Moonlight Walk

To my loyal fans, all 3 of you, I have taken a bit of a hiatus from blogging the past week or so.  It wasn't intentional but we have been pretty busy and I caught a bit of a bug.  It could be serious, incurable in fact.  I can see it taking up a good deal of my time and perhaps some of our cash as well. Not to worry though, its a Photography bug and I brought it upon myself.  About 3 years ago I decided to buy a good quality DSLR and resurrect my long dormant interest in Photography.  After much research I bought a Canon 60D.  Sorry Nikon fans (Robert).  I took a few snapshots and then stuck the camera bag in a closet and didn't do much else with my new baby.  This trip to Arizona has changed all that.  As I am sure you can tell, I have been quite taken with the scenery down here.  It is filled with contradictions.  On one hand it is stark and desolate but at the same time it is dramatic and inspiring.  And when you look closely, so filled with colour and life.

This RV Park has a Photography club which has also helped fuel my interest.  We took a field trip to the Riparian Preserve that was included in my blog on Jan 31.  This coming week we are going to learn a bit about how to improve the final product with the magic found in Photoshop Elements, a picture editing program.  I have also decided to venture out of known territory and in addition to shooting pictures in the common JPEG format I will also be shooting pictures in RAW format.  RAW results in a picture of much greater detail, much of it hidden until you get into post picture processing so we will see if I can make the pictures come to life even more vividly.  This all takes a bit more time and huge amounts of memory as JPEG pictures typically run from 2-5Megabytes.  RAW on the other hand will run up to 20 megs or more per picture.  Good thing I bought that 3 Terabyte external backup drive.

On Monday, Feb 2 we took a trip to the Boyce Thompson Arboretum which is our new favourite place to experience the desert vegetation in all its glory.  We were told by many people that it was a must see and after a brief visit and taking part in one of their tours, I can whole heartedly endorse it as a MUST SEE.  We are planning on another visit on Feb 9 with friends from back home and will reserve showing you day time pictures until we get back from that trip.  We were so impressed by our first visit that we knew we wanted to come back and since the entry fee was $20 for the 2 of us and an annual membership was $50. we got annual memberships.  What we didn't know till we had shelled out our dollars was that they were hosting a moonlight tour the next night for members.  Bonus.  So at 4:00 on Feb 3 we packed up the truck for a 20 minute drive down the highway to the Arboretum.

Below are some of the pictures I took of the full moon rising over the original residence of Boyce Thompson, the founder and original patriarch of what now has become a state park.  I have posted 2 pictures of the same shot, one before processing and one after.  Keep in mind that the processing has been done in IPhoto which is a pretty basic picture editing program and my skills are even more basic but it gives you an idea what can be done on the computer after the image has been captured. (Actually digital cameras don't capture images, rather they capture information which the computer magically transforms into a picture.  Thus, the more info, or larger file, the more detailed the picture)

Make sure you double click on the 1st picture to get in full size so you can really see the difference.  Then scroll through the pics.
Enjoy.

 Thomson was a mining magnate in the 20's and a multi-multi millionaire, which by todays standards would put him in the Billionaire stratosphere.  He became enchanted with the American southwest and bought this property and built the house as his winter home.  There were a number of additional building as part of this complex which have been lost to fire and neglect in the past 90 years. The interior is apparently a shambles and the State has recently purchased the house in the hopes of restoring it.
Donations gratefully accepted.

 A group of photographers and wannabe's (I'm in the latter category) trouped up the trail to this spot to get the rising moon behind Thompson's house.  Then we waited for the sun to set.  And then waited some more, and some more until finally we caught a glimpse of the moons glow behind the house.

It didn't take long for the moon to rise above the roof line.  Everybody snapping shots and then it was all done.  All that waiting for, perhaps 10 minutes of picture taking.

Can you believe at least one person was using a flash.  Not going to be too effective when the house is 1/4 mile away and the moon is, well, just a bit further.



 I didn't notice the shooting star till I got home and downloaded the pictures to the computer.
Dumb luck, I'll take it.

Its amazing how many colours are hidden in all those pixels.

I've got some pictures of the Siphon Draw Trail that we hiked on Wednesday, Feb 4 and also the Apache Trail which we drove on Thursday.  After tomorrow I will have more of the Arboretum, this time in the day light.  We also hope to get back to the Roosevelt Dam on Wednesday, Feb 11.  That should pretty much do it for Gold Canyon as we pack up for Yuma on the 15th.

Thanks for tuning in.  Comments, critiques welcome.

Later.