Western Photo Page

All photographs were taken by me using a Canon AE-1 Program camera usually in automatic mode. Click on the thumbnail images below to retrieve and display a larger image.

I was raised in Oregon for the most part. I have lived in Oregon, California, New Jersey, Germany, Colorado, Nebraska, Mississipi, Alabama, Texas, Virginia, and Arizona. Visited a lot of other places too. I have always loved the West more than the East (Well, Chincoteague/Assateague Islands in Virginia were pretty good too I guess.) Some people have described certain parts of the west as "magnificent desolation". I like that term. It is perhaps appropriately descriptive of these first images below of Monument Valley, Arizona

Monument Valley Arizona . This image was scanned at 1200 DPI. That resulted in a 418 KiloByte JPEG file of 1460x1040 Pixels. I reduced the image size to 800 x 570 Pixels for display here to save space.

Monument Valley Arizona . This image is an excerpt from the full-scale version of the image above, i.e., this image shows all of the detail that was obtained with the 1200 DPI scan. Remember that the HP Scanner also can scan at 2400 DPI for even more detail if desired. It is unclear to me at this point whether the film even *contains* more detail...

There is an old cowboy song where the cowboy's girlfriend back East writes him asking him to come back East. She writes:
"You must have gone crazy out there" and he replies in the chorus:

"They've never seen the Northern lights,
They've never seen a hawk on the wing,
They've never seen the Great Divide,
Hell, they've never heard old camp cookee sing."

An arch in Monument Valley .

Rainbow Bridge . This used to be miles from water before the Glen Canyon dam formed Lake Powell. It was a fifteen or twenty mile hike across the desert. Now boaters flock to the area.

Another old cowboy song, "Old Red" tells of a rodeo cowboy who had never been "throwed". He is assigned an "outlaw" horse that had never been "rode". The horse does a backflip which breaks his neck and kills the rider. The final verse is:

"Out in the west there's a place where they rest,
the cowboy that never was throwed,
and just one foot away resting there 'neath the clay,
lies the outlaw that never was rode."

Sunrise at one of my favorite astrophotography sites . 55 miles southwest of my home here in Tempe.

Evening on Mink Lake in Oregon . Mink Lake is a 9 mile hike if you find the shortest way in. The deer there are fearless because no one in their right mind would hunt one 9 miles from the nearest road. Too much effort to pack one out. My friends and I hiked in a few years ago to recreate a trip we took 30 years prior.

You call tha' a tree? THIS is a tree . Olympic Rain Forest in Washington. Susan provides perspective. The tree goes up quite a ways too!

Grand Canyon Arizona . "A little farther back - A little farther back - Uhhh - maybe that's far enough." Susan survives another photo op.

Cape Perpetua Oregon . From nearby mountain several hundred feet up. That's Highway 101 that you see down below. The Oregon coast is the most spectacular coast line in the United States. Just my opinion but I've seen the US coast from San Diego to the most northern point in Washington and from Key West Florida to the most northern point in Maine. (Susan says Oregonians are worse than Texans.)

Anemonies, Starfish, Oysters, etc . Oregon coast at low tide. This is right on the beach. Many other tide pools are exposed at low tide.

Bambi at the Grand Canyon . Whoa bambi! It wasn't me! I don't even own a gun! This guy hangs out around the trail near the south rim visitor center. He sits very still just above the trail watching people go by. I discovered him when I went off the trail to find a better vantage point for a photo. Shocked me silly when he stood up about 4 feet from me. I had not seen him at all. I touched his nose and he tapped me lightly on the chest with the tip of one of his antlers. I assumed he was trying to tell me something so I retreated. Later, after he had settled back down and after I knew where to look, I watched many hikers walk by him without seeing him even though he was in plain view.

Balloon fest . Drove out to where a hot-air balloon festival was happening here in Arizona. Great colors!

Mount Ranier with Susan in foreground . All that snow almost washes out the slide!

Typical Oregon river . This one is near the "Mount Bachelor" ski area. Funny, when I was a kid in Oregon, they called it "Bachelor Butte" because it wasn't big enough to be considered an Oregon "mountain". The summit is only about 9 or 10 thousand feet high. Guess they changed the name to impress the ski crowd... They also told me when I was a kid that Lassen Peak, California was the only active volcano in the USA...

Desert Tortoise eating a cactus flower . Taken locally at Phoenix Desert Botanical Gardens. I was surprised to encounter this guy. It was spring and the cacti were blooming. Cactus flowers are incredibly beautiful - and unexpected. I have taken hundreds of cactus flower shots including blooms on the Chain Fruit Cholla which seems to bloom very infrequently. But those photos are another story for another time.  (And the time for desert flowers finally arrived in April 2002.)