Wednesday, 10 April 2013
Spider Rock, home of Spider Grandmother/Woman, creator of the world to Puebloan peoples. In White-folk traditions, this is a 750-foot sandstone double-spire.
The light in the desert. Geeze. You venture out early to catch oblique lighting. You wait through the heat of the day when the more direct light flattens the viewscape. Then, in late day, the light gives its gift to photographers and painters once again.
Tuesday, 9 April 2013
There’s nothing to give you a sense of scale here (this is a wide view), except if you can see whitish streaks or threads just left of the red rock in the draw to the left. Those streaks are foot-trails. Human hiking trails.
The eye candy of Las Vegas I go for the most is west of town, at Red Rock Canyon in the Mojave Desert. They say canyon, but to me it’s more walls of rock and high outwash plains. The reddest formation meets the gravel of the desert creating a compelling visual boundary.
The red color of the Aztec Sandstone comes from oxidization of iron oxide components; whitish layers either didn’t originally have the iron oxide, or it has leached away.
Monday, 8 April 2013
Hard to know what to report/highlight from our day on the floor at the NAB….
Ever wonder what twisting this or that ring on your lens does on the inside? Zeiss not only halved a few lenses for us to see this, they gave us press-on tattoos of just the lens profiles all lined up. Cool!
Strange thing—rainy today in Las Vegas. Windy, too, but the rain is what strikes me as freakish.
Sunday, 7 April 2013
The highway department planners and financiers made the deal to build a new bridge crossing the Colorado just below Hoover Dam. This has greatly improved traffic flow, since there are no longer switchbacks to negotiate.
The security-conscious ensured that the lane-edge barriers are strong—and high. Thus, pedestrians have a fine view upstream of the dam, while typical passenger vehicles have a fine view of the concrete safety wall.
Or is this design intended to encourage tourists to stop for the view, then decide to pay hefty entrance fees for the visitor center (yes!) and for dam tours?
Saturday, 6 April 2013
Different day, different view, different time, different light.
Excitement of the day…was when a California Condor (Gymnogyps californianus) soared just over our heads at one of the vista views, using the gusts coming up the cliff-face at our feet. (We could see clearly the two tags, one on each wing, shown in a photo in the WikiPee entry….)
Friday, 5 April 2013
The big erosion gulley of Arizona (BEG-AZ), late afternoon early-spring….
I think this photo was taken at the same vista-view overlook where we heard a jocular guide telling his three charges that those pine-nuts we enjoy these days come from the cones of the piñon/pinyon pines, and the name is spelled p-i-n-i-o-n. While the piñon/pinyon nuts are edible and consumed, the ones you get at the store more likely came from Asia and from Asian species.
Is anyone surprised I shy away from hiring guides?
Thursday, 4 April 2013
We explored history in assorted ways when we did the walking tour at El Morro, which is a sandstone formation known for its carved inscriptions that began with ancient native peoples and hosts additions well into the twentieth century. Coolest stop: the kiva in the small excavated area of the Atsinna pueblo ruin atop the landform. Maybe a dozen rooms are on view, but reports say there are something like 875 rooms. That’s a lot of construction! It’s dated to something like AD 1300….
Wednesday, 3 April 2013
We saw lots of rain, then sunshine.
We saw scanty Krumholtz-ed trees, then open pasture, then scrub.
We strolled past Santa Fe’s Cathedral Basilica and dined across the side-street.
We are so lucky.
Tuesday, 2 April 2013
I love this juxtaposition, with the mini dish-farm shepherding or sheltering the cemetery (or simply adjacent, if you want to skip the anthropomorphization).
Note that the tall stone to the left has the family name “Graves.”
This is by the Natchez Trace Parkway, north of Tupelo. The Elvis Tupelo.
