A mural showing the "Survivor Tree" after the bombing.
Well posting every day on our California trip didn’t exactly work out as planned. Driving around 400 miles a day with extended stops for photo ops didn’t leave much time for writing or editing pictures. The first hint of a problem came in Oklahoma City when we spent a total of about 4 hours at the National Memorial for the 1995 bombing. I did manage to pull the pictures off the camera and put them into labeled folders on the laptop every night, but that’s about all. The few things we managed to post along the way are not even the tip of the iceberg that our ship crashed against.
The "Survivor Tree" as it looks today.
It’s been a very busy month, with no end in sight. We’ve been home (well sort of) for a week and I haven’t even gotten caught up on all my email, much less updating websites and editing pictures.
To do the trip the way we originally conceived it would have taken, at least, twice as long. We really needed to visit attractions and shoot photos on one day, spend the next day editing pictures, checking email, working on websites, and updating the blog-, then travel to the next destination on the third day. Then we would have needed to add on the week for visiting with friends. So we would have been gone about 2 months. Oh well, the dream’s still there. Maybe when Jim retires again, we’ll be able to make the trip that way. …
Arches National Park, Photo by Jim Pearson (c) 2011
Well, it’s been a week since we got back off the road from our three week trip and I’m finally getting around to editing the pictures I shot with my D700. I hope to have some of them posted for your viewing pleasure in the near future as I didn’t take the time to edit and process them from the road. Most of all the photos that you’ve seen from me during out recent trip were shot and processed using my iPhone 4, which still continues to amaze me what you can do with such a small device now days. As I told my good friend Jose Lopez Jr. during our visit with him in Crestline, Ca, I really like my iPhone!
Most of the photos I shot using the D700 during our stay at Arches National Park were shot as HDRs and therefore will take a little longer to process, but I think the resulting images have a greater impact using the dynamic range you get with HDR. – Stay tuned and check back!
"Lunch Break" 2011 Worldwide Photo Walk - Olvera Street, Los Angeles, CA. - Photography by Jim Pearson, (c) 2011
Well, I finally edited down my favorite photos from my participation in the Scott Kelby Worldwide Photowalk. This is the fourth year the walks have been done globally and my third year of participating. If you’ve never taken part in one you really should look one up close to you next year and take part.
Usually I participate in the walk organized by the West Kentucky Photography Club and good friend Rennan Quijano at one of the community locations we do in our surrounding area, but this year I was on the road and as my sister has mentioned in an earlier post on this site, we were in Los Angeles when the walk was held this year.
This years walk was different as the only other person I really knew was my sister, so it gave me a chance to meet new photographers that share the same passion for capturing slices of history and moments in time with their cameras. We all had a great time. …
The photo walk was not part of our original schedule. However, we’ve done the World-wide Photo Walk for the past three years and didn’t want to miss it if we could help it. We chose one that started a little after 8am and was supposed to be finished by 10am. It was a good group and we enjoyed it, especially since it was outside our normal environment. It was, however, nearly 11:30 by the time we finished.
We didn’t leave L.A. until nearly noon. We resigned ourselves to another schedule adjustment. After all, nothing is set in stone except the hotel reservations. Plan A that put us in Moab, Utah by noon on October 1st was revised. We stopped just north of the city for lunch at a Carl’s Jr., so Jim could have his mythical “favorite burger anywhere,” and worked out Plan B. The original plan included a stop at Zion National Park, but Jim was reluctant to spend the time, since we were running later than expected. According to Plan B we were going to make the Arches by mid-afternoon so he could find a good place to, at least, get some nice sunset shots.
Just inside the entry from I-15.
The Arches National Park is one of the major stops on his agenda and he originally intended to spend 3 full days there. The delay meant that had been cut back to 2 1/2 days. Miraculously, we didn’t hit any real traffic problems on the way out of the L.A. area and calculating the distance and speed limit he finally agreed we could afford an hour at Zion. Just a quick drive in and out at the north entrance to buy a National Parks season pass for seniors, with a couple of stops for quick photos of the high points. Such a foolish idea. We stopped a couple of places on the way in and, telling ourselves we had a schedule to keep, turned around fairly soon to head out. However, every few minutes one of us would say, “Look there, I’ve got to have that shot.” We knew we had lost it when we couldn’t resist the temptation to climb down one of the trails into a small gorge to check out the stream we could hear running along the bottom.
Clear Water Singing Over Stones
As we returned to I-15, we “re-calculated” and decided, if we didn’t stop anywhere else, we could still make Arches by 5 PM. I used the weather App on my phone to check the sunset time in Moab and it said 7:10 PM. As navigator, I pulled out the Arches map and made a guess at possible sites we could reach quickly for sunset views. If you’ve ever driven from Zion toward the Arches, you know how beautiful it is and that the highway department has provided a generous supply of places to pull over safely. The adjustment to Plan B was soon to be blown out of the water.
The first glitch came in the form of gorgeous red cliffs against blue mountains. I eyed them from the distance for a while as we came down out of a pass. Finally, I said to Jim, “That’s really nice.” He said, “Yeah, I’ve been watching it too. Look for a place to pull over. It’ll only take a minute.” Can you say “famous last words?”
The fluffy white clouds made stopping even harder to resist.
We soon found ourselves pulling off the highway again in search of Red Cliffs Park. After spending nearly an hour there, we set our sights on 6pm at Arches and swore we wouldn’t stop again. You know how well that went, right? All those convenient pullover spots together with stupendous cliffs and beautiful wide screen vistas are irresistible, especially when you know you may not have another chance to capture them. We finally gave up as we were flying downhill at 75 miles an hour and Jim said, “Oooo. Ooo. Look! There!” and headed for the breakdown lane. He couldn’t even wait for a pullover area. We both broke out laughing. We were laughing too hard to snap the picture and every time we looked at each other, it started over again.
With Plan B gone for good, we simply gave up. By the time we got to the Arches, it was fully dark. We pulled into the park and drove up to the first impressive set of cliffs. Jim took a couple of night shots, just to have a check-in for Facebook and we went on to Moab to check in to the motel and look for a place to eat. To all our friends who have suggested that spontaneity should be the method of choice for vacations, it isn’t a good idea for us. If we didn’t have deadlines to meet, it would probably take us longer to cross the country than the average wagon train took in the 1800s and they didn’t even have cameras.
The trip down from Crestline was typical LA travel. Switching from one freeway to another with 6 to 8 lanes each way moving at 60 miles an hour, then slowing to a stop-and-go crawl that kept up for about 30 minutes, during which time we went a total of 3 miles. Accidents on the LA freeways don’t seem to be as common as I remember, but it doesn’t take much to tie up traffic. This time it was the result of two tractor trailers trying to occupy the same space at once.
For the next couple of days we will be at Ken and Manola Hackman’s home in Studio City. We had lunch with them at a small local deli called Marv’s. I had the best Pastrami sandwich in more than 40 years. Oh yeah, the last one was also here in LA. On the way here from Jose’s, we swung through the old neighborhood where I lived when my boys were small. We moved from this house while I was expecting with Chrystal, my oldest daughter, but this is the only address I remember. …
