Tag Archives: photography

Cowboy James in Moab

November 6, 2011 by Jeff C | Comments Off

I had a little bit of landscape fatigue after four days at the Moab workshop, so for about 20 minutes I wandered over to the “ranch” next to the lodge where we were staying. I met James, who had worked there as a wrangler/outfitter most of his life. When James isn’t taking Japanese tourists on dude-ranch style outings along the Colorado River, he’s doing the real cowboy work of taking care of the horses. He never stood still, but I got some decent shots.

(Photo nerds: I used an off-camera flash on the ground in a small Lastolite softbox to get a little light up under that hat.)

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.

The Parkers in the Virgin Islands

July 31, 2011 by Jeff C | Comments Off

I got to spend ten days or so in the Virgin Islands with my sister’s family (Jana and Bill Parker, and their ‘kids’ Tyler, Caitlin (in pink dress) and Grace. We stayed on St. Thomas and then St. Johnr. In the middle, we took a sailboat trip to Jost Van Dyke (one of the British Virgin Islands, which gave the Parker clan a chance to get a real stamp in their newly-minted passports).

These few pictures surely don’t do the place justice, but since most of our activities were water-based and my camera isn’t waterproof, there weren’t many pictures except for a few on the sailboat trip and an impromptu photo shoot the final night’s trip to dinner. The stranger is Captain “Hollywood” Joe, who owned the sailboat.

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.