My 2015 Vacation, Part 2 of 7

Drugs

I started staging everything for my trip a couple of days early. I figured out most of my clothing needs and shaving kit needs and packed what I could. One thing I had to take care of was getting all of my prescriptions in advance so that I had enough to last the 2 weeks.

I get my medical prescriptions through Walgreens. I contacted them about how to fill some prescriptions in advance and they told me to contact my insurance company who told me to contact my pharmacy. I love how things are getting simpler in life. My local Walgreens at 83rd Avenue and Lower Buckeye in Phoenix (yeah, a bit of a plug there) took care of everything, and even figured out a way to get me an advance on a prescription the insurance company wouldn’t allow. They were great and I appreciated their help. On the other hand, I hate taking the medications so if it hadn’t worked out I would likely have been just as happy!

 

Reservations

I had made my motel reservations for Port Angeles. In fact, I made them twice. I didn’t have the flyer from my friend Judi and the reunion committee so wasn’t aware they’d made arrangements with a motel for the reunion visitors. I looked online and decided I didn’t want to pay the almost $200 per night the Red Lion was charging so I looked around.

I ended up booking a motel room through Expedia which I’d never used. I let my friend Judi know about it and she reminded what motel that place was and how awful it is (Holiday Lodge, Port Angeles). She let me know of another inexpensive motel that another class mate uses repeatedly so I called them. They had a room available so I decided to take that and cancel the Expedia purchase. This was all on the same day (July 3rd) and Expedia charged me $40 or so to cancel the room. I won’t use them again. Yes, they did have warnings but they also had a notice that cancellations were free. Turns out they were $40 worth of "freeness".

Royal Victorian Motel, Port Angeles

I called the second place back to make my reservation, at the Royal Victorian. The woman at the desk was a very pleasant oriental gal and she was happy to chat for a bit. We made an initial arrangement and then she hesitatingly mentioned they had a cheaper room available. The catch was that it was smaller and didn’t have an air conditioner. I used to live in Port Angeles and had experience with their heat waves. I currently live in Phoenix, Arizona and have experience with the heat there. I asked her what the weather typically is like in Port Angeles and she said it gets into the 70s during the day and the 50s at night. I thought I’d be able to handle that without an air conditioner. She laughed and we changed my room to the one without the air conditioner.

The campgrounds on the Pacific coast of Washington did not take reservations. I called Bogachiel State Park and the ranger said they do fill up but they’re first come first serve.



Beachside State Park, Oregon

I also called a private campground I was interested in staying at in La Push, Washington, the Quileute Oceanside Resort. It had been many years since I’d been to La Push, over 40 years for sure. It looked like they had a great beach to take some pictures of at sunset and the gal at the resort said I didn’t need a reservation for the campsites. I decided I could take my chances because it’s only about 60 miles from that area to Port Angeles and I was sure that if nothing else I could just go to Port Angeles and get a motel room.


I made reservations at Beachside State Park and Cape Lookout State Park in Oregon, both of which offered showers and camping near the beach. The reservations were about $29 per night. I was set for most of my accommodations.



Cape Lookout State Park, Oregon

The only other night I needed to address was the first night on the coast but I wasn’t sure where that would be so I decided I would play it by ear, getting a motel room somewhere if necessary. As it turned out, I stayed in a motel, but more on that later.

 

Batteries

I also charged up all of my devices to have them ready to go. That included my Kindle, my RAVPower RP-WD01, my 4 camera batteries, my 4 Eneloop flash batteries, and my MP3 player. I ensured I had my power inverter and charger unit with me. I ensured all of my SD cards were formatted.

Final Packing

My Exploder Camping Quarters

I packed my new self inflating air mattress from REI, my sleeping bag, a blanket, and a pillow. I didn’t plan to cook while camping but took a cooler to store a few things in, a bin with a box of crackers, some Vanilla Wafers and breakfast bars and sugar free hard candy.

On Sunday, August 2nd, I had all of my stuff ready and eventually packed in the Exploder. I laid my one sport coat I was taking, a dress shirt, and slacks on top of everything and I was ready to go!

I said goodbye to my wife, my dogs, and I was off on my adventure!


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My 2015 Vacation, Part 1 of 7

This blog, or likely series of blogs, is more of a personal note and not thoroughly related to photography although photography does play a part. I mentioned this trip in my previous blog, and I elaborate more here. I wanted to write about my travels, however, and this is the best place I have to do it...

My Reasons

I had three reasons to plan and take a trip in August of 2015. First, and the least significant, is that my birthday is at the beginning of the month and I usually try to take some time off. Not for any other reason than it is a selfish present to myself and for the last couple of years I drive somewhere and take some photographs. And, there aren't any other holidays in August so I wouldn't have any time off of work without this present.

This year, however, there were two additional reasons. Important reasons.

Selfie at Seal Rock, Oregon

This year marked my 40th high school graduation anniversary and reunion from Port Angeles Senior High School in Washington. I had never been to a high school reunion, in part because I'd never received the notice or invitation, in part because I never tried to find out about the reunions in previous years, and in part because I haven't had much connection to high school classmates.

I am not a big fan of Facebook, and have many questions about how it can truly be worth much on the stock exchange, why they do some of the software design things they do, etc., but I can't deny that I would not have established a communication channel with high school classmates without it. I have become Facebook friends with a number of classmates over the previous years and have really enjoyed communicating with them and sharing pictures. It has made me FEEL. I have felt comfort, kinship, familiarity, sadness, and joy, to list a few feelings, as I’ve read about their problems, successes, and experiences in the town I went to high school as well as the other towns or cities they live in currently.

This year was also the year things have worked out well for my son Ryan and as a result he announced he and his wonderful partner Kara were going to get married in August. He and Kara had been together for some years, living in Portland, Port Townsend, and now in Suquamish, Washington which is about 65 miles from Port Angeles. They discussed it with me and set the date so that it didn’t conflict with my high school reunion to ensure I could attend. The thought of that consideration and desire makes me tear up still. I feel so very lucky to have Ryan think that highly of me especially since he lived most of his childhood with his mother.

I requested the time off early in the year and in June and July I started making plans for the trip. I took the week off leading up to the reunion, which I attended events on Friday and Saturday, August 7^th and 8^th. Ryan and Kara were getting married the following Friday, August 14^th. I took most of the week after the 14^th off to give myself time to get back to Phoenix, work on some photography post processing, and to “ease” back into returning to work.

I planned to drive the trip, heading up as much of the Pacific coast as possible with the hopes of capturing some photographs, and arriving in Port Angeles on Friday the 7^th. After the reunion I planned to go to Suquamish and spend a few days with Ryan and Kara before leaving for the wedding on Wednesday, August 12^th. I planned to stay with my sister in law Linda but as it turned out, I stayed with my daughter Jessica in Newberg, Oregon, who needed some company. I hoped to also meet some other friends while in the Newberg area before returning to Phoenix. The Microsoft “bing” map website estimated the trip at about 3,400 miles, not counting any local driving I might do.

Elmer watching me prepare for the trip

To be honest, I had some worries when planning the trip. I felt old. I hadn’t been notably outside of Arizona for maybe 5 years, and hadn’t been away from home for that amount of time since moving to Phoenix in 2001. I certainly hadn’t planned an itinerary of that scale for years. I had questions about which route to take, where to stay, how far I could drive in a day while trying to take pictures. I had a big concern about not having my dog Elmer with me; Elmer always accompanies me on my weekend photography excursions.

For some time I have made some of my weekend trips by simply sleeping in the back of my Ford Explorer (Ryan calls it and “Exploder”). I often set out on trips planning to do just that but I find that as night draws close I end up looking for a camping ground and sometimes end up getting a motel room. I just don’t want to try to settle in somewhere and then either get woke up by traffic or other noise, or by a police officer who says I can’t sleep at that location. I know how I don’t feel very good the following day if I don’t get some good sleep. My eyes burn and I just feel miserable overall and it doesn’t end up being conducive to taking photographs.

I ended up deciding I’d spend the first night in northern California at a truck stop sleeping in the Exploder but after that I’d be at the coast for 4 nights. I made campground reservations for 2 of the nights. I figured I’d deal with the first night at the coast when I got there, and for the last night at the coast the place I called said I didn’t need a reservation (more on that later). Then I’d be in Port Angeles and for that I made motel reservations for 2 nights. The rest of the trip would be spent with family. Once I had my itinerary nailed down to that level I was pretty relaxed and excited to start, other than making the trip sans Elmer.

Almost an entire week at the beginning of the trip would allow me to shoot some photographs along the Oregon and Washington coast. That also caused me to be concerned with preparations for the camera gear. But it wasn’t until the week before leaving that I realized I needed to do a few things related to my photography equipment.

First, I’ve gone out on weekends and shot perhaps 500 exposures in one day. This gave me anxiety over storage for images. I have a few SD cards for the two cameras (Nikon D610 and Nikon D3200) but if I ended up shooting a lot I would exceed my SD card capacity. I decided to get a 1T Seagate USB hard drive. I have a RAVPower RP-WD01 SD Card Reader, WiFi hub, and USB port which allows me to transfer data from an SD card to a USB device. I ordered the drive from Amazon and tried out my plan and had that problem solved.

Note that the RAVPower device is about the same size as the USB drive. I can use software on either my Kindle or iPhone 5 to manage the data transfer.

I really wanted to do this instead of buying additional SD cards because I really don’t want to manage a lot of SD cards. By offloading to the USB drive I can store a terabyte of data. And, with the price of USB drives, it ends up being cheaper as well. Plus, although I didn’t do it for this trip, you could take 2 USB drives and copy the files from the SD card to both drives (one at a time) and have a backup copy.

This plan allows me to use enough SD card space for a single day and then offload them to the USB drive(s). Not long before my trip I purchased a 16G SanDisk ExtremePro card with a 95MB per second write speed to use for burst shots. I like it, and think I’ll get another one. Thom Hogan recommends staying at the 32G or lower cards because the cameras seem to read and write slower with the bigger cards. I’ve experienced the same thing so I got this very fast card in only the 16G size and it works amazing.

My main cards before this have been Lexar 600x 32G cards which have a 45MB per second write speed. I use 2 of them in the Nikon D610 camera and they are very stable, giving me over 500 shots per card. I use a single SanDisk Ultra 16G card with a maximum 30MB per second write speed in the Nikon D3200 and I get about 250 shots on that card. I have some additional cards as well but I think I’ll switch over to the 16G SanDisk ExtremePro 95MB speed cards for my main cards, meaning I need to purchase 2 more of them.

One other purchase I made before my trip was a UV filter for my wide angle lens. I read from many sources that it’s a good idea to use one for protection when you’re at the coast to protect the lens from blowing sand and salt water spray. I have not been one to use a ultra-violet (UV) filter for protection purposes in the past. I fall more in the Thom Hogan (and others ) camp that feels it’s not really necessary and it adds another piece of glass in the light transmission path that can reduce image quality (IQ). Most people in this camp feel that a lens hood does more to protect a lens and DSLR cameras are not susceptible to UV light anyway (unlike film cameras of the past).

However, one place everyone seems to agree that a UV lens is worth it is at the beach. So I picked up a B+W 77mm UV MRC lens for the Nikkor 16-35mm f/4 lens. It’s a $1,260 or so lens and using a $55 UV filter to avoid ruining it seemed financially sound even if I never use it afterwards. I already had a B+W 52mm UV MRC for the Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 lens and I had a cheap 67mm UV filter for the Nikkor 70-200mm f/4 lens which I just planned to use only when necessary.

One other note I’ll make about camera gear is that I did try to take a few pictures during the trip with the 70-200mm lens that I really wanted longer exposures for and didn’t have enough neutral density filtering available. It sucks when you’re somewhere and you want to take a shot that you may never get to again and you don’t have the filter you need. In my case it was before the sun went all the way down, and I wanted to blur the wave action on a beach. I couldn’t do it without blowing out the picture. After not being to the coast in at least 14 years and then not being able to take the shot I wanted when I was there was disappointing to say the least.

That was all the “real” photo gear I added prior to my trip. However, one thing I also did was add a iPhone 5 to my luggage. I haven’t been using a cell phone since the early 2000’s. My wife wanted the new iPhone 6 Plus so we got that and I took over the iPhone 5, mainly so that I could use it to arrange or find lodging along the trip. What I didn’t expect was the extent I used it for photographs.

By the time I got home from the trip I had racked up 3,849.2 miles, 1,344 pictures on the Nikon cameras, and 1,699 pictures and videos (a dozen or so videos) on the iPhone. I found that most of the pictures during the day were not going to be great no matter what camera I used so I ended up taking more of what I consider “snapshots” with the iPhone than getting out the Nikons. When I wanted to try to get the best image quality, mainly golden hour or night shots, I used the Nikons.

Downtown Portland (iPhone 5)

I also found I used the iPhone to take pictures that I could immediately share on Facebook, letting my classmates and family and other friends see what I was up to. I got a lot of, well, “mention” from classmates about the frequent “where’s Waldo” updates. Most of them had fun with it, I think, and I know I did. Thanks again, Facebook.





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Preparing for a trip

I'm getting ready to head out on a 2 week or so trip with 3 primary purposes: my son's wedding, my high school reunion, and my annual birthday time photography related "drive about". I'm excited about all three reasons but I'll limit my text to the photography aspect.

Overall I plan to drive from Phoenix, AZ up to Oregon along Interstate 5. I'll head over to Reedsport on the Oregon coast and then drive up the Oregon and Washington coast to eventually arrive in Port Angeles, WA for my reunion. Then over by Bainbridge Island to see my son's family prior to driving down Interstate 5 again to the Portland, OR area for his wedding. Finally I'll come back down Interstate 5 to the Interstate 10 which will lead me back to Phoenix. It should be a decent trip, that Bing maps out at around 3,268 miles and 46 hours of driving.

B+W 77mm UV MRC

I hope to get some good pictures all along the way, of the Oregon and Washington coast, I'm going to try to get Port Angeles at night from out on Ediz Hook, and from the Bainbridge Island area, some sunrise pictures of Seattle from across the Puget Sound.

I'm not planning to be the official photographer at the wedding or reunion but I'm sure I'll take some at both of those events.

As part of my planning, I realized that I need to consider taking pictures at the beach and how to protect my equipment. I have experienced some windy conditions in Arizona but not with sand and salt water mixed.

I read a lot of recommendations that you should use a UV or other filter on your lens so I ended up adding one to my collection. I have 3 lenses that I use for the Nikon D610, with a 52mm, 67mm, and 77mm diameter front element. I have a B+W 52mm UV MRC filter already, which I've never used. I also got a cheap 67mm filter with my $1,499 70-200mm lens so I'm just going to use it. I didn't have the 77mm for my $1300 16-35mm lens so I got another B+W UV MRC filter.

I have to give Amazon a plug here.

Amazon has a number of their warehouses in Phoenix which can be cool for me. I decided to order the filter from them on 7/29/2015 at about 7:15 AM. Because I'm an Amazon Prime member, they offered me free SAME DAY delivery. And, they said it was available as long as I ordered by about 11:30 AM. How cool is that?

I got the lens that night, as promised.

But now I'm wondering if there are other aspects of the trip I haven't planned for. I guess I'll find out!

Quick Review of the Hakuba PSTC-200 Tripod Case

I bought this Hakuba PSTC-200 Tripod Case based on the reviews on Adorama's page, and after receiving it on 7/2/2015, I agree with and echo all of the positive comments. 

Hakuba PSTC-200 Tripod Case

This Hakuba Large / PSTC-200 bag is great. The zipper looks like a YKK grade on both the bag and the side pouch. The padding is nice and thick, maybe 1/2" or more. As mentioned, it also includes another pouch inside the bag with a Velcro closure. It also has a transparent pouch for a business card or other identification card on the outside, opposite the large pouch.

I got this case to replace a cheap VidPro bag I'd got from Amazon (which also had a number of positive reviews) that cost about $15.00. That bag had just enough padding to claim it was padded but the zipper failed me after about 18 months (I bought the VidPro on 1/22/2014, the zipper no longer functioned by June 2015). The VidPro has a very cheap sort of coiled plastic zipper that easily pulls apart and eventually wouldn't zip together at all. I really wanted a new bag with a working zipper (otherwise why have it?).

I really did not want the Manfrotto or other manufacturer bags because of the advertising. 

The only thing better in my opinion would be a hard case.

This case easily fits my Manfrotto 055XPROB with 468MGRC5 ball head attached. I can fit my other cheaper tripod in there too if desired.

I wish I'd got this bag at the start - it's under $45 and will provide a lot of protection for a few hundred dollars of tripod and ball head.

I don't plan to use it to carry the tripod on a trail but it does come with a shoulder strap. (I have the Manfrotto strap that goes on the tripod itself to carry it in the field).

My first Milky Way Picture

The Plan

On Saturday, 6/20/2015, a fellow photographer invited me to try shooting the Milky Way from the Superstition Mountains which is about 40 miles east of Phoenix, by Apache Junction. He had seen a great picture on Facebook and wanted to try it too. I always like going to the Superstitions so it was a man date! (He had his wife along so it wasn't quite that weird.)

We decided to meet at the gate to the Lost Dutchman State Park which is at the north-west end of the Superstition Mountain range at around 8:00 PM.

I decided to look online for additional information about shooting the Milky Way so I'd hopefully be more prepared. I found a number of images such as this one on Flickr by Beth Myers. I noted that she used a Nikon D610 (YAY) with apparently the Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8 lens. She shot hers at 3:02 AM on 5/3/2014. She used f/2.8 at 30s and ISO 1600 with a 14mm focal length. Since the full size image is 6016 x 4016 pixels (the size of the full images) I think she was fairly close to the mountain.

Stellarium Screen Shot from the Stellarium Website

Next I wanted to see what time the Milky Way would be visible. I found out about Stellarium, a really slick and FREE (for desktop use) application that not only shows the stars from the location you enter, but it has a real time simulator that you can control the speed of to see how the moon, planets, and stars and constellation move across the sky. 

Using the information from this application you can find out what time the Milky Way will appear vertical, for instance. It roughly shows the location, displaying the major compass coordinates on the screen. It's really slick - I also paid for a version to install on my Kindle Fire HD, which I took with me to help visualize where the Milky Way should appear.

Mice and Men

We met at the park gate as planned, or there about. I got there early and had wandered into the park and took some pics while waiting. Spoiler alert - I liked these earlier pics as much as or more than the Milky way pic. Here's one of them:

Dusk over the Usery Mountains

I really like the gold of this picture with some subtle green. This is pretty much Straight Out Of the Camera (SOOC) with the saturation bumped, some burning, etc.

When it got dark enough we started taking some pictures. They just weren't very inspiring. We could see the Milky Way in the pictures a bit, but one thing I'd read was that you really should be able to see it with your naked eye (or eyes) in order to capture it well. And we couldn't. 

I believe the issue was that it was pretty hazy. Normally I can see the Superstitions from Phoenix itself. On the drive out I could not see them from Phoenix but had to get closer, maybe to where I was within 15 miles or so, to see the mountains through the haze. I think that caused two issues: 1) it reduced visibility of the Milky Way, and 2) it captured "light pollution" in the atmosphere which also reduces the contrast of the Milky Way to the dark, empty space.

Here's my best picture, and this was edited quite a bit at this point:

Milky Way over the Superstitions #1

Post Processing

I found a good, succinct tutorial video that I watched (I really don't like videos much because I have to turn on a lot of other gear that I use for my recording studio in order to play audio from my PC). I watched it because the guy also offers some FREE presets for Adobe Lightroom specifically for processing night / sky / Milky Way images. The guy's name is David Kingham and his tutorial / presets page is http://www.davidkingham.com/night-photography-lightroom-presets. I used his advice and presets to get the picture above to the point it's at.

I wasn't very happy with it, though, compared to the Beth Myers image mentioned above, or others I'd seen. So I decided to try playing with it some more. Basically I took a copy of the above image (easy to do in Lightroom with a [CTRL][']) and tried to mainly bump up the exposure so that it wasn't so dark. Well, that lightened up everything too much so I used some filters to darken the sky above and below the Milky Way. I'd also used David Kingham's "star de-focus" preset on the upper and right stars but I thought it blurred the stars too much so removed most of that effect. Here's the final version which I like better:

Milky Way over the Superstitions #2

This was with my Nikon D610 and Nikkor 16-35mm f/4 lens. Exposure is 25 seconds at f/4, ISO 1600, and focal length at 16mm.

The Reason behind Photography (for me)

Fishing on the Bill Williams River
National Wildlife Refuge

I'm sure I mentioned in one of my first posts to this blog that one of the main reasons I took up photography was to give me a reason to be outdoors like I had been years ago when I used to fish. This last weekend those two interests intersected for the first time since starting my photography hobby.

I was out along the Colorado River, south of Lake Havasu City, on the border between Arizona and California. I'd spent the night in Lake Havasu City and was heading back home in the somewhat early morning. At about 7:30 I made it to the Bill Williams River National Wildlife Refuge. There's a bridge that spans the cattail filled river which, running from east to west, empties into the Colorado River at Lake Havasu, not too far north of Parker Dam.

It looks like it could be a wonderful place to take pictures of birds but there weren't any there. However, there was a nice fishing boat with a couple of guys taking advantage of the serene beauty. I knew what they must have gone through to get their boat to that point by that time in the morning, and I could feel the rod and reel in my hands, the line spooling off the reel, as I watched them cast. I wondered what species they were targeting. I wondered what type of bait or lure they were using and what I'd choose for that area and time of day.

I felt a twinge of a start of an urge to see if my rods and reels were still functional and to try hitting some water myself. But then I remembered how I just don't like the thought of actually puncturing the jaw of a fish with a metal hook simply for my pleasure. So the twinge faded as quick as it came.

But the enjoyment of being out on a not yet hot early morning, along side a body of water, with very little man-made noise (only an occasional car), was shared between me and the fisher dudes. It made me smile then as it does now. My photography not only got me there for that moment but when I look at this picture I'll always have that memory.







Being Picky

Over the last few weeks I have been out on the weekends with the intent to take some pictures. I have ensured my camera equipment is clean, batteries are charged, and campground reservations are in hand. I have gone to my chosen locations. But, my picture taking is very limited. I have lately been experiencing at least two impediments to my productivity.

First, and this one I don't know how to manage, is that lately I have been sleeping more regularly. I rarely wake up in the middle of the night now resulting in less night shots. I don't know what is causing this but I know from experience that it's likely to turn back to waking up naturally in the middle of the night again at some point. I'm torn about whether to set alarms for midnight or 1 AM, because I actually benefit during the work week when I get regular sleep. And, I normally go through these phases over a period of some weeks or possibly months and then I'll go back to waking up in the middle of the night. It's because of this experience, coupled with the fact that landscapes will always be there, that means I allow myself to sleep through the nights and to give up the night photography for now.

Because of the different sleep habits I'm also missing out on the golden- and blue-hour shots. This mainly leaves the "pool light" shots (paraphrasing Brian Peterson - the mid-day hours better spent by the swimming pool rather than shooting pictures). Due to this sleep "disorder" I don't take as many pictures as I was.

Second, I'm just getting picky about the pictures I want to take. This stems from a number of reasons:

1. Locality Saturation

I have been to most of my home state of Arizona a number of times for the purpose of taking pictures in the last couple of years. I feel there are three basic types of scenery in Arizona: a) Canyon / Hills / Cliffs - such as the Grand Canyon, Salt River Canyon, Sedona areas; b) Desert / Cactus - such as Saguaro, Organ Pipe National parks; and c) Pine Forests - such as on the Mogollon Rim, Flagstaff, Prescott areas. There are a few outliers, such as the desert lakes, Indian ruins, Tonto Natural Bridge, Kartchner Caverns, but those are short diversions. I'm just feeling the need to expand my horizons.

Because I feel like I've almost already shot all the pictures available in Arizona, I don't take as many pictures lately.

2. Creatively Stifled

When I look at my pictures I tend to just see travel photographs and not very much "art". I'd rather be shooting "art", whatever that means. For me, it means being able to eliminated the number of subjects in my pictures but I struggle to find or compose pictures that I can create the way I want. I believe it's my inability to find the subject of a picture and then my technical proficiency to isolate or contrast the subject with a very limited set of objects in the same picture.

This has been my fight for a year or so, especially after reading the David duChemin books. But I've also been admiring a number of photos posted on 500px.com, especially under the "Fine Art" group. There are a lot of photographers creating landscape or scenery images like I'd like to produce. I'm just not one of them yet.

Unless I see something that is striking to me in the view finder I don't take many pictures.

3. Post Processing

A result of items 2 and 3 above is that I no longer want to spend much time post processing images that I really don't care for. Consequently I avoid taking as many pictures in order to reduce my post processing activities (including uploading to the computer, reviewing and/or rating, and actual image post processing).

Next Steps

I need to overcome these mindsets somehow. I still enjoy the picture taking process, but have grown to where I don't care for the results as often. I do enjoy the "snapshot" quality pics that I do take and minimally process - they remind me of times and places I've experienced. Usually I can instantly remember the temperature of a place (of some significance here in Arizona), the solitude, the level of noise, etc. I remember certain things my dog might have done or at least how he sits in the seat next to me on the road and stares at me for hours. Those things are valuable.

The difference is that I want to create some art. For me that means better perspectives on better subjects with better isolation and better lighting. I hope that is something I can achieve and that it is not something that has to be innate rather than something that can be worked on and learned.