Posts in Category: canyon
Valentine’s Day in Maine
Carol (my Valentine) in the sidewalk snow canyon
We are bracing ourselves, here in Southern Maine, for what they are already calling the Valentine’s Day Blizzard. 18 inches of fresh snow, winds to 50 mph, and temperatures in the single digits (it is -12 as I write this). And this on top of the 60 inches or more of snow, drifted often to much higher, that we already have on the ground. The piles of snow in the parking lots are reaching three stores high. The industrial grade snowblower tractor that makes canyons out of sidewalks finally made it through the snow plies from the drives along our street yesterday, and Carol came out to pose in the gap for scale. Okay, so Carol is not very tall, but it makes the point.
And, since Carol is my Valentine, it makes a perfect pic for today. 🙂
Sony WX220. Intelligent Auto. 25mm equivalent field of view. ISO 100 @ f3.3 @ 1/500th. Processed in Lightroom on my Surface Pro 3 tablet.
Church Rock Canyon, NM
My wife and second youngest daughter traveled to New Mexico with me this week. I am working the Festival of the Cranes starting tomorrow, but yesterday and today we are visiting old friends and old haunts from our 12 years as NM residents. All of our children were born in NM. Erin, the afore-mentioned daughter, was 2 when we moved so she does not remember anything of it. This is her first visit back since.
We spent a few hours yesterday hiking up Church Rock Canyon at Red Rock State Park, just outside Gallup NM. The trail has not changed much since we hiked it 25 years ago. It is still a beautiful little Canyon carved through the Chinle sandstone formation, with the weathered spires of Church Rock always hanging tantalizingly on the horizon. It was a perfect fall day for the canyon, cool enough to enjoy hiking, with just enough whispy clouds in the sky to add contrast to the HDR shots. 🙂
Samsung Smart Camera WB800F in Rich Tone mode. 23mm equivalent field of view. Processed in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 using the new HDR Scene filter and the Detail tools. I find that in much HDR work, the blue of a deep blue sky is hard to manage in processing. The HDR processing tends to add a kind of light freckling to the blue, especially with this kind of whispy clouds. For my shots yesterday, after Snapseed, I opened them in Photo Editor, still on the tablet, and went over parts of the sky with a “Smart Blur” brush, to smooth away the freckles without losing the cloud detail.