It’s been a while since I’ve been able to sit down and write much about the goings on around here.  Today is no different, however I wanted to make a quick note.  If you’ve been watching the main page, you’ve already seen quite a few photos from Monument Valley.  I finally finished going through them and processing the ones that were worthy of spending time with.  The last of the Monument Valley photos will post on February 2nd.

Now, the main reason I wanted to post a quick note.  I’ve always known the importance of this, but I got bit hard, and I do mean hard.  It’s not only important but it is vital to make sure your sensor is super clean before taking a special trip for photography such as the one I took to Monument Valley.  Had I known that my sensor was this dirty, I obviously would have had it cleaned and it would have saved me HOURS of cleaning the dirt out of most of my Monument Valley photos.  The odd thing is, during the normal hours of the day, the dirt wasn’t as noticeable.  A few of the larger spots that were easy to clean/fix showed, but the little spots were mostly invisible.  The bulk of the dirt/dust appeared to showed its ugly head in low light situations (early morning and evening).  Below are several cropped sections of just one unprocessed photo.  This shows you just how bad dirt/dust can be.

The sad thing is, on the original, these spots are much more apparent than what you see in the photos above.  Needless to say, I just got my camera back from Tucson Camera and I’m happy to say my camera is clean again.  While I may be $45 lighter in the wallet, my time will be better spent taking photos and not processing out dirt in every one of my photos.

So, take it from me.  Get your camera cleaned before a momentous photography trip.  It’s money well spent instead of spending 20+ hours processing dirt out of your photos.