Grand Canyon West is located near the opening of the Colorado River to Lake Mead.  It is on the Hualapai Indian Reservation and hosts the famous Grand Canyon Skywalk.

Just a quick little shot out the side window of a light airplane.  The Hualapai Mountains of NW Arizona take center stage along with portions of Kingman to the right.  Foreground is the polished wing strut of the plane.

I know, many, many people have taken photographs of the Grand Canyon.  But since it’s practically in my back yard, I’m going to share some of my offerings.  It is truly a photographer’s playground.  The light changes nearly by the minute.  A day spent shooting can net you a lot of good shots, but you still make plans for coming again and getting more.

This shot looks back down the anticline of the San Rafael Swell.  It is some 3700 feet above the desert floor to the east, and rises to this height in about a 17 mile drive.  This is taken from the rest area at the top of the grade.  It is along Interstate 70 between Salinas Utah, and Green River.

I took this picture last winter while traveling across southern Utah.  Black Dragon Canyon is a geological anomaly owing it’s existence to the San Rafael Swell, an upthrust in the earth’s crust due to tectonic activity.

After some consideration, I have elected to make a shift on this blog towards photograpy, and other more artistic pursuits.  This is not a new notion, it is actually one of the aims I had in mind when I first purchased the domain.  Tech blogging seemed attractive for a time, but not actually being a part of that industry makes it fairly difficult to remain current.

So, a couple small modifications to the site, a new minimalist theme so as not to detract from the photos themselves, and voila!  I hope you enjoy it as much as I do as I chronicle a few of my adventures.

Well, it’s been a while since I actually put any thought into posting to this blog.  It’s not that I’m not interested, it just seems that I’ve fallen into that lazy-blogger syndrome.  It actually takes a bit of discipline to post regularly and keep the content fresh.  It’s easy to slip into inactivity.

One of the factors I’ve noticed, seems to be fairly common with the casual blogger, and that is social networking.  With the ability to share something on Twitter, Facebook, or Buzz with just the click of the mouse, micro blogging seems to take away from any real creativity.  That is not to say that I will stop doing these activities.  Some of the things I share are not necessarily anything I would wish to but a lot of head work  into.  As I consider these things, I realize that I must strike a balance.  I need to perhaps begin to keep lists of topics I wish to write about, and then perhaps sharing things the other way won’t be so out of balance.

That said, having good tools changes the way you play the game.  As you may have noticed via a few previous test posts, I have added a new one to my tool box.  Windows Live Writer.  I’ve been hearing things about it, but with my jaundiced view of things Microsoft, I was determined to despise it.  I finally broke down and gave it a test drive.  Folks, I have to admit, so far I really like it.  It handles multiple blogging accounts across various platforms.  It provides all the functions that you find on the web interfaces.  The kicker is that it also allows you to save your drafts locally.  That way if you live your life on the go like I do, or maybe just want to grab your lappy and head to the park, you can blog practically anywhere!

So if your are a serious blogger, or just a dabbler like myself, this little tool merits your examination.  If you are a Win7 user, you probably already have it, but you can download it for free from the good folks in Redmond.

Have a great day, and happy blogging!