jw – Page 69 – On the road with Jim

La Dolce Vita

I’m living a dream and I don’t mean that I’m Back in the Highlife Again. That would never happen. I have too much bad Karma. The dream I’m talking about is the one that everybody has. The details change, but in it, you’re trying to get something accomplished and things keep happening to thwart you. If you overcome one obstacle, another one takes its place and it’s usually worse. The dream goes on and on until you finally get to school and realize that you’re not wearing pants. I’m sure my dilemma isn’t a dream because I can remember what happened yesterday and it continues after I wake-up.

I’ve had my current photo printer for three years and it’s the second one that I bought. I got this unit because the printing heads on its predecessor clogged and nothing I did would clear them, including a fresh round of ink cartridges. Of course, I discovered the problem when I urgently needed to make a set of prints for a reason that’s now escaped me, so I panicked and ordered the second printer, and even paying for two-day delivery. I salvaged all the new cartridges from printer #1 so that I could use them in printer # 2. It’s been a couple of years and I haven’t needed to replace the entire set yet.

The new printer is off most of the time. I only turn it on when I sell a print or I have to make a new show entry. I stopped printing all of my images years ago. My closet is full of print boxes that just take up space. Since I don’t do very many art shows anymore, I don’t need to replace the existing stock very often.

I have a new show later this month (more to come) and the committee selected two of the five prints I submitted, so I fired up the printer a couple of weeks ago. The first thing I do when I turn it on is run a couple of cleaning cycles before I ever load the paper. I want to make sure the printer is hitting on all eight cylinders so I don’t waste a sheet of expensive paper. I went to make my four prints—two for show and two for backup—and the first three printed perfectly. There was something wrong in the shadows with the fourth print, so I tried again with the same results. The indicator for the cyan cartridge was flashing, but I didn’t have a replacement in my stash. Instead, I ran the head cleaning maintenance a couple of times while I ordered another cartridge from Amazon. Then I tried another print, but the results were the same. I tweaked the paper profile, I used another brand of paper, I did more cleaning, but nothing worked. In desperation, I ran a series of cleaning cycles until the printer yelled at me, “Can not do the head cleaning, one of the ink cartridges is out of ink.”

My cyan cartridge arrived yesterday and I put it into the printer. Before printing anything, I ran a nozzle check. When you do that, the printer spits out a print with a series of color music scales. If one of the heads is clogged, that color scale has broken lines. In this case, almost all the black scale was missing. Now that I had plenty of ink, I began running cleaning cycles. After each one, more of the black pattern appeared and after a half-dozen cycles, there was only one small break in the black pattern, so I tried once more. The printer began yelling again, “Maintenance cartridge is full, please replace with a new cartridge.” When you do a head cleaning, the printer squirts ink into the maintenance cartridge and when that’s full, the printer stops working until you replace it.

So I’m waiting for the new cartridge to arrive from Amazon. Because of today’s holiday, it won’t arrive until next week. Instead of matting and framing my show entries, I have to spend the day being nice to the birthday girl. That means I have to cook dinner and watch Independence Day again because that’s what she does on July 4^th. Jeez, it’s not even the alien invasion movie with the cool Slim Whitman ending. Maybe if I’m lucky, I can take a nap and sleep away this nightmare.

Until next time — jw

Granite Dells Sunset Picture of the Week

Welcome to July—the start of the year’s second half and when our nation comes together to celebrate Queen Anne’s birthday. Time flies when you’re having fun … and evidently, even when you’re not. As we tear another month from this year’s calendar, it’s also time to introduce the place we’ll visit: Prescott’s Granite Dells City Park. We were here five years ago during the tragic Yarnell fire, but this time, we came better prepared with experience and a real camera.

Granite Dells—or The Dells—is a “McDonalds’ playground” for adults. The park’s trails take you through or around the rock maze. There are secret rooms to discover, rocks to climb, narrow passageways to squeeze through, and creeks to ford. The only thing missing is the restaurant’s ball pit, where kids pee. The trail lengths vary so that you can spend an hour or an afternoon wandering among the giant boulders all day.

A million and a half years ago, a magma pluton—a six square-mile glob of molten lava shaped like a giant balloon—tried to force its way to the surface as the eruptions in Hawaii have done. Instead, because it didn’t have enough energy to bust through the rocks above, it was trapped and cooled slowly and crystallized into granite. Another famous example of a pluton is Yosemite’s Half Dome. As millennia passed and the forces of erosion and plate tectonics shaped the earth, the pluton eventually made its way to the surface. It has been exposed there long enough for the formation to fracture and undergo spheroidal weathering—the erosion that rounds the rock’s edges. Yavapai County has two other places where you can see these kinds of rock formations: the town of Yarnell along SR 89 and the hilltop where the truck stop of Nothing once was on Route US 93.

The two creeks that drain through the Dells, Granite and Willow, were dammed in the early 1900s as irrigation reservoirs by Chino Valley farm co-operatives. In 1998, Prescott acquired a chunk of Granite Dells, including the lakes, and has set aside the area as an open-space park. The usual picnic areas and sports fields are there, but the backcountry trails lead into parts of the park where you get a taste of wilderness experience. That illusion is occasionally broken when the trail passes a No Trespassing sign along the periphery.

When we visited the park in June, we saw new home developments on its northern flank and another proposed on the east side along the Peavine Trail near Point of Rocks. The development was met with community outcry and packed meetings at city hall. Concerned citizens worry that the new developments will irreparably change Dell’s character by blocking wildlife movements and introducing a sea of roofs to the landscape. It’s another example of a good thing being loved to death. I guess it’s true what they say, “You can’t have your Kate and Edith, too.”

I took this week’s image after a Prescott meeting—not at city hall—that I attended. The sun was about to set, so I rushed to the Dells to get this shot. When I got to the Watson Lake overlook, I knew I wanted to capture this sweeping scene with the most detail. The format is a little different for me because this is a four-shot panorama. I took four shots and stitched them together in PhotoShop. The resulting file size is four times larger than my usual shots, and I can make a print thirty-six inches wide at full resolution. I made a crop of the shoreline tree in actual size to show how much detail I got using this method. This image is called Granite Dells Sunset.

Tree Detail — A full-size crop of the shoreline tree in this week’s image shows how much detail is in this image.

~~Click here to see a larger version of Granite Dell’s Sunset on its Web Page.~~ It’s easier to find the tree in the larger version. I hope you enjoy viewing my newest entry and return next week when I post shots I took while hiking the park’s trails.

Until next time — jw

Bobby D’s BBQ at the English Kitchen Jerome Restaurant Review

To coerce Queen Anne to join me on a photo outing, I have to bribe her with something precious—like food or ice cream. If I schedule everything carefully, I can get away with having to pay for only one meal while we’re on the road. I wanted to shoot in Jerome in the good afternoon light and the drive from our house is a little over a couple of hours, so my cheapest bet was to buy her lunch. When we travel we use the TripAdvisor rankings to see what the popular restaurants are at our destination. It eliminates some guesswork picking out a place to eat. We look at the best reviews and then try to find them when we get to town and for our Jerome trip, Bobby D’s BBQ was their top pick.

Bobby’s is in the English Kitchen Building directly across the street from the Liberty Theater. The old building has hosted various restaurants since Charley Hong built it in 1899, according to the story on the back of the menu. I enjoyed reading the part about the English Kitchen name because—being a Chinese restaurant—it never served traditional British fare. If unwitting diners ordered an English breakfast, they were more likely served a dish of chop suey.

The interior of the original building is simple with about dozen wooden tables and historic Jerome photos decorating the wall. There’s not much room inside and since it was a pleasant day, we opted for seats on the deck. Our friendly hostess quickly found a spot at one of the many picnic tables. We enjoyed a nice breeze in the shade of the orange canopies and gawked at the Verde Valley panorama while the aroma of the smokers seduced our appetites. Our pleasant waitress brought menus and took our drink orders before we finished looking around.

Bobby D’s is a BBQ joint and the staff proudly proclaims that they’ve won a Best in Arizona award. The first page of the menu is all BBQ, but we weren’t that hungry so instead, we split the Arizona Cheesesteak from the second page. It consisted of brisket, sautéed onions, pepper jack cheese and (Ortega) chilies stuffed into a hoagie. It sounded different. It came to the table dry along with four house-made sauces for us to sample.

I’m a guy that likes BBQ and I’ve cooked a mean rib a time or two. I like a lot of flavor. A good sauce should singe your nose hairs but leave a sweet taste. The sandwich was good, but it surprised me at how little smoke and rub seasoning was in the meat. While I’m picking nits here, the mild chilies they use are lost in such a bold sandwich as this—jalapeños would have been a better choice. Their BBQ is southern style so one of the sauces is mustard-based, but it was too reminiscent of honey-mustard dressing for me. A second blend they have is called Jalapeño Molasses and again the chilies were missing in the sweet syrup. That leaves their Little Miss Tango sauce as my pick among the three. Anne liked it too—so that alone shows that it wasn’t spicy enough.

Bobby D’s is a good place in Jerome for lunch or an early dinner. It’s fun to eat in and learn about the historic diner. Our service was very good, and the staff was attentive. The food was also very good even if I felt it was on the bland side. Is this the best restaurant in Jerome? The reviews say it is, but I haven’t tried the others. Is it the best BBQ in Arizona? I’ve had better, but BBQ is always a safe bet. Because Jerome isn’t an overnight destination, many of its restaurants close by 2:00 while Bobby’s is open until 6:00. If this were a Yelp or TripAdvisor review, I’d offer four out of five stars.

Until next time — jw

School Bus 11 Picture of the Week

The Summer of Love was 51 years ago. It was 1967 when a hundred-thousand flower children converged on San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury District and challenged our worldly perceptions. At the time, I was on duty overseas, so I missed it. When I returned to the States the next year, I got married and had to pass up the free sex movement. Four years later my first wife divorced me and by that time, the movement was over. My timing has always been impeccable.

Before we retired, Queen Anne and I had the pleasure of attending seminars in the Bay area several times. On our last visit, we signed up for a walking tour of the historic old houses. On the tour, we learned that a by-product of the hippie period was the Painted Ladies. Needing a place to live, the invaders bought the cheap dilapidated Victorian homes that no one else wanted. Like any respectable homeowner, they began to restore and personalize the homes by painting them. Instead of using the traditional way—one muted-tone color—they made the house’s details pop with bright contrasting colors. These paint schemes shocked traditionalist, but it drew attention to how much craftsmanship went into building these old houses. It gave them character and made you appreciate them more, so the style of painting Victorian homes in multiple colors has become the norm. We even painted the shed we bought here in Congress with three colors and that shocked the neighborhood then.

Last month, when I turned a corner in Jerome and saw this repurposed bus, it reminded me of those resourceful hippies and when I first visited the ghost town. There was a bit of tension in the old towns like Jerome and Bisbee then. People of my generation rejected the social norms and consumerist values of the period. They didn’t want to live in ticky-tacky tract homes and instead wanted a house that had character. They moved into Phoenix’s Encanto district and the abandoned shacks they found in these historic towns. They were perfect for making arts and crafts away from the rat race in Phoenix. The entrenched community pushed back. “We don’t want those weirdos living here, they’ll ruin everything.” Town hall meetings were often very heated and vocal and sometimes even made news in the Phoenix papers (yes, at one time, there were two papers). The conflict seems to have eased and there’s no apparent evidence of tension in today’s Jerome. It’s become a nice place to visit with the family, shop for mementos, and enjoy history—sort of a light version of Main Street, Disneyland.

The photo of the bus that triggered these recollections is called School Bus 11 and it’s my picture of the week. In it, I’m showing the essence of the school bus and its colors. The lights, the faded yellow, the rust, and the graphics tell stories about school children and—to me—the flower children of my past. I moved in to emphasize the patina, faded paint, and letters. From this close perspective, they become the composition and a story of yesterday.

You can see a larger version of School Bus 11 on its Web Page by clicking here. I hope you enjoy viewing my newest entry and come back next week when we move onto a new location for July.

Until next time — jw

Above the Yardarm Photography Tip

Bartlett Hotel – The ruins of the Bartlett Hotel in Jerome. Summertime shooting in the southwest deserts means being ready when the light comes in.

Spring is ending and there are signs of its imminent demise everywhere. This year’s crop of quail chicks, which looked like gray dust bunnies a few weeks ago, has already grown to three-quarter size. I’ve seen normally wary jackrabbits come in off the desert looking for water. Tropical storm Bud managed to bring rain throughout the valley except at the airport where the Weather Service records official measurements. It brought a welcome break from the heat and an early arrival of the summer monsoon storms. As far as I’m concerned, summer started when the thermometer exceeded the century mark several weeks ago. The Summer Solstice is tomorrow—the official start of summer and the longest day of the year. You’d think that all this extra daylight would be better for picture-taking. Not in the Sonoran Desert—not for me.

As an art-photographer, I consider myself average at best. The reason is partly that I’m not that creative and I’m too lazy to really work hard at it, and partly because I work too fast. I’m comfortable knowing this, but to compensate I use every advantage I can. I use high megapixel cameras so I have lots of margins when editing. I print on high-quality paper and mat to museum standards so my product has lasting value. I’m learning to make my own frames to differentiate them from cheap import stuff. And finally, I only shoot when the light is best—the Golden Hour or the Blue Hour—the short period before or after the sun transits the horizon. The rest of the time, the sun is over the yardarm—the term sailors on tall ships used when it was time to go below deck and drink rum. In photography, the light has lost color. The landscape goes flat, there’s too much contrast, and—especially in the desert—there’s too much glare. Photographers say, “We’ve lost the light.”

In the desert southwest, there are still periods when the light is pleasing in spring and summer, they’re just very short. I joke when I say, “morning’s golden hour lasts 5 minutes,” but I’m not far off. I don’t have the luxury of wandering around and shooting multiple subjects; I must plan and be there when the light is right. The reason for this phenomenon—here in the desert—is the sun’s angle. Because we’re so close to having the sun directly overhead this time of the year, the light comes straight through the atmosphere and that’s when the sun’s light is the whitest. The lack of humidity here plays havoc too. In the dry air, light reflects off objects which washes out the colors. Just wear a pair of polarized sunglasses to see what I mean.

This light thing doesn’t happen globally. I’ve read internet posts, written by northern photographers, longing for the long summer days and better light. The first time I noticed a difference was when Queen Anne and I visited New Zealand. As we explored the islands, we agreed on a schedule where I could shoot in the morning then travel to a new place where I could shoot again at day’s end. I kept messing up our plans because the light was still good and I was still working at 11:00 am; something I normally wouldn’t do. I had the point really hammered home to me a couple of years ago when we were traveling through Idaho. While there, I got up before sunrise to shoot a grain elevator and as I walked to the scene, I looked for the brightest part of the sky to guess where the sun would come up. It surprised me to find that the sun didn’t rise that day—at least vertically like I’m used to—instead it slid west along the horizon for several degrees before clearing some distant trees. The light on the grain elevator was a different angle than I expected and I had to move the camera to compensate. I got my shot went back to the trailer and, before 6:00 am, I crawled back in the sack. When we packed and left later that morning, we drove by that old building and the light was still good. I could have slept in, had a cup of coffee and still got my shot.

Madison Grain Silo – In northern latitudes, the golden hour takes its time.

My argument can be condensed into this; the working length of good light changes with latitude during summer. It’s longer in the north and shorter here in the south (yes, in the southern hemisphere the water circles the toilet backward). It all has to do with the sun’s light angle through the atmosphere. Evidently, this isn’t a new idea because I found this neat sun-angle calculator on the Internet. It’s really slick. You put in the day and place, and the map will display the angle of sunrise and sunset. Then you can move the pointer north or south and watch as the angles change.

To get through this period of long (hot) days, I have a couple of strategies that get me by. I slow down my productivity. As I said, instead of wandering and looking for something to photograph, I’ll scout sites out. After finding a good subject, I’ll go back at a time when the light will be right. If I have all the details worked out, I’m out and back within an hour. You could call it, Hit and Run shooting. My favorite coping mechanism is to go where the light is better. If the light won’t come to you, then you go to the mountain. In Arizona, we have an old tribal word for such behavior—snowbird.

Until next time — jw