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On our last day in Sedona, Arizona, we went up to the overlook at the airport to watch the sunset behind the city.
Please click the image to view a larger version.
There were lots of people up there, lined up shoulder to shoulder, so I walked down the hill a little way to get some space of my own.
Overall Sedona is a really beautiful place to visit with some fantastic scenery and great hiking trails. Its downside is the overcrowding of tourists in the downtown area. I guess we have become accustomed to less crowded places.
Next week I’ll be moving on to sunny Utah where there are 5 national parks and numerous state parks in a circle in the southern part of the state. We are spending the last month of our trip there before heading back to BC for the summer.
May 18, 2012 | Categories: Arizona, North American Adventure | Tags: arizona, sedona | 1 Comment »
At sunrise and sunset the rocks surrounding Sedona, Arizona, glow with shades of red and orange. Add a few clouds in the sky and you can get some dramatic landscape images. But even on a blue sky day, the contrast between the red and blue also makes for some stunning scenery.
Here are some of the more well known rock formations. Please click the images to view larger versions.
The Nuns
Bell Rock
A closer view of the top of Bell Rock
Chapel of the Holy Cross (that's the chapel in the lower right)
And my favourite…
Snoopy Rock
(If you don’t see it, imagine Snoopy sleeping on the top of his dog house. That’s woodstock on the tip of his nose.)
May 17, 2012 | Categories: Arizona, North American Adventure | Tags: arizona, bell rock, red rock, rock formations, sedona, snoopy rock, the nuns | 6 Comments »
I planned my visit to Red Rock Crossing in the late afternoon. Just enough time to get there, walk around to see everything, and enjoy a picnic dinner before picking my location for sunset.
I almost didn’t go when I saw the dark storm clouds coming before I left the RV park. But the location was about half an hour away and I thought I might get lucky with some dramatic skies. And lucky I was!
Arriving at Red Rock Crossing, it started raining. Pouring really. All kinds of people started running out of the park into their cars and quickly left. How great is that? No people!! Ray and I stayed in the truck to have our picnic and wait out the storm. When the last few raindrops fell, I jumped out and got all my camera gear together and quickly headed towards Oak Creek where I knew there would be water in the foreground.
I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw Cathedral Rock for the first time. With a beautiful rainbow heading right into the rock!!
Please click the images to view larger versions.
I made a number of images before a mountain biker came along and wanted to cross the creek in front of me. The rocks going across the creek provide the only crossing point. There were some other photographers there too and when the biker went to cross I glanced back at them to see if they were also finished shooting so he could cross. One of them said to me “Aren’t you going to shoot him?” That’s when I realized I made my classic mistake of always avoiding people in my photography. I didn’t even consider it until the other photographer said it.
I wasn’t set up right for that kind of shot. I was all ready for a long exposure landscape with my mirror lockup on and my two second timer. All I had time to do was press the shutter and hope for the best. With my two second timer on I had absolutely no control over whether the bike rider would even be in the frame when the shutter released. Here is what I got:
Two lucky shots in one night! Maybe there really is some spiritual vortex thing here?
May 16, 2012 | Categories: Arizona, North American Adventure | Tags: arizona, cathedral rock, red rock, sedona | 9 Comments »
The most iconic image of Sedona, Arizona, has to be Cathedral Rock. It costs $9 to access Red Rock Crossing, which almost deterred me from going, but I just couldn’t go home without my iconic shot. I like icons.
Please click the images to view larger versions.
You can photograph Cathedral Rock from many different angles providing different foreground features which gives you a little more bang for your buck.
I hate to bore you with too many shots from the same location, but tomorrow I have two amazingly lucky shots I got here.
May 15, 2012 | Categories: Arizona, North American Adventure | Tags: arizona, cathedral rock, red rock, sedona | 11 Comments »
This week I have some images from Sedona, Arizona, to share with you. My husband and I spent two weeks there relaxing, swimming in the pool at the RV park, and exploring the many hiking trails, mountains, canyons and streams in Red Rock Country.
Why so long? Free camping! We became members of “Thousand Trails” an organization that owns about 80 vacation properties for campers and RVers. They are all in the USA except one in Canada.
The deal is it cost us $500 to join. That includes 30 days of free camping in a year and after that it costs only $3 per night. We also get discounts on all the Encore resorts. We bought the membership in Florida where camping was very expensive, especially since we were there during high season. There are many Encore resorts in Florida and we found that the Thousand Trails membership paid for itself in the discounts we received in Florida alone.
When we saw one of their resorts was just outside Sedona, we decided to stay for two weeks and use up some of our free camping nights.
Sedona is surrounded by rugged red rocks that provide stunning vistas. On one of our first days in Sedona we took a scenic drive to the Village of Oak Creek where there were numerous pull outs along the road. After our drive we decided to return to Bell Rock to watch the sunset.
Please click the image to view a larger version.
We only had to hike a short distance on the path up to the rock when we were rewarded with this view looking back towards the city.
I made this image using a 3 stop soft step neutral density filter to even out the exposure between the bright background and darker foreground. In post processing, I polished it off using Nik Color Efex Pro.
May 14, 2012 | Categories: Arizona, North American Adventure | Tags: arizona, camping, sedona, sunset | 6 Comments »
As I mentioned in yesterday’s post about the painted desert, millions of years ago this land was covered in a lush thick forest. Over 200 million years ago actually. Today, as the painted desert erodes, it exposes the fossilized artifacts of the ancient forest. It is the world’s largest concentration of petrified wood.
200 million year old trees!! Seriously, I had to look it up a number of times to believe that the trees I touched were 200 million years old.
From afar, it doesn’t really look all that impressive. Please click the images to view larger versions.
But once you get a little closer it is really quite astonishing.
The petrified wood is almost solid quartz so hard it can only be cut with a diamond tipped saw.
It is illegal to take any pieces of the wood out of the park and there are severe penalties if you are caught with any in your pockets.
The national parks always have an introductory movie about the park that you can watch in the visitor’s center. In the movie about the Petrified Forest there was a cute part about all the packages they receive in the mail every year. Packages containing rocks and notes of apology. It seems many people are compelled to return the rocks they have taken.
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May 11, 2012 | Categories: Arizona, North American Adventure, Petrified Forest National Park | Tags: arizona, national park, petrified forest national park | 6 Comments »
The painted desert covers a huge expanse of Arizona from the Grand Canyon to the Petrified Forest. It is vast landscape of rainbow coloured badland hills and buttes that resembles an abstract painting on earth’s canvas.
Please click the images to view larger versions.
This particular section of the painted desert is inside the bounds of Petrified Forest National Park. I’ll have more on that tomorrow. For now, feast your eyes on these layers of clay and sandstone stacked like a delicious cake. The soft layers of earth allow a great deal of erosion and colourful staining by mineral deposits.
It was another white sky day during my visit so I focussed my attention on the patterns and textures of the landscape and did not include the sky in the frame.
It’s hard to imagine that this area was once covered with a thick lush forest, dinosaurs roamed the land, and at one time it was covered by ocean.
May 10, 2012 | Categories: Arizona, North American Adventure, Petrified Forest National Park | Tags: arizona, national park, painted desert, petrified forest national park | 5 Comments »
Along the historic Route 66 as it goes through Holbrook, Arizona, there is one attraction you cannot miss: The Wigwam Motel. We saw it as we drove by during the day and decided to return at night hoping it would be lit up.
Please click the images to view larger versions.
After lurking about in the parking lot we noticed that inside there were old photographs of Route 66 so we decided to go in, although we were not staying there.
What a treat it was to meet a woman who had lived there for over 60 years and she told us stories about what the old Route 66 was like and how much it has changed. They try to keep the motel as it used to be complete with old cars for the nostalgic atmosphere.
I tried to take more photographs, but it just wasn’t the same when the SUV’s started showing up in the parking lot. Fortunately I did manage to get one image with a wigwam and a vintage car.
Does the motel look familiar to you? Maybe that’s because it was in the recent animated movie “Cars” where it was called “Cosy Cones”.
May 09, 2012 | Categories: Arizona, North American Adventure | Tags: arizona, holbrook, teepee, vintage, wigwam, wigwam motel | 19 Comments »
One characteristic of Santa Fe that makes it stand out among other cities is the same thing that doesn’t stand out: its architectural style. The distinctive low-profile adobe buildings are made of earth and sun-dried straw. They come in a variety of soft earthen tones and have flat roofs and soft rounded corners making them blend in to the gentle slopes of the mountains surrounding the city.
From Albuquerque, we did a day trip into Santa Fe to explore the city and to meet up with fellow photographer Jackson Frishman, who was kind enough to treat us to a great lunch at The Shed, a well known local restaurant, and show us around town. Thanks Jackson!
While the architectural style was once simply a shared aesthetic, it is now required by law that new buildings and any renovations adhere to this specific style making the new appear old.
Please click the images to view larger versions.
It was a white-sky day during our visit so I excluded the sky from many of my images and filled the frame with detailed elements of the buildings.
For the next image, I combined three exposures to maintain some detail and colour in the sky.
Santa Fe also has a vibrant arts community which is revealed in the local shops which have a multitude of authentic local paintings, sculptures, pottery, and masks as well as unique clothing, jewelry, shoes, and more.
May 08, 2012 | Categories: New Mexico, North American Adventure | Tags: adobe, architecture, building, new mexico, santa fe | 19 Comments »
In Albuquerque, New Mexico, we stayed at an RV park along historic Route 66 called “Enchanted Trails RV Park & Trading Post” which was originally a trading post in the late 1940′s. There I found a fantastic photography subject: a vintage car pulling a vintage trailer!
The car and trailer are available for rental and the trailer looked pretty roomy inside given its small size. Just imagine the looks you would get if you drove around in this!
1950 Hudson Commodore with 1954 VaKaShunette
Please click the images to view larger versions.
I felt like I should rent it so I could drive it to a better place for the purpose of photography. As it is the background is rather cluttered and distracting with the trees and RVs, but it shows you what was there in front of me.
To make my “artistic” image, I decided I had to exclude the trailer. I positioned myself in front of the vehicle and got down low angling my camera upwards.
1950 Hudson Commodore
It was mid-day as you can tell by the shadows from the tree above on the hood of the car. I took three exposures and combined them in Photomatix. Then I brought the image into Topaz Adjust and used a setting called “Grunge Me” to make the final image. If you have Topaz Adjust, you can download the “Grunge Me” setting for free at Photoframd.
If you liked this article, consider signing up for my free monthly newsletter which contains exclusive photo tips and tutorials which are not available on the blog, stories from my recent travels and you’ll even get two free photography eBooks as a bonus.
May 07, 2012 | Categories: New Mexico, North American Adventure | Tags: 1950, albuquerque, car, hudson commodore, new mexico, trailer, vakashunette, vintage | 8 Comments »
