Tahquechi Photography

Last night I was out shooting(thanks to my wife Carrie for taking me out even though she didn’t feel like driving), trying to get the “now” shot for a couple of the retouched images I have been working on. It was just as sunset hit when the fog rolled in like oranges. As a result I didn’t get the shot I imagined for the then and now project but I did manage to take this one of the boardwalk.

I’m on track to have at least one if not 2 more then and now pictures done this week. We shall see how things go.

The first stop on our trip was The Devils Tower Wyoming – rising 1,200 feet above the Belle Fourche River,  inspired the imagination of the Indians. They called it Mateo Tepee, meaning Grizzly Bear Lodge, and had several legends regarding its origin. According to the Kiowas, who at one time are reputed to have lived in the region, their tribe once camped on a stream where there were many bears. One day seven little girls were playing at a distance from the village and were chased by some bears. The girls ran toward the village and when the bears were about to catch them, they jumped to a low rock about three feet in height. One of them prayed to the rock, “Rock, take pity on us–Rock, save us.” The rock heard them and began to elongate itself upwards, pushing the children higher and higher out of reach of the bears, When the bears jumped at them they scratched the rock, broke their claws and fell back upon the ground. The rock continued to push the children upward into the sky while the bears jumped at them, The children are still in the sky, seven little stars in a group (the pleiades). According to the legend the marks of the bears’ claws may be seen on the side of the rock.

After seeing this awesome tower, it is certainly easy to see how it could impact anyone who has visited it, and why it was named our first national monument. It was a beautiful day when we arrived, a bit early in the afternoon for some great shots, but I managed a few good ones. I’m working feverishly on completing the rest of the shots from Mt. Rushmore, Crazy Horse and Deadwood.

Its always fun to go, and its always fun to come home but my favorite part of traveling is (aside from spending time with friends and family which is obvious) processing all the photos I took. I have just returned home from a week long trip to Colorodo. We took a nice photo taking drive up in the mountains above boulder, went to the devils tower in Wyoming, Mt Rushmore, The Crazy Horse Memorial and stayed for almost a week in Deadwood South Dakota. It was a lot of fun. and I have many stories and picutres to share. Now…off to work on them I go!

Whew! thanks for all the great comments on the new project! I have six more shots I’m working on at the moment, now, if the weather would only cooperate and give me some non-foggy skies I can do the “now” shots to go with the retouched shots I have ready to go.

The plan for this week is to get a link to the Then and Now section on the main navigation bar, and it looks like I need to look into options for online sales of prints. I have had a lot of requests for it so this week I will start looking around and make a decision on which service to use. Just to let you know, I mentioned a new camera I would love to have…The Canon 5D mkII anything I get from print sales will go directly towards saving for that baby.

Heres a shot from the photowalk last weekend taken at Neary Lagoon.

Happy Friday! well as promised I have gotten the first page up for the Then and Now section of the site. It took me a bit longer then antivipated…I wanted to make sure I had the facts for the dedication portion  all straight. Anyway, its weird to link to my own site but here goes…

http://www.tahquechi.com/tan/tanindex.htm

Next week I have to rebuild the navigation on the tops of the pages so you can get directly to the Then and Now section,  but you can at least see where I am headed with the whole . This is a picture of my Grandfather, the man who inspired me to do this whole then and now thing. I found an old photo album of his, and thought wow would it be a great idea to combine pictures that have been restored with current shots of the same area.

His name is Georgs Harrison and he, like me was legally blind and had a love of photography. The first then and now image I chose was the shot he took of Natural Bridges..he took the original shot with a Kodak Brownie No2. camera and developed the shot at the kitchen table. Ah how times have changed I still am developing the images but today its with photoshop and in a higher resolution than he could probably imagine.  Granted things were a lot tougher then… the chemical washes and developing, drying, rinsing…so much has changed now that you can take the card out of the camera and click a couple of buttons.   Dealing with the chemical developing method and being legally blind must have been a true test to his love for photographic art. I won’t pretend to imagine how hard it would have  been, I will just happily dedicate the then and now section to him for all the hard work he put in to make the images we can now all enjoy.

Please let me know what you think of the section and suggestions are always read and appreciated!

At 10:00 am on the 18th of July it was overcast and misty (not at all unusual for Santa Cruz), thankfully as the photowalk started the fog cleared and left us with some high wispy clouds.  About 25 of us gathered at the clock tower at the end of Pacific Ave. here in Santa Cruz. The route took us down Pacific and into the historic house area on Walnut Ave. Then the pedestrian bridge which crosses San Lorenzo river.  The photos are due this Saturday you can see my and other submissions at http://worldwidephotowalk.com/santa-cruz-ca-usa/ The photowalk was fun and interesting at the same time. Its neat to hit the streets with a bunch of like minded rabid photographers. Anyway after it was all over I walked home form the downtown area. I wandered through Neary Lagoon on the way home and snapped this image. Its hard to believe that such a cool looking place is a sewage treatment plant  Anyone whos interested in photography should participate in next years photowalk.

Happy friday! As promised another shot from this weeks hike. This was taken at Natural Bridges State Beach.  The plan at the moment is to get the first then and now page up on the main site. The page will contain the 2 shots of the arch at Natural Bridges and some history on the shots and the arch.  Hopefully it will make for some interesting rewading.

Don’t forget tomorrow is the second annual worldwide photowalk. I’m planning to be there and will post a gallery of the shots I take for you all to see. I was struggling with the equipment I should bring. The walk is going to be about three hours, and while I would love to tote my whole camera bag with me, I think Im going to go light and just bring the Canon XSi with Rstrap4, 2 4gb SD cards and a 16gb SD card. I’m going with a single lens (ugh I want to bring them all) the 18/55mm.

Have a great weekend and see you next week!

Well, Just got back from a week in Reno. I’m back into the swing of things. I went out shooting today and as I usually try and do, I set a goal for myself – the goal today was to  not shoot any beach scenes. I really can’t help it, I love the beach heh. Walking in the paths in Natural Bridges State Beach, I took this shot. The sun was just coming out, and I think it shows the whole dry summer theme we have going on here in Santa Cruz. I got a few other decent shots that I will post later this week and into next week. The summer traveling this year isn’t as hectic as it has been in the last few summers. I have one more trip then its back to school.

The Worldwide Photo walk is this Saturday 27,000 photographers in 915 cities worldwide will be taking part in this event. Thios shots from the Santa Cruz walk can be viewed at http://worldwidephotowalk.com/santa-cruz-ca-usa/ The images will be up shortly after the walk depending on how quickly the walkers get their shots turned in. If your interested in being part of the walk, there is still time you can check out the Scott Kelby link on the right of this blog.

You know your blogs getting more popular when: (1) you start hearing from people who are reading what your writing and (2) when all the spam starts rolling in. 8-( Its just hilarious to me that a photography blog can generate spam related to viagra and how to make 300 dollars a day just using the internet and my computer….sigh.  I suppose I will know people are really interested in what I have to say when I start getting the lonely housewives and hot young teens spam right? heheh Anyway thanks again for all the great feedback and comments I appreciate it. I will strive to post more regularly in the future, even when school starts.

I was digging through some shots I did and realized that I forgot to post the cool shot I took of a nesting gull.  This was taken at Wilder Ranch in Santa Cruz. It was a gloomy cloudy day (not unlike today) so I figured I would go in search of other things to shoot than the landscape. Anyway out on the coast trail I spotted the nesting gull out on a rock outcropping… The gull was very calm and let me get close enough to frame this shot. I’m still working on the pages to incorporate the 2 arch shots together. Thanks for the great comments. I really appreciate them.

Hooray!  The tides, clouds and my schedule finally all worked out for a change. I have been working hard to get a decent shot of the arch at Natural Bridges state beach to go along with my last post which had a cool scanned image of the arch taken around 1924.  I tried a few mornings over the last couple weeks, but the sun was either too harsh for a decent shot – or the clouds were too thick and had no interesting shapes behind the arch.  I also went a few times and tried some long exposure shots to get a nice foamy and misty look to the water at the base of the arch, but the tide and the lighting never seemed to jive.  This shot was taken using a 15 second exposure at f22 with my lens set at 34mm.  It was medium high tide at 8 in the evening (thanks rangers for only yelling at me a little for running onto the beach when the park was closing =D).  So the original shot pulled waaaay too blue (and it may still be too blue for my liking) I adjusted the exposure and such, but now the big decision comes… What should I do about the seagull fecies on the top of the arch, and the seaweed on the beach? It would not be too difficult to photoshop it out, but it is nature and if the true reason for doing this project is to show change over time, the broken arch and the fecies do represent change over time from the original shot.  At this point I am leaning towards 2 different versions of the shot, maybe one as is for this project and 1 as an art piece which removes the fecies and the seaweed. What do you think?