Being there...

I'm late, I'm late, for a very important date! No time to say "Hello, Good Bye" I'm late, I'm late, I'm late!
-- a White Rabbit

I’m late. The drive across Utah is ahead of me but my grand 04:30 departure for Canyonlands was being held hostage by frozen water. 

An unexpected frost had formed but wasn't merely on the windshield; it was fused to it, a stubborn, crystalline cataract that had no intention of yielding to a plastic scraper.

It was a particularly stubborn variety, immune to scraping and interested only in melting on its own leisurely schedule. And so I sat, engine running, defrost blasting, watching the world through a crystalline filter. It was one of those forced pauses in life, a precious opportunity to sit quietly with my old friend Patience as she wove time, she always make for a good visit when you have no other choice.

There are moments in life when the universe, in a rare fit of organizational competence, appears to line everything up just for you. The weather is cool, the forecast is devoid of rain, and a good friend—a fellow of such unimpeachable character that he shall remain anonymous, mostly to protect him from association with what follows—happens to be camping practically on the doorstep of your photographic ambitions. It was, in short, the perfect alignment of the universe for a photographic expedition to Canyonlands National Park. The plan, as all my best plans are, was a model of military precision: arise at the unholy hour of 03:50, brew a press of coffee strong enough to dissolve a spoon, and be on the road by 04:30. This would grant me a leisurely two hours for the drive and a full hour for setup before the sun, with its scheduled 07:26 appearance, began its daily performance.

Naturally, that same universe, having dangled this tantalizing carrot of perfect order, promptly went back to its usual state of mild chaos. I actually departed at 5:20, a time when my schedule dictated I should have been halfway to Utah, manfully sipping coffee, decanted from my 48 oz Stanly French press.

As I climbed the switchbacks toward the mesa top of Island in the Sky, the dome surrounding me was already blushing with the day's first light. The much-vaunted "dark skies" of the park were being rudely undermined by the persistent, insomniac glow of Moab off in the distance to my left. So much for cosmic purity. I motored on, keeping to a saintly pace just under the speed limit—a courtesy I extend to park wildlife who have yet to master the Green Cross Code. This piety was apparently not shared by the drivers of a Tacoma and a Jeep, who blew past me in a great hurry, presumably late for a very important appointment with the view of some rocks. I, of course, was also late, but we shall draw a veil over that.

On the way, I passed the parking lot for Mesa Arch and was astonished to see it was already full with Adventure Vans and SUVs already lining the entrance road into the lot. It looked like a gathering of the faithful on a scale not seen since Woodstock, only with more Gore-Tex and significantly more expensive camera equipment. What frantic, elbow-jostling ritual was unfolding over at the Arch at that ungodly hour was a mystery I was content to leave to my imagination.

I rolled into the Grand View lot at 7:10, and in a piece of timing so precise it could only have been accidental, I passed my friend as he was driving out and I was driving in. We exchanged the sort of grunt that passes for "hello" among men before 8 AM, and he kindly relieved me of my partly extended tripod, transforming instantly from a sleepy camper into a stoic sherpa.

My goal for the day was deeply, wonderfully nerdy: to continue my ongoing spiritual communion with my new Nikon Z8. I am still learning how the sensor interprets light, which is a bit like learning the private dialect of a new and complex friend. I busied myself with the arcane ritual of shooting five-shot brackets, fiddling with three different zoom lenses, and generally talking to myself in a low, continuous murmur, a habit my friend is kind enough to ignore. He stood by, a dependable and heroic guardian against the perils of changing lenses on a dusty cliff edge.

This morning received my score of 7 out of 10. The light, I must admit, was lovely, bathing the canyons in a warm, buttery glow. But the sky! It was a vast, empty, cloudless dome of the most boring steel-blue imaginable. Photographers, you see, are a contrary bunch. We want clouds, but not too many. We want drama, but not a full-blown tempest that obscures the sun entirely. We are, in short, impossible to please. My tardiness also meant the sun was ready to expose it’s face on the horizon, and the long, mysterious shadows I’d hoped to capture were already in hasty retreat.

After exhausting the possibilities at Grand View and the Green River Overlook, we pointed the truck toward Moab and the siren song of a diner breakfast. At the Moab Diner, where breakfast is served ‘anytime’ (a word of profound beauty), we were seated in ten minutes and eating shortly after. It was a symphony of sizzling bacon and clattering cutlery.

The work, of course, was only just beginning. Back home, the digital harvest had to be brought in. A faintly ludicrous 1,347 images, consuming 42.3 gigabytes of memory, had to be copied, backed up, and then backed up again. In the old days, that would have been enough film to document the entire Napoleonic Wars. Now, it’s just a Friday morning. There are brackets to merge, focus stacks to assemble, and panoramas to stitch. It is a mountain of data to climb. But as with all things, you just have to take the risk, wade into the chaos, and see what you find. Expect failure, but by all means, enjoy the lesson, and find something good to keep with you.

Thanks for stopping by for a read! 

buzzshawphoto.com

All images posted on the buzzshawphoto.blogspot.com 2025 are copyrighted. All rights reserved

The Never-Ending Rain

The Never-Ending Rain: An Essay

Oct 16, 2:42 PM

It never rains in the desert, except when it pours. And pours. And pours. Out here on the Colorado Plateau, we’re currently sandwiched between the soggy remnants of Hurricane Priscilla, which has since wandered off to bother the Midwest, and a new tropical storm named Raymond, who is currently doing donuts off the coast of Central America before he too, follows the conga line of this fall’s dominant Rossby Wave and pays us a fruitful visit. We’ve had floods, the kind that re-sculpt the very land we stand on, and yet, we adapt. We survive. It’s a comforting thought, a little glimmer of hope for the future of our species.

When I roam this incredible landscape, I’m surrounded by the ghosts of landscapes past, written in the language of Jurassic and Triassic rock. And if you think a week of hurricane rain is a big deal, let me tell you about a time when it rained. And rained. And rained. For two million years. Yes, you read that right. Two. Million. Years. The Earth, our steadfast and ever-changing home, threw a geological tantrum of epic proportions, and the evidence is etched into the very stones beneath my feet. It’s one of the many stories that can be read in the hardened pages of rock, a tale pieced together by dedicated geologists who’ve spent their lives deciphering the clues. There are a few basics you’ll need to follow along, but trust me, it’s quite the ride.

The story, as best as we can tell it today, goes something like this. The world back then, during the late Triassic, was a hot, dry place. The supercontinent of Pangea was just beginning to feel the tell-tale rumbles of an impending breakup. Tectonic plates were getting restless, stretching and straining like a grumpy cat after a long nap. This continental fidgeting manifested itself in a spectacular display of volcanism, a chain of fire-breathing mountains and fissures that would make Mordor look like a quaint little village. The star of this show was the Wrangellian eruptions, a series of flood basalt eruptions in what is now Alaska and British Columbia. We’re not talking about your run-of-the-mill, cone-shaped volcano here. These were colossal fissures in the Earth's crust that bled lava for over five million years, creating a volcanic province over one hundred times larger than any supervolcano we can imagine. The magma, bubbling up from the planet's depths at a blistering 1600°C, may have even ignited vast, untapped coal beds, adding a whole new level of smoky, atmospheric chaos to the mix.

Now, volcanoes are not just about the flashy lava flows. They are masters of atmospheric alchemy, releasing invisible gases that can alter the climate for millennia. These Wrangellian eruptions pumped the atmosphere full of carbon dioxide and methane, effectively wrapping the planet in a thick, heat-trapping blanket. CO2 levels skyrocketed to over 1000 parts per million, more than two and a half times what they are today. (though we are trying our best it seems to match it, but thats another story for another day) Global temperatures soared by as much as 10 degrees Celsius. The air grew thick, heavy, and saturated with moisture. To add insult to injury, the volcanoes also spewed out hydrogen sulfide gas, which, when mixed with water and oxygen, creates good old-fashioned acid rain.

This combination of extreme heat and a souped-up, moisture-laden atmosphere was the perfect recipe for a supercharged water cycle. The warm oceans evaporated at an accelerated rate, sending colossal amounts of water vapor into the sky. This moisture condensed into storm systems of unimaginable size and ferocity, creating a feedback loop of warmth and water that just wouldn’t quit. For two million years, the heavens opened, and the rain began. It wasn’t a gentle spring shower, either. This was a deluge of biblical proportions, a relentless, planet-drowning storm that transformed the very face of the Earth.

The consequences were, as you might imagine, catastrophic. Continents drowned, rivers swelled into inland seas, and lush forests rotted into stagnant swamps. The relentless rain stripped mountains and highlands bare, washing away fertile topsoil and choking the oceans with sediment. The once-arid interior of Pangea, a vast and dusty desert, was now a humid, waterlogged wasteland. The sun, hidden behind a perpetual curtain of storm clouds, could no longer provide the energy needed for photosynthesis, and plant life withered and died. Oxygen levels plummeted, creating vast "dead zones" in the oceans where nothing could survive.

It was a global environmental collapse of the highest order. The old guard of the Triassic, the species that had thrived in the hot, dry world, were wiped out. But as is always the case in the grand, dramatic story of our planet, with death comes opportunity. The Carnian Pluvial Episode, this two-million-year-long rainstorm, cleared the stage for a new cast of characters. And waiting in the wings, ready for their moment in the spotlight, were the dinosaurs. These adaptable, resilient creatures were perfectly suited to the new, wet world, and in the wake of the great dying, they rose to prominence, beginning a reign that would last for over 150 million years.

So, as I watch the muddy waters of the Colorado River rush past, swollen with the remnants of yet another hurricane, I can’t help but feel a strange sense of connection to that ancient, waterlogged world. The rocks around me are a silent testament to the planet's incredible power, its capacity for both destruction and creation. And in that story, in the rise and fall of ancient ecosystems and the inexorable march of life, there is a lesson for us all. We adapt. We survive. And in the face of even the most dramatic and terrifying changes, there is always hope for a new beginning.

Thanks for stopping by and having a read! 

buzzshawphoto.com

All images posted on the buzzshawphoto.blogspot.com 2025 are copyrighted. All rights reserved

Storm Chasing

Rain
I don't mind
Shine
The weathers fine

   --John Lennon & Paul McCartney

You don’t generally expect to find a Pacific hurricane loitering about in the high desert of Colorado, but then, nature rarely consults a map. Hurricane Priscilla, having evidently grown tired of the coast, decided to wander inland and give us a proper soaking. Now, I’m not one to complain about a bit of rain—goodness knows we need it—but this was something else. Just to our east, the little town of Paonia was doing its best impression of Atlantis, finding itself submerged under an astonishing nine inches of water. We, on the comparatively more arid western part of the Western Slope of the Rockies, got off with a mere two-point-one-four inches, which was still enough to turn the landscape into a vast, uncooperative puddle and put a firm kibosh on any storm-chasing heroics. The only safe place to be was on asphalt, which, for a landscape photographer, is roughly equivalent to being told to stay on the viewing platform at the Grand Canyon.

Still, there was magic afoot. A lovely, moody fog was pouring over the escarpment of the Grand Valley like dry ice in a school play. So, naturally, I did what any sensible person would do: I grabbed my tripod, my camera go bag, and drove straight into the thick of it, up into the Colorado National Monument.

For the next few hours, my life consisted of a repeating, and frankly rather daft, little cycle. I’d sit in my truck, listening to the drumming of rain on the roof, a sound that is cozy for precisely ten minutes and then becomes a kind of maddening reminder that indeed it is raining, thank you. A momentary lull would occur, and I’d bolt from the cab like a man escaping a perfumed candle shop, frantically fire off a few shots, and then scramble back inside as the heavens opened once more. This was followed by the delicate ritual of cleaning every last drop of water from the lens and camera barrel, only to repeat the whole soggy enterprise moments later.

1 1/3 stop bracket shots

Now, what I was capturing out there are called bracketed exposures, which is a wonderfully technical term for taking the same picture three times: one too dark, one too bright, and one that Goldilocks would call just right. You then mash them all together in the computer to create an HDR, or High Dynamic Range, image. The point of all this fumbling around is to get an image where you can see the details in the gloomy shadows without the bright bits looking like they’ve been bleached by an mad angel. When all this data is given equal weight you get an nice clean unrealistic HDR result. With the new generations of cameras can take many multiples of the same exposure at varying levels of exposure stops giving the editor a wealth of data captured by the sensor which is then turned into the final imagee, which is information part of the Data, Information, Knowledge, Wisdom sequence.

Equally weighted meged bracket trio - HDR -High Dynamic Range

As a curiosity, the first image I edit out is one in which each image of the triad has equal weight. This image suggests a mildly overcast, damp afternoon—pleasant, even. It in no way captures the reality of the moment, which sometimes felt like being inside a car wash. My camera did exactly what I told it to do, but now my job is to edit the thing until it reflects what I remember, my personal reality—the feeling of the cold, the sound of the rain, the wind pushing the tripod, the sheer drama of it all. As I like to say in full cynical mockery, I’ve brought home my prey; now I just have to clean, dress, and cook it.

This is an image captured at the peak of fog movement just as the rain started again. The only editing I have done on the image is the digital removal of raindrops on the lens.

And as if the day weren't surreal enough, I was not alone. The parking area where I had perched my truck served a very, very small shed—a pavilion, really, placed ther for observing the sunrise.. And in that pavilion, a wedding was taking place. A wedding! I am pretty sure the plan had been a glorious, cliff-edge ceremony, with the happy couple exchanging vows against a backdrop of geological splendor. Instead, thanks to Priscilla, they were crammed, along with friends and family, into a structure where a family of five might find the bench seating a bit of a squeeze. There wasn't so much a wedding party as a little league baseball team huddled in a dugout trying to stay dry.

From the dry comfort of my truck, I watched the wedding photographer, a true hero of her craft, trying to orchestrate memorable shots while keeping the couple dry under a single, valiant umbrella. And in my mind all was wonderful. The bride and groom were beaming. If you can stand together in the middle of a repurposed monsoon, their family stuffed into a glorified bus stop, and still smile at each other like that, out in the rain with flowing fog obscuring their joy, well, you’ve got a pretty good start on things. And we do what we do: we find a way to get happily married despite the rain. If they could smile, and be happy with each other in the middle of a Pacific Monsoon named Priscilla then they have a good beginning. Nature did what nature does. She gives us challenges, we overcome, we evolve, and humanity grows.

Thanks for stopping by for a read! 

buzzshawphoto.com

All images posted on the buzzshawphoto.blogspot.com 2025 are copyrighted. All rights reserved

'

in which he has music and muses

Hopelessly passing your time in the grassland away
Only dimly aware of a certain unease in the air
You better watch out
There may be dogs about
I've looked over Jordan, and I have seen
Things are not what they seem

What do you get for pretending the danger's not real
Meek and obedient you follow the leader
Down well trodden corridors into the valley of steel
What a surprise

      -- Sheep, Pink Floyd,  Raving and Drooling, Sheep, Live, 1974

Muse -- Greek mythological goddesses of inspiration, a person who inspires an artist, the act of thinking deeply

Note: this is my 40th narrative. And here it is.

Out here, in the high desert, a deep rain is an event, a deviation from the norm. This one began sometime before midnight. We knew because the summer’s accumulated heat, having retreated deep into the rock, allowed for open windows. There is a specific kind of restfulness that comes from listening to a firm, gentle rain while you are lost in sleep, a sound that is both a presence and an absence. Of course, it has its other side. The sound is a lullaby, but the water itself can be a menace. When the ground becomes saturated, it sheds the excess into the arroyos and canyons, filling them with a sudden, churning anger. Rain muffles the world, smothers sound, and in doing so can drown out the warning of a predator skulking near the edge of the light.

The distances here are geological. Roads run straight and long, engineered lines across immense, unpeopled landscapes where you can legally set a cruise control at eighty miles per hour and travel from one nowhere to the next in the time it takes for a memory to pass. I tend to listen to music on these transits. It is a way to key out memories, to entertain the solitary mind, for on these photographic journeys I am almost always alone. The GMRS radio is on, scanning, its occasional squawk of chatter an interruption that pulls me out of my musings and back into the truck, a useful anchor. There are, after all, many realities. When you are moving at eighty miles per hour in a truck that is a quarter-century old, it pays to check in with the immediate one before drifting off again.

The audio system in the T100 recently had to be replaced. Its predecessor, a Kenwood unit, finally succumbed to the accumulated heat of countless desert crossings. It died with a certain integrity. The controls on the faceplate all went numb at once, a complete systems failure. The problem was a mix CD, one I’d been playing with the volume set high enough to feel the bass through the floorboards. With the controls inert, the only way to silence it was to kill the ignition. For a few days, before I found the time to pull the dashboard apart and unplug the harness, any trip was accompanied by thirty-eight minutes of unalterable, high-volume rock and roll. It was good rock, fortunately, but at town speeds it was loud. My apologies to anyone who was around, particularly on nights when I’d roll into the drive late. Raccoon-time late.

I photograph, and when I am running across the desert in the pre-dawn dark, waiting to point a camera into the morning light, I often contemplate the persistence of this compulsion. The why of it. A large part of it, I know, is the sense that I have captured an instance, pinning a single moment against the vast volumes of time laid out before me. Time, history, rock—it is an inescapable theme. Each sunrise adds or subtracts from the ledger; a new layer of aeolian sand is laid down, or a few more chips of an old one blow away.

You can see how a grain of sand was captured by striking a rock a good whack with a hammer, revealing a fresh face. A single grain contains a surprising volume of information, and the stronger the hand lens, the more you can learn. The story is written on its surface. Pock marks tell you it was aeolian, blown by the wind, its journey a series of tiny, abrading collisions with other grains. A deeper look, through a microscope, reveals the conchoidal fractures typical of quartz. We know them as percussion marks. If the grain is smooth, shiny, and round as a marble, it was tumbled in the surf, perfected by the back-and-forth scour of waves on a long-vanished beach. This is how you read the rock. There are many stories to learn to be able to know a grain of sand.

The patterns of deposition—how those sands were laid down—tell you still more about the paleoenvironment of those accumulated moments. Sand blown by the wind but captured in a lake will be cemented with clays. The cements in paleodunes speak of the water that flowed through them over millennia, concentrating minerals, binding the grains together. The stories are all there. You learn the themes, identify the minerals, trace your way up and down a formation. The pages and narrative are complete, waiting to be read.

When I am out there, seeking the moments I wish to photograph, I listen to the silence. It sharpens my concentration. It allows me to hear the ravens and the raptors on their hunts. Ravens, in their curiosity, will often swing by close, blessing me with the leathery swish of their wings as they pass. In the parks, they are assessing me for the possibility of food, of shiny wrappers and the droppings of tourists.

Now, a Zoom H5 Handy Recorder comes with me. I’ll set it on a tripod and let it run as I work the light. I have found that listening to that recorded sound takes me back to the environment where I stood with the camera helps me in the editing. My goal in editing is to reproduce what I was seeing, and for me, seeing is an act colored by emotion and illuminated by light, by the musings I have as I watch my muse—the view that is inspiring me. Listening to the audio of those moments flowing by, the wind in the junipers, the distant croak of a raven, helps recapture the daydreams I had behind the camera. It brings back the whole memory, now frozen in the moments of a dream. In these pages the dangers are real.

Thanks for stopping by for a read! 

buzzshawphoto.com

All images posted on the buzzshawphoto.blogspot.com 2025 are copyrighted. All rights reserved

so that happened

Sunshine on My Shoulders
Make me happy

Sunshine in my eyes can make me cry
Sunshine on the water, looks so lovely.
Sunshine almost always makes me high
--Sunshine on my shoulder, John Denver, January 1, 1973

Back in Jan 1, 1973 I was having high adventure!

It has to be said, I have a thing for sunrises at Canyonlands National Park. An obsession, really, which is a slightly more noble-sounding word for a madness that compels a man of a certain age to hurl himself out of a perfectly warm bed in the dead of night. My particular patch of paradise is the Island in the Sky district, with its overlooks that have names like poetry: Bucks Canyon, Grand View, and the frankly staggering Green River Overlook.

Buck Canyon Overlook from below at Sunset.

I thought, for the sake of scientific accuracy, that I might consult my shot records to provide you with a precise tally of my pilgrimages. But upon reviewing the chaotic mess of my digital files, I realized it was a fool's errand. The number is lost to the mists of time and questionable data management. What I can offer, however, is a tour of my most spectacular failures in the pursuit of a very specific phenomenon: that sublime moment the sun crests the horizon and produces what photographers, in their delightful jargon, call "iris diagram flares."

First, one must understand the prelude to these failures. The trip to Moab is, on paper, a simple affair. The true Herculean labor happens before a wheel is turned. It's the Great 1:30 AM Extraction. This is a multi-stage operation fraught with peril, chief among them a small, furry landmine known as the cat. The sequence goes something like this: swing legs out of bed with the stealth of a cat burglar, conduct a blind shuffle to the bathroom to avoid stepping on the actual cat burglar, splash water on one's face with the enthusiasm of a man being waterboarded, fill a 32-ounce Stanley Coffee press (for this is the fuel of genius and desperation), and then, crucially, feed the cat.

This last step is a delicate negotiation. You are attempting to placate a tiny, demanding overlord while simultaneously moving many pounds of gear into a truck, all without making a sound and—this is the critical part—without letting the beast escape into the primeval darkness of a Colorado night. Failure to appease him results in a hiss, a sound of pure, condensed fury, a hiss that seems to emanate not from his lungs but from some ancient, volcanic core deep within the Earth.

Once this domestic drama is concluded, the drive itself is mostly a joy. You motor through a profound darkness punctuated only by the astonishing canopy of stars above and the looming behemoths of truck convoys thundering in the opposite direction. There's a particular stretch of Utah Route 191 that feels less like a highway and more like a channel for these land-bound freighters, but goodness, the view of the cosmos makes it all worthwhile.

Now, some failures are simple, elegant things. You drive for two and a half hours, set up hundreds of dollars worth of equipment, and the sky gods decide to hang a thick, gray curtain of cloud directly over the LaSal Mountains. No sun, no spires, no shot. You just pack up, drink your coffee, and try not to think about your warm bed. That has happened more times than I care to admit.

But the truly memorable failures, the ones that stick with you, are born of pure, unadulterated human error.

My first exhibit is a tale of distraction. It was, I must say, a perfect morning. The clouds were broken just so, like something arranged by a celestial set decorator. The sun was rising into a clean gap. My magnificent Nikon D810 was on its tripod, a structure so firmly planted and weighted it could have served as a mooring for a battleship. The mirror was locked up. My finger hovered, trembling with anticipation, over the shutter release. I was ready for "the moment"—that exquisite instant when the sun is a half-crown of fire, its light bent by the atmosphere into a full, spiky orb even before it has fully cleared the horizon.

And then, just as the sun popped, Canyonlands did what it does. A wave of impossible, golden light struck the cliffs to my left. It didn't just illuminate them; it seemed to pour down their faces like liquid honey, chasing the shadows away across the canyon floor. My head, of its own volition, turned. I was mesmerized. I watched this grand spectacle, this silent symphony of light, completely forgetting that I was there with a very specific, and very fleeting, job to do. By the time my brain reconnected with my trigger finger, the sun was fully up, sitting there in the sky with a distinct gap of blue beneath it. I had missed it. I got some perfectly lovely shots of sun-painted cliffs, but the grand prize had slipped through my fingers while I was, quite literally, sightseeing.

Bucks Canyon, looking South at sunset

Another time, it was the cold that did me in. It was a late February, a time of year when the Utah desert can't quite decide if it's winter or spring. I was at the pipe railings of Bucks Canyon Overlook, gloved but for my fingertips, waiting for the rise. The moment was approaching when, from the depths of the canyon below, a wind came up. This was not a breeze. This was a physical presence, a refrigerated ghost that had been lurking in the icy shadows all night, and it came screaming up the canyon wall driven by the thermal dynamics of the approaching dawn.

Unedited image of the Moment, Bucks Canyon

It was carrying fine, chilled sand that immediately filled my eyes. My exposed fingers went from cold to numb to feeling like alien appendages made of glass. The moisture on the back of my camera flash-froze into a brilliant white shell. My body’s only response was to burrow my head into my hood like a tortoise and begin an involuntary, rather frantic jig to generate some semblance of heat. I missed the shot because I was, in essence, flash-frozen at the necessary moment.

Which brings me to the phrase "necessary moment." I've always loved it. It puts me in mind of that scene in the film Little Big Man where Faye Dunaway, playing the preacher's wife Mrs Louise Pendrake, is about to bathe a young Dustin Hoffman as Jack and declares, "I will avert my eyes at the necessary moment." Every sunrise has its necessary moment, and I seem to have a gift for averting my eyes, or my fingers, or my entire conscious state. But I digress. Another favorite phrase of mine. My mind, when left to its own devices, can jump about like a rabbit on hot rocks.

Sunrise at Bucks Canyon

The final failure I'll share with you actually resulted in some rather nice pictures, particularly a panorama I’m quite proud of. But the getting of them, well. I was at Grand View, the very end of the road. It was dark. I was running a bit late. I couldn’t find my main flashlight. My headlamp, it turned out, had a battery that had died a quiet, unannounced death in my camera bag, and in my fumbling to replace it, I dropped the fresh one into the dark, seat-rail-infested netherworld of my truck.

My emergency backup? A couple of green chemical glow sticks. So there I am, picking my way over the tourist-tromped ground toward the edge of a 1,700-foot drop, holding a tripod in one hand and waving two eerie green sticks in the other, like a very lost and poorly equipped raver. I found a rock—or perhaps the fossilized toe of a particularly clumsy stegosaurus, it was impossible to tell—and went down. Hard. To the left. Onto the tripod.

Now, I’d always had a general, theoretical knowledge of the location of my ribcage. In that instant, however, I was granted a sudden, shockingly precise, and altogether unwelcome anatomical lesson. I knew exactly where those ribs were. I carried on, breathing shallowly, and got the shots. Months later, my good Dr. Lisa, concurred with my on-the-spot diagnosis that while I had certainly dislodged them from their gristly moorings, I probably hadn't broken them again. A small comfort, I suppose, and a fine reminder that there's not much they can do for ribs anyway, except tell you not to fall on your tripod in the dark.

Thanks for stopping by for a read! 

buzzshawphoto.com

All images posted on the buzzshawphoto.blogspot.com 2025 are copyrighted. All rights reserved

and put up a parking lot

 

Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got
Till it's gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot

    --Big Yellow Taxi, Joni Mitchell, April, 1970

I woke with the kind of jolt usually reserved for finding a scorpion in your hiking boot, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped woodpecker. The moonlight slanting through the window of my lodge room—a room where the word "vintage" was doing some very heavy lifting, suggesting a deliberate design choice rather than forty years of benign neglect—cast long, unsettling shadows. It was just a dream, I told myself, clutching a blanket with the threadbare integrity of a fossilized leaf. But the terror felt as real and as solid as a fresh exposure of Precambrian basement rock.

The Grand Tetons being Grand

It had all started so hopefully. There I was, in my dream, standing in Grand Teton National Park with a camera slung over my shoulder, full of the kind of naive optimism that only a man who has forgotten all his previous trips can muster. The air was crisp. The aspens were just beginning to consider their autumn wardrobe. "Ah," I thought with profound satisfaction, "early September! The perfect window. The great summer hordes will have retreated, the throngs thinned to a manageable trickle! I shall capture the majesty unmolested!"

This, it turned out, was a geological timing miscalculation of the highest order. The throngs, I should know by now, operate on the same principle as a gas in a container: they simply expand to fill any available volume.

In the dream, however, it was worse. Far, far worse.

I was driving the Teton Park Road, eager for a sunrise that I felt, on a spiritual level, I was owed. But the road wasn't a road. It was a grid. A vast, perfectly perpendicular, crystalline lattice of asphalt stretching to the horizon, each three-by-five-meter square of which contained exactly one vehicle. It was a giant, geological game of Tetris where all the blocks had already fallen, perfectly, into place, leaving no gaps. Navigating the feeder lanes to the main parking areas was a slow-motion nightmare of brake lights and the sudden, startling pop of a van door opening into your path. The sun was coming up, you could see the first blush of red on the peaks, but only in the narrow gaps over the roofs of the slowly churning sea of SUVs beside you.

I tried for Schwabacher Landing, a place of normally reliable beauty. The turnoff was barricaded by a solid wall of Priuses, their catalytic converters humming a low, discordant drone that seemed to vibrate through the very bedrock. Before I could even contemplate a 17-point turn, a park ranger materialized at my window. He was a man who looked less born and more eroded into shape, with a face of weathered granite and a uniform that appeared to be made of tightly woven lichen.

"Permit, sir?" he boomed, his voice echoing with the gravelly authority of a minor rockfall.

"A permit for what?" I stammered, the cold dread beginning its familiar creep up my spine.

"Permit for existence," he replied, with no trace of irony. He gestured with a gnarled hand at the endless grid. "Every molecule of space, every photon of light, has been allocated for the current fiscal epoch. Your vehicle," he eyed my 4Runner with the sort of deep, geological contempt a block of gneiss might hold for a piece of flimsy shale, "is outside its designated temporal-spatial coordinates."

He pointed to a small LED screen embedded in the lichen of his chest. It displayed a single, pulsing message: "PARKING LOT FULL. ESTIMATED WAIT: 4.6 MILLION YEARS."

Then things went from merely bureaucratic to properly, geologically unsettling. The mountains themselves began to change. The Grand Teton, that magnificent, ice-carved horn, started to morph. Its pristine slopes became riddled with the yawning mouths of multi-story parking garages, carved directly into the granite. The iconic peak was crowned not with snow, but with a towering, illuminated sign that blinked, "GRAND TETON PARKING STRUCTURE C: LEVELS 1-37 FULL."

Down below, Jenny Lake was no longer water. It was a vast, shimmering mirror of car roofs, reflecting the dawn in a fractured kaleidoscope of metallic blues, reds, and silvers. And from this great, silent expanse of parked humanity rose a faint, disembodied chant: “The Pit Toilets are full… the Pit Toilets are full…” It took a horrifying moment for my dream-addled brain to process the true meaning: they weren't complaining about the lines. They were providing a real-time, and frankly unwelcome, hydrology report.

I felt myself sinking into the pavement, the sheer gravitational mass of it all pressing down on me. My camera felt like a useless brick. What good is a lens when the entire landscape is an impenetrable barricade of traffic, and the hiking paths are awash in things you’d rather not think about flowing across the feet of people waiting in line for that unflushable seat?

And that's when I bolted upright, gasping in the musty, "vintage" air of the lodge. The real Grand Tetons still stood outside, majestic and, mercifully, free of integrated parking solutions. The only sound was the low, persistent hum from the wall of EV chargers out in the lot—a gentle, real-world reminder that our quest for a clean escape is always, inevitably, tethered to a plug.

I glanced at my camera, then at the perfectly acceptable, uncluttered view from my own deck. Perhaps, I thought, a simple shot of the dawn from right here wouldn't be so bad. The mountains, after all, aren't going anywhere. And neither, it seems, are the crowds. You spend your life appreciating the unimaginable power of tectonic uplift, only to realize that, in the 21st century, all that majestic upheaval has really done is create a more scenic and geologically interesting place to have a parking crisis. The only answer, I suspect, is a snowmobile in the dead of winter. The photography, one imagines, would be spectacular.

Thanks for stopping by for a read! 

buzzshawphoto.com

All images posted on the buzzshawphoto.blogspot.com 2025 are copyrighted. All rights reserved

'

Some Techno Babble

Destination outward bound
I turn to see the northern lights behind the wing
Horizons seem to beckon me
Learned how to cry too young, so now I live to sing

           -- Renaissance, 1973

Alright, gather 'round, you budding shutterbugs and digital darkroom dabblers, for a tale of photographic woe, technological triumph, and the rather peculiar habits of yours truly, as recounted after a serendipitous encounter within the hallowed (and often baffling) halls of our local medical establishment. You see, I was surfing it’s bureaucracy, while taking those tests we all experience with our yearly physical, likely contemplating the existential dread of yet another form to sign, when I stumbled upon a kindred spirit – a new acquaintance, no less! – who, in a moment of disarming honesty, confessed to owning a Canon camera she'd never quite managed to operate. My heart, a delicate instrument tuned to the subtle clicks and whirs of a well-loved lens, sank a little. The tragedy! A perfectly good piece of photographic machinery gathering dust, its creative potential untapped, its silicon soul yearning for light. Naturally, I seized the opportunity to champion my own humble corner of the internet, this very narrative space, and my photographic website. Because, let's be honest, what's a chance encounter if not an opportunity for a little unashamed self-promotion?

And so, dear reader, I present to you this 'exciting episode,' a modest attempt to illuminate the shadowy corners of photographic curiosity and perhaps, just perhaps, coax that neglected Canon out of its slumber.

My Nikon Z8 with it's silicon wrapper. I like being able to find my camera in the dark.

Of Cameras and the Curious Case of Brand Loyalty

Now, when it comes to the tools of the trade, I'm a Nikon man. Always have been, always will be. It's like choosing a good woman; once you're in, you're in for life, or at least you should be, come what may. Although I confess, my journey through the digital landscape began with a couple of Sony point-and-shoot cameras. I won't launch into a full-scale Sony-bashing tirade – life's too short, and there are far more pressing matters, like the proper exposure settings for a particularly stubborn sunset – but let's just say my satisfaction was fleeting, and crucial components seemed to develop an inexplicable aversion to functioning after a mere handful of months.

Then there was Canon. Ah, Canon. The name itself conjures images of mighty artillery, not delicate light-capturing devices. My mind goes there because I was a Navy Gunner’s Mate in one of my past lives. And for good reason, I might add. I once, in a moment of paternal zeal upon the arrival of my son, splurged on an expensive Canon video camera. A mere year and a half later, in a symphony of fizzling and leaking capacitors, it gave up the ghost. I waged a valiant campaign, talking my way to the very secretary of the US division's head honcho, but alas, the bureaucratic fortress held firm. Suffice it to say, I wouldn't even buy a Canon bath towel now. And while I'm sure it's an entirely different company these days, the sentiment remains: cannons are for shooting at ships, not for taking charming pictures of them.

My loyalty, as I've mentioned, lies firmly with Nikon. My second film camera, a robust Nikon FG, set the precedent, and I've been a devotee ever since. I still possess my Nikon F4, a magnificent beast I acquired used, and which continues to operate with the stoic reliability of a Swiss watch, albeit one that weighs about the same as a small boulder. It's a Sherman Tank, pure and simple. Its analog controls are a tactile delight, a reassuring presence that whispers, "Fear not, for I am here, and I shall perform my functions without fail." Then there's the F5, another dependable workhorse, ready to tackle whatever photographic challenge I throw its way. I will load black and white TriX film in the F4, Fujifilm in the F5 and venture off into the Golden Hour delights.

The Enduring Charm of Good Glass

In this dizzying age of technological obsolescence, cameras are commodities. You buy one today, and tomorrow there's a shinier, faster, more pixel-packed model designed to make you feel utterly inadequate. Lenses, however, are a different breed entirely. They are, to borrow a phrase, a resource. Good glass is, quite simply, good glass, and it lasts. Nikon, until the advent of their mirrorless Z cameras, maintained a glorious compatibility with their entire lens ecosystem. This means I can, and often do, attach a Nikon lens crafted in the 1970s to any of my modern cameras.

For the discerning photographer, this is a revelation. Imagine, a treasure hunt on eBay, where one can unearth vintage Nikon lenses – often referred to as 'classic glass' – for mere dollars on the thousand, a fraction of their original cost. A little research, a sprinkle of patience, and you can assemble a truly excellent film kit. While these older lenses might be a tad heavier and lack the advanced Vibration Reduction technology of their contemporary counterparts, the ultimate goal is, after all, to produce high-quality images, not a dizzying array of bells and whistles. Nikon has also provided an excellent Nikon F to Z converter, which allows all the great Nikkor glass to be used on the Z technology. You won’t be doing that with a Canon or Sony. They want to buy their latest shiny new toy.

The Allure of Film: A Masterclass in Light

And now, a quick but crucial detour. If you genuinely aspire to learn photography, to truly understand the dance of light and shadow, then procure a film camera. It's a baptism by fire, a masterclass in manipulation. And if you venture into the monochromatic world of black and white film, it can be incredibly economical, especially if you embrace the alchemical art of developing your own negatives. Working with black and white forces you to see light and form and color in a fundamentally different way, revealing the very essence of composition. And when I speak of "color" in this context, you'll understand it more profoundly once you've grappled with the nuances of film technology in monochrome. It's like learning to cook from scratch before relying on pre-made meals – you appreciate the ingredients and the process so much more.

Canyonlands National Park, Green River Overlook. This time in monochrome. Nikon D810 color conversion.

Navigating the Digital Wild West: Software for the Soul

Of course, in this brave new world, photography isn't just about the click of the shutter; it's also about the digital darkroom. Editing software is no longer an optional extra but a fundamental necessity. And here, I believe, Artificial Intelligence is poised to democratize the process, lowering the formidable barrier to entry that has traditionally guarded the gates of digital manipulation.

I've been wrestling with Photoshop since the 80s – a testament to its enduring power, and perhaps my own stubbornness. While I can now zip through edits with the dexterity of a seasoned surgeon, its learning curve is, to put it mildly, practically vertical. I still use Photoshop and Lightroom, but I'm increasingly impressed by the speed and impact of tools like Topaz or Luminar for quick, yet stunning, results.

Given my background in software engineering, grappling with digital editing tools is, for me, a relatively straightforward affair. But I've worked with countless individuals who simply don't possess a "head for complex technologies." And I get it. This stuff is complex, and often, maddeningly, it just doesn't work as advertised. But that, as they say, is a subject for another time. The good news is that tools like Luminar Neo offer a surprisingly accessible and intuitive interface. And thankfully, the digital ether is teeming with helpful guides. Jim Nix, for instance, is a fine explainer, and his videos on YouTube is an excellent starting point: https://youtu.be/klNCpblyMsk?si=MQLyR3HbVD2wuNuT. Dive into my past musings, and you'll unearth a veritable treasure trove of other YouTube resources perfect for the photographic neophyte. Go forth and prosper, my friends!

The AI Advantage: NotebookLM and the Quest for Knowledge

And now for one more AI tool, a marvel of modern technology that I simply must recommend: NotebookLM (NLM) by Google. You can find it at notebooklm.google.com. You get a free month to dabble, and then, I believe, it’s currently around $20 a month, though Google is forever concocting delightful promotions to bundle their various digital delights. Why do I sing its praises? Allow me to offer a single, illustrative use case from my own photographic journey. I could, quite frankly, bore you for weeks detailing its myriad applications, but for now, a simple example will suffice.

I recently acquired a Nikon Z8, a glorious piece of kit that boasts all the capabilities of my old Nikon D810 DSLR and then some – so much more, in fact, that it could, and did, make a grown man weep with joy (or perhaps, confusion). Nikon, to their credit, generally does an admirable job of organizing their menus, but pouring over a manual, taking notes, and attempting to commit every arcane setting to memory is a time-consuming and often fruitless endeavor.

Enter NLM, my digital Genius. I've used it to construct an interactive database of Z8 wisdom. I scoured YouTube for every instructional Z8 video I could find, loaded their URLs into NLM's Resource Panel, then uploaded the official Nikon Owners Manual as a PDF. I even included a few blog URLs and web pages that detail how to master the Z8 for various photographic pursuits, such as night, studio, and landscape photography, among others. To further enrich this digital wellspring, I added videos that are not specific to the Z8 but are invaluable nonetheless, covering topics such as composition, exposure, depth of field, shutter speed, and ISO.

The result? An information powerhouse. Now, instead of fumbling through a physical manual, I can simply open the NLM ‘Chat’ Panel and pose questions like, "What menu settings do I need for an exposure stack, and what pitfalls should I avoid?" or "How far can I push the ISO" for an image taken in those elusive late-evening bluelight conditions? The possibilities are boundless. You can even ask it to guide your exploration of a subject, offering prompts and hints to help you delve deeper into your photographic conundrums.

And then there's the 'Studio' panel, a veritable wonderland where your questions can be transformed into audio, a video overview, or, currently, a mind map, reports, flashcards, and quizzes – truly excellent learning aids. I hope you're beginning to glimpse the immense potential this technology offers across a multitude of domains, from organizing your personal finances to mastering the delicate art of soufflé-making. So, yes, I wholeheartedly recommend taking a look.

The Grand Finale: Go Forth and Be a Nike!

That's quite enough for now. I shall, no doubt, revisit these fascinating subjects in due course. My primary aim here, however, is singular: to empower you to take pictures. So, grab a camera – any camera – and get out there. It will, I promise you, sharpen your gaze, helping you discern the intricate details of the world that often escape our hurried attention. Be a NIKE. (um... just Do It!)

Thanks for stopping by for a read! 

buzzshawphoto.com

All images posted on the buzzshawphoto.blogspot.com 2025 are copyrighted. All rights reserved