Once over lightly

Sunrise in the Grand Canyon

We have all seen those grand vistas of our better known national parks or monuments, so behind your photo opportunities is always that thought of coming up with something unique. You begin with choosing your time and place like dawn at the Grand Canyon. Digital is cheap compared with film so you snap and snap and snap.

There is no dropping off the film at Kodak these days. We are not merely the photographer but the developer and editor. I go through my photos several times and am learning to delete mercilessly. I try to keep in mind the old film rule that one great photo in a roll of 36 is exceptional. Download 225 images and there have to be a lot not worth taking up hard drive space. And then there are those worth fiddling with in your photo editing program. A much smaller number.

Painted Desert

I travel with my laptop for downloading of photographs. It is a 2006 HP and is very limited on photo editing options. I have Photoshop 5 on it. So when I get home to my desktop and Corel Paintshop Pro X4 is where the real editing begins. But a pass through the undeleted and minimal cropping and adjustment experiments allows me to zero in on those photos (original always untouched) I want to focus my post processing on.

Detail of Wupatki Pueblo wall

And as one goes from photo opportunity to photo opportunity you find yourself centering in on the shots those with point and shoot cameras or Iphones miss or cannot capture effectively.

Wupatki Pueblo with Moon

Water color treatment of tree trunk

And out of boredom of another pass thru the photos you have not deleted you play around a bit. And then one photo pops up that needs very little at all to be remarkable.

Painted Desert

No doubt my favorites may change over the next week or two but my raven will always be in that group.