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I’ve really no excuse for the time lag between my last blog and this one except that I’ve been a good boy and I’ve been spending time with my son who is home from college and doing a lot of shooting. As I’ve mentioned in previous blogs, digital photography has been a fantastic inspiration to me, and at this stage in most people’s lives, when ending work seems to take center stage (at least it has for many of my friends), digital photography has had the opposite effect on me. I can’t wait to get in the field and work.The added benefit of all this recreation disguised as a job has also been a rekindling of a keen sense of joy and peace when I’m outdoors. This feeling has never left me to any great sense, and it has has always been my prime motivation beyond photography, but right now I’m in period where my desire to be immersed in nature is particularly intense. Besides shooting in the Canyonlands, I have been hunting down a number of rock art panels, and climbing around the Colorado River Rims. I like to do these river shots when the river is high, as it was a few weeks ago. My hiking buddy and I found a road that I’ve missed on dozens of trips to a very scenic rim area upstream from Moab. The GPS actually alerted us to its existence, and it took us to a rim location I had tried to reach unsuccessfully by hiking. To get the shot I wanted, I still had to hike about four miles, and the gnats were as vociferous as as I’ve ever experienced. Since I arrived about two hours before the best light (a major error), I had to withstand two hours of the worst they had to offer. Did I mention this is a glamorous job? My buddy, as tough and experienced a canyoneer as exists, gave up and left for the car, but I stayed behind to the bitter end. My reward – some good new images and welts around my ankles that itched so badly they kept me awake at night and are can still be seen over a month later. Photograhically, some of the images required processing with both HDR technology and expanded depth of field programs. Refer to other blogs for information about these, or send me an email of an explanation. Because of these processes and other, I’m finding that every hour I spend in the field is requiring three hours in digital post production work, the only real drawback I can see to digital photography. At about this same time, I began to experiment in my office with Canon’s new 6×19 printer. I bought the model with 10 inks, and also took Calumet Photographic’s recommendation for a paper – their Brilliant Museum Silver Gloss White. I had read that the Print module of Lightroom was really sophisticated, so I decided to put it to the test. I installed the inks, loaded a sheet of paper and printed a image from my Mark III. I DID NOT download any profiles, or calibrate my monitor. I’ve now printed about 50 images and I think they all look great. We have even put them for sale at the Moab Gallery. Normally, the time lag between the moment I shoot an image that may end up in the gallery and the time it arrives on the walls can be six months or longer. With this printer I can now deliver (admittedly small) prints the day after I shoot the image, and this has happened already in many cases. We sell the prints signed for $50, and many will be one of a kind. I’ve had great fun with this whole process. A few weeks ago, I hiked with a friend in the Escalante area. I spent three days hiking up to eight miles a day in the 100 degree weather. Again, as I approach my 59th birthday, this would not have been possible without a digital camera. Although I can remember many times shooting with the 4×5 with just the camera sticking out of the water, we visited a spectacular waterfall that required I do my shooting with just my head sticking out of the plunge pool. Although I won’t reveal its location, this falls gets my vote as Utah’s loveliest. Last week I returned to Australia. Each time I go, I think it will be my last trip. This time, when my jet lost an engine to fire over the Pacific, and my rescheduled flight was cordoned off by a terrorist incident, I was ready to say never again, but then I find places like the Painted Hills. I had read recently about a newly found scenic wonder in Outback Australia. Though not on any map, any Goggle search will provide information about the place, accessible only by air from Australia’s smallest town. My guide, Merv, set me up with a great pilot and I was flabbergasted by the unique landscape. Over a series of low hill and small buttes, it appeared that flying saucers had disgorged giant buckets of paint on the ground. Reds, oranges, blues, violets, pinks, magentas, and especially yellows turned the normal drab desert into a psychedelic dream or a giant Jackson Pollack canvas. Only in Australia could a place like this be unknown until two years ago!Returning to Adelaide, I became an even bigger fan of car gps. I had noticed a photo in a brochure of a waterfall just outside the city in the beautiful Adelaide Hills. With only a short time until sunset, the gps told me that I would arrive with an an hour and a half to hike and shoot the falls (swollen by several days of rain) and guided me to the site without incident across Adelaide during rush hour. When I finished shooting, it also sent me to a very good Thai restaurant. In September I will be going to Geneva to open a traveling show of my work depicting World Heritage Sites. After taking care of duties, there I plan to spend two weeks traveling around France, and think the car gps will be a godsend for such a trip. The show, featuring 30 prints, will be traveling worldwide after the Geneva opening. Back in Australia, I was also lucky to finally arrange a tour to rock art sites with aboriginal leader Bill Harney. Bill is the last keeper of some of Australia’s, and the world’s, best rock art sites. The 76-year-old lead us through the bush on roads barely discernible to a half dozen “friezes” as the Aussies call them over two days. I guess he must have taken a shine to me because I got to go to some places that he rarely takes visitors, including the most beautiful rock art panel I have ever seen called the “Little Lightnings.” There is no way to describe this beautiful location, so I’ve included an image. Above the rock art was an large arch, uncatalougued I am sure, and the first of four unknown or little known arches I would photograph over the next few days. I can’t divulge the location of this place, because neither I or my anglo guide Mick could ever find it again without Bill. I’m worried that when Bill is gone, heaven forbid, these places will be lost forever, along with his many stories about the adventures of the mischievous Lightning Spirits. My last day in the outback began with a helicopter flight over a half dozen magnificent waterfalls—each a Shangri-La with crystal-clear swimming pools. After lunch we helicoptered to a place I called The Place That Time Forgot, where another huge waterfall in a stunning canyon which narrowed to a mile-long slot before opening to its swimming hole. Many of these images were very contrasty, and will require a lot of work in Lightroom to pull down highlights and open up shadows. At the next stop, the helicopters landed, and I was fortunate to visit a series of spots that few have ever experienced. These places haven’t been in books, they haven’t been photographed and National Geographic Adventure has never been there. The helicopter pilots, one of which has herded cattle with a helicopter all over the nearby area was not even aware of their existence. At the first stop, the helicopter landed next to a huge arch framing another huge stream and the canyon walls. The water continued down a perfect tiered waterfall to a huge swimming pool, with water so pure it was drinkable. At our final stop, we were looking for the “Cathedral,” one of the outback’s most amazing secret wonders. No one, not even two aborigines who accompanied us, knew the exact location of the site, and I was growing worried we wouldn’t find it, even using the helicopters to search. Finally though, after several landings, we saw what had to be the place from the air, and luckily with the winter daylight quickly fading, we were correct. One of the pilots made it to the huge cave arch first. His comment was “It’s full on in here!”“Cathedral” was a apt description of the discovery we had made. Over centuries Aborigines had spent time during the unrelenting rains of the wet season high and dry inside this arch of sandstone that measured perhaps 15 feet high, 60 feet wide, and 200 feet long. Inside the arch, piano leg-like buttresses held the ceiling in place, a natural geologic wonder which I believe is unique. Over the millennia, indigenous painters had decorated the ceiling of the Cathedral with a stunning display of aboriginal rock art, an outdoor Sistine Chapel reflecting the lives of these people who lived perhaps 10,000 years before Christ. I began shooting with my tripod on the ground to get as much of the ceiling as I could into the shot, but I only had time to get enough images to give overall feel of the magnificence of this place. How lucky I was to see and photograph this miracle. Back in Sydney, I hiked over the Harbor Bridge to shoot the city at night, about a six-mile walk. I used a high ISO, and also the color temperature controls and white balance controls in Lightroom to get what I thought were natural colors. Today, I’m hopefully on my way home, although this is not my year for flying, I guess. They’ve just announced the flight will be delayed.