The Digital Photo Guy

I’m writing this update from Anza-Borrego Desert State Park where I’m getting ready to go look for wildflowers. Yesterday, on my way back from Arizona, I stopped by Joshua Tree NP and drove as far north as Conttonwood campground. There are definite signs of a spring wildflowers but they’re still pretty scrawny. The desert lupines are sparse and standing about 4″-5″ tall where past displays have been thick and lush, standing 10″-12″. There were lots of chia that looked as if they had been killed by a frost and the live ones seemed pretty forlorn.

A weathered, leathered desert rat of the female variety flagged me down and told me the road ahead was washed out. She and her older but very well maintained RV were camped just outside the south entrance to Joshua Tree NP. By her reckoning, the full spring wildflower display wouldn’t happen for for another 2-3 weeks.

To the east of JTNP, below 2000′ elevation, the bloom was in full swing. Along the freeway, I could see bladderpods, brittlebush, sand verbena, chuparosa, desert lupines, California poppies (in AZ they’re called Arizona poppies, duh!) and other SCBs (small colorful bushes).

Here are some lupines I found just outside my RV this morning as I made photos of the sun rising over the mountains to the east. The sand verbena and desert gold were along Henderson Canyon Road in Borrego Springs.

I removed a dead stalk in front of the lupines using the Clone Tool and cropped to remove the RV parked next to me. Otherwise, I just adjusted Levels. I didn’t even have to remove dust bunnies. The sand verbena and desert gold were cropped, levels adjusted and sharpened.

On my way to Bosque del Apache, NM, I stopped by JTNP to check wildflower conditions. At the southern end, most of the vegetation is nicely turning green with spots of early bloomers such as this bladderpod.

On the way home, I came across  I-8 along the southern route through Tucson. That route was already in full bloom with lots of brittle bush, sand verbena, Arizona poppy and others that I couldn’t identify at 65MPH.

Some recent reports say Anza-Borrego State Park has already started peak bloom and anyone waiting much longer may miss it. Bottom line, it looks like Joshua Tree NP around the middle of March will be perfect for that area.

If you can’t go to Anza-Borrego, consider my JTNP Spring Desert Wildflower Photoshoot on March 21 or 22.

Holy mackeral! Can you believe that it’s been nearly 2 weeks since my last update. I deserve 30 lashes with a roll of Kodak Tri-X.

I meant to update every night during my recent IPT (Instructional Photo Tour) with Artie Morris at Bosque del Apache. However, taking a workshop with Artie is a bit like boot camp. We were up at Oh-Dark-Thirty each morning and on site by 0600 (that’s 6AM for non-bird photographer types). We shot until about 1030 and then retired to the motel conference room for lunch and critiques or Photoshop sessions. Afterwards, it was back to the refuge from about 3PM until past sunset. Dinner was another marathon critique or lecture session. By the time I got to bed around 10:30PM, updating my blog was low on my list of priorities.

As I said in a previous post, if you can keep up, you’ll learn more from Artie in 3 days than you’ll learn from any other photographer in 6 months. I’ll post some photos as soon as I recover and have a chance to review about 1200 photos.

In the meantime, a former student asked about removing an object from a photo and replacing it with a similar texture. I said I would develop the steps and post them here but that plan obviously went by the wayside. I’ll try to get to it ASAP when I get home. (I’m posting this from a truck stop in Eloy, AZ).

The Comments still aren’t working because I haven’t had time to harangue my developer. I’ll get on that also when I get home.

Obviously, there was no MMT this past week while I attended Artie’s boot camp.

I’ve been immersed in WordPress and WP plug-ins for the past week and my core compentecy, digital photography, has suffered. It’s time to get back to writing about what I know and enjoy best.

I’ve been teaching a webcast Photoshop Elements class for the past 5 weeks. This coming Wednesday is the last session but there’s so much in PSE that I’ve written a short MMT (Monday Morning Tip) which can be found on the Tips & News page. MMTs are password protected because they are a benefit for registered visitors. In the future, you’ll have to register to access the MMTs page. For the moment, contact me if you want the password. There are about 80 MMTs covering Photography Gear, Composition, Software and Misc but only about 5 are uploaded at this time. I’ll upload the remainder as time permits.

This week’s MMT (2/9/09) covers a use for Selections that wasn’t covered in the PSE class. As you recall, Selections are used to isolate an area so you can constrain your edit to just a specific area. In the webcast, I demonstrated using several tools to select a flower then move that flower to another photo where it was placed in a young lady’s hair. I also showed how the flower color can be changed by constraining color changes to the selected area.

Today’s MMT shows another application that is patently obvious once you see it but may be otherwise obtuse. I hope you enjoy it and, if it interests you, sign up for the next Photoshop Elements Webcast class starting March 25 at 7:30PM Pacific Time.

On Saturday, February 7, 2009 at 4:15AM PST, my new WordPress blog-based website was launched. The Name Servers at my registrar (the guys who took my money and told ICANN to save thedigitalphotoguy.com for me) were updated to reflect the new host (the guys who took my money in exchange for disk space and computing power on their servers). Now, I have to wait 1-2 hours for my DNS change to propagate (spread) throughout the Internet so anyone typing my URL into their web browser will be directed to the new site. Think of this as changing phone numbers and waiting for the new phone directories to be printed and delivered.

My greatest concern is, of course, that my e-mail links won’t work. In 2009, anyone who can’t communicate via e-mail is “out of the loop” and most businesses live or die by their communications. Therefore, anyone reading this is requested to go to the Contact Page and send me a test message. Thanks.

While I was writing this, my new web site has come up in another tab so it’s working as far as directing people to the correct server. My test e-mails to myself haven’t yet shown up so I’m a bit concerned but hope that mail server propogation is just a bit slower.