"Go West young Man ..."

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It’s been quite a while since my last travel blog so where do I start? First, I hope you and yours are doing well and second – if this is your first blog – welcome. I’ll start with where I am at today – Page, Az on a “tour’” of the Southwest of the USA. As my relative Horace Greeley said, “go West Young man. I was actually going to go East to China and teach English.



Let me start by saying it isn’t easy, nor is it cheap traveling in the US. I’ve been on the road (driving my car) for about two months now. I’ve stayed in a hotel 0 times, slept in walmart parking lots, camped and stayed with family and friends and it still is costing me way more than traveling in SE Asia or South America – staying in hotels with showers, eating in restaurants, having WIFI, taking tours … But if you are a traveler you already know this so I won’t expound on it.



I’m photographing the “classic” landscape images of the Southwest and yesterday it dawned on me that I’m taking the exact same images as thousands of others, hoping for “good light.” Tomorrow I’m going to go to Antelope canyon on the Navajo reservation and take the exact same shot that millions (ok thousands) have taken. My guide will tell me to set my tripod up here, focus there and shoot. That’s not to say that these types of landscape images aren't nice/good. I guess I realized that the images I like to shoot – people, isn’t going to happen in the USA. I’m going to continue taking the “classic” Southwest images but I’ll be keeping my eye out for something unique.



My trip has taken me from Northern Minnesota to Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Nevada, Utah and now back in Arizona. Before I forget, if you want to follow my travels, check out and like my artist page on Facebook – imagesbydavid.co



Not having access to the Internet nightly (or electricity, or a shower) I’m way behind on working on my photos. I just noticed I have over 5k images from one of the places I’ve visited – Bosque Del Apache wildlife refuge in New Mexico – talk about “spray and pray," ie take a lot of images and hope one turns out. I’m going to post some random images in this blog. Now that I think about it, maybe I will do a few more blogs on some of the places I’ve already been.



The images I’ll post here are from the Great Sand Dunes National Park in Colorado, Bosque Del Apache and White Sand Dunes National Monument in New Mexico. I learned in Bosque (too late) that long lenses have really shallow depth of field.



Bosque is a winter migratory home for many species of birds. Most of the images of birds in this blog are either Snow geese or Sand hill cranes. There are a few images of ducks and raptors. I believe the counts at the refuge for both the Cranes and Snow geese were around 50k for each. Speaking of 50k, there was a lot of big glass (i.e. – large lenses 500mm, 600mm maybe an 800mm) being used at Bosque.



Sorry but I just noticed that quite a few photos were duplicated and I’m not able to delete them. Well It’s time to leave McDonalds’ free WIFI and go across the street to “camp” in the Walmart parking lot. I’ll be dreaming of faces in foreign lands. Well not so fast, the Travelblog website is not responding so it looks like I’ll be posting this tomorrow.



Til next time,



Dave / Yogi

ps - I just got back from lower Antelope Canyon and I have one word to say about it epic - going back tomorrow!

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Photos

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leaving Ely, Mn with a canoe to deliver in Santa cruz, NM