Photoblog 2.0

Ken Hopper Group Portrait, photo by Harold Davis. View this party larger.

The purpose of our Phoenix roundtrip was not to give me the chance to photograph southwestern sunrises and sunsets at the turning of the year. Nor to photograph my kids, trains, nor saguaros. The photo opportunities were side effects: unexpected but pleasurable.

We were driving to the Phoenix area to spend some of the holidays with Phyllis’s parents, Barbara and Kenneth D. “Ken” Hopper. December 30th was also Ken’s 80th birthday.

The photo above shows all of us on Ken’s birthday: Barbara, Ken, my family (Harold, Phyllis, Julian, Nicky, and Mathew), and Phyllis’s brother Chris’s family (Chris, DeJonghe, David, and Steven).

Ken belongs to the “greatest generation.” He survived landing on the beach at Normandy, the Battle of the Bulge, and a stint as a German prisoner of war. He was stationed in Barrow, Alaska for several years in the 1950s and has tales to tell of Polar Bears and surviving arctic winter.

Ken’s own elegant and moving words (from Ken and Barbara’s 2005 Seasons Greeting letter) tell why it was important for us to be with him this year:

About 2½ years ago I was diagnosed with prostate cancer. Thirty-eight radiation treatments and injections of Lupron [which continue] slowed the cancer but did not eliminate it. A few months ago there was evidence that the cancer had got very “busy” and is now much more extensive. … Where this will go is very uncertain. Barbara has had much additional work placed upon her and has been wonderful. No greater love could I ask. Consider that I am 80 years old, have had good health most of my life, have had a loving, caring wife, two great children, a job I enjoyed and sincere, good friends all over the world. What more could a person want? I have great faith in God and know His will will prevail. I thank all of those who have included me in their prayers, and those who have sent their good wishes. I love you all.

Despite his illness, Ken keeps active with his ham radio station and patrolling his property in his deluxe golf cart. He’s shown here giving a tour of the Rancho Hopper with Barbara, Phyllis, Julian, and Mathew (Nicky’s there but you can’t see him!):

On my very enjoyable golf cart ride, Ken showed me the signs warning that we were entering a rattlesnake den area. As he said with a chuckle and a twinkle in his eye, “The signs may even be true, and they certainly cut down on trespassers!”

So three cheers for Ken! When my time comes, may I accept it with such grace, and be able to look back as happily on the blessings of my life. Happy birthday, birthday boy:

Bay Sunset from Wildcat Peak, photo by Harold Davis. Check this photo out larger!

This afternoon I took off to Tilden Park with my photo gear to enjoy the sunshine. How nice the sun seems after all the rain we’ve had.

Wildcat Peak is a great vantage point for photographing Bay sunsets. It’s very dramatic, also cold and windy this evening. And a long trek down in the dark. But I’m glad I was there for sunset…

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Mathew Exploring, photo by Harold Davis.

In the austerely beautiful and sparsely populated country between Barstow, California and the retirement megalopolis of Phoenix there isn’t much in the way of stops safe for young children. True, there is the Mojave National Preserve. And there are range after range with names like Vulture Mountains and Hieroglyphic Mountains. Also there are plenty of saguaros, Joshua trees, and cacti.

None of this scenic grandeur does much good for parents who want to exercise their kar-bound kids and keep them safe. We did some nice desert stops in the Mojave.

For the record, at a playground in Kingman, Arizona other parents were friendly and informative. At another playground stop in Wickenburg, Arizona kids were belligerent and their care-takers hostile.

As you can see from the pictures, Mathew and Nicky are pretty much happy anywhere so long as they aren’t tired or hungry.

Julian is a touch more complex (not really!): he needs a rock he can think about taking home (this one was obviously too big) or something like a saguaro to photograph:

As for Phyllis, she is happy as long as the kids are:

Oh, and a word to the wise. This is a matter of good parenting. If you stop to play on the train tracks (like we did here), make sure to get the kids off before the Santa Fe engine comes rushing down the tracks:

You can’t see it in the photo, but the engineer waved at us. Good thing we had vacated the tracks a couple of minutes earlier:

Winter Mojave Flower, photo by Harold Davis. View this photo larger.

OK. The important thing when you are on a long road trip with small kids is to stop often for physical activity. But as we left Barstow and sunrise behind, in the Mojave desert options such as McD’s play areas are far and few between. Anyhow, kids may like “Happy Meals” (or at least the toys that come with them) but from the parental viewpoint there are only so many fast food joints one can take.

Which reminds me that I used to quote a Woody Allen quip to the effect that hell was being locked in with an insurance salesman listening to country and western music in an endless loop. (Don’t get me wrong, I like a lot of country music!). I’ve come to think that my own personal definition of the fiery domain is going from one McD to another listening endlessly to Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel. Don’t ask: it is a book on tape for kids featuring the heroic steam shovel Mary Anne and the town hall basement in Popperville. Can she dig the cellar in just one day? This book is dearly beloved by our Nicky, who tends to be as obsessive as only a four-year-old can be about the things he loves.

Well, if you do ask I can probably recite the story for you word for word. Written by the inimitable children’s book author Virginia Lee Burton in 1939, it has (as the book jacket puts it), “never lost its appeal for kids.” It sure has for me, though.

Anyhow, the important thing when you are taking a break with young kids out in the desert is to try to find a place where the kids (especially an into-everything toddler like Mathew) won’t stumble into a cactus or some other deadly hazard while they are running around.

This dirt road off a dirt road stop in the middle of nowhere fit the bill. And as we were running around chasing each other, I noticed this tiny (really tiny! I mean almost microscopic) winter desert flower. Fodder for my camera, tripod, macro lens and 36mm extension tube. I think it works best with moderate depth of field (this was taken at f/11). The background plants are even Christmas-like in their red and green coloration!

Barstow Sunrise 5, photo by Harold Davis. View this photo larger.

Night swept around us, and we rushed through the night, as we left Bakersfield and the setting sun behind us. Drowsy kids in the car, we went over Tehachapi Summit and started across the Mojave. We stopped for the night in a motel in Barstow, the last stop for more than a hundred miles and the California-Arizona border.

I woke early before the kids. Peering out the window in the motel parking lot, it was dark, but I thought I saw the glimmer of a nice sunrise. I struggled into my clothes, trying not to wake anyone, and hoisted my camera kit and tripod on my back. It had been too dark, and I was too tired, when we pulled up the previous night for me to notice what was around us.

Walking out of the motel area, I crossed the road, and found myself in a median strip between the railroad tracks and a freeway exit (for Interstate 40). I set up my tripod.

Sunrise came on fast and furious and red. I photographed trains on the track in both directions:

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The landscape across the tracks also looked interesting (if somewhat sparse):

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Barstow was lighting up:

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I was startled by a flock of starlings coming out to greet the dawn and whizzing past me. I pulled my camera off the tripod, and grabbed a couple of shots of these birds gathered around a street light that was still on:

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The show was just about over. I packed up camera and tripod, re-crossed the street, and headed for the motel office where I chugged a cup of typically execrable coffee.

Back in the room, the kids were already bouncing off the walls. It was 6:30 AM and time to hit the end-of-December Mojave.

Black and White Bristlecone 5, photo by Harold Davis. View this photo larger.

In a couple of previous posts, I explained a number of different techniques for converting color digital photos to black and white in Photoshop. See More Black and White Conversion Fun and Converting to Black and White.

If you are going to convert to black and white, quite possibly it is because you want your photo to look like a classic black and white print. (You know, like one by Ansel somebody or other…). Now, the fact of life was the film, and silver-halide photo paper for prints, had grain. This grain was formed by the silver used in the exposure process and was irregular: not at all like digital noise.

Now, as a master black and white photographer and print maker, most likely one strived like all get out to reduce the apparent grain, or make it “fine”–that is, small in granular size. But like the Biblical poor who are always with one, grain was always with black and white film photography and prints. It can be thought of as a hallmark of classical silver-halide analog photography.

So as I thought about my black and white conversions, I realized that probably a touch of grain should be added.

Fortunately, Photoshop comes with a Film Grain filter (found under Artistic Filters). This filter should not be confused with the Texture > Grain Filter. Like many Photoshop filters, it only operates on 8-bit (not 16-bit) images, so if you are working in 16 bits you will have to convert your image mode to apply it.

To apply the Artistic > Film Grain filter to the black and white conversion, I created a duplicate layer. I applied the filter to the duplicate layer, using (after considerable trial and error) settings of Grain = 6, Highlight Area = 11, and Intensity = 6. I set Opacity for this layer to 18%.

Next, I duplicated the grain layer with the intention of blurring the edges of the grain to make it look more like “real” grain in film. Working on this “grain blur” layer, I used the Gaussian Blur filter (found in Filter > Blur) with the pixel radius at the default setting of 1.0. I set the Opacity for the grain blur” layer to 23%.

The impact is pretty much like fairly fine-grained film. Note that if you are planning to make prints using this technique, you’ll need to experiment to find settings that actually look like decent silver-halide prints on your digital printer (depending on the specifics of your printer).

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End of the Rain, photo by Harold Davis. View this photo larger.

How nice to look up late this afternoon and see the sky clearing after all this rain. I had to head with Julian to photograph the sunset. (Phyllis graciously took the other kids shopping to replenish our larders, bare after our roundtrip to Phoenix.)

Sunset was indeed golden, holding promise that the storm may be over:

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Sunset near Bakersfield 2, photo by Harold Davis. View this photo larger.

Phyllis, the kids, and I drove to Phoenix and back over New Year’s. Actually, since the Phoenix is a bird that dies and is reborn, this is an appropriate sounding destination at the turning of the year.

We went to Phoenix to spend some time with Phyllis’s parents and family on the occasion her dad Ken’s 80th birthday.

Two days drive there and two days back in a car with three small kids was on the grueling side of things, but also fun. The weather was mixed, with an immense storm front blanketing California, and cloud-filled sunsets and sunrises in the desert.

Of course, I took photos along the way! For example, these photos of sunset and fields along the road near Bakersfield, California on our first night out.

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