Southwest 2014 - Second Week...

Well, my second week of travel has gone by, with generally fabulous weather for photography. Finally some clouds and interesting light! There were a few challenging days where the sky was grey, raining and generally hopeless for taking photos, but by and large it was nice. The above photo was taken at the south rim of the Grand Canyon. I had a great sunset there but sadly, the next morning it was totally grey and overcast.

The following gallery contains images from White Sands, Bandelier National Monument and Los Alamos in New Mexico, then Petrified Forest National Park (lots of huge fossilized tree trunks and great Painted Desert scenery) and the Grand Canyon in Arizona.

Gallery: Southwest 2014 - Second Week

Greetings from Alamogordo, New Mexico...

I've been on the road for a little over a week now, and have covered a fair bit of ground. Some of the interesting spots I've visited so far are Snow Canyon State Park, just outside of St. George, Utah (the above image is from there), then in Arizona I've been to Meteor Crater, Oak Creek Canyon, Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, Saguaro National Monument, Tombstone and Chiricahua National Monument.

Next up is White Sands, New Mexico. I am blogging from a nice little cafe in Alamogordo right now, waiting for evening to approach, when I'll be hiking out into White Sands for sunset.

I've been shooting exclusively with my Fujifilm X-E2 system and am loving the lighter weight, especially when hiking in the heat, the incredible lens quality and the gorgeous colour rendition. On my first real day of hiking, in Snow Canyon State Park, the temperature soared to 38º C, quite a shock from the cooler weather we were having back in Vancouver. Now I've acclimatized quite well and yesterday while hiking around Chiricahua National Monument, up at 7,000 feet with the temperature at a mere 18º C, I was actually wearing a jacket most of the day!

For a gallery of forty selected images: Southwest 2014 - First Week