A Word about The Photographs

Throughout this publication you will notice several photographs. In fact, you will notice several hundred photographs. Some of them are even good ones, if we do say so ourselves.

All our photographs are protected by copyright laws, so if you use them without permission, why, we'll be very upset and sue you. You should see our lawyer. He blots out the sun. If you want to use one, just Email Us and tell us why, and where. It's that simple.

Anyway, the real reason for this explanation is not to threaten you (although it was fun) but to explain a bit about resolution. Most of the thumbnail pictures (that is, the small pictures you click on to view the larger pictures) are roughly 180 to 200 pixels wide. They serve as links to the larger pictures, which are usually about 800 pixels wide. That should allow most folks to view the pictures in their browser without having to deal with the dreaded scroll bars.

Most folks, that is, that are using 1024 x 768 resolution.

I was going to include larger versions as well, but you know what? It was just too much trouble. You should remember that, after you view a picture, use your browser's BACK button to return to wherever it was you were.

Most of the photographs taken here were recorded on a digital camera, an Olympus D-360L to be exact. It's a 1.3 Megapixel device, and the pictures it takes are OK. Very good close-ups, fairly good everything else. What I really like about it is you can operate it with one hand (slide open the cover and shoot) and it appears to be very rugged, as I've dropped it several times, not to mention the abuse it takes bumping down the ghost-town trail in my fanny pack, choked with dust from following Luis. It'll hold about 146 photos in SHQ (1280 x 960) mode, enough for most visits.

Luis uses an old-fashioned 35mm camera that uses... wait a second, it'll come to me... film. It's a strange strip of plastic with some silver-based chemicals on it that reacts to light and- well, suffice to say it's very crude. He seems to like it though. Luis also carries a little "Instamatic-type" camera for shooting on the fly. His Big Gun is a Nikon FG body. I used to bring my FG but, quite frankly, since everything pretty much goes right from camera to computer screen it was easier to shoot digital.

An more recent acquisition is a Nikon EM with a motor drive and some great lenses, the results of which maybe we'll see someday if he gets off his butt and scans some pictures for the web site. Ahem. Anyway, I'll bet that motor drive is just great for capturing those action shots of one of us riding off a cliff, or tumbleweeds tumbling, or something. Oh, I'm just jealous.

UPDATE: Aha, I'm not jealous- evidently the EM has a light leak which ruined his last batch of pictures. Bummer.

You're asking yourself, how did I get that shot of the digital camera? Well, I used the other digital camera, an 4.0 Megapixel Olympus C-4000. A more recent addition, we don't use it much in the field because it's too pretty. The D-360L doesn't take as good a picture, but it's a lot easier to whip out. When the situation calls for some careful, planned shots, or ones that we really want to turn out halfway decent, we'll haul out the C-4000.