West Clear Creek Canyon

Thursday, May 10th, 2012 at 4:09 pm VIEW 10 comments

Last week I visited West Clear Creek Canyon which is in the Coconino National Forest near the junction of Highway 87 and FH-3 (Lake Mary Road) here in Arizona.  The canyon is quite spectacular and relatively unknown to most folks.  I sat there one evening and captured some images late in the day as the sun started to set for the day.  Here are a few of those images.

6:11pm – the sun is getting low on the horizon.  Isn’t this canyon amazing, with the deep rugged walls, the lush green trees lining the clear creek flowing along the bottom.

6:55pm – the sun is just kissing the horizon, I really love the lens-flare it caused to shoot right down the canyon.

7:13pm – the sun has dropped below the horizon and is starting to light up the clouds in the sky.

7:20pm –  the sky has really lit up.  The deep orange color in the clouds on this day is accentuated by smoke particles from a nearby forest controlled burn.  This is truely how it looked, it was absolutely beautiful.

Thank you for letting me share my photography with you.

David Gralian
david@davidgralian.com
www.davidgralian.com

More of my images can be viewed and purchased  HERE.

photography info: Canon 1Ds M3 camera, 24-105mm lens, 5 image bracketed exposures processed using Nik HDR Pro software.

Barrel Racing

Tuesday, March 6th, 2012 at 3:29 pm VIEW 10 comments

A few weeks back in a blog (Boots & Spurs), I mentioned that I had been doing some photography at rodeo barrel racing competitions and that I would do a blog about my experiences.  I was invited by a fellow photographer, Glynn Thrower (Ropes & Barrels Photography), to tag along as he went about his business of photographing these rodeo events.  I definitely had a lot of fun, learned a whole bunch and want to do it again.

Let me try to explain what Barrel Racing is.  {excerpts from Wikipedia} Barrel racing is a rodeo event in which a horse and rider attempt to complete a clover-leaf pattern around preset barrels in the fastest time.  It combines the horse’s athletic ability and the horsemanship skills of a rider in order to safely and successfully maneuver a horse through a clover leaf pattern around three barrels placed in a triangle (~100ft apart) in the center of an arena.  Competitors range in age from pre-teens to senior citizens, both female and male, although the vast majority are female.  OK, enough of that, if you want just click the barrel racing link to learn the details.

For me, it was a photography rich environment, with lots of action and sights.  What was very interesting to me was the sequence of images I was capturing as the riders went through the whole course, and this is what I want to share with you all today.  The challenge was how to do this without filling up this blog with 75 pictures, so what I decided to do was turn the image sequences into video slide-shows.  Today I’m going to share 6 of these video sequences with you (I have many more).  To watch them just click on the ‘Play’ symbol for each video.
{NOTE: these videos may not play on Apple devices as they are Flash format, SORRY}

This first video is a short sequence of a young lady making the turn around “barrel three”.  You’ll notice her lips are puckered into a kiss pretty much the whole time.  I finally asked a competitor about it and she said they are making kissing sounds to the horse to signal it to go fast.

This young lady (I’m thinking pre-teen) was as focused and serious about her races as any of the adults I saw.  She was very skilled, in-control and turned in consistently good times.

The following video sequence is the same adult lady in two different barrel races that I’ve combined into one video clip.  I watched her race many times while I was there and she was always in control, sitting tall and poised but moving very fast.  Also notice how dressed-up/blinged-out she is, this was a very common sight among the female competitors.

Losing the cowboy hat was a common occurance, they all wear them when they start the race but quite a few cross the finish line without them.  From my perspective as a photographer, I thought the long flowing hair added a lot of flair to the images.

Staying in the saddle is one of the challenges that all the riders face.  When those horses charge out of the barrel turn, they are going full tilt and hanging onto the saddle horn is a very necessary practice.  Check the air this young lady gets when they came charging out from barrel three.

For this last video sequence, here’s a young lady as she races around all three barrels.  Look at the determination in that face.

Thank you for letting me share my photography with you.

David Gralian
david@davidgralian.com
www.davidgralian.com

My images for sale HERE.

photography info: Canon 7D camera with Canon 70-200mm f2.8 lens, hand-held.  Images processed using Adobe Lightroom, video sequences using Windows Live Movie Maker.

Now You See It, Now You Don’t

Tuesday, February 21st, 2012 at 5:22 pm VIEW 6 comments

My wife (Christy) and I spent most of last week “camping” out in the desert just to get away for a bit.  Now when I say “camping”, I don’t mean “roughing it”, I mean we took our 30 foot 5th wheel trailer with all the comforts of home (e.g., full kitchen, Keurig coffee maker, forced air heat, hot shower, toilet, full bedroom) and we enjoyed some fine dining (e.g., lobster dinner, steak dinner, fine wine) not to mention sitting around a campfire in the evening.  During the day we’d go hiking in the desert and then take the ATV/quad out for exploratory rides.  Needless to say we had a great time of it.

There are plenty of photography opportunities out there, so I thought I’d share a few of the images I captured.

The first two, I thought were fun and interesting, are of a butterfly that was flitting around and would land on some rocks/boulders. It had these beautiful red-orange and black wings which made it stand-out very nicely against the color of  the rocks.
>> click on image to further enlarge them <<

but what I thought was neat was when it became startled/alarmed (like when a photo-nut is sneaking up on it), it would fold it’s wings up and pretty much disappear against the rock with it’s natural camoflage.
Now you see it, Now you don’t.

The sunrises and sunsets are quite stunning in the desert, set against the desert foliage/cactus, mountains and clouds.  Here’s a sunrise that has it all.

Here’s a gorgeous sunset,

and when I looked behind me, here’s what the sunset was doing to the eastern sky.

The mid-day landscape scenery is just as captivating.

Once again, thank you for letting me share my photography with you.  Feel free to comment.

If there is anyone you feel would enjoy seeing this blog, please forward it to them.
If you would like to be put on a email notification of future blog posts, just send me your email address.

More of my images can be viewed and purchased HERE.

Any questions, please email me.

David Gralian
david@davidgralian.com
www.davidgralian.com

photography info:
Butterfly images: Canon 7D camera with Canon 100-400mm lens, processed using Adobe Lightroom 3.
Sunrise & Sunset images: Canon 1DsM3 camera with Canon 24-105mm lens, 5 frame HDR composition processed using NIK HDR efex Pro software and Adobe Photoshop.

Boots and Spurs

Monday, February 13th, 2012 at 10:02 am VIEW 12 comments

OK, so it’s been 3+ months since I last made a blog post …. well enough whining and excuses, here’s a new blog post.

The past two weekends I’ve been photographing rodeo type events, specifically Barrel Racing competitions.  A fellow photographer, Glynn, invited me to join him as he went about his business of photographing barrel racing and calf roping < www.ropesandbarrels.com >.  This was a whole lot of fun, quite challenging and very interesting to photograph, but all that’s for a different blog post (how’s that for a hook to get you watching for the next blog posts).  While I was there, something else caught my eye, Boots & Spurs.  What a variety of boots-spurs there are roaming around, as varied as the folks wearing them, an integral part of this whole cowboy/girl society.  Well, for the fun of it, I started photographing the various boots-spurs I saw around me.  I have to say, the folks were quite agreeable when I told them that I wanted to photograph their boots & spurs, they were all for it.  I also captured photographs surreptitiously so as to not spoil the authenticity of the moment or to capture it before it disappeared.   So let me share with you some of the images I’ve put together.

The first image is a surreptitious photograph of a women sitting on the railing, holding a cowboy hat and her boots propped on the railing below.
>> click on the images to enlarge them <<

I’ve also been working with a new piece of software for creating black & white images, here’s my first pass at it.

Let me share three more “Boots & Spurs” color and black & white images.

The second set of images are of a women with her feet/boots propped-up on the back of the bench in front of her.  She was happy to pose her boots-spurs for me.

The third set of images are of a woman who was sitting on her horse and when I asked, she cheerfully positioned her boots so I could photograph them with the spurs.

The last image is of two pre-teen boys who were sprawled-out with their boots propped up on the bench in front of them.  They were humored at my request to photograph their boots, but were happy to oblige.

Let me know what you think of the images, color versus black & white.

Also, I’ve opened an extension to my website to sell my photography.  Right now I have two galleries, one for Limited Edition Images and one for Open Edition Images.  You can view them by going to my website and selecting the gallery link for purchasing images or more directly by selecting this web-link < www.davidgralian.zenfolio.com >.  Check it out, let me know what you think about it.  It’s a “Work-In-Progress”, so any suggestions/thoughts/critique are welcome, just send me an email.

Once again, it’s my pleasure to share my photography with you, I hope you’ve enjoyed them.

David Gralian
david@davidgralian.com
www.davidgralian.com

photography info: Canon 1DsM3 camera with Canon 24-105mm lens and Canon 7D camera with 70-200mm lens.  Images processed using Photoshop CS5 and Nik Software.

Secret Beach

Monday, October 31st, 2011 at 12:10 pm VIEW 9 comments

Last summer while traveling along the Oregon coast, I was told by a local about a very photographic beach the locals call “Secret Beach”.  Fortunately he also told me about the location (but alas I’m sworn to secrecy).

A short quarter mile walk down a fairly easy trail brings you to this gorgeous view.  I made this journey just before sunrise so I could be there as the sun’s rays lit the beach in it’s golden light.
>> you can click on the pictures to enlarge them as well as step through them <<

However, to get to the beach you do have climb down a fairly steep 25 foot slope.
This is this stream and waterfall you see as you are about to descend this slope.

When you do get down to the beach, you’ll find a beautiful wide clean sand beach with rock formations sitting off of the beach.
It really is a wonderful place.

You are surrounded by beauty all-around, all you have to do is look.

There is another stream that flows down to and through the main beach.

At the south end of the beach there is another beach that can really only be reached during a “minus low-tide” by crossing the channel shown here to the left past the rock with the trees at the top.

Once there, you’ll find another large beach with more treasures to enjoy.

From this second beach, you can access this tunnel in the rock which is a lot of fun to check out.

Caution, don’t spend too much time at this second beach because when the tide comes back in the access route gets filled with water and it could be a wet and slippery crossing back to the main beach.  I know because I had to wade back in knee deep water carrying my camera gear trying not to slip or get knocked down by waves and fall into the water, happily I made the crossing while only getting my shoes and pant legs wet.  If you wait too long the water can be waist or even chest deep.

At the end of my visit, as I started my short hike back out to the road, I turned around to enjoy the view one more time, vowing to return again.

Thank you for letting me share some of my photography from this special “secret” place with you.

Feel free to comment.

David Gralian
david@davidgralian.com
www.davidgralian.com

photography info:  all of these images, except for 2, are multiple exposure High Dynamic Range (HDR) compositions using the Photomatix HDR software and finished using the Tonal Contrast filter from Nik Software.

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