Guy Schmickle's photostream Pro User

Yesterday was my lovely wife's birthday and we capped off the day by hiking out to my favorite location to view the nearly full moon rise through the spires of Cathedral Rock at this time of the year. Being a budding astrologist, she has a fascination with the moon so it was cool to see her face light up when it first came into view! This scene was shot nearly two miles away from this formation with a 500mm lens to give the moon more prominence within the scene.

I'm still playing with b&w conversions with Nik's Silver Efex Pro software. Here's a conversion of a shot taken a number of years ago at the campy Goldfield Ghost Town just east of the Phoenix area. While the the place is definitely a tourist trap, there are some cool views with the Superstition Mountains as the backdrop.

Here's one final image of Bartlett Lake (north end) and the Mazatzal Mountains with blooming brittlebush and globemallow coloring the foreground hills.

I was really drawn to this backlit desert scene during my last visit to the Bartlett Lake area. It may be a bit busy, but that's pretty much the nature of the desert.

Google has introduced deep price cuts for the Nik software suite (which it bought out a short while ago), so I picked it up and started playing with the Silver Efex Pro b&w conversion tool. So far I'm digging the results. Here's a conversion of an image taken at the Grand Canyon's North Rim. This vantage point of Wotan's Throne can be found at the Cape Royal overlook and is one of the most spectacular in the park. The increasing cloudiness (leading to monsoonal activity later) was perfect for a black & white presentation in my opinion. Silver Efex really allowed me to capture the drama within the scene...much more so than when I originally did the conversion through photoshop. It's definitely gonna be a keeper!