Tour through Monument Valley 1

FJ at Monument Valley

Moon Over Marble Canyon

Marble Canyon, AZ

I took this on the way back home from vegas. I traveled along a road that stretched across northern Arizona, southern Utah, and northern New Mexico. There were incredible views the whole way.

Fry Thief

But you have plenty of delicious vegetables

Taken today at the Au Park shopping mall in Bratislava.

Lake Mead

Lake Mead from an overlook on the way to Hoover Dam

Getting started early

Taken at Sandy Lake Amusement Park

close up at the flamingo

This is from Vegas too.  We were hanging out at the atrium in the Flamingo.

The Flamingo in Vegas

chillin in the gazebo

The Flamingo has a garden in the middle of the complex with fish ponds and pink flamingos. We spent an afternoon there exploring.

Meghan Katarina Taylor newborn photo gallery

From Meghan Katarina (click for gallery)

Valley of Fire Road

The main road

Glyphs at Valley Of Fire State Park

taking closeups of the glyphs

I ran into another photographer in the valley and had lunch with her and her husband. He was an IT Director or something from california, and they were on a month long holiday. It looked like they were on a camping trip.

I ran into 3 other photographers on a Tuesday morning. Must be a popular place for picture takers.

Misha shopping

Valley of Fire State Park, Nevada

Valley of Fire

The same morning I went off-roading at Nellis Dunes, I drove out the this state park. The rocks are a stunning hue of red-orange. And many of them have native american petroglyphs (which are carved as opposed to painted like a pictograph).

Wheelin @ Nellis Dunes

Offroad at Nellis Dunes

During the week in Vegas, I went out one morning to drive on the hills at the Nellis Dunes recreation area. 

Dagmar and Misha on Fremont St

We "experienced" Fremont Street in Las Vegas.  My mother-in-law, Dagmar, is happy to hold Misha anytime.

The flash fill is from the on-camera flash, and I have the exposure set to manual to make sure the ambient light from the background comes through.  The lens I have mounted is very slow.  I couldn't get the focus I wanted, so I applied some tricks in my favorite photo editor.  The foreground is isolated, and a blur gradient is applied to the background to simulate a fast lens.

Lions at Play

Lions At Play

While in vegas we stopped at the MGM Grande to view the lions. It's a pretty cool exhibit. It has a glass tunnel that you can walk through to get a full view of the lions. The standing lion is trying to entice the other into playing.

Cadillac Ranch outside Amarillo, TX

Cadillac Ranch

I'm always keeping an eye out for interesting textures.  The paint on these half burried cars definitely counts.  The flash is being held by my brother-in-law and triggered remotely.  I would have like to spent more time here; but it was impossibly cold.  You can't tell because the crazy kids aren't wearing jackets.

Pool Fun at the Berry's

Our friends threw a pool party, and my baby daughter went for a swim.

What to do after taking hundreds of photos

Digital cameras are fantastic. You can freely take hundreds of photos without worrying about how much it's going to cost to develop. The one negative is that you have to manage the photos afterwards.

The first thing I do is arrange the files in folders by date and location ( or any relevant info):

• 20080530 Bratislava
• 20080531 Vienna - Natural History Museum
• 20080531 Vienna - Old Town

I put the date in the folder name with the format "YYYYMMDD" so that they naturally sort chronologically. This is how I remember things, so it makes it easy for me to find.

Next, I use Picasa, iPhoto, or similar program to scroll through large thumbnails of the pictures, and tag (label or keyword) the ones that are good (or give them stars). If I have time, I will add more relevant tags to the picture - like who is in it or whether it's a landscape shot.

Then I filter the thumbnails by the "good" tag, and I tag the ones I want to share with "share". The ones I want to print, I tag with "print".

If your software doesn't come with tagging, you can accomplish the same thing using sub folders. just copy the pictures to the "good" or "share" subfolder.

Then I filter the list by the "share" tag and copy these to a separate folder. I make copies because I want to preserve the originals in case I make a mistake later. I edit these for contrast and color. Then I crop them to get the composition I like or remove that pesky power line. Then I give them meaningful names.

The last step is to upload them to a shared album in picasa, flickr, or whatever service. I'm in a transitional state right now in regards to photo service. I'm currently trying out picasa.

I back up my photo directory to DVD; but I'm considering using a pay service like smugmug or picasa for photo archival.