Tag Archives: Grand Canyon

Italian Morning Bosque del Apache

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It has been said that if an artist has real talent they will often have an aura about them that extends outward from his presence. This aura extends out to a distance that corresponds to the artists talent. The more accomplished the artist the further out his influence or aura spreads. Leonardo Da Vinci had an aura that went out approximately 1130 miles. This would be a radius not a diameter. This aura will leave its influence on anything that it touches. This is why some of those old European towns like Venice and Florence look the way they do. Leo walked down their streets.

There are many of those old retired painters of the Renaissance, Leo, Michelangelo, Raphael, Titian, Giorgione and many others. Most of these painters have made their money and are no longer painting. What many people don’t know is that all of these artists traveled extensively looking for inspiration, seeing the sights, trying to find new colors that they could incorporate into their work and generally taking advantage of frequent sailing miles they had built up in their travels.

Of course everywhere they went they left their indelible mark on the landscape. Giorgione was a frequent traveler to the New World and one of his favorite spots was to hit Bosque del Apache whenever he was in the neighborhood. Since passport control was fairly lax at that time, there aren’t many records left that document exactly where in his travels he visited, but there is one telltale method that can be used to determine where he has been.

That would be an aura check. Each of the artists had a distinct and identifiable aura once you learned how to identify them. Rembrandt and Michelangelo both leaned heavily into the Chiaroscuro style which was very heavy influenced by extreme contrast and heavy use of brighter colors, gold, silver, etc, which is why if you walk by the coliseum you will see part of it in bright golden sunshine and the other side of it in deep shadows. That’s the Michelangelo effect. Giorgione liked a lighter more open palette, lots of soft backgrounds, muted shades, not so much contrast, earth tones, and highlighting the primary subject in his painting.

Since the last undocumented visit by Giorgione was roughly March 18, 1510, which was a Friday, his aura is beginning to fade a little. While when it was new, you couldn’t even walk in Bosque without tripping over his aura. Now not so much. But every once in a while when you least expect it the landscape will explode into his palette that had been imprinted onto the landscape when he was here as if he stood right beside you. That is exactly what happened when this image was made. Prior to taking the photo the landscape had been drab and uninteresting, almost boring. Then the sun came over the rise and activated the Giorgione aura and you can see the result. Soft muted colors, perfect earth tones, it’s all there. What a joy to be able to see and bask in the reflection of such talent, let alone document these events. We heard that Michelangelo had visited the Grand Canyon so we’re off to see what effects his aura has had on that masterpiece. We’ll try and post that visit later.

We Don’t Do Nothing Nice And Easy

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There are lots of canyons where they are mainly long stretched-out holes in the ground with no tops that primarily serve as a big ditch. They occasionally have a small fizzly amount of water run through them and call themselves mighty. People fall off the edge and they call themselves dangerous. A little dirt falls off their edges and is slowly carried away and they call themselves deepest. When they have a small storm pass over they call themselves dramatic. To some who have never seen a real canyon this appears to be a source of wonderment. They call them canyons.

But there are canyons and there are canyons. This is the Grand Canyon. The Grandmother of all canyons. If the perfect storm were created out of the earth instead of water it would take hundreds of them to create this canyon. Maybe thousands. When something happens here it happens on a colossal scale. Storms are bigger, deeper, higher, stronger. They contain more rain, more lightning, more power. The river that flows through it is one of the most powerful on the planet. Enough earth flows through this canyon, carried along by the strength of its movement, to form a new country.

When all those events happen at the same time we usually call that Wednesday. Where other smaller canyons do their utmost to appear mighty there is no comparison. This is the Grand Canyon, the mightiest canyon in all the world. If you thought these smaller canyons had drama they are the smallest eyelash flick of this grand old dame. Some say sixteen year old girls are the epitome of drama. Take all the sixteen year old girls alive today and all that have ever lived and their combined drama wouldn’t leave an echo in this canyon.

When something happens here it changes the world we live in. Storms, floods, rapids, waterfalls, entire counties of earth falling into the Colorado river at a time. This is the daily life of the canyon. At the Grand Canyon, we don’t do nothing nice and easy.

A Quick Reminder

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A quick reminder. If you’re going to the Grand Canyon this morning be sure to get out to Desert View overlook and go in the watchtower or you’ll miss this. That’s it. Go. Now.

Remorseful Point

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Here it is another year gone by. You know what that means right? No, we’re not talking about your age. We’re talking about something much more important. That’s right you guessed it, Daylight Savings Time.

For those of you who are completely oblivious to the world around you, and you know who you are, Daylight Savings Time is when the Government automatically changes the arrangement the cosmos has for when we have night and day, and today is that day for one of the mandated changes.

Today it has been ordered and approved by a unanimous vote of people who run our lives that we shall, upon awakening, be 1 hour later in the day than we’d normally be. This was done so you, as a hard-working American, would get an extra hour of sleep and therefore would be more productive tomorrow because of the extra rest. But there are dangers. Let’s say you had an appointment with your lawyer for say 10:00am and you went there at your usual time you’d be an hour early and they’d get to charge you for that extra hour and you’d have to pay it because these are lawyers we’re dealing with here, and you’d be mad and feel stupid.

There is a lot of stigma attached to making this change from Regular Every Day Winter Time smoothly, orderly and correctly so you get that extra hour of sleep. If you muck it up and anybody sees it, you become that guy that can’t even do  the time change right and you’re considered a dumbass. And by the time the word gets around that you like totally screwed the pooch, time change-wise, you’re a Total dumbass. Almost everyone except those oblivious people we talked about earlier do not want to be a dumbass. People who made the change successfully are relentless in their criticism of the dumbass’s who didn’t. They will make fun of you. They will call you names. They will beat you with it like a circus monkey. They will beat you like a rented mule. Their smugness and arrogance knows no bounds. So the deal is don’t be a dumbass.

The shame can be so great for some people that they take the ultimate step. And that step happens to be off of Remorseful Point here at the Grand Canyon. Named for those people who got up too early thereby completely messing up the system well thought out as it is, and knowing what’s coming when people find out, they feel that they have no other recourse but to go to Remorseful Point and take the necessary step to reclaim their honor.

There have been groups formed, kind of like the safety nets they put up on the Golden Gate bridge in San Francisco to try and keep people from jumping, to try and help these poor souls deal with the shame, but most of  them sneak around them and make the plunge anyway. It’s like the gene pool has to have a way to keep itself healthy and society’s best efforts to overcome that won’t change nature.

So our recommendations to avoid the shame and heartache of screwing up the whole time change thing is to get totally hammered the night before, I mean toilet hugging, running around the neighborhood yelling “Where is Aunt Maud, I’ve got to find Aunt Maud”, looking for your car keys and not finding them because you swallowed them on a dare, that kind of hammered. It is guaranteed that you will not wake up an hour too early the following morning. In fact it will probably be late afternoon before you’ll even be able to lift your head. This will be considered cool by your peers as they will see that not only did you handle the time change well but you totally get the concept. The later you get up the cooler you are.

If you have any doubts about your ability to make the change as prescribed you’d best head for the nearest LiquorMart and get a jug of Everclear, the 190 proof stuff and make sure you’re covered. It’s a little late this morning to take those measures now unless of course you did screw things up and can not get to the Grand Canyon in time. Then I guess you’ll have to decide the best course of action to take. Hope you did well this year. And you’re not a total dumbass.

Vermillion Cliffs Another Color Lesson

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We talked about how color out here in the west works in the past, but  in reviewing this image of the Vermillion cliffs I noticed something new. If you look closely you will notice that there is just about every color available in the southwest in this shot. Click on it, the picture I mean, and look at all the different shades. I don’t even think there are names for some of these colors. The only other place I’ve seen that comes close to displaying these many shades is the Grand Canyon, but the canyon spreads its color over such a wide, deep space it is difficult to find a photographic area that you can shoot to include all these colors in one shot. Even wide-angle lens in the canyon don’t give you these effects.

We’re probably looking at several miles of cliff face from a distance of several more miles away and it was photographed as a panorama of 19 different images using a telephoto lens, then stitched together into one large image. That was done to bring the cliffs in closer in the image, as using a wide angle lens would have resulted in a tiny squinty little line of purple cliffs across the image that would have had you saying “What the hell, can’t that guy even take a picture?” and I don’t like it when people say that.

The rosy-purple of the cliffs in the center of the shot is produced by the shadows of the incoming storm clouds. Right before the clouds moved in that purple-ish series of cliffs was the same color as the taller line of cliffs behind it. The darker cliffs are some distance in front of the taller ones so the break in the clouds let light in on the back row, but out in the front row the denseness of the clouds put the cliffs in shadow which brought out the deep rich color you see.

None of this would be as noticeable if you were closer. It takes the distance in this case to bring out all the color available and to show the harmonious interplay between them. The lesson being that sometimes you have to step way back to see the overall effect in play. Like a couple of miles. Now I didn’t say this was going to be a great big Ansel Adams type of lesson. It’s just a tiny little lesson, one that doesn’t require a lot of brain power by either of us but sometimes that’s ok. And if all this is turning Greek to you just look at the picture instead of trying to figure it out. That’s what I do.

Light and Dark

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Every night at the Grand Canyon a gentle war takes place. It has been waging since time began and light and dark began their eternal struggle for supremacy. It is a slow battle, with one side gaining the advantage and ultimately and quietly subduing its opponent, only to find that hours later the battle turns and the subdued becomes the victor.

It is about light and dark, the passage of time, and ultimately the constancy of the never-ending quest for balance and harmony. Although it appears there are winners and losers, with one side gaining a moment of superiority, it always balances out and what is left is the merely the moment that exists now.

It matters not whether one is a participant or a spectator, whether you believe the outcome was just or flawed, or that it is fair or unkind. What matters is that the outcome is faced and the realization made that this is how the world works and you must make your peace with it. Tomorrow’s another day. And so is the day after that.

Blue Sundown

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This is it the next to the very last, almost dark, light of the day. The place is the Grand Canyon and even though I paid extra at the gate for a longer day it wasn’t long enough. There is something about the cosmos that has an attitude of, “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn”, and just shuts down when its had enough. And apparently it had had enough.

This shot was taken at about 6pm at the end of a long cold December day and I fully expected to get another 2hrs worth for my money but no dice. It was put the camera away, go home and we’ll talk about it tomorrow kind of deal. Defiantly I snapped a few more shots after this one but it’s difficult to do the canyon justice when you can’t see your hand in front of your face. My camera’s good but it does need a little light.

I felt like I had been cheated because I had paid for more time so I complained. I went to the Customer Service desk at Grand Canyon central and began to explain to the disinterested but bored person manning the counter why I felt hard done by. She looked at my ticket and said in that voice designed to make you feel like you were not only insignificant but that she had a fly swatter handy and wasn’t afraid to use it, that I had gotten my extra time, they had just added it to the beginning of the day instead of the end. The “you moron” part was understood.

Chagrined but haughty I stalked away muttering imprecations on her and all of her get, even though I guess you could make the point that I had not read my ticket properly. These are things that happen to us intelligent, sophisticated and handsome travelers occasionally and my thoughts were headed along the lines of  “Oh well, I’ll think about that tomorrow.” I was a little concerned that I was channeling Scarlett O’Hara as I headed into the restaurant to stuff my face with a big bowl of chili and every carb they had on the menu. But I figured what with the carb bloat and the sugar rush plus a short nights sleep I’d be ready for my long day tomorrow. Extra time in the morning meant I’d have a longer sunrise and that was good. Tomorrow would be a better day.