Canyonlands In Bad Light

While Tuesday was brilliantly sunny, most of yesterday was hazy and covered in wispy cloud. Not the kind of light you're looking for on a day trip to Canyonlands National Park. So, to paraphrase an old saying, when life gives you lemons, open Photoshop. Try B&W, bump up the saturation and contrast, leave it dark, sharpen like crazy.

And by the way, I was wrong when I said yesterday that there are only two national parks with arches. The second photo is Mesa Arch in Canyonlands. A commenter told me that Bryce Canyon, to the west in Utah, has some, too.         

Arches National Park

There are only two U.S. National Parks that contain arches. One is outside my office window. It has a single example. This one in Utah has about 1,500. Nowhere else in the world like it, and the geology is complex. But there are so many more spectacular vistas. This post is limited to the arches themselves (including Delicate, Double, South Window, Sand Dunes, Skyline, and possibly Whatchamacallit Arch) but there are fins, walls, pinnacles and impossibly balancing boulders everywhere. We work hard when we travel. When to edit?

Canyonlands National Park today. And top photo courtesy of my constant travel companion.      

Moab

This is not Missouri (or, Toto, Kansas). We traveled a good way yesterday and ended our journey in Moab, Utah. It sits between two spectacular national parks, Arches and Canyonlands. There is road construction in Arches, the traffic has been terrible and the forecast for Tuesday is 101 F / 38 C. We hope to be at the gate at 7 when it opens.

Dinner last night at the Moab Brewery. There are many odd things hanging from the ceiling, including beer-laden skydivers. There was time for a brief drive along a quiet part of the Colorado River afterward.    

Closing Ceremonies

I have photos from one last Fringe show still to edit Shakespeare's Women, but today is a travel day and I'll have to squeeze it in when I can. For now, a few shots from the festival's closing ceremonies in the Grandel Theater. Executive director Matthew Kerns and technical boss Kevin Bowman first,  followed by stars of this year's productions and, in the last two, what's to come next year.

I'm writing this during a layover at the Dallas-Fort Worth airport. Flying on soon to Grand Junction, Colorado, and driving to Moab, Utah, late this afternoon. Arches National Park tomorrow. No steel versions there.        

The Everest Game

As you can tell, I've been trying desperately to learn theater photography. Sometimes my existing skills are enough, sometimes not. One thing I've learned is that the stage lighting makes a big difference. Broad lighting in a new space is a snap (see earlier posts on A Song For Vanya). On the other hand, the small space in the Kranzberg Studio Theater can have very uneven light. How to expose when one actor, or a part of an actor, is in the spotlight with the rest in semi-shadow? There is Photoshop, of course, but even that's often not enough.

This was the challenge in shooting The Everest Game. Veteran St. Louis actor Joe Hanrahan finds a magic lamp and releases a genie, who grants him a single wish. (Times are tougher than they used to be.) He chooses to go to London in 1970 to prevent the breakup of the Beatles. Hanrahan approaches BBC news reader Brenda Diamond, who announced the horrific event. Through a series of improbable meetings, Joe persuades John, Paul, George and Ringo (all played by women) to give it one more try. Yoko Ono goes along with the plan. The name of the show comes not from the mountain, but the brand of cigarettes a sound engineer at Abbey Road smoked.

I've been listening to Sgt. Pepper as I write this. My sister and I saw the Beatles second concert at Shea Stadium, quite near where we lived in Queens. Must be dating myself.       

Dead Gothics Society

As described in a small local newspaper, The Ladue News,

Several famous writers who dabbled in the horror genre, including Dante, Mary Shelley, Goethe, Bram Stoker, Lord Byron, Christopher Marlowe, Edgar Allan Poe, Horace Walpole, the Marquis de Sade and The Brothers Grimm, compete against each other as they present their selections of the grisly and macabre. The winner gets a ticket out of purgatory skyward into heaven, while the loser heads to Hades.

Satan presides over the ceremonies and the audience picks winners and losers. I don't remember who won but de Sade's act got pulled off the stage.

       

Please Remain Calm

Very late post today. Bad, bad week at work. Didn't get anything done for City Daily Photo theme day either. Should I care to, there will be plenty of opportunity to photograph photographers next week.

Another show from the Fringe festival, Please Remain Calm by O'Fallon Theatre Works. The show was hilarious but a little hard to explain. Seems a pesticide called Kill Magic (it also knocks off flamingos) has caused much of the population of Lloyd Bridges, Indiana, (what?) to turn into zombies. Many of the high school students are herded into a supply closet. The scene drifts back and forth to meetings, perhaps out in public, perhaps in the school, involving the mayor, the chief of police, the principal, the president of the PTA, the school nurse, the girls' gym teacher, parents, a tipsy neighbor and a representative of Kill Magic urging everyone to please remain calm. Kill Magic is safe as can be, we think. But it looks like the zombies win out in the end. Don't they always?

This show was visually rich. There are more images in my Flickr Fringe album here.