Photographs From The Road



Hwy. 88 in the Superstition Mountains

 Recently I went on an 18 day road trip to Arizona and Utah. I had intended to post photos and information on my blog every few days as the trip progressed. I drove about 5000 miles in that time through 8 different  states. I was trying to squeeze what should have been a 3 month trip into that small window of time that I actually had. The good thing about a trip like this is you get to see a lot of scenery and visit many interesting places. The downside is that you do not have the time at any place to really stay and explore it totally. When I visit somewhere new I would much prefer to have more time to throughly explore and learn all that I can and photograph the location.







A bridge on Hwy. 88 climbing into the mountains

With all the places I wanted to visit on this trip, and so little time to do it, I did a lot of driving and quick visits to many locations. I took more photos on this trip that I care to reveal because many people would laugh and tell me I am crazy unless they were a serious photographer. I did some wildlife photography, but the vast majority of my photos on this trip were shots of the amazing landscapes. Although I shoot digital, and always in color, I love to convert manyof the southwest landscape scenes to Black and White.

Abandon Building Outside Roswell New Mexico

I was driving into Roswell New Mexico when I noticed this abandon building sitting alone in he middle of no where. There were no signs to indicate what it may have once been. I stopped and photographed it from several angles and bracketed some exposures for an attempt to do an HDR image. My problem was it was in the middle of the day and the sunlight was extremely bright with not a cloud in the sky. When I was looking at the images, I was not real happy with them. Plain and boring to me. Then I tried the conversion to B&W but was not happy with the plain sky. In a stroke of creativity I darkened the blue and cyan channels to create this totally black looking sky. With some further tweaking in the various color channels, it now appears that it was taken at night with a bright moon light. A good Photoshop save of an otherwise drab photograph. No idea what happened here, but I think the aliens from nearby Area 51 may have been involved.

Scott