Visiting Monument Valley with the Grandkids

I have a habit of revisiting fabulously gorgeous places. Some have a magnetic attraction that just keep me coming back.

Each fall I ferry Mom’s car to Arizona and then back to Michigan in the spring. When I can make the arrangements, I ask one of our grandkids to come along to keep me company and in turn share some wonderful sites with them.

The small town of Kayenta, AZ lies along the route between Phoenix and Michigan. A few miles north of the town along the Arizona/Utah border is Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park – a most unique and eye-popping location. There you will leisurely drive along the 17-mile dirt road to view a multitude of amazing cliffs, buttes and mesas.

These photos were taken at a spot with with either the iconic West Mitten Butte or Merrick Butte in the distance.

Taken April 2011

Taken July 2014

Taken Nov 2014

Taken Apr 2015

Taken Apr 2018

Taken Apr 2019

The photos are a great way for me to remember this magnificent area. Hopefully the grandkids will recall their visit in years to come.

Instant Photography – prints while you shoot

At the Wedding and Portrait Photography International Conference & Expo held earlier in February, I couldn’t help but notice several attractive displays at the huge Fujifilm booth.
Fujifilm has been producing instant photo cameras since before the turn of the century (2000) as a successor to the groundbreaking Polaroid line. Their most popular model is the Instax 70 Mini which comes in six vivid colors – white, yellow, blue, gold, red and black. All of these cameras feature auto focus, auto exposure, self-timer, fill flash and tripod socket. They also have a convenient “selfie” mode. Fujifilm’s line of instant photograph cameras are an attractive addition for enhancing wedding, reunion, or party events. Make the rounds among the guests with one of these cameras and there’s an exciting picture for them to see.
Instax Mini film is packaged in sets to produce 10 – 62mm x 46mm photos – about the size of a credit card. In addition to photographs with white borders, the packages of film can be purchased with these designs and colors: black, sky blue, rainbow, candy pop, stained glass, shiny star, comic, air mail, stripe, and Hello Kitty. There is also a monochrome film package for producing black and white photos.	Here’s a photo of me taken with a colorful border. It takes about 90 seconds from pressing the shutter release until the photograph is fully “developed”.
Here’s a couple of wedding displays that were created from Instax cameras.
The suggested price of Instax 70 Mini is $110. The Instax Mini Film sells for about $15 for 2 x 10-exposure packages. There is also an Instax Wide 300 model camera which can take instant photos that are double wide: 62mm x 92mm. For more information about the Instax line of cameras, please visit Fujifilm.

 

 
Written by: Arnie Lee

 

 

---

 

 

A “must-have” for the pool owner

For nearly thirty years my wife has been after me to build a swimming pool in our yard. Finally, I sort of succumbed to her pressure two years ago. But instead of building one, we found another home that already had a built-in pool.

I have to admit that the swimming pool has been a great addition for the family, especially for the grandkids who drop in regularly to cool off. This being our second summer as pool owners, we’ve hosted many ad hoc combination swim/BBQ dinners. This in turn has given me lots of opportunities to photograph the kids in action.

Late in 2013 I added a neat camera to my growing collection of equipment. The Nikon 1 AW1 had just been introduced as the first rugged mirrorless, interchangeable lens camera. The feature that won me over was the AW1’s underwater capability. Without having to use a bulky and expensive housing this compact unit is usable down to 49 feet. Additionally, it is shockproof from falls up to 6 feet and can operate in temperatures as low as 15 degrees F. Along with the camera, I opted for two lenses: a zoom 11-27.5mm (30-74mm equivalent) and a fixed 10mm (27mm equivalent).

For extra protection, I ordered two accessories: the orange silicone protective jacket and the convenient hand strap.

 

Here’s a sampling of how I use the AW1:

 

teaching one of the young ones to swim

a very cold and wet whitewater trip

 

underwater action	a pair of grandkids
lounging on top	half submerged, half above water

 

 

As an old school shooter, I’m both comfortable and used to messing around with the camera settings. However with the AW1, I’ve come to use it almost as a point-and-shoot camera. Of course the overwhelming number of images that I’ve shot have been in and around the pool, usually with lots of sun. Although I’ve haven’t changed the ISO, white balance, aperture nor shutter speed on the AW1, the photos have turned out well.

For those occasions when the natural light is low, pop up the built-in flash which works underwater too. Press the red-dotted button and you’re shooting movies – either above water or below water. And of course I can change lenses from the zoom to the fixed wide-angle.

 

All in all, I have found the AW1 great not only in and around the water, but it performs well on dry land too.

 

 
Written by: Arnie Lee

 

 

---

 

---

 

Just Faces

Here’s a small album of pictures that show you that Summer is here.

 

---

 

 

---

 

 

---

 

 

---

 

 

---

 

 

---

 

 

---

 

 

---

 

 

---

 

 

---

---

 

Documenting the Memories

I have to admit that I like vacations.

I especially like the ones where we drive and see many different scenic parts of our vast country. Having just returned from another such jaunt, I’ve already recovered from being away from home these past few weeks. Here’s a look back to some of the photos that I took on the trip.

On this vacation we drove some 6300 miles and took in some wonderfully gorgeous areas including the Tetons, Yellowstone, Lake Tahoe, Yosemite, San Diego, Phoenix, Grand Canyon, Monument Valley, Mesa Verde and finally Rocky Mountain National Park.

My wife Kris and I left Grand Rapids and at this time in our lives, instead of traveling with our children we had four grandkids in tow. One of our goals was to drop off two of the grandkids in Reno. But these two also had a wish to see Yellowstone, so we set the GPS to guide us to Old Faithful. Afterwards we would meet up with several of our adult children and additional grandchildren as we made our way to additional destinations.

Naturally I had several cameras with me to record our travels. And while I thoroughly enjoy photographing the amazing mountains, canyons, monuments, waterways, forests, sites and scenery, more importantly are the photos that let me recall the precious time that we spent with our family.

Here’s some of the pictures that illustrate those moments.

Admiring Oxbow Bend in Grand Teton Nat’l Park	Waiting for Old Faithful in Yellowstone

In awe of Mammoth Hot Springs in Yellowstone	cooling off in the Firehole River in Yellowstone

at the swimming pool in Reno	aggressive paddleboarding at Lake Tahoe

inspecting the tufa at Mono Lake	colorful wildflowers of Tuolumne Meadows, Yosemite

surfing the Pacific in San Diego	catching a mermaid in San Diego

picking grapefruit in Phoenix	sitting on the edge of Grand Canyon

among the wonders of Monument Valley	straddling NM, AZ, UT and CO at Four Corners

As you can see, we visited some very gorgeous landscapes: incredible mountains, pristine wildernesses, jaw-dropping gorges, crystal clear lakes, raging rivers, enormous farmlands, five sensational national parks – just a vast array of features that make up our amazing country. And while I have many more images that record these places that we visited, I’m just as content to see the faces of the grandkids, many of which we get to see but once a year.

house warming at Mesa Verde

How lucky we are to be able to capture the smiles on their faces like this.	above the snow and clouds at Rocky Mountain Nat’l Park

 

 
Photographs are certainly a powerful way to record memorable events.

Whether I’m on vacation or not, I try to keep the most meaningful memories as part of my photos.

 

 

Written by: Arnie Lee

 

 

---

 

 

A case against Stop Action

The usual “rule” for photography is to choose a shutter speed fast enough to eliminate the jitter or bluriness when the subject moves.

But sometimes ignoring the rule leads to more interesting photographs.

Here’s a few examples.

This little girl is practicing to become a major league baseball player. She’s winding up, ready to let ‘er rip. By using a slower shutter speed, can’t you feel the breeze as she whips the ball towards the batter? Here the shutter speed was 1/50th second. Had I used a faster shutter speed, her left arm would have been frozen.		Here she’s enjoying the outdoor swingset. By itself, the photo shows no movement. But seeing her at the apogee (highest point) of the swing, doesn’t it conjure the feeling of motion? Recall that at the top of her swing, the velocity is zero – enabling you to use a relatively slow shutter speed to “capture” the motion.
Again we see a subject on a swingset but this time upside down. The relatively slow shutter speed of 1/100th second stops the action at the top of her swing. In this case, the pose with her legs flailing about helps to introduce movement. And see how her hair is flying thereby adding to the feeling of action in the image.		A final example is this photo that lets me see the speed of the hoop and just about hear the air whirling around. For this photo, I patiently waited for a moment when the young girl’s face was in a relatively fixed position while at the same time her arms were wildly gyrating within the hoop. Then CLICK.

 
 
Use your camera’s shutter speed priority mode. Try setting the shutter speed to 1/100th of a second or slower – e.g. 1/25 or 1/50. If you use an even slower shutter speed, you may end up with blurry photos since you may not be able to hold the camera steady enough without introducing camera shake.

With just a little practice you can make your photos move.

 
 
Written by Arnie Lee
 
 
 

---

 
 
 

You May Be Pleasantly Surprised By What You See

 

One of our granddaughters has been interested in picturetaking for a several years. Ezra who is eight years old is now on her second camera – her first camera was a low-cost point-and-shoot model but it didn’t quite survive a washing machine cleaning. So now she’s using a “tough” model that claims to be shockproof, waterproof and freezeproof.

Not long ago, she asked me to copy the pictures from her camera and recharge the battery. As I was copying the images from the SD card, I realized that these were photos that she had taken months ago. The earliest ones dated back to last summer’s vacation, a few other road trips and other events since then.

I studied the more than three hundred of her thumbnails. Frankly, I came away quite impressed with many of her photos. They showed her ability to pick varied subjects, frame carefully from her lowered point of view (she’s about 40″ tall) and snap at an interesting time.

I thought it would be helpful if I picked a few dozen of her photos to show to you with an quick explanation of when and/or where they were taken (as far as I can remember). For the most part the photos are unretouched with some cropping.

Without further ado, here are some of the “Best of Ezra”

On one of the school outings, her class visited a nature preserve. Here’s some of the flora that she caught her attention.	It looks as if Ezra also caught this yellowjacket sucking nectar from the flowers.
At an art festival she apparently liked the metal horse sculpture racing in the river.	This is another display of artfully decorated eggshells
After viewing the eggshells, Ezra talked to and photographed the artist.	This artist was apparently tired after talking to Ezra and other patrons for hours on end. Ezra captured her stealing a little rest.
One of the stops on our summer vacation was in Yellowstone National Park. This is one of the bubbling geyers in the north end of the park.	And you can see that tiny details don’t escape her either.
I’m surprised that the squirrel allowed her to get so close to her. She took five other photos at this close range too.	During play, she stopped to take a picture of her younger sister’s bedroom.
Inside she wanted a closeup of the standing guitar.	Here’s one of Ezra’s schoolmates. She frequently takes her camera to school to records the class trips.
This is one way for her to record a drawing that she enjoyed creating.	It was fun for her to photograph her sister’s feet.
…Or the other way – keep your head pointed upward.	Sometimes it’s interesting to keep your head pointed downward.
This picture shows that she’s keenly aware of the change of seasons.	On a cross-country trip we first stopped in Mesa Verde where she saw this mule deer grazing by the roadside.
Bright flowers nearby in southwestern Colorado.	At the Native American museum in Tuba City, AZ.
As you can see below, Ezra really put her camera to work in the Grand Canyon.
Grandpa	Grandma

 

Ezra has promised to take good care of the camera. It’s an Olympus Model 6020 and is very rugged. It’s been dropped many times and just like the advertisements claim – it remains fully operational.

And as you can see, an eight year old is fully capable of capturing memorable images. Give the kid a camera!

 

Written by Arnie Lee

 

 

 

 

and keeping the environment “a thing of importance”

Our family has been enjoying the outdoors for many years. Some of our adult children were mere babies when we trekked long distance to experience and camp in far away places like Mono Lake, Yellowstone and Acadia. We were attracted by tight knit forests, tumbling waterfalls, golden meadows, majestic mountains, winding hiking trails, abundant wildlife, trickling streams and shimmering nighttime skies.

The love of nature has been in my blood from childhood. At the University of Michigan I studied natural resource economics. The year was 1970 and the call for ecology had gone out with the first Earth Day and notable proponents such as author Rachel Carson, politician Senator Gaylord Nelson, futurist Buckminster Fuller, economist E.F. Schumacher. With my studies, I was counting on a future career that would revolve around conservation and ecology. But as often happens, this career plan didn’t come to pass. Nonetheless, I’ve been trying to keep nature and the environment close to my heart all the years since.

Wouldn’t you guess that photography has been one of my hobbies also since childhood? So it’s only natural that I would arm myself with a camera as our family traveled far and wide. And while family snapshots comprise an important part of my picture taking activities, the other part are the photos that I take to record the many amazing places that we visit.

These are all “peopleless” photographs. They’re meant to illustrate the beauty, scale, magnificence and sometimes fragility of some of our nation’s most iconic vistas and scenery.

Here are some of those picturesque places that we’ve experienced in our travels.
 

---

Sunset Point, Bryce Canyon NP	Temple of Sinawara, Zion NP
Oxbow Bend, Grand Teton NP	Snake River, Grand Teton NP
Zabriskie Point, Death Valley NP	Norris Geyser Basin, Yellowstone NP
Joshua Tree NM	snow geese flyout, Bosque del Apache NWR
Devil’s Golf Course, Death Valley NP	West Thumb, Yellowstone NP
Lake, Yellowstone NP	Upper Yellowstone Falls, Yellowstone NP
Spider Rocks, Canyon de Chelly NM	Olympic NP
Devil’s Tower NM

 

---

 

As I view this photo, I can feel the mist rising from the roaring waterfall. When I look at that photo, I find myself breathing in the scent of an immense douglas fir forest. In a third photo, my eyes are following the billowing clouds passing over a craggy, red rock canyon. And that photo has me marveling at the way the bright, fall colors accent the distant snow-covered peaks. Yes, all of these photos serve to remind me how wondrous our environment really is.

But I haven’t completed documenting my encounters with the outdoors just yet. And so I’m determined to continue experiencing the environment in person. I somehow prefer the phrase “experiencing the environment” rather than “capturing the environment” even though I may be recording the scene with a camera.

Whether it’s a national, state, county or city park or any other natural setting, I will treat the environment with respect.

I remain committed to practicing “leave no trace photography” – disturb neither our environment nor our wildlife.

Written by Arnie Lee
 
 

Our National Parks As you can see from the photos above, I’m a avid user of our National Park System. It’s extensive, consisting of almost 400 parks, monuments, landmarks, recreation areas, shorelines, trails, historic sites and wildlife refuges and encompassing some 85 million acres. Each year 275 million of us outdoor lovers visit these places. Entrance fees vary by unit, but an $80 annual pass is a bargain if you plan to visit several parks. Senior citizens 62 years and older can purchase a lifetime pass for only $10. Find our more about our National Parks here.

 
 

---

Simply put, my picturetaking falls into one of two categories: photos taken for “others” and photos taken for personal use.

Photos that I take for others are usually jobs in which the style of the photos is dictated by the needs and desires of the client. These may be a paying client or a freebie client such as a daughter’s birthday party or a sister’s passport photo. She may need a business head shot or he may want an illustrative photo of his industrial machine. A group may want me to photograph an evening event, a restaurant desires closeups of prepared dishes for its new menu or a school a recording of the championship basketball game. Regardless of whether it is a paying or a free transaction, the client generally has a lot of input as to how the completed photos will serve the end goal.

On the other hand, when I take photos for personal use I’m the client. I am free to shoot however, whereever and whatever I like. And as you might expect, this is where I feel the greatest freedom.

While it’s exciting to go on a special outing dedicated to photography, it’s not often that I can squeeze the time into my somewhat hectic schedule. But by keeping a camera nearby, I make it a habit of looking for quick opportunities to sneak in a picture of two.

I get a lot of pleasure photographing “everyday” things such as kids, pets, garden and the like. These are subjects that are close by so I don’t have to make special arrangements to shoot them.

	I get a big kick taking pictures of the grandkids. Here’s one that’s learning to eat her spaghetti elegantly.
	This pet is part of the family. I caught him as he was taking a breather after running his head off for the past 30 minutes.
	Sometimes it pays to look up(ward). This is a majestic sycamore tree at a nearby home. It looks naked because it sheds it bark regularly.
	These colorful day lilies arrive each Spring in our front yard. I shot this one soon after an early morning shower left a few drops.
	From a distance the furrows in the field look boringly straight and parallel. Closer up I can see that the terrain isn’t flat as a pancake and makes for a nice visual.
	You may be surprised by the things that you can spot around the neighborhood. This vintage auto was sitting in an empty lot. Great color and great restoration.

---

I’ll leave you with this reminder: When you’re the client, you have the freedom to shoot whenever and whatever you’d like. Don’t fall into the “no time today” trap. Nor should you believe that the camera is only for special occasions. With a little preparation (i.e. keeping your camera close by), you can surely find a few everyday subjects to photograph.

Written by: Arnie Lee

 

I’ve thoroughly enjoyed photography since I was a youngster. This in turn is the reason that my picturetaking has spanned more than five decades.

I categorize the photos that I take into one of two “camps” – the snapshots and the memorable photos. This article is the first in a series of articles that I’ve called “About this photo” to draw attention to a few of those memorable photos that may be hiding in a shoebox or on your hard drive.

Unlike some people who have photographic memories, I instead have memories about certain photographs.

Most of these special photographs were taken long, long ago. They are indelible and remain riveted in my mind. And so, in this “About this photo” series, I’d like to key in on one of these unforgettable photographs to bring you back to the time and circumstances under which it was taken.

Taken late summer 1970, this is a photo of my girlfriend along Lake Michigan. We spent many weekends at this beach that summer. Usually the beach was very crowded, but on this cloudy and windy day, we had the run of the sand and shore to ourselves. The red lighthouse was a familiar site to anyone who knows this area and remains a key attraction to the beach today. It’s a lucky coincidence that my girlfriend’s jacket was about the same shade of red as the lighthouse. The reason that this photo is etched in my mind is that I’ve been married to this lovely lady for some 40 years now.

---

Now let’s skip forward some 40+ years. This photo was taken this past summer, barely two months ago. Here we have two young girls having fun at the same location on Lake Michigan. You can see the same red lighthouse along the water albeit at a slightly different angle. These are two of our young grandchildren. As we were walking along the beach I was reminded of the 1970 photograph when we approached the red lighthouse. I asked the two girls to pose on the bench in the foreground. This photo captures the familiar feelings of warmth and affection that has somehow remained with me for 40 years.

---

Along the way, I’ve taken a huge number of snapshots. However, the number of memorable photos that I’ve taken is far smaller. Yet it’s the memorable ones that have a magical ability to steer emotions, feelings and pleasure into our minds, even years later. Simply amazing.

 

Written by Arnie Lee

Newer Posts »