Category Archives: Landscapes

Costa Rica November 2011

November 23, 2011 by Jeff C | Comments Off

I spent two weeks in November attending a Spanish language school in Playa Flamingo, Costa Rica. DON’T ask or expect me to bust out any espanol — YET. I’ll need another dose.

Here are a few pictures of some of my friends and classmates surfing at Tamarindo Beach (and some random beach bum types. It may be difficult to discern which are which.)

There’s a town in Costa Rica that’s famous for its pottery (ceramicas). The story is that these families have been making it there for 500 years or so, using pretty much the same materials, designs and methods. I met a guy named (disappointingly) “Willy,” who demonstrated his craft. I wound up flying home with seven pieces of pottery in my luggage. Amusingly, I also wound up giving a multimedia show-and-tell presentation (in Spanish, of course) to the entire school, describing my visit to Guaitil .

Here are some random Costa Rican sunsets from the trip.

Moab Photography Workshop

November 5, 2011 by Jeff C | Comments Off

As this site surely implies, in the past year I’ve resumed one of my teen-years hobbies: photography. My skills may not have advanced much in the last 25 years, but the capabilities of modern cameras are indistinguishable from magic.

I was privileged to be a part of the last-ever Digital Landscape Workshop, led by a couple of famous photographers: Moose Peterson and Joe McNally. Google them — or take a look at www.moosepeterson.com or www.joemcnally.com. Those guys rock. And they really know their, uh, stuff. So for 15 hours a day, I tried to soak up as much as I could. As much as anything, I learned that I have much to learn. Here are some of my pictures from the workshop.

_JJC7052 Happy Couple on Double Arch Rocks.jpg

_JJC7088 Girl walking under double arch.jpg

Moose also has an aviation photography website: www.warbirdimages.com. Two other instructors (the longtime right-hand-men for Joe and Moose, respectively, have photography websites at www.drewgurian.com and www.chasingthelight.com.

A few friends from the workshop have their pictures online here, http://www.fifty-twopeople.blogspot.com/ (Dan) and here, http://www.flickr.com/photos/indyfan31/ (Fausto) and here http://www.dbpazianphotography.com/ (Barry). Here’s a picture Fausto took on the last day of the workshop. I’m sure he considers it the masterpiece of his lifetime — attributable primarily to the impromptu model.

Finally, here are “portraits” I took of Moose (with the moustache) and Joe (in glasses). They were kind enough to dedicate a good 20 seconds each to posing for these.

Hidden Canyon – Moab Mountain Biking

October 30, 2011 by Jeff C | Comments Off

I came to Moab primarily for a photo workshop (more to come on that), but of course I brought my mountain bike. It’s Moab, after all (mountain bike mecca). These are just pocket camera pictures — but sometimes equipment quality is less important than LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION. This is a place called “Hidden Canyon.” It’s about a one hour mountain bike ride (over tons of slickrock!) off the road, not too far from the Canyonlands airport. Maybe someday I’ll get a ‘real’ camera up there.

IMG_0523 Bike on Ledge Hidden Canyon Moab.jpg

(Actually, one of these pics — with more trees — is from a trail near downtown Moab). And: (1) Yes, that’s my bike; (2) Yes, I took that picture of myself; (3) Yes, Mother, I know I probably shouldn’t be an hour’s ride into the wilderness by myself.

Alaska with Joyce and J.B.

June 29, 2011 by Jeff C | Comments Off

My first post-retirement priority was to take a trip with my Mom and Dad. Most Alaska tourists apparently spend their time on cruise ships. I had raised this option with my Dad. Predictably, his response to the cruise ship idea included a good bit of profantity and the word “prison.” So we flew to Anchorage in mid-June, rented an SUV, and for two weeks traveled the majority of the relatively-few roads that exist in that section of Alaska.

Along the way, we chartered a small boat for a private glacier cruise, took a horseback ride in the Kenai peninsula, took a ‘flightseeing’ plane trip to McKinley (including a landing on the Glacier), and spent a day on those terrible old school buses that are the only way to actually go into Denali National Park.

If you get off the tourist-beaten path, you can really have the place to yourself. One day, for example, we drove into Wrangell-St. Elias National Park — the largest national park in U.S. at 13 million acres. There are only two roads in, so we picked one and drove 2 hours, which was as far as you could go in a vehicle. In that time, we saw maybe one or two other cars of sightseers. Meanwhile, most of the visitors to Alaska were sharing a boat with 2,000 other tourists, or at best sharing bus with 40. I think my Dad was right.

JJC_3839 Alaska Aerial Glacier Cracks.jpg

Spain 2011 – Barcelona & Ibiza

June 6, 2011 by Jeff C | Comments Off

I jumped the gun a little. On the first official day of my retirement, I was actually already in Spain. A friend of mine is living in Barcelona, so I spent a few days there, and then a long weekend in Ibiza. (It turns out that Ibiza is an island in the Mediterranean, a hundred miles or so south of Barcelona).

The best picture from Barcelona is one I didn’t have the nerve to take. Nudity is legal (and not uncommonl) on Barcelona beaches. (No, I did not — thanks for asking.) One day, just off the side of the busy beachside boardwalk lay an older, fairly-heavy, very-tanned Spanish gentleman, sleeping buck naked with his head resting on his own artificial leg (which he had removed, apparently for use as a pillow). I didn’t have the nerve to go over there and take a picture. So…no Barcelona beach pictures.

The first several pictures below are actually at Montserrat — a hilltop monastery outside Barcelona. Then there are a couple at the relatively modern and decidedly odd Sagrada Familia Cathedral in Barcelona — designed by the architect Gaudi, after whom was coined the word “gaudy,” for reasons the cathedral makes apparent. The pretty beach is Ibiza.