Hidden Valley

This is a reprise of the blog post titled A Missed Setting. The two photos below were taken from Hidden Valley Wildlife Preserve.

I made the photographs in the morning early in October 2010. When I reviewed the images that evening, I discovered that I hadn’t reset the ISO after the previous day’s low light shooting. Everything from the Hidden Valley session was shot at ISO 1600, rather than my usual 100 or 200, and I was annoyed by how grainy the images were.

While sorting through photos a couple days ago I stumbled upon them again, took a good look, and decided that they aren’t as bad as I initially thought.

Random Frames

Sorting through photos from the last year recently, I found a few frames that slipped between the cracks. These are all photos that I like for one reason or another. The first frame is from Red Rock Canyon, Nevada. It didn’t make it into the Red Rock post. I’m not sure why.

The flowers in the photo below are unknown to me, which isn’t particularly unusual. This frame was captured near Nuevo, California.

The photo below is a view of the east side of the Mission Inn in Riverside, California. I had an apartment on this side of the Inn in the winter of 1971-1972 when I first arrived on the West Coast.

The photo below was made in Sycamore Canyon. I thought of it as a “practice” frame when I captured it, but I keep viewing it, so I suspect there’s more to it than that.

The below view is from Anza Narrows. The buildings in the middle distance are in downtown Riverside. The far ridgeline is the San Bernardino Mountains, including Mt. San Gorgonio.

Below, another view from Anza Narrows. The shadow is on Box Springs Mountain. Mt. San Gorgonio is obscured by clouds.

A night photo from my street in Riverside, California. I like the orange light from the streetlamps.

This long view is from Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah.

A Redirect Post: Stolen Photo

I'm not going to make a habit of this. But.


Sometimes I run into an article or blog post that is just so good that I want to share it with my somewhat tight circle of friends in an email. The blog post mentioned below is one of those. 


I started to write an email to my circle about this post, then thought better about it, because it really deserves wider circulation. Not that my blog has a huge readership, but it does have a small number of readers scattered across the globe in places far beyond the confines of the United States in countries such as Russia, China, France, Canada, Viet Nam, Slovenia, South Korea, and Malaysia, for example. I don't know why people in other countries are reading the blog, but I like the fact that they are. If you read this and are from a county other than the USA, please feel free to comment on any post you like (or hate, for that matter), and mention your country. Of course, you can comment if you are in the US - I'm not anti-American, heh, heh... I'd love to hear from you. For instructions on posting a comment see http://crossingsrralexander.blogspot.com/2010/04/posting-comment.html.


In any case, the blog post by Kirk Tuck titled Sometimes getting a photo stolen is flattering. A little. is definitely worth a quick read. Go to http://visualsciencelab.blogspot.com/ and scroll down to the 5th post (as of November 8, 2010), which has the title mentioned above. 

Anza Views

November 6, 2010. Like every morning, I walked outside to look at the dark sky and decide where to go hiking. The direction I would take depended on the cloud formations. If it didn’t look particularly good for photographs – no clouds, or one big uniform misty dome – I’d head for Sycamore Canyon Wilderness Preserve on the eastern rim of the valley. If the clouds looked likely to produce a photography-friendly sunrise, I’d head for Anza Narrows or Hidden Valley, since both parks have good long views of the valley and the mountains in and around it. The clouds looked promising, so I loaded the saddlebags and rode up to Anza Narrows. I thought for a passing moment about taking the Subaru, then remembered the gate at the park: If it was closed I could only get in with the Road Star, since I could ride in on the sidewalk, bypassing the automobile entrance. When I arrived at the entrance the automobile gates were unlocked. The County apparently doesn’t have enough workers to lock everything up every night. That’s a recent development, brought on by years of government mismanagement at both state and local levels.

Photo above. From left; Mt. San Gorgonio in the San Bernardino Mountains, Box Springs mountain, Mt. San Jacinto in the San Jacinto Mountains. Statistics: ½ second, f/11, ISO 100, -0.3 EV, 28mm (35mm equivalent).

Photo above. Left: Box Springs Mountain. Center, far distance: Mt. San Jacinto. Statistics:1/4 second, f/22, ISO 100, 67mm (equiv.).

Photo above. Mt. San Jacinto. Statistics: 1/13 second, f/11,ISO 100, +0.3 EV,157mm (equiv.)