Chasing Clouds @kerensky97 - Tumblr Blog

Happy MLK day. I don't really have any inspirational quotes or images that fit the occasion, especially with the world being as topsy-turvy in the Civil Rights side of things recently; it can seem overwhelming. So all I can say is love one another. Treat everybody with respect and as your equal. Find peace and foster peace. And here's a serene picture of a frozen over Provo River in the Uintas if that helps. #ProverRiver #Uintas #UintaWasatchCacheNationalForest #Winter #martinlutherking #mlkday #martinlutherkingjr https://www.instagram.com/p/CKM5cQ6BhM_/?igshid=70jnjn6vuhx6

#proverriver #uintas #uintawasatchcachenationalforest #winter #martinlutherking #mlkday #martinlutherkingjr

Reflected clouds I'm already missing the mountain lakes again. It's not like there is only one good lake for pictures. They're all like this. From tiny ponds only 100ft across to the big reservoirs that are a fisherman's paradise. There are 100's of them in the mountains, just choose one that's not too crowded, set up your tent nearby, and enjoy the sunset. It's that simple. (But bring plenty of bug spray!) So many plans for 2021. #Happy2021 https://www.instagram.com/p/CJetZShhtUp/?igshid=19wfvbkhl6yyv

#happy2021

Sunset on the Spiral Like most people I get in the habit of thinking the sunset ends when the sun goes behind the horizon. It gets really hard to balance bright skies with shadowy foregrounds and suddenly your foregrounds are all bluish compared to the golden colors they have been for the last hour. But the best colors of a sunset happen about 5-15 minutes after the sun sets. You can almost set your watch by it; as everybody starts shuffling away, stick around about 10 minutes and start to look at the clouds around you. That's when the pink and purple colors show up everywhere. Even though I know this I always forget. So I spent an hour walking all over the place taking pictures, worrying the light wasn't the way I wanted. The sun set. And I was going to pack up and leave but I figured there was still some light so how about one more shot? Then right on queue at about 10-15 minutes everything got really pink and the glow was reflecting off everything around me. Sometimes the best laid plans don't compare to what happens if you're just patient and don't worry about beating the crowd out of the parking lot. Even if the sky doesn't light up it's a nice chance to just sit and enjoy the last of the day. (at Spiral Jetty/Great Salt Lake) https://www.instagram.com/p/CJcHaK2BlNa/?igshid=8ony3bfedxpb

Spring Runoff. I was actually hurrying back to another location to take pictures of the setting sun when I made a quick stop at an empty picnic area for a quick "bio break" on the way. The light on the trees, and the sound of the flooding creek, and the clouds were all just so nice I took some pictures, literally standing 2 feet from the parking lot. Then when I got to the meadow where I thought the sunset would be great the light just didn't work and I went home feeling like nothing had worked out yet again. But looking back through the pics that "parking lot picture" looks great I shouldn't have been so dismissive. #Happy2021 https://www.instagram.com/p/CJZuLQ5hhyq/?igshid=a569ufnl0qoq

#happy2021

Another photo I like but didn't appreciate enough before. This was litterally the break of dawn but there was some mottled clouds on the horizon. So the sky had a beautiful glow and the diffused light kept shifting all over the colorful desert hills. Never any direct sunlight. I was disappointed because I wanted SUN shinung on the hills with light and shadow so I considered it a write off. But looking back the weak shifting light was kind of magical. Like when you see flashing Christmas lights that are covered up with a layer of snow. #Happy2021 https://www.instagram.com/p/CJW-xNIBpBQ/?igshid=1ge2xzqzl8cfo

#happy2021

This isn't a "woe is me" post; stick with me to the end here. I feel like I haven't taken a great photograph in about 5 years now. Like I'm in the middle of a massive "dry spell." A lot of hard work goes into learning more about photography, trying to head to new places, see new things, but none of it works. If anything my photography is getting worse IMO. I still get decent photos but not as good as I used to. I feel like I'm sliding backwards so why bother? So I decided to look through all my pictures of the year and found that I was overlooking a lot of good stuff I should be more proud of. Perception is reality, and I was dismissing a lot of pictures because they "Weren't a famous overlook" or "I was just goofing around instead of taking a serious picture" or "They weren't part of a fantastic trip in a foreign land." I think when you focus on the negative soon all you see is negative; your memory only sees the bad in your life and not the good. It's typical of 2020. Good things and bad things are always happening but it's easy to focus on the bad and blind yourself to the good; but once you only see the bad it seems to never end. The next year is "Another bad year" because you've programmed yourself to only see the bad and filter out the good. So the last pics I'm posting for the year are the ones that I didn't appreciate enough. Most were unplanned, I was just enjoying the surroundings and saw the opportunity for a picture (Maybe that's the secret. Don't force things; enjoy yourself and be happy and the good will reveal itself to you.) When you're negative the world is negative. When you're happy the world is happy. I want to break my 5 years of negative programming with some of the good from 2020. So here's to a happy 2021. #happy2021 (at Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest) https://www.instagram.com/p/CJUUs3Bhx6U/?igshid=xwia65txex6z

#happy2021

First off Merry Christmas, etc. etc. So it's my day off. Having dinner with the family later, all the typical Christmas stuff. I wasn't planning on posting anything to social media; I want to spend the time offline. Everybody enjoy yourself either at home with friends, or family, or even on your own. Today and tomorrow are for you to just do what you want. BUT I was spending the time before dinner editing photos and I'm just too excited how this turned out and had to upload it now. This was the same series of photos I got the Orion picture I posted a few days ago. But now I got to do the official processing on it as was planned instead of just the single test shot and WOW!!!! Photo 1 is the processed stack of pictures from Deep Sky Stacker and Photoshop. 15mins total exposure time. Photo 2 is the same pic as earlier, just a 1min picture within the stack. Photo 3 is a 100% crop on gas and dust detail of the nebula. Look at the detail in there!!!! This is going to be so much fun to play with in the next year! Anyway sorry to interrupt what you were doing, have a great holiday! https://www.instagram.com/p/CJMyApCBnxi/?igshid=w9frfw4fs8xh

Cold Days up in the mountains now. I'm already looking forward to next summer. (at Big Cottonwood Canyon) https://www.instagram.com/p/CJKCFJshzjC/?igshid=1d9i0aifeop2d

So after struggling with Saturn and Jupiter this was also the first cloudless, moonless oppertunity since I got the telescope. So I tested it on the Orion Nebula. This is one 60 second shot. This was just the TEST RUN. I'm hoping to further dial in and start stacking shots on the future. (at Lakeside, Utah) https://www.instagram.com/p/CJHtN0oh6W0/?igshid=1civa1af9dz6m

If you missed it last night; the two planets are still uncomfortably close tonight. Go out not long after sundown and look to the lower southwest sky. I was hoping to use my older telescope to take a picture of Saturn+Jupiter but it turns out the adapter for the new camera and telescope doesn't fit the old telescope. And the new telescope was deliberately purchased to be a much wider field of view than is optimal for shooting individual stars and planets (320mm vs 750mm). Plus since I had to work I wasn't able to get away from the thermals caused by the city and the planets kept waving and shimmering due to atmospheric effects. Basically what I was left to do was just shoot about 100 shots of the planets to hope that one didn't have any distortion and then crop the hell out of the picture. Overall a fail but a little bit of descent salvage. You can see Jupiter's moons and Saturn is an oval blob instead of a circle. You can almost see the gaps between it's rings and the planet. The second pic is the original it was cropped from. I don't know if the stars will even show at instagram resolution. (at Salt Lake City, Utah) https://www.instagram.com/p/CJHpFNchJGr/?igshid=1w6ff0huf24i7

Never got around to posting all the pictures from Golden Spike. Here's "Chinese Arch" Central Pacific Railroad was desperate for workers for the 1st transcontinental rail and hired a bunch of Chinese immigrants as an experiment. They were such hard workers that they came to make up 4 out of every 5 workers of the crews building the Transcontinental Railroad. Afterwards they always made up a large contingent of of other rail projects in the west as well because of their experience, hard work and reliability. This country was tied together in the most literal sense by these important immigrants and the arch in Northern Utah was named to remember their hard work. (at Golden Spike National Historic Site) https://www.instagram.com/p/CJE22Aehw-v/?igshid=1m48vubupagcn

Cool Erosion patterns coming off the Hoodoos (at Burr Trail Road) https://www.instagram.com/p/CI_mCpzh7L9/?igshid=121cs2ml2xfau

Mushroom shaped hoodoos near Bullfrog UT (at Burr Trail Road) https://www.instagram.com/p/CI8_YpNBls9/?igshid=16hr0gyorlko6

Art, or a collection of junk found in the desert arranged in a specific way? Or is that the same thing... Alternate caption: "When you order your Utah Monolith from wish. com" (at Burr Trail road) https://www.instagram.com/p/CIv9uSPB4PW/?igshid=1qwbmi2tkp9m

Strike Valley Overlook Trail. I don't know what it is about slickrock but I just love the way it looks. Even big unnamed outcroppings. . . . . . #StrikeValleyOverlook #UpperMuleyTwistCanyon #BurrTrail #CapitolReef #NationalPark #CARE #Utah #Redrock #Fall #NationalParks #The59Parks #USParksAndMonuments #NationalParkService #USNationalParks #GoParks #internationalmountainday #Nationalparkgeek #MightyFive #nps #americasbestidea #nationalparkfoundation #utahnps https://www.instagram.com/p/CIrMqYtB7j2/?igshid=1mz6xqn8gexnv

Looking down Strike Valley towards Bullfrog and Lake Powell. The red slickrock on the far horizon is actually Mancos Mesa on the far side of Lake Powell (and west of Natural Bridges). An interesting and VERY remote location that used to be a part of the Bears Ears NM in it's initial designation. The land is broken and mostly roadless so so it's inaccessibility rivals the Maze area of Canyonlands. (at Capitol Reef National Park) https://www.instagram.com/p/CIeQvvChAFp/?igshid=1fwetz5so01ng

The tilted and tortured rocks of the Waterpocket Fold The clump of rocks in the foreground were kind of weird. The looked like they had been placed there by hand sitting on top of the usually smooth slickrock, but it was clear they were part of the rock and everything around them had just eroded away leaving them the same angle as the rest of the anticline. (at Capitol Reef National Park) https://www.instagram.com/p/CIY5zcuHgxA/?igshid=1w4dkljp2cn69

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