My insect proof Ocotillo arrived yesterday. Look closely and you’ll see that it’s made from railroad spikes. Pretty cool, huh?! Metal artist/sculptor, Kevin Caron is responsible for this genius idea. Click on his name to see his other phenomenal work. By the way, the birds have already tested it out and found it worthy of resting a spell 🙂
All posts by Marianne Skov Jensen
opuntia engelmannii
We’re having an especially good year for cactus blooms so I’m posting another one. Like the one on the 18th, I added some drama while processing the image.
roaming free
Here’s what we saw as we exited our vehicle at the North Tom’s Thumb trailhead yesterday. This little guy is part of a small herd that’s been allowed to roam free in North Scottsdale and vicinity for all their lives. Since so much of the land they call home is now Preserve, I think the city is trying to work something out with the owner so we all can continue to enjoy them!
prickly pear cactus bloom
The native Prickly Pear cactus (Opuntia engelmannii) are blooming in the North end of the McDowell Sonoran Preserve and it looks like we’re going to have multiple blooms on many of them.
certified desert landscaper
Yep! That title will be added to my business card in a couple of weeks. 🙂 No plans to go into the business, though. I just wanted to educate myself so I could do my own landscaping. The final session of this course is typically spent landscaping a Habitat for Humanity house but this time the house was chosen by the city of Guadalupe. We’re in the second week of installation. The first week we prepped the lot by removing granite, contouring the lot and setting in boulders. This week we dug trenches, put in pipes and put together the irrigation manifold. Next week we plant!
Photoshop Elements and Lightroom – a perfect match?
(Today’s photo has nothing to do with the text below. I just wanted to share another Lensbaby shot) 🙂
Our digital group (DIG) meeting this week had one topic….Lightroom. Barry L. White, (our guru extraordinaire) gave an outstanding presentation which I’m sure inspired anyone in the audience who didn’t own Lightroom to run out after the meeting and buy it! Imagine working on an entire folder of images at the same time (including cropping), and then being able to print, send them via email or make a webpage without ever having to leave the program! The time saving advantage is tremendous.
Elements users already have these capabilities so after the meeting, several people asked me if I thought that Elements and Lightroom would be all they needed. My answer is: It depends. If you already use Elements and it’s been taking care of all your creative needs, then my answer is YES. It’s a perfect combination. Lightroom’s image editing and database capabilities are far superior to Elements so all you’d need Elements for is for any creative stuff that involves altering pixels.
If you’re a full version Photoshop user and you’re trying to decide whether you need to upgrade to CS4 or buy Elements 7, then again, my answer is: It depends. Do you regularly use Layer Groups? Do you regularly use Smart Objects? Do you regularly work with Channels? There are more but if you depend on these, then you need to upgrade to CS4 because Elements doesn’t have these features available.
HOWEVER…..Elements users DO have an opportunity to add some powerful Photoshop features so as a full PS user, check out The Hidden Power of Photoshop Elements before you decide. These tools give Elements an impressive amount of power. Not quite CS4 but they might be all you need. If you are a current Elements user and you don’t know about this, check it out. It’s well worth adding to your copy of Elements.
Then I was asked if I knew whether Lightroom would retain keywords from Elements like it does from Bridge. I’ve been researching since then and although I couldn’t find a specific reference, my guess is that unfortunately it does not. Sorry. This means you have to start from scratch adding keywords. I wouldn’t let that stop you, though. As I mentioned previously, although you can also create a database using Elements, Lightroom is far superior. The time you spend now will serve you well in the future….especially with a growing library of images.
Finally….if you’ve never destroyed a pixel and don’t plan to, you might find that Lightroom is all you need 🙂
marina parryi and more
Another first sighting for me. This time it’s a native Dalea which goes by a couple of names: Marina dalea (was Dalea parryi). A bonus was finding a tiny hopper staring at me.
After seeing the insect on the Dalea, I started looking for others and found a little Crab spider on a New Mexico Thistle next.
One of my last photos of the afternoon was the prize of the day! The plant is Odora (Porophyllum gracile) and I think the butterfly is an Azure Celestrina.
Tech FYI: Canon 24-105, 500D close-up filter (which meant I was close! I’ll take my 180 macro next time)
ocotillo borer
One of our largest Ocotillos was taken by flat head borers 🙁 . This guy was right outside the dining room window and has been used as a resting spot for many birds much to the delight of our cats. I’m especially sad to see it go as it’s been the source of some of my best bird and sunrise shots.
It had been under stress ever since it had to be moved when the house was built. Then last year a micro burst blew it over and since then, it hasn’t looked good. If I had looked closer, I would have seen little holes up and down the stalks. I started snapping off the obvious dead stalks and this is what I found. Ewwww!
Lesson? If some of your Ocotillo stalks haven’t leafed out while neighboring stalks have, start looking for small round holes. If you see these holes, you likely have an infestation of Ocotillo borers.
Rock Live-forever
Rock Live-forever is the common name of the plant below. What?! Makes you wonder who’s in charge of naming. The latin name, on the other hand, is Dudleya collomiae so I’m going to call it Dudley 🙂 . Anyway, I once again have Steve Jones to thank for identifying this plant we saw yesterday at The Lookout in the McDowell Sonoran Preserve.
Speaking of the brand new “The Lookout” spot, here’s a shot of the sign and the view in that direction. The haze makes it difficult to see but the fountain in Fountain Hills was on at the time.
The photo below shows the view in another direction where you can see the Windgate Trail, Inspiration Viewpoint and the Gateway. All in all, we dubbed The Lookout as the most spectacular viewpoint in the Preserve. Can’t wait to go back to capture it in better light.
Finally…here’s a shot of one of the new Tom’s Thumb trail signs.
mariposa lilies and trailing windmills
What an amazing day we had! Chris, I and our friend Barry spent over six hours hiking up and around Tom’s Thumb and The Lookout trail from the North side. My goal was to photograph Trailing Windmills which I was told were out at The Lookout and we weren’t disappointed. They were everywhere! Unfortunately,not blooming as much as they have been but it appearing there are still blooms to come. The amazing bonus was seeing my first Desert Mariposa Lily! I yelled at my friend Barry (pictured below) saying “look at that really orange poppy over there!”. Very exciting 🙂
