Road Trips – Page 56 – On the road with Jim

State Route 12 Project New Publication Announcement

Utah SR 12 Magazine-84 pages of color photos and stories printed on premium paper and you can buy on its Blurb Page.

There’s exciting news this morning coming from the international headquarters of Jim Witkowski Photography, located in beautiful downtown Congress. You may have wondered why things have been quiet around here for the last six months, or that I didn’t post many photos from our Utah trip last summer. Well, I was busy using that time to compile years of photographs into my new 84-page magazine—Utah State Route 12, and I’m pleased to announce that it’s ready for début.

The project’s theme is about the beautiful places in the Escalante Grand Staircase National Monument. The monument is so vast that it has three management areas: the western Grand Staircase Region, Kaiparowits Region, and Escalante Canyon Region on the east flank. There is only one paved highway that spans them all—Utah’s State Route 12. In this project, I wanted to show that there are beautiful marvels to see along its length, and the road is more than just a gateway to Bryce Canyon.

I plan to release my work in four versions: PDF, Magazine, Book, and eBook. I have completed the first two, which—I believe—should get the most attention, and I’m still working on the second half. It looks like they will be ready by Valentines. (Are you in the dog house and need a gift?)

PDF—this version is best for viewing on your computer, and except for bandwidth, it’s free. It’s ideal for those of you that don’t need more clutter. You can open the file and begin browsing right away or save it to your hard drive for later.

Magazine—this is a 84-page hard copy of photos and text printed on premium stock paper. I’m delighted with how well the images reproduced. The magazine’s cost is $ 22.99 (plus shipping) is admittedly pricy for a periodical, but compared to the book, it’s a bargain. Blurb handles the sales on their secure Website because they print them to demand. That means that there won’t be surplus versions lining birdcage bottoms.

Book—the large (13 x 11) coffee table book is still in progress which sounds simple, but it’s in landscape orientation, so the layouts have to be adjusted. The photos are larger than the magazine’s, and I had more space to embellish the stories. It will be available in softcover, hardback image wrap, and hardback with dust jacket. The price of the book is expected to be under $ 200.00 at most, so I think there will only ever be one edition—my own if Her Highness lets me.

EBook—this will be the last version and will be easy to do because it’s the book reformatted to fit your Kindle. That’s all handled by the computers. I don’t know what it will cost, but it will be ready next month, so keep watching my Books sections. The downside is that with this version, you won’t get the privilege of collecting dust with it.

I’m planning on releasing a new project each year as Queen Anne, and I travel. For this first project, I had to learn the software and build the templates; something that took up development time. Future projects should go from camera to print quicker. Plans for next year’s project are in progress.

You can get your free PDF version and preview the magazine by visiting their Web Page by clicking here. I hope you enjoy viewing them and please leave your comments here and/or on their Blurb page.

Until next time — jw

Winter Castle Picture of the Week

The KofA Wildlife Refuge takes up a good chunk of land. It covers a megabyte—or 1040 square miles if you’re not a computer nerd and don’t get the joke—nearly the size of Rhode Island. The topography is Basin and Range, which is standard for western Arizona, Nevada, and California’s Mohave Desert. Finally—one last bit of trivia before I move on from statistics—the wildlife range spans three mountain ranges (that’s three more than in Rhode Island).

The reason for so much space is to support herds of desert bighorn and antelope. Fifty years ago, both of these large animals were almost gone. Like bison, the sheep were plentiful in western Arizona, but a century of overhunting took its toll. It’s actually the sheep’s fault. They walk to the edge of a precipice then strike a magnificent pose saying, “Go on and shoot. I won’t move, and I’ll bet you’ll miss.” It was a living shooting gallery. By the time Arizona was a state, they were effectively wiped out.

Things started to change in 1933 when the Boy Scouts worked to get a game range established. Although the idea seems convoluted, you can’t hunt big horn without having sheep—the very logic that started the conservation movement. The game management people augmented the herds with transplants from other areas—including Mexico, but there was too much inbreeding. To successfully reintroduce them, they needed a broader gene base with multiple herds. Wildlife scientists established a crowd in the KofA and a southern pack in the Castle Domes and another in the New Water range to the north. To make this system work young males need to migrate across the open desert between ranges and breed with a different stock. Sheep can’t move freely across an Interstate Highway. Now you know why the KofA management area is so large. We like sheep, however rattlesnakes are a different thing.

When I set up to photograph this week’s featured image, none of what I told you was in my head. I thought it was pretty. That’s all I need to take a picture. I made it late in the day while driving away from Palm Canyon looking south. On the far side of King Valley, the Castle Dome Mountains are back-lit from the low winter sun. The atmospherics show off the range’s depth, as the peaks progressively get lighter in the distance, with Castle Dome Peak rising to 3788 feet. As I processed this image, I began to understand its story. I called it Winter Castle, and I hope you like it.

As usual, you can see a larger version of Winter Castle on its Web Page by clicking here. I hope you enjoy viewing this week’s post and return next week when we’ll show another featured image from the KofA Wildlife Refuge.

Until next time — jw

KofA Moonrise Picture of the Week

For the last couple of years, on the drive to see the dentist, we drive past a place that I wanted to photograph. That sounds like it’s down the street, but our dentist is three hours away in Mexico. When we pass by in the morning, we’re on our way to an appointment, and I’m too tired to stop on the way home. I decided that I can’t do it justice with a drive-by shooting. I need to make it a destination.

The place I’m talking about is the Kofa Wildlife Refuge in the far west part of Arizona and near the western edge of the Sonoran Desert, which is the Colorado River thirty miles away. It’s along US 95, a half hour south of Quartzsite. The refuge spans three mountain ranges: the Castle Dome, the Kofa, and the New Water ranges. It supports a herd of desert bighorn sheep large enough to allow limited hunting. The refuge also has a couple of indigenous plants that only grow within its boundaries.

KofA Moonrise – A partial moon rises over the KofA Range in western Arizona.

Of the three ranges, I think the Kofa Range is the most photogenic; at least along its western face. There’s a central mountain—Signal Peak—that is surrounded by shorter—but impressive—needles and jagged peaks. It reminds me of the Superstitions a bit as they’re both volcanic in origin and have a similar geographical setting. Early prospectors called them the Shit House Mountains because they thought the spires looked like outhouses. Mapmakers didn’t care for that name, so they changed the name to Stone House and finally Kofa after the King of Arizona Mine—an operation that pulled millions of dollars of gold from the mountains in the twenty years that it operated.

Besides the rugged terrain and the bighorn, the Kofa has Palm Canyon. The canyon requires a short but steep half-mile hike to see a dozen and a half California Fan Palms growing in a vertical gash in the mountain. I know that you can see palms anywhere in Arizona, but these are the only native ones in the state. They’re a holdover from one of the Ice Ages. I failed to get a good shot on this trip because to get close you would need to be a mountain goat, and the sun shines on them for a limited time. When I go back, I’ll take a different lens.

This week’s featured image was an afterthought. I was driving down from Palm Canyon and stopped to capture an image in the west. When I got out of the truck, I saw a three-quarter moon rising above Signal Peak, so I instinctively fired a couple of shots, but quickly dismissed them as insignificant because of the wide lens I used. Wide lenses make a small moon even smaller. When I saw this shot with those streaky clouds and golden light on my monitor, I thought this would be perfect for an introduction to this month’s topic. I call it KofA Moonrise (I think it’s the way we should spell the range’s name). Incidentally, Palm Canyon is in the dark area beneath Signal Peak.

You can see a larger version of KofA Moonrise on its Web Page by clicking here. I hope you enjoy viewing this week’s post and come back next week when we’ll show another featured image from the KofA Wildlife Refuge.

Until next time — jw

Sonoran Winter Afternoon

It’s the end of the year already, and that means that this week’s photo wraps up the month and year. In a few days, we’ll begin a new year, shooting new locations and new subjects. But I’ll worry about that next week. For now, let’s finish with the trip up the San Domingo Wash, which is where I shot this week’s featured image.

While I was out exploring the mountains north of Wickenburg, I experienced the desert in changing light—from late afternoon to sunset. In that short amount of time, the desert’s character changed as the sun sank lower in the sky. When it was behind the clouds, the scene was dull and empty. Later, when the sun came out, it was warm and full of life, and all the different plants stood out like characters on a stage. At sunset, those characters blended into an image of textures and shapes. Meanwhile, the sky became a more critical player in the story.

A late afternoon sun lights up the saguaros in the mountains north of Wickenburg, Arizona.

With this week’s image I call Sonoran Winter Afternoon, it was the saguaro near the hilltop and in the middle of the frame that made me raise the camera to my eye. Although it may not seem notable, desert dwellers will spot that it’s a very tall specimen. It stands out like an NBA player walking down New York’s Fifth Avenue. It’s a trophy shot in the same way as one with multiple arms or with a crest would be. After my first shot, I worked to get a better composition and show it among others for scale. I like how the warm afternoon sun gives the vegetation a golden glow which contrasts nicely with the blue sky patches. I hope you enjoy it.

You can see a larger version of Sonoran Winter Afternoon on its Web Page by clicking here. I hope you enjoy viewing this week’s post and come back next week when we’ll be in an entirely different Arizona place. I also have some announcements coming up that I’m looking to get the New Year with a good start. Here’s hoping yours will be better and brighter.

Until next time — jw

Pair of Threes

I’m all alone this week because Queen Anne has gone home to her sister’s because they made Christmas cookies this week, and Anne goes where the sugar is. For me, it’s good news and bad news. The good news is that the bleeding from my ears has stopped since the yelling ceased. The bad news is that I don’t have a copy editor this week, so this will be a short post. I don’t know how to spell all the big words she uses. She’s coming home on Thursday so things will be back to normal then. Pray for me.

Meanwhile back at the mines—or more specifically, San Domingo Wash where Anderson Mill is.

Back in the days when everybody used film—that’s the cellulose stuff you put in cameras to capture images before we used electrons—I was a stingy shooter. Because each frame cost a buck (sheet film was five-times that), I wouldn’t waste my money on something I wasn’t sure was good. Now that electrons are cheap (and the prices keep falling), I’ll snap just about anything that catches my eye. Often that shot turns out to be junk, but one out of a thousand deserves a second look. That’s how this week’s featured image happened.

Pair of Threes -Three saguaro along the ridge overlooking the San Domingo Wash where the Anderson Mill is. The three wispy clouds make up the pair.

If you’re the kind of person that lingers on every word that I write, you’ll recall that in my previous posts that the Anderson Mill structure is several stories tall and that the brothers welded it together as needed. In the short time that Fred and I were there, I wanted to poke around the different levels. Now, there are steel-treed stairs, but most of them didn’t have handrails. So I walked the truck paths that snaked up the hillside. It was at one of the switchbacks that I looked up and saw three saguaros along the ridge. Without thinking, I snapped the camera shutter and then dismissed it. When I saw that image on the computer, I knew I could use it because the clouds made the photo. I call this image Pair of Threes.

You can see a larger version of Pair of Threes on its Web Page by clicking here. I hope you enjoy viewing this week’s post and come back next week when we’ll show another featured image from San Domingo Wash.

Until next time — jw

BTW: Anne’s flight comes in after 11 pm. If you were a good friend, you’d pick her up … and keep her.