McDowell Sonoran Preserve groundbreaking

June 8, 2008 Marianne Skov Jensen

Gateway Groundbreaking
The much anticipated groundbreaking for the Gateway to the McDowell Sonoran Preserve was held yesterday morning. Pictured from left to right are Len Marcisz (MSC board member), Carla (long time conservation advocate), Betty Drake (councilwoman), Jamie Drinkwater Buchanan (former Mayor Drinkwater’s daughter), Mary Manross (Scottsdale’s Mayor), Art Decabooter (president of SCC) and Jane Rau (MSC board member). Behind them is councilman Tony Nelssen on one of his mules.

Photo FYI: Canon 40D and Sigma 18-200mm lens. Shooting into the sun was a challenge. I converted to black and white to give it a journalistic look.

Giant Desert Hairy Scorpion

June 7, 2008 Marianne Skov Jensen

Moving rocks the other day and this crawled out! It’s a Giant Desert Hairy Scorpion and definitely the largest I’ve seen yet. It waited long enough for me to grab a quarter to show scale but then scooted off.

javelina food

June 6, 2008 Marianne Skov Jensen

javelina food
Yummy! Javelina love cactus blooms so this one lasted only one day. I took a quick shot of it the day before they found it with the intention of going back for some macro shots the next morning. I should have known better.
(FYI:a variety of Octopus Cactus)

Phainopepla

June 5, 2008 Marianne Skov Jensen

Phainopepla
This photo shows why Painopepla are mistakenly called “black cardinals”. FYI:They love mistletoe berries and are responsible for spreading it to other trees. My goal is to catch one in the act but no luck so far. This is a grab shot of one resting in the Ocotillo outside our front door. (Captured with my Canon point and shoot at 200mm).

I see marbles

June 4, 2008 Marianne Skov Jensen

This aisle of sport drinks made me think of photoshop marbles. I used my Canon S5 (set on the smallest aperture) and walked very quickly to get the blur. I then applied a Flaming Pear filter called Flexify2 .
I see marbles

sunset

June 3, 2008 Marianne Skov Jensen

Leaving for the day in a few moments so I grabbed a photo from my archives; converted into a line drawing and then added sunset colors that I remembered from two nights ago. (used threshold and gradient fill adjustment layers among other things)

vine ripe

June 2, 2008 Marianne Skov Jensen

Every time I buy tomatoes that are still on the vine, I tell myself to photograph them as soon as I get home. That hasn’t happened yet but this morning I got one at least! I used Photomatix to process a single image (cool) and then applied a fun filter called Fractalius. Both these programs accentuate any lines or textures. Below is the original file.

snapshot

June 1, 2008 Marianne Skov Jensen 2 Comments

Had a great ride this morning. Shooting while biking is really hard! Fun though 🙂

velcro fruit

May 31, 2008 Marianne Skov Jensen

White Ratany produces a little burr fruit with barbs that attach easily to anything it touches. Note that there’s one main curved barb. Check out the photo below to see the velcro-like barbs at the end of each spine. By the way, they are not sharp like cactus so they’re easier to remove from your clothing.

cleo and cloe

May 30, 2008 Marianne Skov Jensen

Cleo (L) and sister Cloe in their kitty walk enclosure. This is a very quick handheld and not so great HDR from this morning. The cats were in total shade so I set my 40D to ISO 400 and auto bracketed to produce 3 different exposures. The newest version of Photomatix does an excellent job of aligning handheld images.

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