And How Was Your Thanksgiving?

We had a great Thanksgiving dinner at Angela's and Danny's and got to meet some new folks and see some others we hadn't seen for years. And we missed a few of our regulars, Karen, Richard, and Daniel, who felt they needed to stick a bit closer to Seton Hospital than the rest of us who traveled north. People were coming and going on their own schedules, just like the old days. I drove up in the rain and by the time I got to Arlington it was in the mid 30's. Of course, that would never keep me from a turkey dinner. I've a few more pictures than usual in this post and more still that I'll make available shortly. I chose these because they'll fit in my brief but trenchant narrative.

Once I broke out my camera, I felt the thing to do was stir up trouble so I could document it all. The best place to do that is in the kitchen where everyone is hard at work preparing my dinner. . . okay, "our" dinner. Here, I'm trying to convince Mary to take credit for the spinach salad Tracy just put together. She was pleasant about it, but having none of my shenanigans.

This may be more work than I'd expected. I was still hanging in the neighborhood when Tracy returned and added the fruits of her labor to the buffet.

Tracy and Matt traveled the farthest (from the UK) to brighten our day and the picture above shows them with Tracy's granddad, who dropped in to see that everybody was behaving themselves. The three of them are sandwiched between our new friends (and Matt's parents), John and Sarah. They came from the Turks and Caicos islands to see what kind of people Matt and Tracy were hanging out with. It was a great visit and we thoroughly enjoyed meeting them.

Now, several of the attendees chose to run the somewhat damp 2K Turkey Trot over in Fort Worth the day before. And I found the headgear some of the entrants chose to keep their ears warm very disturbing when I saw photographs of them on Facebook.

Danny really bonded with his fowl hat apparently and seemed to be talking to it in his corner of the kitchen while he prepared his portion of our feast. Notice the interest Danny's friend exhibits when he becomes aware of the pleasant smells wafting through the kitchen.

Unfortunately, that didn't last long at all. He was clearly terrified when he tumbled to the unspeakable things Danny was doing to the bird on the counter. LOOK AT THE POOR HAT'S EYES! I couldn't take it any more and had to go find someplace to sit down.

Shortly thereafter emotions calmed and peace returned when the monkey bread joined the rest of "the fixin's" on the buffet. It was all every bit as good as it looked. . . note the pies on the sideboard: Pecan, Cherry, Pumpkin, Buttermilk and, of course, Chocolate (hiding in the fridge, no doubt).

I heard several laments during the course of the afternoon about the kids growing up, we being short of toddlers at the moment. Well, we can't have it all our own way, I suppose. And these are good kids after all. They may enjoy a good card game, but keep their greenbacks out of sight lest they scandalize any transients who might wander through the family room. (Did you notice Blake's chapeau? He's very close to Danny, his grandfather, and seems possibly to have inherited his attraction to avian head wear. We don't usually bring it up, not wanting to embarrass him.)

They all love my pictures, this crew, and decided after I'd already stowed my camera for the drive back to Austin that this was an excellent time for some group shots. But that's okay. This is one of the better ones; at least nobody's curled up on the floor asleep. It was another truly grand Thanksgiving.

I Really Have to Get Out More

I had another of those "computer events" a couple weeks ago. You know the ones. They used to just announce themselves (at the worst possible moment of course) by displaying the "Blue Screen of Death". When it happened in October 2012, I remember getting a message telling me the hard disk was about to fail. While I pondered the warning and my next move, thinking things had really come a long way, it quit on me and I lost. . . well, never mind, I already cried on your shoulder about that.

This time it simply wouldn't boot. I didn't panic, I just tried anything I could think of for an hour and a half and finally. . . SUCCESS! It booted. I spent the rest of the day backing up all kinds of stuff I should have been backing up regularly. But I'd been at it for some time and I thought I'd leave it on, get some sleep and finish up in the morning. Microsoft decided sometime in the wee hours that I needed some security updates and promptly installed them for me. Unfortunately, the updates needed a reboot to take effect. Yeah. The reboot didn't quite happen. I'm still hopeful that my efforts to backup those files may be fruitful, but I've been studying the problem and haven't been able to test my recovery plan. I'm just not ready to find out for sure that I've been screwed again. Of course, the good news is: if I delay testing the plan long enough I may simply forget that it happened again.

Anyhow, I've been thus occupied until today, when I finally broke out to get some fresh air and take a few pictures. I heard a few weeks ago that the drought here in the Hill Country had finally been broken. So, the order of the day was to verify the claim. First stop was a short drive to Marshal Ford Marina, the closest portion of Lake Travis to my apartment. The drought IS broken! Defeat Hollow and the marina looked full, just like it did the first time I saw them in the late 60s.

From Marshal Ford I drove up to the gate at the northern approach to Mansfield Dam. One used to be able to find a good view of the lake there. It was pleasant enough today too, but the Ashe Juniper (what we refer to as "cedar") has grown so tall that I could only catch a glimpse of the Lake. It was still great to see water that high and I feel sure it was even wet.

Okay, lunch time. Haven't been to Ski Shores since I took Mom there more than three years ago. Lake Travis had been so low for so long that I just didn't think about dropping by. Of course, Ski Shores is on Lake Austin, not Travis, and Lake Austin is, for all practical purposes, a constant level lake. I needn't have stayed away. They have made some changes to the cafe and they seem to be all to the good. My chicken sandwich was great and I had my first french fries in ages.

These last four shots were all taken at Bull Creek District Park, just off Loop 360. The water in the creek was a lot higher than the last time I shot there. I could nearly walk across with dry feet then, stepping from stone to stone. The big treat though was getting the pictures home and applying some new post processing techniques I've recently been working on. Another reason I haven't gotten around to actually doing anything to resolve my late computer problems. . .

These two, the creek above and the rock wall below are my favorites from today's outing. I ended up including some variations on the procedures I've been practicing and was really quite pleased with the outcome. It seems I now have enough experience with some newly acquired Photoshop skills that I can comfortably combine several to good effect.

I hadn't noticed the rock wall on earlier visits here. I must have been distracted. The stone staircase through the cut near the center of the frame reminded me of "The Rocks", one of my favorite areas of Sydney. And, there was a young man attempting to free climb up the face to the right of the staircase. That reminded me that my son, Dave, has started rock climbing again.

This last shot appeared to be a root-ball from an uprooted tree/shrub lying half in and half out of the creek. I thought the submerged portion merited some extra interest with the movement of the water. A little more depth and a big carp would really have looked nice. In any case, I like it well enough to have made it my current wallpaper.

I really do need to get out more often.

San Antonio Missions, Part II

First things first: the Longhorn baby boomers BOOMED the Sooners. Congratulations to the Texas Longhorns, beating #10 Oklahoma 24 – 17. It's certainly taken a while, but this was a sweet win.

Back to San Antonio and Mission San José. The view above of the church and convento is probably my favorite from the whole collection of pictures I took last week. I know it's similar to one of yesterday's pictures, but the composition is so compelling that similar shots kept showing up throughout the day's batch. I like the crispness and the intensity of the colors. The play of the shadows on the convento arches is very dramatic.

This shot turned out much better than I had expected because of the great lighting. The dome and the belltower would have been in deep shadow had the sunlight not been reflected by the opposite side of the wall. I think the result gives an ethereal quality missing in the other images. When I return, I hope I'll be able to remember to take advantage of the effect.

Similar to one of yesterday's shots, what I was trying to catch here was the cylindrical section of the building where the door and window are. It looks to be pretty beat up, but the architectural detail, like the carved stone and the arches and the gothic windows and the wrought ironwork all add to the marvelous design of this complex.

Here's another shot emphasizing the arches and the shadows. It's hard to see much detail in the stone carvings surrounding the door, but they're really impressive. When I first saw this image, my first thought was to return to the mission and go through with my plan to shoot High Dynamic Range. HDR is sometimes overused because some of the effects can be so surrealistic. It should be remembered that the whole purpose of HDR is to bring to an image the entire tonal range that the human eye can resolve that cameras typically fail to capture.

This image is a two frame panorama using two of the four frames I used in the one posted yesterday. I was so pleased with the lighting here that I completed the processing of this shot (these shots) before I even realized that I had taken enough (four) for the larger panorama.

On the north side of the wall that shows up in the second picture is the mission's mill and acequia. I didn't finish all my background reading on the missions, so I'm guessing that the acequia is the control center for the mission's irrigation system. My assumption is based on the fact that there are a couple sluice gates in the area and fresh water brought in via aqueduct from the San Antonio River flows through the basement of this small building. Even 300 years ago it made sense to be able to control the system from a central location. Also note the flower from the century plant (it looks like a 15 foot tall ostrich drumstick).

That's all there is for this session. It's cooled off a little this week and I'm anxious to go back and do the HDR shoot, so perhaps it won't be so long between posts next time.

San Antonio Missions National Historical Park

About the middle of last week, I started thinking about a plan I'd hatched to go down to San Antonio and spend a day driving up the Mission Trail and photographing San Antonio's Spanish missions. Now, considering how poorly my last photo Safari turned out - shooting the super moon and lunar eclipse - I decided to spend more time on my preparation. That meant finding the National Park Service maps of the San Antonio Missions National Historic Park and whatever other details I could suss out to ensure a satisfactory outcome.

The missions generally follow the San Antonio River upstream towards the heart of the city. Beginning with Mission Espada, the Trail leads the tourist or photographer from there to Mission San Juan Capistrano, Mission San José, Mission Concepción, and Mission San Antonio de Valero which is, of course, the Alamo. Stopping in the center of town, the Mission Trail kind of left me hanging. After all, I still had to drive back to Austin. Was there anywhere else I needed to shoot since I was already down here? Brackenridge Park Zoo is around here somewhere; I could spend the afternoon there, maybe stop and see Ellen on the way out of town, avoid traffic and get home via Marble Falls and - voilà - a very productive day by any measure.

Founded in 1690 as San Francisco de los Tejas, 40 years later when the Spanish frontier was retreating from the Nacogdoches region back to San Antonio, the missionaries and soldiers associated with the mission were transferred to a site near the San Antonio River and the mission renamed San Francisco de la Espada.

Now, taking the basic plan, it's time for some tweaking. I've already been to the Alamo several times and, even though it's Friday and school is back in session, I decided out of hand that I could do without the crowds and traffic that I suspect still teem about the Alamo Plaza. I launched Google Maps and Google Images and started my reconnaissance. Mission Espada has some real promise, but most of the images I found concentrated on the chapel and the bells in its façade. Google Maps, with great foresight, sent a hiker through the missions with his backpack-mounted Street View camera, so I was able to see just about this whole portion of the park. Ruins of the mission walls seemed very photogenic, but my first impression was right on. Unless I was looking for a place to shoot great portraits, all my pictures here were likely to be of the chapel.

Okay, Mission Espada was a possibility. Upstream a bit and on the other side of the river I checked out San Juan. The situation there was similar to Espada - all the images would be concentrated on the chapel. While many of the images I found online showed promise, for some inexplicable reason the NPS whitewashed the chapel and the connected wall. Thinking about it, I suppose they whitewashed the portions of the mission that were satisfactory from a structural point of view while they restore and repair other sections. Not really inexplicable after all, but not what I want to shoot either.

Mission San José y San Miguel de Aguayo, known as the "Queen of the Missions", is the largest of the missions and was almost fully restored to its original design in the 1930s by the Works Projects Administration (WPA).

On to Mission San José. The Street View images of San José told me immediately that this would be where I'd spend most of my time. It was wide-open with oak and mesquite trees providing some shade in the courtyard. The main buildings, the chapel and convento stand out with a belltower and dome, each capped with a wrought iron cross, beautiful arches, carved stone details. Exactly what any photographer would be searching for. The courtyard itself was bounded by walls for protection from the wild Indians. The walls incorporated quarters, small rooms which the padres would no doubt have referred to as cells, for the Indian residents. The stonework here seems to be largely done, and the Park Service repair work is concentrating on details such as arbors and the like. From what little reading I did, I suspect there is some archaeological work still going on, probably associated with local universities. All of it is laudable work, well carried out.

The bell tower on the western corner of the main church building. Note the carved stone detail on the tower and the surrounding the rose window on the southwestern wall as well as the wrought ironwork.

My impression of San José was that there was plenty here to keep me busy all morning, and enough detail to stretch into the middle of the afternoon. All the mission sites have hours of 9am -5pm. However, San José had gates which the signs said would close at 5pm and presumably stay closed till 9am. On the other hand, possibly because the walls themselves were ruins, Mission Espada had no gates - yet. The idea was forming in my mind that I would drive down from Austin to Espada to shoot that mission shortly after sunrise, have a breakfast burrito on the way to San José, and be there when the gates opened at 9am. Good plan, Parker.

The belltower and the dome over the transept mark the church (left) are joined to the convento, which housed the Spanish residents of the mission. Native residents' quarters were located within the compound along the perimeter wall.

Next up, Mission Concepción. Absolutely beautiful. My first impression of Concepción is that the church has been in continuous use for the last 300 years. The big difference between it and San José though, is that the portions of the mission no longer necessary to provide sanctuary from rampaging Indians apparently had been removed as they fell to ruin and there is no visible sign, except possibly to a trained archaeologist, that Concepción is anything other than a 300-year-old church located in the middle of a beautiful park. That's certainly not to say that it's not worth visiting. I just decided that I'd save my visit to Concepción for a photography side trip next time I'm in San Antonio to see Ellen and Stan, ideally around sunset.

Sleeping quarters in the convento were on the second story, above storerooms, offices and common rooms.

The missing part of this plan turned out to be unnecessary anyway. The part where I visit Ellen and Stan on the way out of town wasn't going to happen because Ellen and Stan were off in Washington DC or North Carolina on vacation. That pretty well established my agenda. Shoot Mission Espada in the early morning light, get to San José by 9am, take as much time as I wanted there and, if I still had enough energy, I'd spend the afternoon at the zoo; if not, I'd head on home in plenty of time for dinner. I programmed my gps with two route options after San José. Only thing left was to decide what day to go.

This panoramic view looking south shows the southern end of the convento with a well in the foreground, the mission's south gate, and the first few of numerous rooms for native residents around the perimeter of the mission.

In the event, I decided Thursday night that I'd go down Friday morning. I spent the evening with my Canon users manual, familiarizing myself with autoexposure bracketing [AEB] so I could shoot some HDR images. Then I got sidetracked when I thought of something that had given me trouble the week before with the super moon and a lunar eclipse. I didn't resolve anything, but when I gave up on it I failed to leave my camera settings ready for the next morning. Ergo, on arrival at Espada my camera was misbehaving and I didn't know whether I was getting any usable shots or not. I probably only spent 15 minutes there before deciding to drive to San José and troubleshoot the camera in the mission parking lot. That way, assuming I figured out what was wrong and how to fix it - neither of which was a given - I'd be ready when the gates opened at 9. The troubleshooting was successful and I managed to figure out how to release the mirror, which had been locked up the night before when I was checking out procedures for time exposures. As well as I could tell from the small LCD screen on the camera, the pictures I took at Espada seemed to be in reasonable focus, nicely composed, and well lit. I'd have to check when I've uploaded them to the computer at home.

I'm nearly done here. I think I'll tell this tale in one post interspersed among half a dozen images. Then tomorrow I'll post another half dozen possibly with captions but with no need for a narrative. As it turned out, I didn't take any HDR shots but the morning at San José was so enjoyable, I'm currently planning to return specifically for HDR shots. Maybe I'll visit Concepción on that trip. Always remember that indecision is the key to flexibility.

The 2015 Spring Roadtrip: Headed for Home

What, you thought we were going to Zion next? Well, yeah. That was the plan. I got my extra hour's sleep in Cedar City and headed for Zion. Like most national parks you only see a portion of it if you stick to the overlooks. In addition, Zion is different from the other parks because of the physical constraints of the Zion Gorge. There's no room for traffic in gorge so, if you want to see that part of it, you've got to park in what I think of as Greater Zion and take a shuttle bus in. On my first visit I was oblivious to the shuttle and the gorge. I thought I had seen it all - and loved it. On my next visit I caught on, but my schedule had no cushion for the shuttle. This time, I was going specifically to take the shuttle up the gorge but after five days on the road the combination of fatigue and early morning tourist traffic robbed me of my enthusiasm. Next time, it'll be Zion first and the shuttle bus into the gorge. That said, it was a curious feeling being able to take a shortcut through a national park without stopping at any overlooks or snapping any pictures. It was like the park is mine but I've got something to do, so the rest of you people can use it while I'm gone.

After taking my shortcut through Zion, the most direct route back home (which wasn't particularly direct, by the way) took me by Page AZ. By way of inspection I took a slight detour up to the Wahweap Overlook to check out Lake Powell. Panorama above covers the whole vista from Castle Rock on the left to the Glen Canyon Dam and bridge on the right.

So, having skipped the Zion shuttle and stopping only briefly at Lake Powell, I was actually a little bit ahead of schedule on my drive home. I had planned to stop at Socorro or Roswell NM but on arrival at both locations I didn't feel like stopping. Keep on truckin', dude. There were several times after passing Roswell that I wished I had stayed the night. I hadn't been paying attention to how much rain Texas had been getting while I was gone, but as soon as I crossed the state line I was in it. So the weather was lousy and I probably lost an hour because of it. And there really wasn't a good place to stop till I got to San Angelo. I pulled into the parking lot at Denny's and took a four hour nap, which did me a world of good. Made it home about 9:30 Saturday morning. . . then crashed for three days.

*****

These panoramas - or is it panoramae - are to recap the 2015 Spring Roadtrip in case there's a test next week. You'll want to be ready for it.

North of Green River Utah, 19 May

Approaching Vernal Utah, 19 May

Grand Teton Ntional Park, 20 May

Yellowstone National Park, 20 May

Near St Anthony Idaho, 20 May

Fort Boise Military Cemetery, 20 May

Cedar Breaks National Monument, 21 May

The 2015 Spring Roadtrip: Cedar Breaks National Monument

I didn't sleep very well in Boise and consequently the drive south through Twin Falls ID and Ely NV was tough. I ended up stopping several times, napping in the Sierra and moving on for another couple hours. I did uncover a weakness in my planning, however. It seems I failed to take note of the route's terrain on this leg and I was actually surprised by the size and scope of the mountains in Nevada. Every time the road I was traveling took aim at a ridge whose upper reaches were encased in the clouds, I was sure that I'd soon be trying to cross the snowy pass. I think my fatigue was showing. As it turned out, I made it to my motel in Cedar City in time to take a two hour nap before checking out Cedar Breaks National Monument for the sunset.

Cedar Breaks NM is about 20 miles east of town and the stretch of I-15 that joins Las Vegas and Salt Lake City. I-15's probably a very nice highway, maybe even a scenic highway, I don't know. I'll continue to bend to my preference for local byways. The view above is the western approach to Cedar Breaks, sometimes described as a mini Bryce Canyon. One's initial impression might suggest that,  however it's really an overstatement. On the other hand, depending on where you happen to be and when, it's (1) easier to get to and (2) you may not have to share it with anybody. Those are a real selling points.

When I arrived, a few hours before sunset, I was still unsure whether there'd be any sunset for me to shoot. I'd not been rained on all day but by the same token the clouds did threaten all day. But being up here alone, it's easy to go with the flow and decide to stick around to see how things turn out.

Besides the red rock sandstone, there were plenty of stands of fir trees, or combinations of fir trees and matchsticks. It didn't look like there'd been a fire recently, maybe some kind of beetle or acid rain. There was plenty of snow still, but none of was on the road (which I thoroughly appreciated).

Sometime between taking the picture above and the picture below there began to be indications that the clouds may break up enough before sunset to give me some color. You never really know about whether or not the color will be there until it starts showing up. It's just a waiting game.

I did appreciate the standing water and melting snow. It makes a good foreground. I was also glad to see the sun making an attempt to break through. Since I was the only one around, I'd have to assume Mother Nature's effort was especially for me, right?

I guess I need to quit imagining my sunsets ahead of time. My imagination works well enough that it seems I'm doomed to be at least somewhat disappointed. On the other hand, I know great sunsets happen and I can increase my chances of catching one occasionally by trying more often. Yeah, that's a plan.

These last two shots were taken at the aptly named Sunset Overlook. It was a very enjoyable afternoon and it made me thankful. Thankful for my jacket with its quilted lining (it was about 40° with a 15 knot wind) and thankful for digital cameras and lithium-ion batteries that let you shoot hundreds of pictures on a single charge. How great is that?!!

It occurred to me, standing at Sunset Overlook, that my plan to come back for sunrise was ill advised. None of the overlooks is called Sunrise Overlook and there's no good spot to shoot the Brakes at sunrise. Instead, I'll give myself an extra hour of sleep - or the possibility of an extra hour of sleep - and head directly to Zion NP in the morning.

The 2015 Spring Roadtrip: West Yellowstone to Boise

This post is going to be short and sweet. You're probably asking yourselves, "Why is he going to Boise?" Good question. Once I'd made the decision to go to Grand Teton and Yellowstone NPs, the pull from an unexpected quarter kind of took on a life of its own. In December 2012 I found the gravesite of a great, great uncle who had apparently gone missing after the Civil War. There are several posts on this blog site recounting the details. Still, as far as I know, no one in the family had ever visited the gravesite. I had found pictures online of the Fort Boise military Cemetery and reposted a few of them when I was writing about this uncle. I found the terrain interesting and thought that I might at some point get a chance to photograph the area myself. So, in planning my road trip, I found myself routed to Yellowstone and looking for an alternate route home, not wanting to re-cover ground I had just seen. Perusing Google Maps it was obvious that I was going to cross into Idaho at some point, probably from Yellowstone's west entrance. That's when the pull started. . . 356 miles to Boise. Well, having come this far, another 6 hour drive hardly seemed critical, and I am on a photo mission. I shifted my third night motel from Idaho Falls to Boise and my fourth night to Cedar City, effecting a bypass of Salt Lake City and set up staging for another visit to Zion NP.

There are some nice mountains between Yellowstone and Boise, but after the last few days I thought I'd be better off if I stuck to the Snake River basin. With the skies I had for this trip, I thought the relative simplicity of the plains landscapes would be more than satisfactory. And, so they were. The shot above,  near St Anthony, Fremont County, ID shows the skies had lost none of their drama.

About halfway to Boise I passed Craters of the Moon National Monument (above). What appears to be turned earth in the middle of the image is actually a lava field. In the 60s some of the lunar astronauts trained here not because it was actually like the moon's surface (the name was coined in the early part of the century in a random remark about the area's desolate nature), but because it was easy to show them just how to search for target moon rocks when they got up there. The skies notwithstanding, I didn't expect to find anything there I'd want to photograph. Keep on trucking. . .

I found Fort Boise Military Cemetery right where I expected to, in Ada County, ID. . . just over the hill and about 2 1/2 miles distant from the state capitol. I'd been hoping all day for the clouds to stick around, but thin out a little bit too, anticipating lots of color and a great backdrop for the cemetery images. By the time I'd been in Boise a few hours I decided I probably wasn't going to see that color. My guess is that the clouds extended far enough west that the setting sun couldn't reach the high clouds over Boise which would have provided the color. Oh well, the best laid plans. . .

Arthur Conlin, son of John Conlin and Sarah McAllister Conlin;

b. 13 Aug 1840, Augusta Twp, Carroll Co, Ohio; d. 06 Apr 1904, Fort Boise, Ada Co, Idaho.

Pvt, Co I, 86th Ohio Volunteer Infantry, Civil War

Pvt, Co B, 170th Ohio Volunteer Infantry, Civil War

Looking west from Fort Boise Military Cemetery towards the federal and state government complex which includes the VA Hospital, Idaho State Veterans Home, Fort Boise Park, Idaho State University, and the US Geological Survey - Idaho Water Science Center. The state capital is probably out of frame on the right, on the other side of the hill.

I hung around for a couple hours till I was sure the skies weren't going to suddenly light up in a symphony of color.

No promises had been made, so I wasn't really disappointed. The cemetery was as peaceful and pleasant as anyone could expect and I appreciated the opportunity to sit quietly, think, and listen to the birds sing.

One of the things that crossed my mind sitting out here was that I still might find more information about Arthur, who had been a member of the Phil Sheridan camp of the GAR (Grand Army of the Republic, a veterans organization along the lines of the VFW, I believe) in Boise before he died.

I need to see whether there's any way to search, or have searched on my behalf, GAR records which are probably archived by the Idaho State Historical Society. I had found some records online, but they were only documentation of the GAR "encampments", annual reunions for Civil War veterans.