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I'm back from a five day Photography road trip.  I went with my photo shooting friend, Chad.  (We tried to get our wives to go but they knew we'd be gone from morning till night wearing our camera's out so they opted to stay home.  They were right.)  The only purpose was to get some (hopefully) beautiful photos of the amazing geology and a little of the flora and fauna of Southern Utah.  I also got just a tiny bit of North West Arizona.  In all I took somewhere between 2000 and 2500 exposures.  However, there were a lot of duplications, for example, there were a lot of times I bracketed the shots when I wasn't real sure of the best exposure, other times I might zoom in or out just a little.  There were many that seemed beautiful to the eye but didn't transfer to the digital image as well as I hoped, but there were some that came out even better than I thought they would.  The bottom line is that many of those exposures have been or will be deleted. 

There are some photos that I am very happy with that I will be sharing in the future, but I will tell you that it is simply not possible for the camera to capture and convey the beauty or grandeur of the area, not to mention that there's a heck of a difference between seeing it in 3-D instead of the 2-D of the photo.  I can't tell you how many times it crossed my mind how lucky I was to be there witnessing the amazing sites.

The photo I'm posting today was taken on our first day out and it was just a couple hundred yards off of a main road heading North out of the city of St. George, Utah, USA.  I think it's a good photo of a beautiful area, but it is just that.  In the coming weeks and even months I hope to be posting some photos that will really please your eyes.  I know I'm pretty excited to share them.

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If you read last week that I would be out of town for the next few days - without internet service - and you wonder where I am, this is the answer.  I'm somewhere within about 100 miles of this old shack on the Shivwitz Indian Reservation in South West Utah.

The photos since last Friday were all set up on Thursday evening and scheduled to post on each day.  This will be my last post for at least two or three days until I'm back from my trip - hopefully with a few hundred photos to share over the next while so come back soon and let's see what I found.

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Not very often you get the moon caught in a sunset.  Of course as you can see the sunset is off to the right a bit, but lots of color still there.

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This week's PhotoHunt Theme is Spiral.
This spiral is just lights in a dark room manually swirled to form a double spiral.

To see more PhotoHunt Spiral photos click here.

I do look forward to reading your comments and seeing your posts, but I will be away for a few days and don't expect to have Internet access, so please be patient.  THANX!

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NOTICE: I will be leaving town this evening and will be gone for several days, and I don't think I'll have much (if any) Internet access. I have scheduled a few posts but you probably won't hear from me for a few days.


This is a little bit of a throw back, because it was actually taken back in December '09. But since I have been doing several "Motion Blur" photos for my Phun Phriday! pics I thought I would throw one of these in because they can be fun. If you like this kind of thing you can click on "Christmas" in my Label Cloud and see more, but even better is get out a try a few. Post them on your blog or photo sharing site and leave a link in the comments so we can enjoy. If you want I'll be glad to critique and/or give you hints. To tell you the truth, this is NOT my favorite or best one, but I have already posted my favorite one and I didn't want to duplicate. Also many of my others were taken with lots of Christmas lights and I didn't want to do Christmas in March.

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---Original post 3/10/2010 at 8:30 a.m.---
Am I having a hard time letting go of Winter?  No . . .I just haven't got any good spring shots yet.  This one was taken of Antelope Island on Jan. 20 this year, after the sun had officially set.  Being after the sun was down the only color was blue.

---Update 3/10/2010 at 7:30 p.m.---

Well this is kind of funny and kind of embarrassing.  I created this post last night just barely before I crawled into bed and scheduled to appear this morning after I went to work.  But oooooops, I forgot to include the image.  Whoever may have viewed it was too polite to say "Hey, dummy, the image doesn't show!"  so there were no comments.  Well here is the image and so I'm going to use it for tomorrow's post too.

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Don't be shy - leave a comment or email me.  I love hearing from my visitors!

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Driving home from another shoot the other day this building destruction caught my eye.  The steps were gone but the hand railing remains.  I also liked the color and texture of the old green wall and the old plumbing.  To most people driving by I'm sure it looks old and ugly, to me it was textures and angles and shapes and a very lonely hand rail.

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One of the nice things about Sunsets is they don't require much explanation. 

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This week's PhotoHunt theme is Foreign.
This is a night exposure originally taken on slide film about 40 years ago in Venice, Italy when I lived about 30 miles north of there.  I think this should be foreign to everyone in PhotoHunt.

I look forward to seeing your post too.  I may be a couple days getting to it because I've got a busy weekend, but I'll get around to them all (provided your links work ;^)  ) .

You can see more “Foreign” photos from around the world by clicking here.

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Along comes another Phun Phriday! Since this is only the fourth one, I'll remind you that Phun Phriday! is about doing something different, something more on the experimental side. If you recall, Phun Priday! Numero Uno was a water drop photo and since then I've been messing with motion blur photos.  Today's photo is a different kind of motion blur.  It was taken as it was getting dark and some geese were flying almost directly over my head.  The exposure was 1/10 second as I followed them for that very short distance.

YOU are invited to stop by every Phun Phriday! and view.  I'd love to have you comment and if you have a Phun or exciting experimental photo to share we'd love you have you include a link to it.

Remember. . . this blog has new posts daily (or darn close anyway) so please stop by anytime.



**AND NOW THE BIG CONTEST**

When I reach 500 followers I will give away a (USD) $50 Amazon.com Gift Card*  to one of my followers.


Here's how it will work.

1.  All current followers and all future followers who join on or before the day I reach 500 followers are eligible.

2. To enter you must leave a comment on this post telling me you'd like to win the $50 Gift Card*.  Only one comment per follower will be considered for the contest.

3.  Within a few days after I hit the magic # of followers I will use a random number generator to select which commenter will be the BIG WINNER.  To be extra fare I will use the random number generator twice.  The first time I will have it select a number between 1 and 10 and then whatever number it gives me I will have it generate a number between 1 and the number of entries I received that many times and I will use the final number to determine the winner. My decision on the winner is final.

4.  I will then announce the winner in a blog post on this blog and the winner will have 30 days to contact me to claim the prize. 
NOTE: The reason I am using this method is because I have noticed that when I click on the avatars of some of my followers all I see is their avatar photo (if they have one) and very little other information.  Many of them do not give me any way to find their blog or to contact them and I want all followers who enter to have an equal chance to win.

5.  I retain the right to delete any comments and/or followers who I feel are abusive, rude, obscene, spammers or in any way detract from the overall spirit of this blog. Comments and/or followers that have been deleted are NOT eligible to win.  (Constructive criticism and comments are always welcome if given in the spirit of helping to improve and build up and not tear down - yes, I know that is redundant ;-)  )

6.  By commenting and telling me you'd like to win the $50 Gift Card, you acknowledge that you have read and agree to all of the above rules and procedures.

*  I will not be purchasing the gift card until I have a confirmed winner, so if there is some other business the winner would rather have the gift card for I may be willing to get it from there instead, provided it is a well known legitimate business where I can purchase an e-gift card online.

If you have any questions concerning this please contact me by email.

Don't be shy - leave a comment or email me.  I love hearing from my visitors!

Don't be shy - leave a comment or email me.  I love hearing from my visitors!

This is actually the same tree that you see in my blog banner, taken in the heat of summer in 2009. I thought I'd share a photo I took much closer and I converted it to Black and White to emphasize the texture and shapes. To me this old dead tree was a real photographic find and I was also fortunate enough to have some interesting activity going on in the sky.

Don't be shy - leave a comment or email me.  I love hearing from my visitors!

Don't be shy - leave a comment or email me.  I love hearing from my visitors!