Dangerspouse, your fried chicken is pictured up top here. I’d apologize for presentation but these days, I count it a good day when I can cook something requiring more than fifteen minutes prep time.
There’s a little bit of chicken and a couple of those small ears of corn tucked away in the fridge tonight. We demolished every bite of pasta salad. It was made earlier in the day and we’d been munching on it for a while.
This week we did a grand tour of the state, or at least a good chunk of it. I took over 1000 photos; G took over 1200.
Since I’m still waiting on a replacement ‘puter, all but a small handful of the pictures I took are still in RAW files direct from the camera. I couldn’t resize ’em or edit ’em in any way, though I’ll admit this time I managed to get a few more converted and resized before hitting the crash zone.
This abandoned trading post sits along I-40 between Flagstaff and Holbrook. The sepia of the trading post above is the closest thing I could get to a real edit.
Thanks to ongoing crashes and Photoshop’s raging attitude, you get a random and extremely limited assortment of images from our last two days, because that’s all I could coax out of it. I converted the files and resized them, and that’s it. These are otherwise unedited.
Gotta love a college town. In old-town Flagstaff, we ran across this decidedly not-old-town mural. And yes, at the left edge you DO see part of a Halloween skeleton. At least, I assume it’s for Halloween.
This was taken at the top of the Mogollon Rim, between Heber and Payson. The elevation is somewhere around 7700 feet. The weather was absolutely spectacular for the whole trip; chilly at night, daytime temps in the 60s and 70s.
Just so you understand – it’s a near-vertical drop from where we stood. A little while after this was taken, some witless wonder decided to stand out on the rock protrusion shown top left in this shot, a chunk of stone maybe 18 inches thick at its widest point. Pieces of the cliffs can and do shear off and tumble down hundreds of feet – and that’s without the added stress of 200+ pounds of stupid standing on it.
This was taken maybe a third of the way down, looking back up at the top. Yes, we were that close to the edge of these cliffs; and yes, they’re steep as they look.
Fortunately no Photoshop is needed to edit videos taken by my phone. We were hoping for fall color. While this super-short video does give a little glimpse, it unfortunately didn’t pick up the effect I was hoping it would show. Aspen leaves fluttering in the wind positively glitter. I haven’t seen anything else like it.
There were a few bright red maples in some of the towns, but maple isn’t native here (and I couldn’t get far enough in to edit any pictures I took of them). Oak is, though. The oaks ranged from yellow to red-orange to brown.
G and I are so much alike it’s crazy, by the way. On ridiculous roads – when there’s no other traffic – we’re known to come to a dead stop and back up to take a picture of a single, perfect leaf. The above is taken with my camera; but G took it because – wrong side of the road, my body not in a cooperative mood. If I couldn’t take the shot from the window, I handed the camera off to my partner in crime. But I spotted it and backed up on a dirt road barely wide enough for Stormtrooper to navigate, and I’d do it again in a heartbeat.
Last shot for this collection.
While we skipped the Grand Canyon this time, for several reasons, G talked me into going to the Painted Desert & Petrified Forest. (Same park. HUGE park.) I’d been once before, around the time the dinosaurs roamed, and I remembered it being kind of blah. However – my initial trip was with my kids’ dad. We arrived just before the park closed for the night, so only saw the first overlook at dusk. I mean, what little I could see looked cool, but I had no idea it was a 20+ mile drive to go through from end to end. The drive isn’t a loop, either. We started on the north side of I-40 and drove some 20 miles almost due south to the exit, taking a different highway back to our motel in Holbrook.
This is the Blue Mesa area of the park. The picture doesn’t begin to show the full scope of the landscape, which is breathtaking.
Some of the petrified tree trunks are the size of a truck. And they’re everywhere, including outside the park boundaries.
Back to the grindstone tomorrow. If I haven’t heard from Dell by Monday I’ll call them to get a status update. I’ve got stuff to do which requires a functioning computer – including photos to process!
EVERYBODY OUT OF MY WAY, THERE’S FRIED CHICKEN HERE! Oh MAN that looks great, L! And don’t worry about plating. It’s not gonna stay there long enough to even register with my optic nerve. The corn and pasta salad look toothsome too, but maaaaaaaaaan, that chicken! Is it single by any chance…?
Almost as good looking is some of your pictures! Even without processing one can tell you know what the hell you’re doing. Composition and framing mean so much. A picture doesn’t have to be processed much at all if the other elements are in place, and your pics prove that. Well done!
BTW, I know you’re a PhotoShop wizard but have you seen the new features in the latest Lightroom update? Pretty amazing. I’m still trying to figure out how to actually use them (WHY does every feature improvement seem to require jettisoning old familiar icons and layouts??) but once I do, it seems like many will be very useful.
Thanks for the grub, bub 🙂
G told me about some of the changes to Lightroom. I’ve been using Photoshop since 2001. I know it like the back of my hand, so naturally it’s my go-to. I haven’t used Lightroom enough for it to be Old Hat to me – yet. As time goes on, they’re moving the two programs closer together imho – I suspect they’ll eventually just go to a single behemoth application.
Thank you for the compliments on my photos! I always understood framing and composition (art background) but couldn’t get the camera to see the vignettes my eye spotted, in so many cases. Picking your brain (and you allowing it) has helped get the lens and my instincts on the same track. 🙂
You’re welcome for the chicken. We finished up the last couple of pieces with breakfast this morning, and it was GOOOOOOOD.
I’m so glad to hear you two had a great getaway. I bet the scenery in person was even more spectacular. Good luck with the replaced computer. I hope your return to work goes smoothly.
Thank you, Terri! We had an amazing time and the scenery was spectacular. We went to a lot of little smears (too small to be dots) on the map where we’d never been before. Lots of kitschy roadside attractions in several of the places we visited, and some beautiful – if decaying – signs and buildings. I’m itching to get those photos edited.