The other night Ann and I were (I thought) unwinding on the couch after a long day’s work.  I think we were watching the Daily Show, or Grand Tour - something fairly light and entertaining.  What was on TV had my attention, and Ann was sitting there with her feet up on the couch, playing with her iPad and periodically laughing at what was on the screen.  At the end of the show, Ann hands me her iPad and says, “What do you think of that?”

We’ve had a crazy schedule these past few weeks with a lot on our plates, ending with a winter storm fouling up our plans to see Michael Kenna at the Portland Japanese Gardens last Saturday.  So what do you do when events try their best to stop your photography - you print!  So on Sunday we warmed up the Canon and made some prints!

One of the things that many landscape photographers will tell you they dread the most is clear blue skies.  As much as they offer incredible pre-dawn light in certain places (such as the coast, or the desert), clear blue skies are, in a word, boring.  Which means the skies are often pretty much framed outside of the picture when they’re totally blue.  Landscape photographers will opt, hands-down, for partly cloudy skies. 

Ann and I spent part of New Year’s day printing photographs.  We printed some images for friends, and also were testing a new program we’ve acquired to work on our images.  Most importantly, we took the time to work on a couple of images from our recent trip to Death Valley, which leads us to this installment of Printing the Image.  

The next morning found us up and early driving down 20 Mule Team Canyon Road by moonlight.  Given that it was a full moon and the moon was out (unlike when we were driving around in the Alabama Hills), we could actually see where we were going and, more importantly, whether we wanted to make any stops before we hit our GPS pinned photo locations.  It was like driving through an alien landscape, simply incredible!

Heading down to Death Valley for our December 2018 Adventure was Ann’s idea, and what a good idea it was!  Ann had been working her butt off at work and really needed a good break.  Given that Christmas was on a Tuesday, her office was shut down for Christmas Eve, and Ann’s usual Friday off, that meant we could maximize a longer trip and get a whole week off while only using two vacation days.  Even then we couldn’t help ourselves and left after work on Tuesday to head out of town.