Sep 5
I put a Cholla Skeleton outside the dining room window knowing birds would use as a perch and I’d have a good chance of getting some nice images. The hard part, though, is keeping the birds from seeing me! It’s no problem in the afternoon but at sunrise, they take off at the slightest movement so I typically crawl on the floor until I reach the window and then slowly get up. Sometimes I make it but not this time. I like the result anyway 🙂
Sep 2
Another HDR shot of the Desert Tortoise I encountered on Tom’s Thumb Trail last Sunday. He was moving during this exposure sequence so it was difficult to merge the exposures perfectly. This resulted in lots of ghosting but after tedious cloning and fringe removal and reducing color saturation, I did it. What a face 🙂
Sep 1
A photo of Queen Butterflies taken last week at Boyce Thompson Arboretum. Two images of texture were added along with lots of blending and other Photoshop magic. It’s a process that really doesn’t have an end so it’s difficult to stop 🙂
Aug 30
I hiked the north access trail to Tom’s Thumb yesterday with a goal of seeing what was blooming. I spotted several flowers (check tmorrow’s post) but I also came across this guy! There are lots of Desert Tortoise in the Preserve but they’re really good a hiding so this was a treat! The lighting was mixed so I used my Canon SX 1 to capture two exposures and combined them in Photomatix.
Aug 28
Cleo headed straight for grass yesterday morning which typically means he has a fur ball weighing heavy in his stomach. For those without cats?….the grass makes him throw up the fur ball which he usually does in the middle of the night in a place where we are sure to walk on it. Yuk….but we love Cleo and Cloe anyway 🙂
Droid X image using Vignette App and the following customs: Full screen, Ilford film, grain and glow……straight from the phone!
Aug 24
Beetle finds a drink in a Richardson’s Geranium. Shot with Canon SX1 IS.
Aug 20
Calling all Wildflower lovers!!! Because of heavy snows, this is a banner year for Wildflowers in Flagstaff so it is well worth the drive. I recommend going up Schultz Pass Road to the Sunset Trailhead. Once there, look for the Shultz Tank trail (or something like that). It’s about a mile hike or so but you’ll see flowers all along the trail. The Tank should be your goal, though, as I have never seen so many varieties of flowers! This Hummingbird literally flew into my shot 🙂
Aug 13
This image was taken very early in the morning during a workshop with Art Morris in January of 2004. It was barely light outside and there was heavy fog so I knew it would be a tough exposure but it was such a beautiful scene I had to try. Besides, it was dead calm and the Pelicans weren’t moving so I figured I might get something. I was practicing, after all, so I put my Canon 10D with a 100-400mm lens on a tripod, set my ISO to 1600, aperture to f/11 and fired off three shots. I had barely pressed the shutter when one of the Pelicans decided to lift off. It was really underexposed and at ISO 1600, you can imagine the tremendous amount of noise!
Back then, it was impossible to remove that amount of noise but I loved the images so I kept them. Now we have phenomenal noise reduction software and although the image isn’t perfect, I’m able to make an acceptable small print. Moral? If have a poorly exposed image but you love the composition and subject matter, don’t delete it! You WILL be able to recover it some day.
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