Sun lit

This past weekend Jon and I went wandering around the banks of  the Virgin River at the outskirts of the Virgin River Gorge Campground in northern Arizona. We went with the express purposes of gathering river-worn wood, photographing the beauty, and wearing out our dog. We accomplished all of our goals.

For the first two photographs I waded out into the river to get the shots I wanted. The current was swift and kept pulling the sand out from under my feet, but the excitement was well worth it. I mean, just look at those tones. My previous experiences with ID-UV film tended to shift to aqua tones, but these turned lovely cool blues and violets.

I love the reflections and light in this one.

Check out the moon. How cool is that?

It was a serene day. We walked around, dipped our feet into the river, listened to the rush and roar of the river, and saw standing waves build into white caps and then collapse on themselves. We watched as the red desert around us shifted into cool tones and experienced the drop in temperature as night came on. It was a good day.
These photos were taken using a Polaroid 350 land camera. Film: expired ID-UV film (05/2007).

Three Falls

Three Falls, otherwise known as Toquerville Falls is located in Southern Utah near Toquerville. There is a rough 6 miles of  "road" to traverse before reaching the falls, but that doesn't keep people away. It is a popular destination for locals to sunbathe, picnic, or when the conditions are right, do a little cliff jumping. (In fact, that is just what we did two years ago in July.)

We went out there on Memorial Day to see how it looked this time of year. There was a lot of snow-melt flooding going on, so there weren't too many other visitors. The ones who were there left soon after my hubby and I showed up and we were left with a two hour window in which to shoot photos without the occasional random person stumbling into a shot.

It was such a great afternoon-- we had a make-shift picnic on some rock slabs, we took a short hike, and I sketched and took in the sound of water roaring. This is the closest I get to the ocean out here, and I was soaking it up.

I had a few different cameras at work, but only my Polaroids that are ready to share so far. The first three photos show the falls overflowing:

This last photo shows the view looking down river from the falls: 

The color photo was taken on my SX 70 Alpha camera, using PX 680 First Flush film from The Impossible Project. The black and white photos were taken using a Polaroid Swinger camera and expired (May 2007) Polaroid 667 film.

As always, you can see more of my photos HERE.

How I spent my Easter

First was church, and enjoying the real meaning behind Easter. And then when everyone else was doing family dinners and such, Jon and I took a drive with our dog out to Arizona. We took her on a hike with us and I took a bunch of photos of the storm that rolled through. We thought we'd be avoiding the bad weather by driving south, but instead we got caught in the middle of it. It made for some pretty nice photos though. There were lots of mountains, clouds and Joshua trees.

The first shot was taken on a Polaroid SX70 Sonar camera. The film is PX70 PUSH! from The Impossible Project.

As a comparison, the next two shots were taken on a Polaroid SX70 Alpha camera using The Impossible Project's new PX680 film. I was using a beta test pack, so it has some tiny white specks, but those are sure to disappear when the real stuff rolls out on May 5th!

The next two were taken on a Polaroid Spectra System camera using expired Softtone film.

The last three shots were all taken on my Polaroid 430 land camera using expired 690 film.

As you can tell from the last photo, the storm didn't last terribly long. Within a couple of hours it was all but spent and the clouds really started to dissipate. Our pup did awesome for all the new stuff we were throwing at her on this excursion, and we really enjoyed being out in nature.