rim shots

I’m sitting at the Phoenix airport waiting for the second stage of my vacation. First I have a layover in Chicago before arriving in New York. From there Sam and I are driving across the US back to California. I have some downtime so I decided to take a look at some of my pictures from the past week. Here are my favorites. I will upload the rest to Picasa when I’m back in Davis.

Night Watch – Star trails at the watch tower at Desert View. I took 18 exposures at 30 seconds and stitched them together to get this. I guess the equivalent would be a bulb shot at 9-10 minutes.

Sunset Serendipity – Sometimes the best shots are all a matter of luck. Gid asked me if I could take a silhouette shot of us. So I took shots at random to adjust my exposure for the silhouette shot and got this one. It ended up being my favorite sunset picture.

Dave’s Dream – This shot is not a spectacular photo. I really like it just because of the experience of being so close to the sheep. Why’s it called Dave’s dream? Because the male bighorn sheep is chilling in the shade watching over his multiple wives. Dave and I sometimes talk about what it would be like to have multiple wives. “Dave’s Dream” just happened to sound better than “Mike’s Dream” because it has that alliteration thing going on.

God’s Grandeur – I saw this sign last time I came to the Grand Canyon and was glad to see it again this year. It’s a reminder to me of God’s creation. If you look out over the sign, it’s almost like you’re viewing a stadium and all of the canyon sings praises to God. I wonder if this sign will be removed sometime during my lifetime.

Worldwide Wonder – This is a view from the observation tower at Desert View. It reminds me that all of the world comes here to view the splendor of the canyon. Just at this location I could hear Japanese, German, French and Russian being spoken. If you look closely towards the bottom middle of the picture, you can see the sign from the last picture.