I woke up around 1:00 and was wide awake. I got out of bed around 2:00 and did some computer work. I went back to bed around 4:15.

We woke up around our normal time and it was mostly cloudy outside — the first real clouds we've had in a ling time! I made coffee to go and J started a mug of tea steeping and we left in the Jeep around 7:55.

I had Clif Bars for breakfast while driving to a good place to photograph the red and orange maples in Wasatch Mountain State Park. We stopped at a promising area, photographed for a short time, then took shelter in the Jeep as a rain shower passed. I was glad to be wearing my new APECS Parka in MARPAT Woodland. It kept me nice and dry, and later in the morning the pit zips helped keep me cool. After the rain stopped, we went back outside and photographed some more until the next rain shower started, and this time it was accompanied by pea-sized hail! We drove a bit further and then photographed between rain and hail storms some more. During one interlude, the cloud layer broke up nicely and I was able to incorporate an interesting cloud in the image (far left). Then the clouds started to break up even more and I was able to capture a really nice foreground with wispy clouds (above right). The image was created from two exposures to maintain detail in the bright sky and the dark foreground, and I used the tilt function of the 24 Tilt/Shift Mk II to align the plane of focus along the Rabbit Brush in the foreground and the horizon in the background.
Then we moved to another area and concentrated on more intimate scenes because a solid cloud layer had returned. We had a blast photographing among the red and orange maples, and were surprised that we were able to be shooting at noon! My favorite image is of some really intense red maple leaves against the dark trunk and branches (left). I wouldn't usually use my 90 Tilt/Shift for such an image, but earlier in the morning my 77mm polarizer got stuck in the 58-to-77mm step-up ring that I use with the 90 Tilt/Shift, and I really wanted to be able to use a polarizer to reduce unwanted glare from the wet leaves. I had some Clif Bars for lunch while shooting so I wouldn't starve. J said she enjoyed photographing there the most since we've been photographing fall colors in the Wasatch Mountains near Salt Lake City.


We returned to the RV around 1:30. I took a nap, to make up for not getting much sleep last night, from 1:45 to about 3:00 when it started raining heavily. Then I downloaded the images I took this morning and worked up a blog entry. Then I started to downselect the images from this morning in Capture One (C1) while J made half a batch of Pineapple Sweet And Sour Chicken.

We had dinner around 6:00 of Pineapple Sweet And Sour Chicken over brown rice.

After dinner, I finished downselecting the images from this morning and then did some computer work before going to bed early.