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Color o Blanco y Negro?

For those of you whose Spanish skills are worse than mine, the translation of today’s post title is Color or Black and White?  A stark, nearly white subject like San Xavier sort of screams for black and white.  So I experimented with a number of photos.  Converting digital images from color to black and white is as simple as clicking on ‘desaturate’ in Photoshop.  Unfortunately that rarely gets you a really great black and white image.  There are a lot of tips and tricks to getting a better image, unfortunately I don’t know them.  So mostly I just hack around and hope for something decent.

Some photos clearly work better in black and white and some clearly work better in color.  But sometimes I find myself flipping back and forth between the two versions, not really sure which one is the winner.  So for the following images I leave it to you – color or black and white?

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She’s on a Mission

Yesterday I posted my classic postcard shot of San Xavier.  It’s mandatory to take at least one shot like that and I’m pretty happy with how it turned out.  But of course there are a lot of cool architectural details and features about the mission that tend to get lost in a full building shot.  Our time was limited due to the setting sun and our access was extremely limited due to the gate slamming in our face, so I wasn’t able to get as many images as I wanted.  But the light was amazing.

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White Dove

If you go to Tucson, there are two places that are considered mandatory to visit.  Wait, I’m getting a sense of deja vu.  That’s exactly how I started my post on 1/9 (Watch Dogs) when I wrote about the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, aka mandatory stop number one.  So today’s post must be about mandatory stop number two.  And so it is.  Mission San Xavier del Bac is known as the white dove of the desert.  It’s a stunning building that needs to be seen in person, as no photo can adequately capture it.  But of course a girl’s got to try.

Because of our somewhat aggressive agenda for the day, we made it to the mission at 5:00, right as the sun was starting to go down.  Which unfortunately is the same time the mission closes.  So we had amazing light for photographing the exterior, but the building and grounds were closed.  They take that 5:00 closing very seriously and will pretty much shut the door in your face.  So I photographed like mad before the sun disappeared.  This is the classic postcard shot of the mission.

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Cutting Anxiety

I got my hair cut yesterday.  Oh sure, it doesn’t sound like big deal, but with one exception (an emergency caused by the Halloween blizzard of ’91) only one person has cut my hair for the last 25 years.  So the idea of finding someone to cut it while we’re in Phoenix has filled me with dread.  Naturally I avoided it as long as possible.  Since we were back in Minneapolis in mid November and mid December, I was able to get away with it.  Now I won’t be back until late February and I’ve already gone over three weeks since my last cut.  Normally I get my hair cut every two weeks.  Yes I know that’s crazy, but I’m inordinately fussy about the length.  I justify the cost by telling myself that I’m saving money by letting it go gray.

So I knew I had to do something about it this week.  My sister-in-law has recommended a salon/spa in Desert Ridge near the MIM.  Which I will definitely check out when I (eventually) get around to finding a place to get a facial and a massage.  But I would prefer someplace closer to the house for a haircut.  So I went on a Google search and found a promising looking salon less than 2 miles from our house.  I had to make a trip to the Post Office yesterday and since it was on the way back, decided to stop at the salon and check it out.

My original intent had been to find a place and stop in right after returning from Minneapolis, so I could show them what my freshly cut hair should look like.  Since I practiced such active avoidance of the whole task, that was out of the question.  But I did have the foresight to take a set of photos.  Possibly the most unflattering photos I have ever taken (never stand in front of a yellow wall for a photo) but my hair looked great.

So I screwed up my courage, drove to the salon and walked in to tell my little tale of woe.  The receptionist was awesome (with a great haircut) and recommended I try one of two stylists.  By some bizarre stroke of luck, one was due in 20 minutes and had a opening on her calendar.  Apparently everyone blew their haircare budgets over the holiday, so this was an unusually slow week for them.  The stylist was also awesome (with a great haircut) and spent nearly an hour cutting my hair.  Normally a haircut takes less than 30 minutes, but I think my regular stylist is at the point that she can do it with her eyes closed.

So I now have a fresh haircut and a new stylist for the winter.  Check one item off the list.

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Feathered Friends

Continuing my critters theme, I have a few more photos from the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum.  Birds are probably the most challenging subject in the animal kingdom, due to their small size and ability to move rapidly.  What’s that called again?  Oh yeah, flying.  I will probably spend the rest of my life trying to get that perfect hummingbird photo.  Oh, it’s possible.  If you set up a blind with your camera on a tripod and use a remote motion trigger.  But I keep torturing myself by trying to do it with a hand-held camera.  They did have a hummingbird enclosure at the museum but I only tried a few photos and all of them sucked.  Royally.

They also had a larger bird enclosure.  I didn’t see very many interesting birds in it but just before we were going to walk out, I spotted a bluebird on the ground.  He hopped around for quite while so I was able to get a few decent images.  Then, a little while later while we were eating lunch out on a patio, a cardinal showed up trolling for dropped crumbs.  <WARNING – Do not feed the birds or squirrels.  It’s bad for them and dangerous for you>  Clearly few people bothered to heed the sign and so the cardinal knew if he hung around long enough, snacks would appear.  I think these are two of the better bird photos I’ve ever taken.  But that’s not saying much.

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Hope in a Bottle

I hate getting old.  I’ve never thought of myself as being especially vain, but lately I’ve become obsessed with every single line in my face.  A few years ago I noticed the skin on my neck starting to get loose.  It’s only noticeable when I turn my head a certain way, but it’s just the first sign of things to come.  So I am constantly looking for miracle creams and potions.  I ran out of an expensive face serum and decided not to purchase it again, since I wasn’t convinced it was doing anything for me.  About a month later I started noticing brown spots on my face, so I immediately ran out and purchased another bottle.  I am happy to report that within a few weeks the spots faded.  So at least I have one magic potion that lives up to its ridiculous price tag.

As for the rest of them?  Well, at least I’m well moisturized, which is not a small thing when you spend the winter in the desert.  The regime does gets a little ridiculous though.  Every morning – eye cream, serum, moisturizer (with sunblock), neck cream, hand lotion.  Five different products.  Just to amp up the crazy factor, I have the same routine but a whole different set of products for the evening.  I also have an ultrasonic cleaner for my face.  The ladies at the spa swear by them.

Is it really helping?  It’s a good question.  My mom swears by Vaseline.  Sure it doesn’t feel or smell great, but it keeps her skin soft.  Her mother used it and her skin looked great until she died in her early nineties.  Of course she also gargled with brandy, but that’s a different story.  I don’t think I could stand to use Vaseline, but I do try to stick to products I can buy at Target. (Magic face serum excepted, of course)  The aesthetician who does my facials tells me that my skin “age” is mid 30’s, so I’ve kept 10 years off.  Assuming, of course, that she’s not lying to me to make me feel better.

Excuse me, I need to go moisturize now.

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Sometimes They Pose

Photographing animals, even in the confines of a zoo, is usually frustrating.  When it’s hot they hide in shady spots or disappear entirely behind the scenes.  When they are visible, they are often sleeping.  A sprawled out bear doesn’t make for a great photo op.  The prairie dogs at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum were alert and practically posing for the camera, but it was still difficult to get a lot of good photos of them.  A single dog was a good target, but the groups were impossible.  One of the mountain lions was awake but mostly obscured by grass while the other one was asleep.  The tortoises were nowhere to be seen.  The otter was in constant motion, diving in and out of the water.  I have a lot of really blurry photos of that.

There were a few exceptions.  The Mexican gray wolf stood at attention, looking out at us.  He seemed a little sleepy and a few of my photos show him with closed eyes, but several turned out well.  The bighorn sheep started out in the shadows at the bottom of the enclosure and then followed a female up the artificial cliff and out of sight, presumably for a little afternoon delight.  None of that made for great photos.  I was just about to walk away when he appeared at the top of the cliff and posed.  I took two shots and realized my compact flash card was full.  Unbelievable.  I quickly switched cards and much to my surprise, the bighorn sheep continued to hold his pose until I was able to take a few more photos.  Maybe it’s in his contract.

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Watch Dogs

If you go to Tucson, there are two places that are considered mandatory to visit.  The first is the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum.  The Desert Museum is not a museum in any traditional sense of the word.  It’s part zoo, part botanical garden with a touch of natural history museum thrown in for good measure.  It is a microcosm of the Sonoran Desert.  For this stop on our big Tucson tour, I switched to my 70-200mm zoom lens.  I took a number of photos of the plants and scenery, but most of the ones I liked were of the animals.  I wouldn’t say any of them were great, but many were pretty good.  One of the most entertaining exhibits was a prairie dog burrow.  Prairie dogs are viciously destructive and the scourge of farmers and ranchers.  They are also incredibly cute to watch.

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They Shoot Movies, Don’t They?

The second stop on our fabulous outing to Tucson was a kitschy tourist attraction called Old Tucson Studios.  It is used for filming, but as far as I can tell its biggest claim to fame was being the set for The Three Amigos.  Not exactly a Hollywood legend.  Even though everything there is fake, it is a pretty decent simulation of an old western town.  Besides, I like taking photos of fake stuff that looks real.  One of my favorite photos is a fake Costa Rican storefront at the Phoenix zoo.  You would swear it was taken in dusty little third world town.  For this stop I switched to my 16-35mm lens.  Of course the things I found most interesting were the little detail shots.  Fortunately this lens will focus pretty close, as long as you don’t mind standing right on top of whatever you’re trying to photograph.

We didn’t watch the big stunt show they do at the Studio.  It lasts 30 minutes and we still had our primary destinations for the day ahead of us.  We did get sucked into a really bad old mine “tour” given by Terrible Tom.  I think the Terrible part of his name was in reference to his breath.  The tour was a ten minute walk through a cheesy haunted mine, complete with skeletons and strobe lights.  We didn’t spend much time at Old Tucson Studios, but I think I can be comfortable in recommending that it’s not worth the price of admission.

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Please Buy Something

We tempted fate today by going furniture shopping.  I use the word shopping loosely here – it was primarily a scouting expedition and just to be sure it stayed that way, we took the BMW instead of the Xterra.  This risky business was prompted by the soon to be imminent arrival of our long awaited sofa.  We ordered the sofa at the end of October and it is finally being delivered next Wednesday.  The sofa is a Comfort Sleeper – the only brand of sleeper sofa that I would actually be willing to sleep on.  Having a sleeper sofa on the first floor gives us the option of using it as an ad-hoc bedroom, in the unlikely event that we ever have more than one or two (co-habitating) visitors as guests.  There’s already a full bath so in a pinch we have a second guest bedroom.

Furniture shopping is always fraught with peril.  We have been known to spend days visiting dozens of stores and finding absolutely nothing.  Other times we will go to a few places and find stuff at all of them.  It’s feast or famine.  We had deliberately postponed looking at any additional furniture for the first floor because until the sofa is in place, it’s impossible to know what else will work in the room.  I’ve learned from hard experience not to buy too much at one time.  What looks good in theory on a little paper floor plan can be a nightmare in reality.  Now that we’re so close to actually getting the sofa, it seemed appropriate to start gathering ideas for the rest of the furniture, hence the scouting expedition.

My first observation of the day was that the furniture business must be extremely soft right now.  We were greeted eagerly every place we went and offered water or coffee.  When you start measuring pieces and taking notes, they assume you are really serious about buying something.  At one store, we found a chair we really liked and looked at fabric samples.  They actually gave us a little present just for coming in.  It was a box of small soaps shaped like rosebuds and boy, did they stink of desperation.

Despite setting the expectation that this was just a scouting expedition, we did purchase two items.  One was a small end table and the other was a large vase.  They fit quite easily into the BMW.  I guess next time we’ll have to use a scooter.