My pictures from the Tanzania Safari have been patiently waiting. Over the past month I’ve found that I am finally ready to embrace these pictures and the memories (mostly wonderful) attached to them. As I started to review my collection of about 8000 pictures from this trip I knew I was in trouble: how do I best approach for sharing them with others? Of course the natural answer is to create a travelogue for this trip along with a somewhat larger album of photos from the trip. However, a travelogue can only be enjoyed on the computer and a number of friends have expressed interest in prints. So, after some thought, I decided that I would try a new approach and create a wall calendar for 2012.

I wanted the pictures in the calendar to be a reasonable size so that they could be enjoyed, so I decided to compose the calendar using only 13 pictures - one for the cover and one for each of the 12 months of the year. The next problem to be addressed is which 13 pictures? So, I pondered the question for a bit and decided that I would use Barb for inspiration; this seemed to be a fitting way to remember her last trip. So, the pictures that I have selected are ones that I think she would have chosen among her favorites from the trip. And while not everything we saw is represented in the calendar, the 13 pictures do, I think, provide a nice summary of the Africa that we love.

The final detail that I had to address with the calendar was whether or not to annotate the pictures. I think the pictures that we’ve (we because Barb’s spirit is helping me out on this one) selected stand on their own and don’t need a title or description. However, I did feel that appropriate quotations would supplement the calendar. So, I made a decision to attach a quotation to each of the pictures. I choose to select religious quotations, mostly from the bible, that complemented the picture and were ones with which I think Barb would have agreed.

So, the art production work on the calendar is done and I’m in the process of working through the mechanical details required to get it printed. It will be ready for distribution in late January. Since our trip ended in February, and Barb went to her heavenly home in February, it seemed fitting to start the calendar with the month of February.

I will be giving some copies of the calendar away to family and friends. I will make copies available to others that request it. Most on-line services want $15-20 to print a calendar, but I think I can get it done for about $9 by printing it at Staples. So, if you want a calendar please let me know and I’ll send you a message when the calendars are ready. Who knows, you might get lucky and get one as a gift. You can request one by commenting on this blog entry and by sending me an email message (see link on Home page).

In October I traveled to the Scottish Highlands for some landscape photography. Upon hearing about my trip to Scotland I usually get asked about the golfing in Scotland, however, as my golfing buds know, while I enjoy getting out for a round of golf I don’t enjoy it enough to plan a trip around golf or to pack my golf clubs along. The sole purpose of this trip was landscape photography and I limited the scope of my trip to solely the Scottish Highlands.

My original plans for this trip involved a PODAS Workshop (Phase One Digital Artist Series) in the southern region of the Highlands around Fort Williams, Scotland. This workshop offered a chance to try out a Phase One digital medium format camera and instruction in landscape photography from two UK photographers Steve Gosling and Peter Cox. I then decided to add a second workshop offered by another landscape photographer, Bruce Percy, in the Northeast region of the Highlands. The circles on the map of Scotland at the right show the portions of the Highlands that I visited on this trip.

For me the most striking characteristics of the Highlands were the bog (hard to walk across and ubiquitous) and the striking orange-brown color of the foliage. The photograph of Loch Loyne at the top of this blog provides a good example of the fall color of the Highlands. What I found most striking was the intensity of the orange hue in the color.

I enjoyed the trip and the weather wasn’t an issue. In face, I’m told that the weather during my visit was exceptional for this time of year. A couple of mornings we woke up to temperatures around freezing, and we only had a couple of days with some rain, but for the most part we enjoyed reasonable temperatures and partly cloudy skies. The landscape of rolling hills and the abundance of small lakes made for interesting photography. It was fun using the Phase One medium format camera; it’s resolution and picture quality is phenomenal. However, it is a very expensive system (the camera that I used in the workshop had a retail value of $40,000) and, for me, limited in utility to formal landscape photography and not the handheld style of photography in which I normally engage. So, while I’d love to have one to use, I don’t think Santa will be bringing one this year.

It was a fruitful trip. I learned a lot about landscape photography and came back with some good pictures and great memories. Click Here to see pictures from this trip. Enjoy.

I just returned from a short visit to see my very good friend Joe in Northern California. When we get together we always discuss politics and religion and, depending on the weather, we’ll go golfing and/or fishing. While I don’t fish and I’m not sure its accurate to describe my actions on the links as golf, I enjoy our time together out in the field. Recently, since our trip to Yellowstone, Joe and I have added photography to our list of shared activities. On this trip we went out twice to see what we could find: a hike at Gray Lodge Wildlife Area to see what the birds were up to and a drive in the Sierras.

At Gray Lodge we had a nice walk around the ponds, but it was early for migration and it was still dove hunting season and the birds were very skittish. This didn’t stop me from trying; after all, much of the pleasure that I get from photography comes from snapping the shutter, even when there isn’t any promise of a photograph materializing later.

On the last day of my visit Joe’s father-in-law, Stan, took us for a drive in the Sierras by Lake Almanor. On the way we stopped at a rest stop on Dear Creek Highway where we found a working, hand-operated water pump. We turned off the highway onto a gravel road and found a interesting contraption made of old truck parts and wood which we determined to be a working weather vane.

It was a short but fun trip. I plan on going back to visit Joe again around the first part of February to see what’s happening at Gray Lodge and other great birding sites in the area around Yuba City. Click Here to see a few more pictures from this trip. Enjoy.

The end of May I made a return trip to Moscow ID to visit my brother Gary and his wife Jeannie. I told my sister Elaine that I was going to

see brother Gary; it has been awhile since she had seen Gary, so she and her husband Ray decided to drive over from Portland OR to join us for a few days of craziness.

On my previous visit to Moscow last September I was inspired by the old abandoned trucks and buildings, along with the vast rolling fields of this part of Idaho and Washington. In fact, the area is so unique that folks here simply call it "The Palouse". So, the "sibling reunion" took the form of a photo tour of The Palouse - early rise for the good morning light; long afternoons searching for the perfect shot during the golden light of the afternoon, and exploration during the rest of the day. We did, however, find time for cherry pie and our last night together was a classic "goodies" and movies night.

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Recently I participated in a day outing to Anza-Borrego Desert State Park. The outing was led by a Ernie and Kati Cowan. Ernie is a nature photographer that has been exploring, photographing and leading tours in and around Anza-Borrego his entire life. I had hoped to have the opportunity to explore and photograph wildflowers. As it turns out, this has been a very dry year in the desert and flowers where very rare; the day turned out to be more about the rocks and scenery of Anza-Borrego. Read More...

In early December I attended a landscape photography workshop in Joshua Tree National Park. The workshop was led by Alain Briot, a landscape photography with a lot of experience photographing the Southwest landscape. Read More...