Pictures & Words | Jim Kofron

A new visitor to the pond.

Sun, 25 Jul 2010 19:37:41 -0500

Jen calls him "Mr. Big". Hopefully he's not having fish for dinner…

Back to the Dogs: Shiloh the Field Spaniel

Sun, 25 Jul 2010 17:08:28 -0500

Grace made a deal with one of her field spaniel friends: we'd end up taking a 3 month old puppy for a couple weeks, and then switch and take the sibling for another couple weeks. This was to give them some time apart (a good thing for the young adolescent dogs), as well as to do a little training with them. Celeste was the first to come and visit, and she was a huge hit—especially with the boys! I'll have to dig up some of the photos of her later. Shiloh is her sibling, and she's been a blast to have around the house. She's very sweet, definitely a daddy's girl, and she loves to play with the other dogs (and a few of the cats as well).

Today was a chance to give the new Sigma SD15 a little workout. Continuous focus works much better on this model than it does on the SD14, and I really like the colors coming out of the camera.

Here she is in action:

And posing with Noah

She has quite the nose!

Here she is wrestling with the other 'puppy' of the house, Stewart!

And here's Stewart giving some of it back…

But be careful with that end—those teeth are sharp!

And here she is in a calmer moment…

She's a keeper. Her new owners are going to be very happy with her!

The American Southwest: Epilogue

Sun, 27 Jun 2010 18:35:31 -0500

It's been a month since I've returned from this trip. I want to keep referring to it as 'a trip of a lifetime', but I'm hoping that's wildly inaccurate. I want to go back. Soon! And many more times!! One of the most interesting aspects of my sharing of this trip is that my wife really wants to go along next time. Maybe not for two weeks, but she's just amazed at the beauty and wonder of the places that we visited. That, and she really likes rocks. I'm so grateful that she was willing to deal with the house and livestock on her own while I went out on this trip.

A huge thank you goes to Rick Decker for arranging this trip and being such a great travel guide and partner. Rick does this fairly regularly, and I can completely understand why. It's easy to be drawn into the stark beauty, the bizarre and wonderful colors and weird formations, and the lush barrenness that we experienced. I will mention that it was nice to get back to the humidity of Wisconsin (although I'm sick of it now...). We take a lot for granted around here. Green. Lots and lots of water. Visiting this area was in many ways like visiting another world!

Speaking of the 'other world', the inhabitants were terrific. Friendly, accommodating, generous, and incredibly helpful. We were really well taken care of, and that really added a terrific dimension to our trip—one that isn't easily captured on film (or X3 sensors, as the case may be). For those unnamed friends—thank you for your wonderful and kind hospitality!

Thanks also to Kendall Gelner, who had to leave us too soon. I hope to have a chance to go shooting with you again soon (maybe it'll be in Chicago). And it was great to see Laurence again—it seemed like only last year that we were planting some rhododendrons for him in the woods... :-). And a big thank you to Sigma, for sending us lenses to test out and shoot with, as well as the preproduction SD15s.

And finally, for those of you who have had the patience to read all this rambling and go through the photos—thanks to you! I started this to share with my family and friends: I thought it might be nice to do a 'trip report'. But the response I've gotten has been better than I had ever thought. Not only family and friends, but friends of family and friends of friends. I checked my host data and saw that I had nearly 2000 unique visitors to the site for this month. My normal totals are more like 200. I hope for all of you who visited that you found something that caught your fancy. I hope that I was able to share some of the marvelous wonder of these places. And I really hope that some of you will have this same opportunity to make a trip like this. If you do—do it! I almost talked myself out of taking this trip—and I'm so glad that I didn't.

And one last thanks to Grace, who let me borrow Domo for the trip. It helped keep me connected to you all back home—especially when the cell phone wasn't working.

Jim

The American Southwest: Post 27–Drive to Vegas

Sat, 26 Jun 2010 18:58:46 -0500

On Tuesday morning, Rick and I got up and started packing the gear to head out. We knew that we needed to visit a car wash to get the Jeep clean, both inside and out. We worked on that for a while, got it in good shape, and then headed back to say goodbye to our hosts. We threw the gear into the Jeep and drove north out of Moab. But we had a plan: there were a couple stops along the way where we could shoot petroglyphs and pictographs. And that's what we did. Our first stop was off of Route 70, at a small town called Thompson Springs. Going through the town, we found the rock art with no problems. There's several groups of art in this area, some date from the Archaic period (7000 BC), some from the Barrier Canyon period (2000 BC), some from the Freemont tribe (600-1200 AD) and some from the Ute tribe (1300 AD). Very easy to get to, and some of it is in good shape.

Petroglyphs are etched drawings, pictographs are painted on (I have a 50% chance of being right). These are some really cool petroglyphs.

Artwork from the early Archaic period overlaid with artwork from the late Moronic period.

Earliest painting of bad hair day.

These are cool: see the painted figure next to the etched figures.

After this, we headed back to Thompson Springs (named after Thomson and Thompson, the detectives in the Tintin series by Hergé). The town had some interesting older abandoned buildings, so we took a few minutes to shoot 'downtown'.

After Chunsum shot a covered bridge in Vermont and treated it like this, I've been waiting for my opportunity!

A more reasonable exposure.

Neither the gift shop nor the cafe were open.

From here, we continued on 70 (actually we went 'back' in the other direction), to find another set of pictographs. We got off on a 'Ranch Exit', and pulled over and tried to figure out where to go. We had a guide book, but it wasn't exactly specific. As we were debating, this 50-some year old guy drives up (in a green Jeep). No shirt, scruffy beard. We asked if he knew where the petroglyphs were. He said sure, let me give you a hand. He got up out of his seat, and then I noticed the laptop mounted next to him on the passengers side. And the camera. And he went to the back and grabbed a couple BLM maps, and started to highlight them. We had run into a ranger! He was great and gave us a lot of good information (in fact, we wouldn't be able to see everything on the list). We would have never found this place without his help! After a decent drive (about 30 minutes), we got to our destination.

Did the ancient Anasazi know Domo?

This was the last stop we made on the trip (unless you count Subway). We had a blast driving through some really pretty country on our way to Las Vegas. Rick came up with a great idea for a guide book, but I'm not going to give it away. We eventually rolled into Las Vegas. We found a FedEx to ship the cases of lenses back to Sigma. We then headed out to his hotel, and as we got there, we were treated to a spectacular sunset!

The foreground in this picture is some of the ugliest stuff you've ever seen, so this treatment works very well!

I got showered and changed, and in a few more hours I was on the redeye back to Milwaukee. Unbelievable!

The American Southwest: Post 26–What's pink and shows up in a bunch of photos?

Sat, 26 Jun 2010 12:09:50 -0500

Taken on the morning of our trip to Klondike Bluffs, Domo hangs out in our host's kitchen.

Domo by the front door.

Domo chillin' outside. He seems to be happiest in shrubbery…

Domo on one exceptionally dirty Jeep. He looks exactly like a car sponge here!

Getting ready for the morning trip!

Domo by Tower Arch (he needed help standing).

Domo at Eye of the Whale arch.

And Domo at the Arches entrance sign. He had an outstanding trip, but really could use a bath!