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Lone Tree, Coyote Buttes North, Utah

I've continued to explore my photo archives (as the Seattle weather discourages me from going out to shoot in autumn), and continue to go back to my February trip to the Coyote Buttes North area, on the border of Utah and Arizona.

Along the way towards The Wave we took a side trip up to see the Lace Rocks, which was a bit of a climb up slippery sandstone. I spotted this lone tree, seemingly dead now, that had grown out of the desert rock. I decided to post this photo, although as I look at it critically I see a few things I wish I'd done differently (specifically, bring the camera level lower, and improve the focus to sharpen the background).

However, in chatting with those I hiked around with there it was noted that perhaps we needed more color treatments of the area, rather than all the black and white photos that I've been posted, so I decided to post both. I initially preferred the black and white version for the separation of the tree from the sky, but now I'm leaning towards the color treatment as I think the color of the sandstone is part of what makes this area so special. I suppose there's no right choice.

Nikon D90 | Nikon 18-200VR@26mm | f/8 | 1/320s | ISO200 | Handheld

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Uploaded on Nov 1, 2009  |  Map

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Lone Tree, Coyote Buttes North, Utah

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Uploaded on Nov 1, 2009

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Duck Confit & Jerusalem Artichoke Soup

Apart from Photography, one of my favorite hobbies is cooking, and with the weather in Seattle pretty unpleasant these days I decided I wanted a culinary project.

About 2 weeks ago I decided to try my hand at home-made Duck Confit. I had Duck Confit for the first time about 2 years ago and loved it, and it has become a great once-in-a-rare-while treat. The process takes some time, first I had to break down a duck. Then I seasoned the legs & thighs (and wings), mostly just salt and a little other seasoning, and it needed a little over a day to brine like that. Next it is submerged in a dutch oven of (and this is the tricky part) hot duck fat. All in all it was about 2.5 pounds of duck fat, some from a fancy butcher, some from a great asian market, and some rendered from one of the duck breasts. Submerged in the duck fat it cooked for about 4 hours under low heat.

At that point you remove the duck, strain the fat and submerge the legs. That's chilled and the duck and be held for months encased in fat (it's a preservation method). After a week or so I decided to heat it all up again and cook it a couple more hours, and then refrigerate one leg and freeze the other. The next day (yesterday) I heated it up to what you see here.

The soup was inspired by a meal at the restaurant called Terra in Napa Valley, which apart from really lousy service had fantastic food. I had a Jerusalem Artichoke soup there and really loved it, so I've taken a stab at it a few times, but this was the best to date. I think it was about 1 pound of Jerusalem Artichokes, 2 very small potatoes, 1 large yellow carrot, one medium onion... that was the base. All in all it turned out tasty and silky... just as I'd hoped.

My wife prepared the salad, mixed green and herbs, persimmon and dried blueberries... also delicious.

:)

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Uploaded on Oct 30, 2009

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Sunrise Sunrise, Mount Rainier National Park

Back on my last photo outing (sadly a couple months ago) I made the effort to crawl out of my tent shortly after 4AM to make the drive into the park in time to be there for the sunrise. I'm not a morning person, but I think my early morning efforts have a much higher rate of yielding good results that an easy sunset, and this day was no exception.

I took this high up on the road into the Sunrise area of the park (hence the title, Sunrise Sunrise). It was my first time in the eastern side of the park, and I didn't quite know what to expect, or where to setup to shoot. Just shy of the Sunrise Visitor's Center I found the views to be very rewarding and I parked at the nearest pullout and hiked back to this spot.

This is a film shot, using my large format Tachihara 4x5 camera, shooting Fuji Velvia film. Velvia's dynamic range is notoriously narrow (any relatively modern digital camera is likely more forgiving) so I was very careful to meter this so as not to blow out the snow-capped mountain. In the end I was able to capture the warm pink hues of the first light, but still retain contrast throughout the snow.

If you look at the larger sized image you can see some interesting details, such as the bare tree trunks in the bottom left - as they caught that bright first light they really glowed in contrast to the dark greens surrounding them. Also towards the bottom of the frame there's a stark contrast in the apparent color in the snow in direct light and in shadow, where the shadows are blue compared to the pinks just above them. On a white subject and at this time of day this phenomenon seems more pronounced than usual.

After I'd shot this view I turned about 90 degrees to my left to shoot south towards the Cowlitz Chimneys, which can be seen here.

I hope to post more soon.

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Uploaded on Oct 18, 2009  |  Map

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