Questions to Ask X (Version 3.2.1)

1.  Do you ever seek the advice of children in matters of the heart?

2.  If the checker at a store fails to charge you for one of your purchases do you inform the checker that they have undercharged you?

3.  On a scale ranging from 1 to 10, where 1 is the lowest and 10 is the highest, where do you rank kissing?

4.  Have you ever hidden your house key under a welcome mat?  Under a planter?

5.  Paper or plastic?

6.  As an invited guest to someone’s home, do you sometimes covertly wipe clean silverware before eating dinner?

7.  Have you anonymously given money to someone you know?

8.  What song most annoys you?

9.  Do you believe in ghosts?

10.  What is your preferred curse word? 

--Mitchell Hegman

Roots

Don’t allow the trees to fool you.  Yes, above ground they are stoic and rigid and all standing apart.  But underground, in a warm tangle of roots, they are holding hands.

--Mitchell Hegman

How Not To Avoid Lens Flares

On those occasions when you are taking a photograph that requires you to direct your lens directly into the sun or some other single point of light, you may encounter a problem with lens flare.  Lens flare will either express itself as a haze, a fuzzy spot, a colorful line across the image, or a combination of the three.

Generally, lens flare pretty much sucks and creates an obvious flaw in your image; though, in a few rare cases, a handsome rainbow thingy might highlight or enhance a subject.

Lens flare can be avoided in most instances.  Attaching a lens hood is probably the most common method of reducing lens flare.  The use of certain filters may be effective in combating flare.  You may also step into a shadow and shoot from there as a way to keep direct light from contacting the lens.  On occasion you might be forced to hold your hand out above the camera to block the unwanted light.

My brother-in-law particularly hates lens flare.  He will do anything to avoid the unwanted light bruising his images.  While reviewing his images from our trip to Bryce Canyon, we came across a few of his shots that captured just a bit of his hand here or there at the top of the image as he attempted to ward off the offensive light.  And then we came across the gem I am posting today.

I asked my brother-in-law to email me a copy of his picture.

The photograph amuses both of us to no end.

It is a keeper.

--Mitchell Hegman

Where Not To Stay In Panguitch, Utah

Over the varied course of my fifty-some years I have stayed in some interesting motel and hotel rooms.  I vividly recall, for one, a night I spent in the Metlen Hotel in Dillon, Montana.  What made my stay at the “Met” interesting was that a live country and western band was playing Waylon Jennings tunes underneath my bed as I tried to sleep.  From a strict scientific point of view, the band was one floor below me.  But that is not how it sounded to me.

I also remember a beautiful teakwood-furnished, marble-floored room located on a humid ocean beach in Vietnam that filled with fine white sand from the beach because my wife and I left the door open while walking the windy beach nearby.

Two nights ago, I finally slept in the room from hell.   I write this as a warning to anyone planning a trip to Panguitch, Utah where the room may be found.

I first noticed the brownish carpeting in the room, which appeared to have been the venue for either a series of rodeos or several Roman bacchanals in a previous decade.  Colleen immediately suggested we wear socks at all times as a way to maintain our Ebola-free status.

I was tempted to sleep in my shoes.

The television remote appeared to be vintage 1980.  Honestly, the remote had so few buttons, I was totally confused.  What do you do with “on” and “off” and four arrows?  Once I finally manage to find a decent station on the television, the feed for that station continued to blink on and off.

The shower, though it looked normal, was in fact a high powered pressure washer.  I will spare you details of the sounds I produced when I accidentally exposed some of my more tender parts to the direct spray.

I found the bed pillows most disturbing.  The pillows themselves were covered in plastic.  I mean plastic: honest-to-goodness-will-hold-a-dozen-watermelons-as-you-drag-them-around kind of plastic.  The pillows crinkled when you moved and the instant you tried to pull a pillow into place the cover shot off the pillow like a loaded rubber band.  Worse than that, the pillows stuck to me like blood-sucking leeches once the pillow cases were gone.  If I rolled over, the blood-sucking pillows rolled with me, loudly crinkling the whole time.  I woke late in the night amid a tangle of plastic pillows and free-ranging pillow cases.

In fairness, my sister and her husband overnighted in room #4 of the same establishment and encountered a reasonably pleasant experience.  Given the experiences of my sister and her husband, I will not mention the name of the motel and will, instead, recommend you refuse to stay in room #7 at any of the motels in Panguitch, Utah.

You’re welcome.

--Mitchell Hegman

Bryce Canyon National Park

Few places that I have visited managed to exceed my expectations, whatever those expectations might have been.  From the very first time I saw photographs of Bryce Canyon National Park, I thought the place both odd and gorgeous.  Yesterday, before launching our final drive home from Utah, four of us drove into Bryce Canyon National Park.

I was genuinely awestruck, as were my companions.  Colleen purposely left her camera in the car at the first scenic overlook—which required a short hike up through some rather plain-looking alpine landscape to reach the 8000-foot rim—expecting another stone canyon or perhaps another river valley engraved by a twisting stream.  Once she reached the first railing and peered down into the vice upon vice of hoodoos and the amphitheaters descending into more amphitheaters, Colleen drew in a breath and then asked for the keys to the car so she could run back to get her camera.

The first light of morning struck inside the amphitheaters just as we arrived.  Some of the hoodoos seemed to glow with fluorescence and the sun shuffled through clouds as it continued to draw higher and reach deeper into the formations of colorful stone.  The light and shadows continually changed, seeming to electrify and switch on and off various features inside the park as we stood at the rim watching.

Posted are a few photographs that will never do justice to what we actually witnessed in the new morning.

--Mitchell Hegman

Zion National Park

Posted today are photographs from a drive through Zion National Park.  The photographs were captured yesterday on our (the four Halloween travelers) return trip to Montana.  The park is located in Southern Utah and ranges from 3,666 to 8726 feet in elevation.  The gains in elevation are almost entirely those of rock canyons and cliffs.  The park is a mix of high desert climate zones and is still being carved into shape by the Virgin River.

I thought the park decidedly beautiful.

--Mitchell Hegman

Halloween 2014

Posted are photographs from our Las Vegas Halloween.

 

--Mitchell Hegman