Notes To My Mother

  Dallas Creek Road I have not spent enough time in Colorado.  It has such amazing beauty.  The one place I did spend some time was in the San Juan Mountains.  I was there about 10 days, first with a group of photographers and then with my wife, Jan.  The scene above is on Dallas Creek Road.  I had been there a few days earlier with the group of photographers but the sky was boring and the snow was missing.  One morning, after the photographers had left Jan and I were staying in Ouray.  It snowed! I was up before dawn and headed for this location.  In the dark I missed the turn off and did a bit of frantic wandering until I finally found the road.  I knew this location with fall color, snow on the mountains and a dramatic cloudy sky could be an exceptional scene to photograph.  That is Mt Sneffles in the background and Dallas Creek in the foreground right.     This is a closer look at the scene on the left of the prev...

A couple of friends and I decided we would like to have some pictures of the full moon setting over the Grand Canyon.  We found a full moon date that was workable for all of us, scheduled our flights, booked our rooms and rented a car and met up at the airport in Phoenix.  We stayed in Tusayan making it easy to get to the canyon before fist light.  Most of the year, there are places to the west of the village that you cannot drive your car, requiring transport by the park bus system.  But in winter months those roads are open to passenger cars making getting around a breeze.  Shooting a setting moon requires good timing.  If you are there too early the canyon will be too dark.  If you are late the moon will have disappeared below the horizon.  On this day our timing was good, but notice the band of clouds just below the moon.  Within minutes it obscured the moon.  Good photography involves being at the right place at the right time and a...