Slickrock and Shadow

Buck Farm Canyon narrows and chockstone My hiking book said Buck Farm Canyon had some pretty sections near the end but I'd seen no other pictures of trail reports of this canyon.  When our guide said Buck Farm was our hike, I wondered what we'd find.  Our camp was at the base of this canyon so we took off after a nice lunch at our beach. The going is pretty easy here.  Hiking further up Buck Farm Canyon, I noticed more ferns and then a cottonwood tree.  The temperature dropped a notch and everything felt nice.  Unlike Saddle Canyon and North Canyon, Buck Farm is pretty easy, short and quick.  We reached the end and had a little geology talk before heading back to camp.  Getting my feet a little wet, I walked up the narrows and found a chockstone wedged in the muav limestone.  A pretty fern grew where the water seeped out.  I started clicking. Geology talk about Muav Limestone in the Grand Canyon's Buck Farm Canyon Photography note...

Glencoe, Scotland at dawn My first morning and my first shot in Scotland is posted here.  I woke up early, so early at about 3:30 am so that I could actually see the sun rise at about 4 AM.  June in Scotland's highlands means really long days and short nights.  Catching sunrise feels like severe sleep deprivation here! Driving along the road through Glencoe Valley I searched for a good location.  This massive mountain and its' quaint cottage made me stop and shoot.  I wandered along the stream looking for the right height and location to capture this mountain reflection in the calm stream.  The cottage stands far enough away that it cannot be reflected.   Everything felt cool and quiet.  That's what I think of when I see this photo.  

Montana Bloom:  This photo obeys several landscape photography rules. Lupine wildflowers were in bloom last month in Montana.  Patches of purple mixed in with the green grassland, coloring the charming land.  How to capture this beauty?  I decided to go back to the "rules" of landscape photography and see what happened.  Here are a few of the rules I followed: 1.  Foreground interest.  The flower is the obvious choice here.  The challenge comes in how to include this flower and everything else.  A wide-angle lens positioned just above the highest petals allows the viewer to get a whiff of lupine but still see the wider landscape above. 2.  S-curve.  The S-curve is used mostly in figure photography, particularly the female form.  This same curve can be used when it appear in landscape.  The lovely stream makes such a curve and connects the foreground to the background, helping me obey two photography rules. 3. ...