Slacker!!

Yeah, guilty as charged! However, I'm still taking lots of pics in my many travels this season. We'll take you on a tour to give you a taste of where I have been.

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My several weeks near Mount Shasta resulted in some very fine images.

I just love the lenticular clouds that form as a "cloud-cap" over the peak.

My next assignment was to work on the Mendocino National Forest painting cutting unit boundaries. In one of the units, I found this massive ponderosa pine that was around 70" in diameter and well over 200 feet tall. I decided to try and make a vertical panorama shot, stacking three vertical format pictures on top of each other. After "stitching" together the shots in Photoshop, I used the "Perspective Tool" to adjust for warpage of the trees image. This made the picture's edge all fouled up but, the tree is pretty darn straight. So, I cropped off the goofy edge and here's how it came out.

Since there are no motels in the very remote wilds of the Mendocino, I had a very long commute from Willows, all the way down on the Sacramento Valley floor, to the top of the Coast Ranges. I was struck by the beauty of those golden hills so, I stopped and took this dreamy shot.

I'm currently in the town of Mackay, Idaho, a remote place in the eastern-central part of the state. The Lost River Range is home to several 12,000 foot peaks and Mount Borah is the tallest peak in Idaho. Everything is just so HUGE here and my 10X zoom can only get me so close. These peaks tower 7000 feet over the valley floor and the geology is exquisitely-varied while not masked by deep soils and thick forests. Folded layers of cliffs and elevational variations of plants make this place a visual fascination for a guy like me. Everywhere you look you'll see beauty and "wildness".

However, I still have a job to do, and that involves some picture taking, as well. Me and a co-worker are searching for and documenting stand conditions in patches of aspen. It's very interesting and important work to see how we can improve or protect these very important clumps of trees.

More to come!

Happy Holidays!

Could this be where Santa's secret new base is hidden? Due to global warming, the North Pole just doesn't have the snow and ice that it used to. I do like the look of this pic that puts the mighty Mt. Shasta above it all.

Too bad this mountain is filled with crevasses and avalanche paths. This picture is sure to make expert skiers salivate and drool. Been there and done that. I would be willing to do it again, except to make it all the way to the top. This isn't the "regular route" that most people take. I have to say that climbing with crampons (ice spikes for your mountaineering boots) and ice axe is a lot of fun! It's the coming back down that is scarier, with gravity pushing you down faster than you should go.

I'm going to try and stay busy this winter, with lots of plans on the table. For now, I'm just going to try and have a good time with relatives, cherishing each others company, now more than ever.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!!

New version of Photoshop Elements

Here's the results of my first attempts in this latest version of Elements. This picture below came easily, as the techniques were the same as in the older version. I stumbled on to this colorful sky, in a blurry picture I never deleted.

I hoped there would be some more "artsy" filters but they all seem the same. I used the watercolor filter on this nice group of aspens. I kind of like the "two-toned" effect of the morning shadow.

The new selection tools are a big plus, and earning these skills takes practice. I selected only a portion of the crowns of these trees, smoothing and brightening in a subtle way. I encountered these aspen in a very interesting hidden valley just a few miles east of Mount Shasta.

Finally, here's an older picture of Burney Falls that I "posterized". It seems the sharpen and freeze the action even more. Most of that water is springwater from an underground river in the volcanic Hat Creek valley.

Back on the road

I'm back for another tour in beautiful Dorris, California, just 5 miles from the Oregon border. Here's a leftover picture from the first tour. The big sky and wide open spaces are so different from the mountain forests where I live. As you can see below, their sunsets are just amazing.

On the long drive out to the job site, I saw this old thing actually being used! I just had to stop and take a few pictures of this very interesting old road grader.

This must have been a top-of-the-line model in its time. Looks like it wasn't built for comfort, though.

Finally, I have another leftover from the previous tour. The mountain looks VERY different today than when I took this one. A summer snow storm came through and covered the mountain from head to toe with a new 6-10 inches of new snow!! I'll just have to wait until the time is right to go out and get a new Shasta picture. Maybe this evening there'll be another great sunset (?)

My latest pictures

When I arrived on my latest assignment last weekend, I was pleasantly surprised to see that Mount Shasta had a new dusting of fresh snow, in the middle of August! So much for "global warming", eh? Shasta always astounds me with its beauty and the mountain teased me with a peek of its peak. I wished I could enhance the forest below the clouds, so you could really appreciate how immense this strato-volcano is.

This next one is a very similar picture except that I cropped it out of a bigger picture that I didn't quite compose right. The polarizing filter made the sky nice and blue.

Now we get to a picture I took just a half hour ago. What do you think this is a picture of? Yeah, there's not much to go on, there but, it's an interesting and puzzling picture.

Here's a little bit wider shot that might help a little bit more. Not enough, still? OK, there's plenty of agriculture in Butte Valley, California and they cover their fields with plastic, maybe to reduce water losses in their volcanic ash-laden soils they have near Mount Shasta.

I took this little sidetrip on the way back to the motel from Klamath Falls. Since I have been playing with Photoshop and substituting different skies into other pictures, I took this opportunity to grab some excellent sunset shots. While the oranges are intense and saturated, ya gotta love that deep black of the mountains, too. I sure wished I had my Fuji and its powerful zoom for these shots. Alas, I had to use the work camera. I'm happy with what I came away with, though.

Edit: The above picture is dedicated to my friend and co-worker Jesse. His light shown brightly while he was here and we will never see his quick and easy smile again.

Rest easy, bud!

On the Road Again

On the way up to my next assignment in Chiloquin, Oregon, I made a special stop along Interstate 5 to take these pics of Castle Crags. This zoomed-in shot shows how big those cliffs really are in comparison to the trees. Such jagged rocks always lure me in and I'd like to spend a day wandering around up there someday.

This next picture is the wide angle shot of all the crags. I'm sure I could get into all kinds of trouble up there if I picked the wrong peak to climb.

This morning, I went out before breakfast to take advantage of the morning light. I had picked out an area to drive to, on top of a high ridge above Klamath Lake. Mt. McLoughlin is like a "Baby Shasta" to me. Topping out at under 10,000 feet, it's 4000 feet lower than Shasta but still has those graceful lines and pointed top. This picture also features a very interesting cliff of rimrock and a stylishly-posed snag to enhance the foreground.

I just had to explore this scene a bit more, taking multiple copies of similar shots. Which do you like better?

Finally, I had a distant view of a very dominant Mount Shasta. My powerful zoom brought the mountain much closer through the haze. I played around with the levels controls to get a more natural view than the original.