We had decided to take it easy this morning, so we slept in. J made a nice big breakfast of omelets (cheese, peppers, and onions) and potatoes, and I made whole-wheat toast and poured the OJ. J had her usual Lucile's tea and I had my usual (but not so much lately) LavAzza Gran Filtro Dark Roast coffee. It was nice to relax over breakfast. After we finished eating, we talked about travel plans for later this year and also next year. I played with Fliq Notes on J's iPhone, and it looks like a suitable replacement for the Memo program on my Palm Treo 755p. It was also fairly easy to type with my thumbs on the iPhone keyboard when held horizontally, so I can't wait for the iPhone to come to Verizon! I did the dishes, then processed four images for the blog and worked up a blog entry.

I had lunch around 12:30 and read some of the August 2009 Outdoor Photographer. J prepared a blueberry pie — mmm. Then I processed images through Capture One (C1) to assign final file names and to convert the RAW files to TIFFs. It started raining around 3:15. J let me borrow my USB stick, that she had been using because her stick wasn't able to connect where we're parked, and I went online through a fast Verizon Broadband Access signal. J had discovered that by placing the stick up high in the RV we could get a better signal, and we sure could! I posted the blog entry and checked email. Then I went back to processing images through Capture One (C1) to assign final file names and to convert the RAW files to TIFFs.

I processed one of those images through Photoshop CS5 HDR Pro to see if I should keep the RAW files for some images or whether I should just trash them because it wouldn't be possible to combine them into a useful image. The test image was of the Three Judges in Goblin Valley State Park, Utah, taken at sunrise on May 8, 2010. I captured seven (7) images in one stop intervals from -3 to +3 over the suggested matrix-metered exposure, and this let me capture detail in the shadows and the highlights. When I tried to combine the images by hand in Photoshop, I had a lot of trouble because the clouds had moved so much from the first to the last exposure. Photomatix (an HDR program) did an OK job, but it wasn't great, and I wanted to see how the new HDR Pro in Photoshop CS5 would handle it. Well, I wasn't too impressed. It did a good job of handling the clouds (no ghosting), but it failed miserably in the shadow and highlight areas. There's an incredible amount of noise in the shadow area, even though the exposure for the shadows was clean. It also left a lot of blown pixels near the sun even though the exposure for the sun didn't have any blown pixels. So, out of the box, HDR Pro was also stymied by this image. However, I think I can take it from here and manually combine the HDR Pro image for the (mostly) good sky with a properly processed image for the shadows, and I might be able to get some detail back in the blown out sun. I'll let you know how that works at a later date.
By this time, the dark clouds and thunderstorm had passed, and the sky was mostly sunny over near Mt. Evans.

We had dinner at 5:45 of leftover Pork Marsala and fresh garlic mashed potatoes and broccoli.

We left in the Jeep around 6:25 and headed up Mt. Evans.

We stopped just above the Mt. Goliath Natural Area to photograph the wildflowers there some more, and the clear sky and light breeze wasn't conducive for such activity — so much for going back. We continued heading up the mountain and ...

Stopped just beyond Summit Lake to photograph some Yellow-Bellied Marmots in the wildflowers. They weren't cooperative, so we turned our attention to the wildflowers themselves. By this time, clouds had moved in, and the diffuse light was great for wildflower photography. However, the intermittent light breeze wasn't the best. A lot of patience was required, and I was only able to take a few compositions. However, I was quite happy with the images of King's Crown (far left) and Alpine Clover (near left) that I got. We left as it started to rain, and J was quite happy to leave because she had been hearing thunder.
We returned to the RV around 8:25, and I downloaded the images I took this evening then downselected them in Capture One (C1). Then we had some of J's blueberry pie, and it was very tasty — much better than the homemade pie at the Echo Lake Lodge. I processed two images for the blog before going to bed.