Zzyzx Road

Zzyzx Road is an interestingly named road in southern California, in between LA and Las Vegas.  I probably wouldn’t have ever gone down this road if it also hadn’t been the title of a great Stone Sour song.  I also probably wouldn’t have ever watched the low budget horror movie just called Zzyzx if I hadn’t gone down Zzyzx Road.

Apparently the word Zzyzx was coined by some guy who owned a “mineral springs and health spa” at the end of Zzyzx Road.  He claimed it was the last word in the English language.  No word whether he thought it was physically the last word possible if it were listed in a dictionary or the last word possible to coin as he believed all other combinations of letters had been used.  He was later arrested by Federal Marshals (probably Waco style) for misusing the land (which was federal land) and for violating food and drug laws.  The buildings he built are still there, but now the land is used as a Desert Studies Center.

Let me take a minute to tell you about the movie Zzyzx.  I want to make it perfectly clear that I am a fan of bad horror movies.  Unfortunately Zzyzx Road was worse than bad; it was terribly awful.  If I may quote Futurama, this movie was “a crummy world of plot holes and spelling errors.”  Now I can’t be sure about the spelling errors, but I can only assume based on the quality of the movie that there were a good few.  I won’t give away much about the real plot of the movie by asking, but what in the hell is this Mexican family doing digging up human bones in the desert?  Not even deep in the desert, but off the side of Zzyzx Road after they stopped for some reason.  They find human bones and their instinct is not to call the police like a normal person, but to dig them up with the care of Alan Grant digging up a Velociraptor?  What?  Why?  This is just one of many confusing and nonsensical aspects of this movie.  Don’t watch it; unless you are in the mood for a truly awful movie with negligible amounts of entertainment.

Oh, maybe I should talk a little about photos?  Just a little though.  This will be part one of Zzyzx Road.  These are all film shots taken with my Holga on AGFACHROME RSXII 200 slide film and cross processed for some sweet looking and appropriately weridening effects.  Part two will be digital pictures.  I stopped off at this road twice; once on the way to the Mojave with a friend, and once on the way to the Hoover Dam.  These are all from the Hoover Dam trip.  Henjoy.

Yellow Cake

Wait, Yellow Lake, not Yellow Cake... Great, now I'm on a watch list.

Me:  What do you say we get this thing going again?
Me:   OK, why not?  It’s been a while and I have pictures to post.
Me:  Because I’m busy, that’s why not.
Me:  Well I’m not that busy.
Me:  Yeah, but too busy to sit down and spend a few minutes writing up a post to accompany the photo.
Me:  No, not really.
Me:  No, you’re right; I guess I might as well share this one.

I think this is an interesting photograph.  I took this at Silverwood Lake, shortly before taking this fishy photo.  When I looked at this picture after taking it, I noticed the background was out of focus, but a narrow part of the flowers were in focus, and I was intrigued.  It was technically winter, but these flowers were luckily still alive, and the slight wind was no match for my sweet mid-western grown, wind fighting skills.

Exif information
Model	Canon EOS 20D
Original date	2009:11:21 1:45PM
Exposure time	1/500 sec
Focal length	20mm
F-Stop	f/9
ISO speed	ISO-100
Exposure Bias	-1

Fishy Silverwood Lake

I took this picture at Silverwood Lake in the San Bernardino Mountains.  I went exploring one day, with one of the area’s mountain lakes in mind as my eventual destination and found myself at this dam (seen on the left).  It was a pretty area, and there were great wispy clouds in the sky that day (not so much seen in this particular picture), which are my favorite kind of cloud to photograph.  There were also a lot of annoying people with stereos fishing at the other end of the dam, taking up some good photographic real estate.

This photograph is a panorama comprised of three shots stitched together.  Each picture is a single exposure.  After stitching them together, I did some editing in Photoshop to get the exact look I wanted.  I titled this Fishy Silverwood Lake for a couple reasons.  First of all, it’s a lake and there are most certainly fish living within (see above for indirect evidence of this), and second, the angle of view is greater than my 10mm lens could achieve.  Whether or not it is 180 degrees from left to right as would be the case with a fisheye lens, I don’t know, but I do know it’s very wide.  There’s also no crazy fisheye distortion.  I felt fishy was a fair description.  Enjoy.

Exif information
Model	Canon EOS 20D
Original date	2009:11:21 14:29
Exposure time	1/400 sec
Focal length	10mm
F-Stop	f/9
ISO speed	ISO-100
Exposure Bias	-1

Mormon Rocks

Also known as the Latter Day Saints Rocks, it has been said that these rocks were the site of a trip and fall that slightly inconvenienced Jules Verne during a hiking expedition in Southern California, supposedly leading him to criticize the Mormon religion in a small part of his book Around the World in 80 Days.  These rocks are also where a group of Mormons passed through the mountains on their way to Los Angeles in the 1850’s, after fleeing Utah and a homicidal Mormon Militia.

OK, so I may or may not have made parts of that up.  These rocks really are called Mormon Rocks, apparently because some Mormons Manifested Destiny through the Cajon Pass, between the San Bernardino and San Gabriel Mountains, where these rocks are located.

I don’t have much experience with black and white photography, but I think this one looks pretty good in black and white.  I converted it to look like Kodak Professional T-MAX 100 black and white film.  Generally I like color photographs more because of, well, all the pretty colors.  Like I said though, I think this looks pretty good in black and white, and I wanted to try something different.  I will probably eventually post the color version as well, because I like it a lot too.

Exif information
Model	Canon EOS 20D
Original date	2009:11:07 17:53
Exposure time	1/100 sec
Focal length	50mm
F-Stop	f/10
ISO speed	ISO-100
Exposure Bias	0

Arbitrary Gate

I’ve gone into the Angeles National Forest in the San Bernardino Mountains a few times now and I’ve found some really pretty areas. A major part of this forest was recently involved in some wild fires, possibly set by arson, and as you can see, this part of the forest and mountains is pretty burned out. All of the plants are charred, and there is a ton of ash on the ground. So this area is maybe not the prettiest around, but does offer some interesting features, such as this gate I found. I couldn’t imagine why this gate was necessary; directly in front of the gate was a large berm that was pretty established. As you can see, directly under the gate is a large hole, with some strange rock formations. I can’t speculate as to what these rocks mean, but I’m pretty sure it’s some sort of Wiccan thing. Yeah, that’s probably what it is. 

Regardless, this gate is ridiculous. There isn’t a road, or even a trail, in front of it or behind it, and there is no fence on the sides of it. Even if there was a road, any vehicle that first made it over the large berm would then get stopped by this big hole under the fence. Any person wanting to walk into the property could just simply walk around the gate. On top of its general uselessness, the gate is actually locked; just in case someone wanted to prove me wrong and open the gate and drive a dirt bike through there or something.

Technically speaking, this is a single exposure, with (naturally) some post-processing work. This was such a gray and dull scene I was worried I wouldn’t be able to get something that I liked, but I enjoy this photo.

Edit: Wait a minute; this isn't just a single exposure.  I did this one like I did the Mountain Sun photo.  I used one exposure of the sky and one exposure of the rest of the scene.

Steamboat Panorama

This is a picture I took with my old Canon PowerShot A70.  It is actually 5 pictures stitched together to form this panoramic view of the scene.  I took this at the Steamboat ski resort in Colorado in 2006 over spring break.  It’s a pretty cool ski area with lots of trails and lots of lifts that can keep you skiing on new trails all day.  The problem with Steamboat is how far from I-70 it is located (although this may make it less crowded than ski areas that are closer to I-70).  It was a good trip and Steamboat is a good place to go if you’ve got a special reason to go there, or really don’t mind driving the extra hours, but there are plenty of excellent ski areas closer to I-70.

Anyway, enjoy the picture.  I stitched this together shortly after I took it, but I re-did it recently because I wanted to show more detail in the snow in the foreground; in my original it was blown out and just showed up as white.

Mountain Sun

As I alluded to in my previous post, there was a huge change in my life recently.  That change was that I have moved to the Los Angeles area.  I moved for work to help out on a project out here, and although it is a great opportunity career-wise (I’m actually managing others instead of doing all the work myself), I think the biggest bonus to moving out here is the opportunity for photography!

Take this picture for example; this was just a short drive out of town!  Any direction I go I can see opportunity for great pictures; beaches, the ocean, deserts, mountains, and urban environments.

I took this picture in the Angeles National Forest in the San Bernardino Mountains.  This is an interesting picture because of the way I put it together.  Technically, this is two exposures that I manually combined in Photoshop.  I took one photograph to properly expose the foreground and the mountains, and I took one photograph to properly expose the sky, and get the cool rays of light from the setting sun.  This was really the first time I’ve tried this technique.  I had originally planned on trying an HDR of this scene, but I didn’t really like the results, so I opted to try something new.

Mountain Rocks

As I mentioned in Lufkin Civic Center, I haven’t felt much like working on my artism recently, any further than taking pictures. Luckily, I have a tendency to process photos to a state that is almost finished, but not quite ready for public consumption. It’s a bad habit, but worked out well on this occasion.

This is another photograph from the spring ski trip to Colorado earlier this year. I've had it almost done for a while, and just needed to put a few finishing touches on it.

I did quite a bit of talking in the last post, so I'll keep this one short and let the photograph do the rest of the talking.

Georgetown Lake

I've been pretty busy lately, and traveling, so that's why there hasn't been an update for a little while.  I'm in Georgia right now, and finally have some downtime in the hotel to get a post or two ready to publish.  I've had a good time in southeast Georgia.  I learned that there are some great people down here.  I brought my camera along for the trip and got some good photos, so expect them sometime soon, along with more stories from my trip.

This photograph is another I took last spring in Georgetown, Colorado.  It is another view of the lake we could see when we looked off our balcony of the condo in which we stayed.  The stream seen with the fog also feeds into this lake.  As you can see, the lake is partially frozen, and it looks like a storm is rolling in, but it didn't storm, or even snow in Georgetown while we were there.

Fog Rolls In

This photo is another one I took in Georgetown, Colorado last spring when we went skiing.  We had gotten back from a good day of skiing and my dad and I went and walked around the lake area outside of our condo.  It was already a cloudy day, and as a little rain began to fall we started to head back to the condo.  When we noticed some fog rolling in through the mountains, I quickly set up for a few more shots, and this was one of them.

It's hard to see in this photograph, but there is a guy upstream doing a little fishing.  I didn't see any fish in the stream, but maybe that was because he caught them all before they made it to where I was standing.  I would also note the lack of snow in these pictures.  There was no snow in Georgetown this spring, but there was snow at Loveland, where we skied.  A few areas up high on the mountain coming down from the top were bare, but other than that, the snow was pretty much perfect last spring.  It was also pretty warm, which would probably explain the lack of snow in Georgetown.

Colorado View

This was the view we had from our condo in Georgetown, Colorado last spring when I went skiing with my Dad and Brother.  The lake and mountains were very pretty, and I got a number of pictures I liked in the area.  We have stayed in Georgetown for many years, but we’ve never stayed in these condos or even near the lake before this year.

Although I did get some nice photos from Georgetown, I didn’t get any pictures while skiing.  For one, I’m a little nervous about taking my DSLR up the mountain while I’m skiing, as there is a greater possibility of falling while on skis with a camera than there is while just walking around with a camera.  I also tend to focus more on skiing, and less on taking pictures when I'm on the mountain.  One of these days though, I’ll work up the nerve and spend an afternoon on the mountain with my camera, taking it easy and taking photos.