Gadget’s Airstream Chronicles

Well, it hasn’t really felt like days off at all.  Busy would be the best way to describe things.

Yesterday I let myself rest a little in the morning.  A late start to the day, but then lots of running around.  The first big errand….well, not really an errand…..but it did involve running around.  Sadira gave me a call to let me know that an Arts and Crafts style event was happening on the square.  I had to go.

See, last year I noticed that there was a regular Bonsai dealer at the shows.  I’d been thinking about adding a little tree to the Airstream, and finding out the first big activity on the town square was happening I jumped in the truck and stopped by Sadira’s.

She was under the weather yesterday.  Sinus infection done, food poisoning in full effect.  One thought here gang.  Shrimp & Arizona….don’t do it.  Just don’t!

We hit the show and sure enough, bonsai trees were available.  I looked around, then wandered the square for a while deciding on what to do.  Finally we returned to the little tent full of trees and I picked my Airstream’s new resident.  You’ll see photos soon enough.

I once had a wonderful little bonsai for years.  High school.  It thrived.  Then I went to MA for a few weeks and my mom watched over the tree.  One night on the phone she told me she’d accidentally killed the tree.  She thought it could use some fertilizer (NOOOOOOOOO) and the tree went brown pretty quick.  Whoops!  Still, she was the best mom I could ask for and I still miss her.  Happy Mother’s Day mom.  A new little tree is along in the Airstream now.

I dropped Sadira off and headed for home.  Quick lunch and then I ran up to the Rodeo Stadium.  Yes, I got to photograph the rodeo.  No, I’m not satisfied with the shots.  I needed a 1.8 lens for this stuff, and I didn’t drag one along.  The rodeo started at 7:30, and even with the lights in the stadium the action was so fast that the lenses I brought didn’t cover it.  A few interesting shots that I’ll play with in Photoshop.  Maybe you’ll see them down the road.

I didn’t get home until almost 10, and I was starved.  So I sat up and made a late dinner.  Didn’t get to sleep until nearly midnight.  Ah yes, restful!

This morning was an early rise.  I headed out to the north side of Sycamore Canyon with Sadira, Tom, & DaNece.  2 hour ride in on the super bumpy roads through Perkinsville.  Nearly a 3 hour hike toward the canyon (no water already, lots of dry beds), hot sun, winds with some type of eye irritating  pollen, and a generally wonderful time!  Glad to have shared the adventure.

Our “haze” has returned to the skies, and the blues were really washed out today.  I’ve heard it’s hazy from here to Georgia, so who knows what is up.  So, many of the landscape shots today were sub-par to say the least.  But there was one thing that caught all of our attention.  The flowers heading into the area.  Blues, powder blues, oranges, and purples.  The purple really got me.  Cactus flowers once again (hey, they’re not red).

As we made our way in we began seeing new (to us) flowers that really stood out against the red rock background.  Small green cactus with purple flowers.  One here, one there.  As we neared our destination clusters of the flowers.  Big clusters.  They seemed to be everywhere.  Even along our hike we found more of these wonderful cactus (I’ll look them up in my book tomorrow).

I have dozens of good shots.  They’re all slightly washed out, but I’ll deal with them in Photoshop tomorrow.  High afternoon sun, even with haze, yields less than brilliant results.  But the shots here are currently unedited.  And they’re still stunning flowers in my opinion. 

Finally, after hours driving in, hours hiking, and hours driving back we returned to Prescott.  Sadira wasn’t feeling too well, and I was a little off.  Hot hike, lots of dust, lots of exertion, etc.  Plus I got too much sun.  So we basically crashed on the couch for a while, and finally got enough energy to get moving again.  Sadira headed off to Costco, and I went to do some shopping at Fry’s.  Groceries you know.

After some rest this evening I decided to head to downtown Prescott to try setting up a few exposures for doing an HDR (High Dynamic Ratio) photo.  My intention was to get Whiskey Row and the St. Michaels Hotel.  I’ve gotten many exposures this evening, and only started toying with them.  I only took one set of exposures of the Courthouse, and the result was the photo at the start of this post.  My first satisfying HDR photo (to me at least).  I only tone mapped it after feeding the 3 exposures into Photomatix.  No real tweaking beyond their basic tone mapper.  I like it.  There are places for HDR to be used……more will follow.

That’s it for the evening.  10 p.m. here and I’m beat.  Tomorrow, laundry, errands, and who knows what else.  Wonder if I can fit a 3 hour nap in somewhere?

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 11th, 2008 at 9:56 pm and is filed under Arizona, Digital Photography, Photo of the Day, Photoshop, airstream, off road adventures. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.