ARCHIVE 14: March 2010

DAVID'S PERSONAL NEWS PAGE
and JOURNAL

Jan/Feb 2009
March 2009
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January 2010
February 2010

 

In this Archive:

March 30, 2010 - San Diego and Anza Borrego Flowers Pt 1

Ok here we are, Lunch time, Tuesday into the Spring Break Week.  So far it has been extremely productive for me.   As of a few minutes ago I have completed all of the school related "must-dos" on my list including catching up with outstanding grading, turning in the grades for the 8-week class, getting curricula stuff caught up and the Photo 110 class pre-launched, and outlining a new PowerPoint Presentation on Panoramas and Mosaics to replace a much older one.  After I complete this update and have lunch then I'll do that presentation and start on another then get my taxes done and ready to send in once I get the second check in April.  The good news is that there has already been a little play time and more will come later in the week.

Sunday I went to Anza Borrego to scout out locations for some flower shooting and then on Thursday will go back for some more.  This time I took mostly detailed shots and looked for the good locations at which to spend some quality time on Thursday doing some high resolution mosaics (multi-row panoramas).

There has been a lot of rain this year so the possibility was for a good flower display.  It turns out it was OK, not the best I've seen...  but far from the worst.  The desert is always an interesting place to shoot.  Depending on where you are, the time of day, the light angles, etc. it might appear as if nothing is there or it all stands out brightly and inviting you to wade on in with your camera.

The first stop was at a trail head at the bottom of the Montezuma grade.  it was filled with cars and hikers although a casual glance did not seem to reveal all that great a flower display... in fact, as you can see with the first shot below, it actually looks pretty drab.

But looks can really be deceiving in the desert (can you say, "mirage?").  Once you got your feet on the ground and started walking around however, there were lots of small flowers in bloom.  Sometimes the desert is a little like the tundra in my beloved Rockies: what looks like barren ground is alive with neat stuff but you have to look very close to see it.

Closer to the ground here in the desert a great array of flowers were responding to the moisture and now the warm temperatures.  The little white flowers on the left are only slightly larger than a nickel.

And the bluish-purple blooms in the next shot are actually smaller still.  The little flower heads are about the size of a dime and the little connecting parts are about like a hair. 

To think about all of the design issues that make up these fragile little blossoms has to give one pause.  Yet, delicate as they are, just like their cousins in the tundra, they grow in the harshest and most extreme of environments.  In bad and dry years they simply lie dormant and ride it out waiting only for some moisture to bring them back to life.

I confess to being most ignorant about wild flowers.  My main claim is simply that I think they are beautiful and amazing.  I know the names of only a few such as the lovely Columbine in the mountains that are among my favorites, and the verbena noted below.  But that pretty much exhausts my flora expertise.  Beyond that there are "yellow flowers" of various sizes, and so on through the colors.

In addition to these flowers whose names were a complete mystery to me, there was a vivid purple flower (below) that looked to me like some sort of Lupine.  I am guessing at that only because in the other parts of the west with which I am more familiar, there are red flowers that I KNOW are lupines and which look very similar.  But do understand, that label is a complete guess on my part.

While trying to take a shot of an interesting bush with red trumpet-like blossoms, a small beetle came drifting in and tried to land on a small filament.  The filament gave way under it and deposited it on a twig. 

The little creature seemed so giddy and overjoyed at making its safe, if inelegant landing, it wobbled, filled with the buggy version of adrenalin, and then, as all of its legs turned to rubber, it fell over backwards still clinging to the filament. It then had the very devil of a time getting itself back to a feet-down position. 

I watched for a few moments, laughing at its antics, took the shot and then was going to set it right when it slipped again but this time managed to land on its feet.  it flew off before any of its friends could see what was happening.  Then it was time to move on myself.

The Ocotillo at this stop were in various stages of the bloom cycle.  The first shot is a specimen (I'm not sure if it is properly called a "bush" or not) had its buds just starting to bloom.  As the buds mature they become a deeper red color that opens into leaf-like rays of brilliant scarlet against the rich green of the leaves.  Those leaves, however, hide some amazing thorns designed to keep them save from gazing herbivores.  The stalks are collected to use as "Coyote" fences since no coyote in its right mind would try to squeeze through the thorns.  Even if it managed to do it it would not have enough hide remaining to close its eyes...

Later in the day we came across a veritable forest of Ocotillo near a little collection of RVs and fuel stops named, appropriately, "Ocotillo Wells."   Most of them at this lower elevation were in bloom, but that shot will need to wait for Thursday and better light timing.  As we drove by it was very flat.  Lighting and angles is everything in the desert.  Flat light displays only the common colors with little sense of relief.  But bring it in from an angle and the hidden colors reveal themselves and the topography shows itself to be highly textured.

Although the area of the first stop looked drab to begin with, down along the Henderson Canyon road as it heads toward its junction with the Salton Sea road, it was a very different story.  The sand verbena and the bright yellow flowers made sure everyone could see them.  Not quite the chest-high carpet they were back in 2005, they were still very nice to see.

And sure enough, everybody did.  The roadside was lined with cars.  Some people simply got out and walked around soaking in the view and commenting how this year compared to others they had seen in their vast years of desert experience.  Many knew every flower by name (Bill, Sally, etc.) but usually by type.  I was jealous.  Others had cameras of all types and sizes from small point-and-shoots to larger more professional gear.  Some, however, wanted to capture the scene in a more traditional manner.

Here an oil painter has set up her easel and is  enjoying the day, the scene, and a great place for a painting.  Now I'm really anxious to get the rest of my Spring Break chores done and come back out on Thursday.  Apparently there is a storm coming on along the coast on that date.  If it hangs near the coast then often that creates some great clouds forming to the west of the desert and could make for some dramatic images.  One can only hope...  And if not, even if the lighting does not aid in creating good photographs, just being out is reward aplenty.  

March 26, 2010 - San Diego

For me Spring Break starts effectively today.  Obviously I've not made much of a dent in this ongoing news page this month.  After returning from the Death Valley trip (in the posts for February 2010) it has definitely been a nose to the grindstone few weeks.  But it has also been a most productive time.  All of the classes I needed to do the "course integration" dance for (to bring older courses into line with new requirements) are in the system and would have been completed had the review committee not allowed stylistic minutia to override substantive analysis.  Oh well...  At least it is all in the system now.

The new program too is now entered in draft form awaiting only for me to complete the input on a couple of courses we added at the last minute and then for Dave and I to decide if we like the new expanded requirements for AA and Certificate.  If so then no work needs to be done, if not we only have to adjust required units on several levels of electives which is quick work.  

Because of cutbacks in staff due to the budget, we will not have it approved in time for Fall courses to open in the new building but then we have so many sections cut we could not offer much of it anyway.  That is really disappointing but simply the way it is at the moment. 

The new building remains slated for move-in the early part of June so we are still on track with that.  The San Diego Fair is coming up again and for the 10th year in a row I've been invited back as a judge, a participant in the Judges Roundtable, The "Digital Dialog" experts panel, and also for the third year, will be giving hour long presentations.  Here is the list of them so far:

June 13, 12:30 to 1:30 - Macro and Close Up Photography
June 20,   2:00 to 3:00 - Cleaning your DSLR Sensor
June 20,   3:30 to 4:30 - Extended Depth of Field
July  03, 12:30 to 1:00 - High Dynamic Range Imagery
July  03,   3:30 to 4:30 - Panoramas and Mosaics

Those will give me a chance to promote the photo program at City and the new building, etc.

My friend Lee Peterson, knowing how I often create mosaic images (multi-row panoramas created to show incredible resolution and detail) sent me a link to an amazing photograph made from a 26-gigapixel rendering (from 2300+ frames) of Paris.  (Here is the Link).  In my opinion the shot itself has no real aesthetic merit but as a commercial or documentary image allowing the viewer to study the city as if from a rooftop with powerful binoculars, is astounding.  That potential plays right into the efforts I had made with some of my own work.  I love large prints to begin with.  But was never happy when enlargements simply got bigger and with the enlarged dimension came enlarged circles of confusion and the result was a less sharp image in which there was really no more detail than you could see with a more normal sized version.  And to me that meant there was no point to it.

The mosaics, on the other hand, allowed the photographer to not only show the viewer the scene composed as their vision dictated, but also in a format that, when appropriate, allowed the viewer to engage in a voyage of visual discovery to find little treasures and "Easter Eggs" in the scene that were not even resolvable by any human eye from camera position.  I have one with a small lizard on a rock I could never have seen just standing there.  But that lizard is a major element in the shot since the photograph is not just of a rock pile but of his (or her) home.

I returned from this last Death Valley trek with some mosaics that were technically OK but not aesthetically powerful.  But that shot of Paris and the level of detail had stayed with me.  Since my students, despite my pointing it out as the obvious Christmas Gift, are apparently NOT going to buy me the Seitz Panorama camera I would dearly love to have,  some other option was called for.  Lee had once shown me his "Gigapan" robotic spherical panoramic head which was designed for point and shoot cameras and I loved the concept of it but it wouldn't handle the weight of a larger DSLR.  But a new version has just been announced that is designed specifically for the larger, heavier cameras.  I really did NOT need to discover the new version existed... 

Maybe I'll have one in time for the Alabama Hills field trip and be able to remake some of my older mosaics shot there in even greater detail.   Good thing I do not have it now or I'd be out shooting all week and not get to the grading and curricula stuff I need to do be doing.

OK, I think that about catches me up, at least for the moment.  With luck the break will give me some new things to chat about.