequently just plain messy, disorganized, and chaotic. My footfalls through the forrest caused large, extremely healthy-looking deer to bolt springily away through the underbrush. There was little classically photogenic to be found in the grey and brown trees of winter.

Yet this patch of water, with its tangle of downed branches and dead leaves floating, brought me to a standstill. This too is beautiful. We are meant to spend time in environments like these: our senses are tuned to the patterns of light and dark made by tree trunks in afternoon light, and mirror reflections sooth our minds.

In Memoriam

To See What They Look Like

I believe it was Gary Winogrand who said "I photograph things to see what they look like photographed."

Even today, with the near-instant gratification provided by digital cameras, it is often a surprise to discover that the exposure you made winds up capturing something quite different from what your eyes and brain registered on the scene.

We don't look at one thing. Our eyes jump around in a series of saccades, changing focus and aperture on the fly, with our brains helpfully filling in the blanks with interpolated detail so that we won't see a bunch of mush. Cameras and lenses are much less creative, despite tremendous advances in technology.

I thus consider it something of a triumph when a photograph I take "comes out" as I envisioned it would. But I am always open to surprise: every now and then what appears is not what I expected, but something much more interesting.

Shattered

Life leaves scars.

Some Photographic Challenges

It wasn't all blue skies in New Mexico, alas. Heavy overcast and ultra-flat lighting made it hard to do justice to the magnificent landscape at Tent Rock. These two pictures barely hint at the sheer presence of this landscape.

Standing in the Gap



Tent Rock 'Village'

What Winter Should Look Like

If we must have winter, it should look like this: sunny blue skies, bright white snow, large vistas. If I lived in Albuquerque, I would take up skiing again (or snowboarding, maybe). I haven't thrown myself down a mountain since I was teenager, but the chance to do it in weather like this would tempt me mightily. I don't mind a little nip in the air if the sun is shining. Of course, the bonus here at Sandia is that the temperature improves by 15 degrees at the bottom of the hill, and there are no snowdrifts to dig your car out of.

This image is a single exposure tone-mapped HDR. You might find it interesting to compare it to the version in the previous post.

Quick (Not!) and Dirty Comparison

I thought I'd throw together a little compare & contrast exercise for y'all between Lightroom 3 Beta and Aperture 3. The problem, of course, is that I'm working on my severely underpowered MacBook Air. It will run both programs, but everything is much slower than one would hope… and in the case of Aperture, it quickly becomes damn near unusable. LR3 does a MUCH better job of supporting my feeble little laptop. With this hardware, the fine points of image quality are really irrelevant; I simply can't get work done in a timely fashion using Aperture on this machine.

Nevertheless, I've prepared some comparison images for your amusement.

First up, an unremarkable image opened from RAW with no adjustments:

Aperture



Lightroom



Now with typical adjustments:

Aperture



Lightroom



A few other examples:

Aperture



Lightroom



Aperture



Lightroom



And, lastly, a comparison with a previously-posted image:

Aperture



Lightroom



If you're not seeing big differences between these images (or if you're not seeing them at all on Facebook, please click through to the post on my blog), well, that's because there aren't a lot of big differences. I would say, on average, images coming out of Aperture tend to wind up a little more contrasty and a little more vibrant/saturated. Some of that is probably because, on my gimpy machine, I can't really do adjustments in real time, which probably means I'm over-correcting.

Still, the upshot of this comparison is that while I LOVE the many other features Aperture offers (ease of keywording, Places, and Faces), it is currently way more frustrating than I'm prepared to tolerate for actually making image adjustments. And I think Lightroom 3 Beta currently has the edge in terms of brushed-in adjustments.

My Aperture trial will expire in 9 days. Lightroom 3 Beta will expire in mid-April. I will revisit the comparison when I have hardware that can handle the burden that Aperture places on it, and make a purchasing decision shortly thereafter. It's possible I'll wind up using LR3 for RAW editing and iPhoto (the latest version of which will be free on my theoretically-forthcoming new hardware) for cataloging and other higher-level tasks.

Ancestor, Waiting

Suddenly, in the negative space of this image, I saw a standing figure wrapped in desert-striped weavings, patient and watchful. And, once seen, it became impossible to not see.

Heart of Stone

It is hard to make a photograph that really captures what it was I saw in this constellation of rocks. The bigger version (click on photo) does a better job of it than the small one.

Monumental

Despite overcast skies, we spent a wonderful hour and a half exploring Tent Rock park, located either inside or just adjacent to Cochiti Pueblo, not far from Los Alamos. If you're in the neighborhood, I highly recommend a visit. I hope to go back one day, when conditions are more favorable. It offers one fabulous photographic opportunity after another.

Home Again

My return from Albuquerque presents me with several hundred photographs to pick through, a slew of email to answer, and *oh frabjous day!* an update from Apple that brings RAW support to my Lumix DMC-GF!. Of course what that really means is that I'm processing the same files twice now, once in Lightroom 3 Beta and now in Aperture 3 too. You lucky readers: can a compare & contrast post be far behind? (To be fair, I'm currently much more familiar with LR than Aperture; I really should learn how to use the latter a bit better before doing a comparison.)

If only I had a computer with enough oomph to handle these tasks without slowing to a mind-bendingly annoying crawl.