Arizona Treks

We took another trip to the Rim this weekend. We left about 2PM Friday afternoon and were all set up before 5PM. We had supper and the wind started picking up and the clouds moved in. No shooting on Friday, and it was a nice storm. There was no rain with that one. But a few hours after that storm blew over, the next one hit in the middle of the night. Lots of rin there but by morning it was clear enough to do some shooting. We stayed in the same campsite we have been staying in. This was the last time there however as I have pretty well worked the area and keep catching myself shooting the same scenes again.

We took a walk through an area that I had been through several times already. It was nice but after a while the desire for food and coffee was overpowering. But it was difficult to leave it because something about the light was great. Maybe it had something to do with the storm, but it seemed clean and strong. The highlights almost seemed to sparkle and the shadows were clear. After breakfast we decided to take a walk to the West to check out another area. It is a couple of miles away and the light was starting to get harsh so I brought the Mamiya rather than the 4X5. It was a really nice walk, we found another nice area to work and also found an old elk skull. We brought the skull home to hopefully do some still life work with.

We got back to camp about 12:30 and a storm was moving in. We had lunch and the rain started. It rained for a few hours. We took a little nap while it was raining and when it stopped, there was that beautiful light again. After doing some exploring without cameras, we went to work a ridge that we had not worked before. Then, another storm moved in. This one lasted several hours but we only got the wind. But what wind, WOW was it intense. But this morning, it was clear, almost too clear. There were very few clouds so the shooting was not as good. We left and did a little exploration on the way home.

We hope to return again this weekend but to work the area West of where we have been camping.

After doing a little research, I have discovered that this burn is part of the Dude Fire in 1990. Some firefighters lost their lives fighting it. It was caused by lightning.

One site I found describes the Rim Road (FS300) but says the Western part of the road is not recommended because of the scars on the land there. They refer to it as depressing. I find this to be a very narrow perspective. It is teaming with life, not heavily forested as it once was, but many young trees, wild strawberries, raspberries, etc. It is great to walk among the burned areas and see the way it is growing now. It is coming to life, or rather, life is returning to the area, which is encouraging and beautiful. The number of small animals is significant, we hear coyotes singing frequently, elk are abundant, sign everywhere and we frequently wake up to a herd near our camp. There are some large flocks of wild turkeys in the area. This is in no way depressing, it is nature and it is recovering nicely from the damage.

Sometimes you have to look at things through different eyes to truly see them. When I am walking in this area looking at the dead trees, my imagination works overtime. Every living thing has a distinct personality. Many times in the forest it is difficult to see the individual trees as each being different. But seeing them here shows the unique nature of each one.I often wonder what the different trees looked like before the fire. Which were the tallest, which ones stood out form the rest. It is nice to imagine what they were like.

Just a couple more from last weekend. I am loving what the 115mm wide angle lens does with the scenes there.

We took another trip up to the Rim this weekend. We left mid-day on Saturday and returned mid-day today. The last trip was before the monsoons were here and the skies were clear, that was very far from the case this trip. I have become very interested in shooting the burned areas there. Not methodically or in a documentary method, but I love the possibilities of the landscapes in the area we shot last time. Also, I took a few of the prints to show Rod and he showed me several things that were distracting. These scenes are among the most complex scenes I have ever attempted and require attention to many more details than most to keep them clean and coherent. So shooting here is a challenge and I do so like the images.

We arrived at the camp spot around 3PM and set up camp. We took a short walk so Mary could show me a fire hose she had found on the lat trip. After that we sat in the shade a bit and talked. Once it started cooling off and the light began to soften a bit, I grabbed the camera and we headed out. The plan was to do 2 walks, one in each of 2 different areas. We got started on the first one and I exposed a couple of sheets before the sun went behind some thick clouds and we finally gave up waiting so we headed back to camp.

The second walk was a bit late and I missed the light on one group of trees but I did make the photo below at sunset. Some people say B&W sunsets are not nice, I couldn’t disagree more. But I find B&W photos to be beautiful and color to be mostly distracting. I am quite pleased with the sunset below, a small area i blown out but there is texture in most of the sky area. Also the shadows rather than being silhouettes have detail. This should be fin to print.

The cloud in the East this morning were quite heavy and kept growing so I was not able to shoot much this morning either. But I am mostly pleased with what was captured. The clouds although somewhat frustrating also make for some very nice scenes.

Mary has a light schedule for the next 2 weeks so we were planning to head up in the White Mountains on each of the Fridays and camp there for the weekends. But we have changed out minds at least for the next weekend, we will be returning to the Rim and doing more Burned series.

On saturday we walked between 5 and 6 miles before lunch. The first walk was about 3 miles and we went some ways off the road in a burned area. I took the 4X5 on that trip and made a few negatives, mostly closeups of threes. The next walk I brought the Holga. We went in a different direction in an area that has few signs of a burn and many mature living trees so it was a totally different area. After lunch we took another walk exploring yet another area. There were a couple more walks later and I made a few more negatives with the 4X5. Just before bed we took one last walk and saw Payson in the distance. There is an interesting stand of trees that had a very interesting feel in the dim shadowless light of early evening. This time I had no camera so no photos were made but I went back the following morning and photographed the trees. It is a nice photo, one that I plan to print but of course in the morning light it has a totally different feel.

We will not be taking our usual July trip this year so we plan to do several weekend trips. This was an initial trip to see how we would do and it worked out very well, except for the flat tires that is. I also learned a bit about photographing the area and some things to do on exploration trips.

The 2 photos here were made on the walk I took on Sunday morning. I was alone with the 4X5 and had enough film to make several photos. I walked up the road for a ways then went into one of the burned areas we scouted on Saturday. Several good photos were made on this walk. Although Mary is very patient, I always feel rushed when there is another person with me so going alone is nice.

Both of these were mades using 115mm lens. I wanted to get a bit wider view and in some cases like the top one, get the perspective distortion from the wide-angle lens.