Happy Easter Everyone! However you celebrate Easter, I hope it was a good day for you. I had a lazy Easter Sunday, doing laundry in between naps. I also worked on a new project... more about that in just a bit.
Two weeks ago, Mrs. DeadGuitarist and I went to Death Valley. We got a late start, but that gave me an opportunity to try some astrophotography (which is the reason she was mad at me for 4 days afterward -- he previously cracked rib was hurting and I was being rather selfish, despite offering to go home before heading up to Dante's View for sunset and astrophotography; so I deserved her wrath, or I should say, her 4-day silent treatment). Unfortunately there weren't many wildflowers blooming, even at higher elevations. Creosote bushes were blooming but that's about it. There were the occasional flower along the side of the road, but nothing worth stopping for. Still, there are interesting geologic and geographic features within Death Valley to photograph and I got some good sunset and astro photos. I'm still processing the RAW images, but I set my camera for RAW + JPEG, so here are a few unprocessed previews.
ABOVE: Mesquite Sand Dunes near Stovepipe Wells
ABOVE: Creosote Blossom (using a 10x filter and zoom)
ABOVE: One of many sunset photos at Dante's View; one of four or five where I happened to capture a fantastic silhouette of three people watching the sunset.
ABOVE: Not a great astro photo (I have better ones), but notable for three things: 1) the large orange glow is Las Vegas city lights; 2) the much smaller orange glow just below the larger one are lights from Pahrump, NV; 3) the largest and brightest point in the sky in this shot is Jupiter.
Last Sunday, I went to Spring Mountain Ranch State Park, which is within the Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area, but separate from Red Rock Canyon itself (and probably normally less crowded). Although we've lived in Las Vegas since 1996 (except for 3+ years from late 2007 to early 2011 when we lived in Virginia), I've never been to Spring Mountain Ranch State Park. I saw on Facebook that they were having a ranger led wildflower hike. It was quite a large group so I didn't catch everything the ranger said, but it was an easy hike and there were quite a few wildflowers blooming: wild mustard (an invasive species), sego lily, desert marigold, and a few others that I either cannot remember or didn't catch the name. I haven't pulled those photos off the SD card yet so, unfortunately, no previews. Sorry.
Mrs. DeadGuitarist starts her new job tomorrow. She'll be working for Faraday Futures... yep, a rival of Tesla. Faraday Futures is building its manufacturing plant in Apex, which is just northeast of Las Vegas. She's excited because she'll get to create a Project Management Office, including policies and procedures, staffing and outsourcing. It's her dream job. Tuesday morning she flies out to Los Angeles to go to corporate headquarters, presumably to meet people, learn more about Faraday Futures and get a better idea of what she's gotten herself into. She comes home Thursday evening. So I've got a couple of evenings to myself. Since she needs to be at the airport by 5 AM on Tuesday, I'm planning to go out to the Henderson Bird Viewing preserve to take photos of birds for an hour or so before work. Wednesday evening I'm planning to head over to the Clark County Wetlands Park for some landscape, wildlife and sunset photos for a couple of hours after work.
NEW PROJECT!
I'm building a Patreon page, primarily for my photography, but I might add some videos of places I visit (in addition to photos), behind the scenes photoshoot videos (if I do some studio or location type photoshoots... like those done for SG photosets) and maybe even some original music (not sure about that last one yet). I'm also starting up a new IG for just my photography and I'll be creating one or more online stores for some cool products: photo books, calendars, prints, canvas prints, metal prints, posters and who knows what else. Perhaps I can make some extra cash to help my buy additional photography equipment, a full frame DSLR, camping equipment, fund photography travel and trips, pay model fees when needed, rent shoot locations, and fund large scale projects (of which I have several ideas). One item I really want to buy is an Argus C3 camera. That was my first 35mm film camera; my step-grandfather gave me his when I was in high school. Pretty cool camera. I think I can take some cool vintage style photographs with it, and I know I can take some cool multiple exposure photographs. Surprisingly, even though production on these cameras stopped in the late 1950s or early 1960s, they aren't terribly hard to find and aren't too expensive. I found three on Etsy and one on eBay right at the top of a Google search.
Over the next week or so, I'll be writing some homework blogs and I've got a PINK MAGIC blog I want to write since it's been quite a while since I last wrote one... January I think.
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Stay Tuned...
DeadGuitarist
Besides Suicide Girls, you can find me on various other social, photography and music sites, as well as career oriented sites:
FACEBOOK | TWITTER | INSTAGRAM | REVERBNATION (ARTIST) | SOUNDCLOUD | FANDALISM | TUMBLR | FLICKR | 500PX | VIEWBUG | GURUSHOTS | WASTED YEARS (MY PERSONAL WEBSITE) | YOUTUBE | LINKEDIN | AMAZON WISHLIST | Soon to be on Patreon, Etsy and a brand new website.
I'm also on SnapChat (Gri11Sgt), Periscope (GrillSgt) and Uenme (RhythmGuitarist). I usually have my status on Uenme set to unavailable because of work and I forget to change it when I'm available. I'll try to get better about that.
I'm not super active on all of them, but I add stuff to each of them occasionally that you won't necessarily find on my SG profile page.