MorseBlog

On our first day we headed to the north side of the park looking for a hike. We didn't find the one we were looking for but found Alcoholic Pass. We remembered this from 4 years previously as someone had said there was a NEw year's Day hike which was a local tradition for some. It is a short but steep hike into the small range of mountains on the north side of the park. The views are expansive of the Borrego Springs Valley. Here are a few colour photos I took. Some of the ocotillo were in bloom A desert still life like those mentioned in Torote Canyon post Across Coyote canyon to the mountains above Borrego Springs Ocotillo Beavertail cactus desert still life Down the Trail: Looking north from the top of the pass to Rabbit Mountain.

Our last day in Anza Borrego we selected a hike to Torote Canyon. Now Torote is the Spanish for Elephant tree. We like elephant trees. They are odd trees that grow only in specific places in the park. Four years ago we hiked up to them and we wanted to see if we could find some more.  Torote canyon runs out to a broad flat plain. It is a sandy drive up to where we started the hike. Much of the hike was on the dirt road as we did not have a 4WD to get us further up the canyon. Nevermind it was a pleasant walk with hardly any people about.  The day was not particularly hot but it was warm. I found myself 'blacking dogging'* it in the shadow of the canyon however to stay comfortable.Throughout the day I felt hot and tired and worried there was something wrong. It transpired that I had picked up some food poisoning from the night before and my condition got much worse over the next 24 hours. Never-the-less the area was beautiful and we had nice day out though we cut o...

Every few years when we visit friends and family over Christmas in southern California we stay a few days in Borrego Springs. Borrego Springs is a small resort community in the middle of the Anza Borrego Desert State Park. The first time I took my wife here she was shocked at how bleak and desolate it is. It is very desolate and dry. In winter however the weather is perfect for hiking. After some time she began to see the subtleties of the desert and now we both enjoy visiting and walking in the park. My grandmother first introduced me to the desert. She lived north of Phoenix in the Sonoran desert and she had a great love for it. They lived on about 5 acres in a house with great big windows that brought the desert landscape into the house. My grandfather built a pond and waterfall that attracted wildlife from all over the desert. In addition to the rabbits, coyotes, mule deer, mountain lions, rattle snakes, and gila monsters my grandmother taught me the names of different cactus...

This is another of those perverse topic of mixing analog and digital in photography. Occasionally I will have a photo that I want to print that is not in the form of a B+W negative. If it is a color negative then that has worked out OK. For instance I have taken this photo as a color negative and printed it with little difficulty. Color Negative (Kodak Porta 400)  Positive Image (Photoshop)   The negatives I merely printed directly in the enlarger  of Ilford MGIV RC De Luxe Paper. The result is here... B+W RC Print It becomes more difficult from a positive slide film image. Here an inter-negative must be produced. In this blog entry ( Paper Inter-Negative Anza-Borrego ) I show one traditional way of achieving a B+W print from a color slide. Clearly this is time consuming but satisfying in the purity of the treatment (all analog). It is more difficult if you have a photo taken on a digital camera. I have tried tried making a digital negative f...