(October, 2020) Moving on from Durango, Colorado, we made our way to one of our perennial favorite places to spend autumn in – Bluff, Utah. We planned to spend the month of October relaxing in this southern Utah desert community – enjoying autumn in the high desert and socially distancing with friends. We were also looking forward to sight-seeing and photographing in this land of natural wonders and cultural treasures.
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(Late September, 2020) As the saying goes, “There’s gold in them thar hills!”, and we were determined to find it. Or at least, the Aspen gold of fall color high in the San Juan Mountains of southern Colorado. We had just spent a week at the Alamosa KOA, photographing around Great Sand Dunes National Park, and our plan was to move on to Durango, Colorado. Our hope was to arrive in time for the peak of fall color in the San Juans.
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(Late September, 2020) Towering waves of sand breaking on the shore of a mountain-rimmed cove. That is the impression left by the dune-field at Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve. This was our first time visiting the dunes. We were excited to see and photograph such a breathtaking land of contrasts. Great Sand Dunes did not disappoint.
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(Mid-September, 2020) If you’ve ever driven the empty spaces of the Great Plains, then you’ve seen them. That lonely farmhouse sitting abandoned in the fields. Boards weathered to grey with no hint of paint. Empty windows. Door standing agape. Roof with missing shingles – or altogether gone.
Perhaps, instead it is a forlorn and leaning barn slouching into ruin; or a solitary windmill with battered and missing vanes; or even a proud old wooden grain elevator standing silent sentinel over rusted railroad tracks. You have just seen a Prairie Ghost – sad relic of past lives and of bygone eras.
In this post we’ll pay our respects to several of these ghosts of the prairies and high plains. Join me now along lonely roads – coming away with melancholic memories …and few photographs.
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(July-August, 2020) As noted in an earlier blog post, I recently purchased an infrared-modified digital camera and am having way too much fun photographing Iowa in IR. I first shot infrared years ago during my film days and always enjoyed the look of stark black and white photos with ghostly-white foliage. Switching to digital IR opens new realms of possibility for my photography.
Like film, these digital enhanced color IR images can be processed many different ways – resulting in different moods and emotional responses to the images. Some images work equally well in color as in black and white – others do not. Here, I have chosen a somewhat stylized and dreamlike style for both the color and black and white images. I hope you enjoy the results.
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(Late June – Early August, 2019) After visiting an RV service center in Medford, Oregon, to triage the jammed slide-out on our fifth-wheel and file an insurance claim, we made our way back to Bandon, one of our favorite spots on the southern Oregon coast. We looked forward to spending all of July enjoying the cooling sea breezes, exploring the historic port towns, and taking in the dramatic sights along this stretch of the Pacific coastline.
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(Late May, 2019) From Lone Pine, California, we made our way north along scenic highway US-395. Our route took us north through the Owens Valley where we enjoyed the stunning scenery of the Eastern Sierras and White Mountains – jagged peaks and rocky slopes mantled with fresh snow.
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(Early/mid May, 2019) From the Trona Pinnacles we made our way past Ridgecrest to Highway US-395 and turned north through the Owens Valley to our next stop, Lone Pine, California. This route passes through a region of spectacular scenery with the jagged mountains of the Eastern Sierras to the west and the more desert-like White and Inyo Mountains to the east. Due to the particularly cold and wet winter and spring, both the Sierras and Inyo mountains sported snow at higher elevations.
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(Early May, 2019) We kicked off the start of our 2019 travel season with a short stay at the bizarre Trona Pinnacles, a National Natural Landmark in the dry Searles Lake Basin of Southern California. This unearthly landscape of towering calcium carbonate spires (tufas) formed under a deep lake at the end of recent ice ages, between 10,000 to 100,000 years ago, as mineral-rich hot springs percolated up and interacted with cold lake water and algal colonies.
The spires have been filmed in many TV shows and movies, including Lost in Space, Battlestar Galactica, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, and Planet of the Apes.
I had first visited this dramatic area in the early 2000’s on a photo road-trip and was looking forward to spending more time exploring and photographing around the spires.
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Deep in the heart of the Anza-Borrego Desert of Southern California lies a valley where towering metal sculptures of extinct or fanciful creatures appear to roam, stalk, and do battle. The sculptures are set amidst stark desert beauty, against a stunning backdrop of low rugged mountains.
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