San Xavier del Bac Mission

Well, hard as I try to avoid life by reading books, I still seem to be around. My mind has been on a roller coaster ride of panic over Jessie and whether or not I made the right decision. To avoid all the 'what if's' I have been reading books. I have finished 9 books since last Tuesday. I haven't accomplished much else and today I told myself I needed to start acting like a responsible adult again.

In addition, Gary called a couple of hours ago and said he is headed to Dubai tomorrow until Saturday - so I will be alone and need to be able to do that (be alone) and still function ...

So - I thought that I would finish off my Arizona Adventure with my photos the San Xavier Mission.

The San Xavier Mission was founded as a Catholic mission by Father Eusebio Kino in 1692. Construction of the current church began in 1783 and was completed in 1797.

It is beautiful and they had scaffolding up to clean ... well my dad said clean, but the web site says they have been removing the earlier coating of cement plaster, repairing the historic brickwork beneath and re-finishing the exterior surface with a traditional lime plaster - so more than cleaning.

Anyhooo ... they ran out of funding and the left tower is complete - and sparkly white whereas the right tower is not. I am just happy there was no scaffolding mucking up my photos ... but I wish them well in getting more funding ...

We arrived on a Sunday afternoon. Services were over, but it was crowded with sightseers. You have NO IDEA how long I stood waiting for a shot of the church without anyone in it.

I got two:

Interior:

Ceiling:

More waiting, but got my shot:

Beautiful tree, bench, artwork combo ... yes? (Too bad I removed a water faucet and an entire drinking fountain to get this ...):

It was a beautiful place and called 'The White Dove of the Desert' which makes my ginormous angel I bought here all the more meaningful - she is holding a bird:

So ... that's it for my Arizona photos ... unless I go through them and find random ones I would like to share ...

Here's to hoping that a week without Gary and no blog fodder doesn't send me over the edge ...

HDR and Tombstone ...

Arizona ... Arizona ... Arizona? When was I in Arizona? It seems like a lifetime ago so putting photos on from the trip seems odd. But I realize that it is my brain that is malfunctioning, not that it has been all that long ...

Gary flew to Utah to ski yesterday and Jessie is doing her stint in her Pretty Little House - and apparently having a ball and getting all of the staff to fall in love with her - so I need to get my brain around the fact that Jessie will be living in her Pretty Little House - most likely - sometime in the near future.

Switching her to this home feels right ... but there is always that little alarmist inside of me shrieking "But what if it's not?". Sometimes the little voice is louder than other times - and right now it is clamoring to be heard. What if this is not right? What do we do? Have we lost that tether to Richmond State School? I haven't even asked ... This can escalate into panic rather quickly for me and when Gary is gone - my natural Valium - things can get a little ... dicey ...

So - not to Stark Raving Mad as predicted in an earlier post for today, but I might be there in a day or so ...

And what do I do when I am tense and panicked?


Yes.



I open my books. Usually about photoshop - but always about photography. This time I have been studying a photo technique called HDR - High Dynamic Range Imaging. In this technique - you take a series of 'bracketed' photos - at differing exposures - normal exposure one over exposed and one under exposed (or two over and two under for a total of 5) at a specific interval.

This collects more information on light and shadows than does one photo. You then pull all (in my case) three photos into Photoshop using the HDR process and out comes a rather funky looking photo. I have been intrigued by HDR photos for some time - and want to shoot 'in HDR' for a while and see if I can get something that looks good.

Today I just went through the motions so that in a real setting - I would know how to set up my camera, pull it in to photoshop, etc.

I know these are abominable - so for some examples of GOOD HDR photos - Stuck in Customs is a good place to go and see what I am aspiring to do ...

Here are my three shots:

And here is one way to make it into an HDR:

I obviously don't know what I am doing and there are a ton of adjustments you can make and right now I don't know what does what so just getting my feet wet ...

Here are my tulips from Gary (having seen better days) with more of an HDR look to them

Here is the 'normal' exposure for this photo. You can see where the program took the light information for the shrubs behind the tulips from the overexposed photo and pulled it into the HDR photo - showing much more detail ...


So - I thought I would share ...



Tombstone:


I am not all that impressed with my photos of Tombstone and lost all interest in Boot Hill, but would like to make a post on San Xavier and that was AFTER Tombstone - so I have snuck it in here to be rid of it!

I believe this was supposed to be Doc Holliday - he looked sickly and never smiled. I caught him in a half one here:

I asked this nice lady if I could take her photo and she was kind enough to hide her water bottle:

Next stop, San Xavier Mission ...

Pretty Little Church .... in a Pretty Little Town ...

Back when we lived in Norway and we were traversing the countryside of the numerous Scandinavian countries I liked to take photos of churches. We quickly discovered that there was a pretty little church in EVERY pretty little town (and ALL towns were pretty little towns). We got to where we drove through and we didn't stop for every one - but pointed them out with the phrase: "Pretty little church ... in a pretty little town ...." and would smile. That these beautiful churches in beautiful landscapes had become so mundane that we did not stop so I could photograph them says a LOT about how many we actually drove past. Thinking back - I wish I had a photo of every "Pretty little church ... in a pretty little town ..." we had encountered ...

That phrase has been going through my head today over and over, like that bottom bar of the news that prints out stocks or what ever - I don't watch the news but I have noticed the distracting bar .... I have one of those banners in my brain and all it is saying, sadly is "Pretty little church ... in a pretty little town ...." over and over and over

I woke to the news of the devastation in Christchurch, New Zealand. With a death toll, this seems more serious than the previous earthquake that hit 6 months (or so) earlier. It bothered me so much to read about the devastation since it was such A BEAUTIFUL CITY. And then I saw this photo (online) and burst into tears:

Christchurch Cathedral was in ruins. And I had just BEEN THERE a year and a few months ago:

It was a beautiful day to take photos of churches and this one was no exception - especially since it was in the town square:

Beautiful interior:

In their gift shop hangs a beautiful hand made wood inlay of the church (not for sale): I so hope it made it:

And in that gift shop, I bought this nativity - always liking to buy nativities from somewhere where it is going to mean more to me than ordering it from Amazon:

I don't know how much of the statues survived:

They were beautiful:

My heart is heavy for a town I barely spent two days in, but enjoyed so much. I worry about the motel owner and his motel where we stayed the first night we were in New Zealand and the last night (we flew into Christchurch, made a loop of the island, then ended back in Christchurch for the last night before flying out). Everyone was so kind and friendly - my heart breaks for all of them.

I am hoping they recover soon - and are able to rebuild that pretty little church in that pretty little town ...

Bisbee - Part 3 - Historic Bisbee

Promise - last post for the day. Just thought that I would get all of Bisbee in and it deserved 3 posts ...

We got to Bisbee and festivities were in the air. There were people all over in period costumes, live music and a TON of people. When we went to get a room at the Copper Queen Hotel (a second to the Shady Dell Trailer Park Motel - our FIRST choice) we were laughed out of the room since they were holding their biggest celebration of the year - Valentines Day Weekend with all sorts of stuff - a romantic weekend for couples.

Me and my father were not as impressed ...

A shot dodging traffic of Historic Bisbee:

An adorable little church that I needed to use my wide-angle lens on since it was surrounded by buildings so looks sort of distorted - and I was too lazy to undistort it in Photoshop:



Lots of beautiful old buildings:

Complete with beautiful old windows:

A ton of old signs on the sides of buildings - but most so old you could not read them:

A panorama of Bisbee (actually as we were leaving - this is out of order):

The next morning we got up and there was a part of Bisbee my father had not shown me: Brewery Gulch - the seedier side of Old Bisbee.

LOVED the graffiti that was everywhere - and I didn't see this cute kid - he was trying so hard to hide! Can you see him?

He seemed to work in a doggie day care just around the corner where it looked like people brought their dogs to be babysat during the day ... that or they were getting ready for some dog fights - I seriously could not tell from the setting they were in ... (but isn't he cute? I vote for doggie babysitting):

This was a freakishly scary looking church ... of ... something ... probably not good. Their was music playing and it was just as weird as the funky statues on either side of this building ...

Kay, probably not right and if Ryan was with me he would have slugged me. I generally don't take photos of people - especially people praying (except I will always regret that Ryan FORBADE me to take a photo in the Notre Dame of a guy praying in one of the corners - he wasn't paying attention and kneeling - with bright red high tops on. IT WOULD HAVE BEEN A FANTASTIC PHOTO - but Ryan said he would never speak to me again - through clenched teeth as I raised my camera to my eye - if I took the shot ... so I sighed and lowered my camera - AND HAVE REGRETTED IT EVER SINCE ...). But! THE DOG!!! Isn't the look on his face just priceless - very protective yet bored all at the same time. I LOVE THE DOG!!! Maybe she was on her way to drop him off at doggy day care?

One more shot of a cute old building:

A beautiful old sign:

Some old mining equipment:

And we were out of Bisbee (with me a few pieces of jewelry heavier ... LOVED the shops ... shhhhh).

And on our way to Tombstone ....



... and that will be another day ...