Utah Weather

This evening, I was helping my son prepare his new World Headquarters for J Dawgs, which will have a VIP soft opening tomorrow night and officially open on Saturday, September 19th.

The headquarters is located about 50 ft south of the current location.

As I was leaving, the weather over the Wasatch Mountains turned dark and a rain storm right at sunset made for some beautiful photos...

Deardorf Cemetery - Another Volunteer Day for Find-A-Grave

This request involved quite an adventure to reach the Deardorf Cemetery also known as the Christilla Pioneer Cemetery. GPS coordinates placed it in the parking lot of Chief Obie Lodge on Scouter's Mountain. Having been a scouter for 45 years, I knew this was not the case and that the cemetery was actually in a canyon to the west of the Lodge.



I took my camera and a bottle of water that Deb left in the car (thank you Deb... it was 95 degrees at the time I started my hike), and started over the edge of the canyon on a "Cat" trail that was scraped in the forest floor.

After decending into the canyon, I came to a barbed wire fence and a gate that was locked across the trail to the entrance. The gate was easy to climb, so I did.

When I reached the cemetery, it too was fenced and gated. I tried cracking the combination of the lock, but, if course, I could not. I found a bucket and thought maybe I could climb over the gate but I am too short and it was too high. I had visions of hanging from the top of the chain link fence like "Scarecrow" and decided against the jump.

I was discouraged that I had walked that far and it seemed that I would not be able to finish my quest. Alas, I decided to look at my list of names and see if any of the markers were visible from behind the fence... and guess what... every name was on the two tall obelisk monuments seen in the photo! Deb says that is Family History carma...

This is one of the names that I was asked to find. In all, I was able to add 10 new names to the online cemetery and upgrade a few more with corrected dates, names, and photos. Not bad considering there is only 29 marked graves (supposedly) and I had to do it all from behind the security fence!

FindAGrave.com

A couple of months ago, I joined http://www.findagrave.com/ as a volunteer photographer. People will post requests for you to search for grave markers in local cemeteries and then upload them to the virtual cemeteries online.

I found out about this site through Deb's family history work and thought it would be a fun way for me to "do my part"... the old history buff in me really enjoys searching out these markers.

Tonight, I found a lot of local history in the Clackamas Cemetery.., Jennings, Thiessen, Roots, Mather, and Deardorff are all names that should ring a bell for the locals!

The "Gribble" markers were found in the "Roots" family plot...

Scott

Cannon Beach - Experiment with HDR

This is the image I chose for the poster...

I created this nine frame HDR exposure (spanning 9 stops) to see if I could bring out some detail in the shadows and the sky. Of course, there is ghosting because of the movement of the people on the beach between the exposures. But, I was reaaly most interested in how CS3 would handle the surf during the conversion... Kind of weird but I think I like it.

Mt Hood - East Side

Stopped and captured this image while on the way home from Camp Baldwin in Dufur, Oregon. I love this mountain from every angle!

My Friend Janet Turned 50 And Fell From The Sky...

This is one of hundreds of photos that I took of her adventure. She was always in the shadow of her parachute, causing a backlight condition... I was able to bring out some detail with Viveza.

It looked like a lot of fun... something that I have always wanted to do... it is on my "Bucket List".

Scott

A Very Difficult Restoration...

This restoration started with this scanned negative. The negative was a modern 120 negative taken of a very damaged photo that was originally printed in approximately 1897. The orginal photo was extremely mildewed but otherwise was in pretty good shape as far as other damage. I studied this photo for quite some time before deciding on a plan of attack in CS3.

I decided to create a completely new graduated background, which involved matching the grain and focus of the original photo. After the restoration was complete, I added a film grain filter to sharpen the entire photo.

Multnomah Falls

Deb and Joy decided to hike to the top of the falls yesterday. I didn't leave anything at the top so while they hiked, I took free portraits of tourists. It is amazing to me how many people look at you all "crazy like" when you tell them you are doing something for free... which is a very good price.

I love these falls and I love watching people trying to get the entire falls in the photo (along with their favorite people) while using a "point and shoot" pocket camera... it is comical sometimes.

These are the folks I shot... if you are one of them, send me your email in the comments and let me know which photo is yours and I will send you a printable size file... free of charge just for letting me practice my art form. Enjoy.

Scott