Nerd Rage

I spent pretty much every spare minute of the last 8 days fin­ish­ing a photo book of our 2008 trip through the south­west­ern United States. That included choos­ing the pho­tos, some adjust­ments, pano-stitching where nec­es­sary, and lay­out of the book. Dur­ing that work I noticed that I haven’t posted many panora­mas from that trip (or pho­tos for that mat­ter) at all, even though there were loads of them.

This panorama was the first I took after we entered Joshua Tree National Park. Even though I don’t remem­ber exactly, I guess after see­ing the first Joshua Tree, I pulled over and started click­ing away. Didn’t even get very far away from the road there…
The national park was very impres­sive, with a lot of crazy stone for­ma­tions lying around and all the Joshua Trees in between. We spent pretty much the whole day there, pulling over at nearly every marked tourist sight. The sun was already set­ting when we left the park by the south entrance on the way to Sedona, Ari­zona, and I had the great joy of dri­ving through a sand storm in the dark. I wish Julia had been awake to see that…

This is the view over the Coachella Val­ley from Keys View inside the Joshua Tree National Park. Keys View is "perched on the crest of the Lit­tle San Bernardino Moun­tains" at an ele­va­tion of over 1500m. Some­where down through that val­ley sup­pos­edly runs the famous San Andreas fault (at least it’s writ­ten on the leg­end at bot­tom right). There is a crazy wind up there, and it feels like it’s freez­ing. Since we didn’t really wear warm clothes, com­ing out of the desert below, while the view is spec­tac­u­lar, we wanted to get back into the car as fast as pos­si­ble (after shoot­ing a pano or two)…

They don’t call it "Red Rock Coun­try" for noth­ing…
After some night dri­ving into Sedona, we were stunned with the view we had out of the motel win­dow in the morn­ing. These moun­tains just look awe­some and are def­i­nitely worth a visit when in the area. We hit up pretty much all the marked tourist spots (don’t for­get the Chapel of the Holy Cross) on a cold but sunny day, before head­ing up the Oak Creek Canyon on our way to the Grand Canyon.

This panorama (5 stitched por­trait shots) was taken from the north end of Oak Creek Canyon, some­where between Sedona and Flagstaff. Another awe­some view of the Ari­zona land­scape. And as with all great views and marked tourist attrac­tions in Amer­ica, there were a whole bunch of folks sell­ing var­i­ous trin­kets to gullible tourists.
Any­way, the view was spec­tac­u­lar, much bet­ter than can be ever shown in a pic­ture. The air was cool and clear, and the sun intense. I wish I could’ve shot this dur­ing sun­rise. Or sun­set.

The last stop in Ari­zona on our tour through the Amer­i­can South­west was at the Grand Canyon. After spend­ing the night in Tusayan, we were at the Canyon shortly after sun­rise. Since we had the whole day, we went down East Rim Drive as well as West Rim Drive, stop­ping at most of the "Points" at which one has an espe­cially great view. This panorama was one of the first few that I took (I stopped doing panos after a num­ber of stops…) I think we were walk­ing off-road there, away from the marked tourist spots, get­ting really close to the rim with­out any guard rails and what­not, and were rewarded with this spec­tac­u­lar view over a large part of the Canyon. One can even see the Col­orado river down at the bot­tom, which I guess is respon­si­ble for the exis­tence of the Canyon in the first place…

last posts in flickr:

• O’ahu, Hawai’i
• Maui, Hawai’i
• my favorite focal lengths
• Big Island, Hawai’i
• ECOC in Torino
• ¡Viva México!
• pictures from Paris
• YOTOT(MC) goes Hamburg
• Bob Dylan zu Besuch
• Pictures from Pisa