I just upgraded my Spot 1 to Spot 2. I haven’t tried it out yet but I’ve been using the Spot 1 for about a year every time I go out shooting.

In case you don’t know what Spot is, it’s a GPS reciever and communication satelite transmitter. The GPS tracks your location and the transmitter sends signals to the nearest communication satelite which is then downloaded to a ground station. From there a message is sent to the email addresses and cell phones you specify.

There are 4 kinds of messages on the Spot 2 – checking in, custom, help and SOS. I’m using the custom message to rub it in to my family that I’m out shooting and they’re not.

I just finished configuring the new device and am ready to give it a spin. But here’s a link with a review that gets me excited about what to expect.

http://hardcoreoutdoor.com/2009/11/18/new-and-improved-spot-satellite-messenger–spot-2.aspx

I can’t wait.

I was fortunate enough to have all three photographs accepted for the Orange County Fair this year.  And I was very surprised to learn that all three had won awards.  To today I finally made it out to the fair and sure enough they all had ribbons.

Death Valley Reflections had an Honorable Mention ribbon.

Bristlecone Moon also had an Honorable Mention ribbon.

And Virgin River and the Watchman had a 2nd Place ribbon.

You can see more of my work at http://RalphNordstromPhotography.com

One thing I haven’t done at all really is play around with different ink jet papers.  My thinking is simple – there is so much to master in all the tools I use – Photoshop, Lightroom, etc. – and so many techniques to learn that adding one more variable is something I just wasn’t interested in doing.

I made the decision right at the start to go with matte papers.  The paper I chose was Epson Enhanced Matte, now renamed to Premium Presentation Paper – Matte.  The decision was based on my desire to produce photographs that look more like paintings.  A glossy or even luster surface shouts “photograph!”  But people don’t expect to see photographs on matte surfaces.  At shows, people frequently ask if my works are paintings.

So Epson Enhanced Matte paper has worked out very well for me and I still stand by my original decision.  It’s my paper of choice.  But I had no idea what I was getting into.

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Rain is on the way.  We’ve been warned about a huge storm that will hit over the weekend.  The National Forest people have been mulching the hillsides.  The hope is it will at least slow erosion and runoff.  I talked to a couple of National Forest rangers yesterday and it’s not seed. 

In the past they have seeded burned areas with rye grass which, being non-native, has caused more long term problems (in the form of a greater fire threat) than the short term ones it solved.  So they’re mulching the hillsides instead.  We should get a good test of how that works this weekend.

Click to enlarge

Use of Spot Healing Brush

I have an image that is a shot of the Eastern Sierra at sunrise.  There are gorgeous clouds hanging over the peaks.  The early morning sun lit them on fire along with the mountains.  It was amazing!

My exposure was pretty close to being right on.  And yet, there was one part of the clouds that technically wasn’t clipped but was very close.  The RGB numbers were not 100% but were in the high 80% to low 90%.  The thing was there wasn’t much detail and it really stood out.

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In photography one of the most powerful means of growing is through interactions with the other photographers we meet, be they in workshops or in the field.  Not only do you learn from artists who create amazing photographs but you also build friendships.

One such chance meeting of an outstanding photographer and friend is Jack Graham.  We met on the banks of Mono Lake in October of 2006.  I was there by myself; he was leading a workshop.  We were shooting the South Tufa at sunrise under the harvest moon setting in the west above the imposing Sierra Nevada range.

I added the address to Jack’s blog in the blogroll.  You can also click here.

You’ll also want to be sure to check out his work.  You can click here.

I mentioned in an earlier post that I was using DxO now.  I was introduced to the product in November at the Digital Summit workshop in Zion National Park.  It looked pretty interesting and besides I got a deal I couldn’t refuse.  I waited for the release of DxO Optics Pro 5 before jumping in.  There were a lot of improvements made to version 5 that corrected some of the more serious shortcomings of version 4.

First of all, DxO works with RAW images.  And given the sorts of corrections it applies, it makes sense to use DxO before any other RAW converter like LR, ACR or Capture One.  So that’s where it comes in my workflow.  Actually, I generally import RAW images into LR first, review and rank them in LR.  When I determine the images I want to work on I then bring them into DxO and work on them there before returning to LR.

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The First Surprises 

The recovery after the burn holds one surprise after another.  The first surprise was how quickly the thistles started growing back.  They didn’t even wait for rain.  It only took a few weeks and they were sprouting.

 The second surprise was how quickly the grasses came up with just a couple of inches of rain.  And they’ve been nurtured with additional rain and are growing rapidly and spreading.

With the grasses growing the color combination of the hills was rapidly becoming green and black, not a combination of colors that I found particularly appealing.  The colors looked harsh.  I longed for the more familiar greens and browns typical of Southern California hillsides in spring (at least when we’re not in the midst of a drought year).

Well, as they say, be careful of what you wish (or long) for.  You just might get it.

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Last night marked two months since the fire came through our ‘back yard.’  Since then we’ve had about four inches of rain.  In fact, there was more rain in one storm than all of last year.  As a result the scorched hills are starting to turn green.  We’ve seen crop duster planes flying over the foothills and mountains seeding the slopes to help control erosion.

Last night’s sunset was spectacular!

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Boy, it worked out just fine, the Christmas cards I mean.  I got the card stock from Red River Paper and worked through the issues of my printer recognizing the odd paper size - 7X10.  And got the right ICC profile for the paper.  We ended up selecting their premium matte paper.  It is two-sided so I can print both the outside and inside.  Here’s how it turned out.