Blueberry Picking and More

I have two things today. First of all, a couple of weeks ago I drove up to Upstate NY to visit my brother and his family. We took the kids blueberry picking, and I took a bunch of fun family photos. I also took a couple of more serious photos, just playing around. I think this one came out kind of nice.



Also, although I haven't finished processing or uploading all of the Arizona images from my visit this past April/May, I have created a separate Arizona Gallery. Although new posts to my portfolio will temporarily go into the "Recent Uploads" Gallery, the Arizona shots will eventually all end up in the AZ Gallery. Check it out.

Smorgasbord

This weekend I have a smorgasbord of loose ends to tie up for you.

First of all, I continue to process my images from my trip to Arizona. I guess that the last half of the week I spent there I did a lot less landscape/nature shooting than during the first half of the week. I hope you find these shots interesting. This wall abstract is one of several similar shots that I took in various places throughout southeastern Arizona. Many of the buildings and homes had colorful stucco siding, common throughout the Southwest. Shots like this always make me think of my friend Sarah Underhill who I wrote about in a previous post. I learned so much from Sarah as a photographer. Colorful walls were some of her favorite subjects.

Like I said, you will find a smorgasbord today. In my Recent Additions gallery, you will find several photos from Arizona, a handful of shots from my safari in Kenya last summer, and some shots from the monuments in downtown DC. I've been (figuratively) all over the map lately. :-)

Please also notice that I have added an Arizona Gallery. Arizona shots will eventually end up there after they've outlived their welcome in the Recent Additions gallery.

Enjoy your weekend!

Ghost town!

Yes, yes, I know. There have already been several posts about my trip to Arizona. I am still working through the images that I took there, and enjoying the post-processing of those images. One "set" of images from Arizona consist of shots that I took in the ghost town of Ruby. There is a "caretaker" who lives on the property and collects the entrance fee. But no one else lives there. I enjoyed photographing the abandoned, falling down buildings. I also had fun finding "junk" sitting around the town and attempting to compose images around all of the rusty, abandoned "stuff". I'll even, eventually, post a photo of the caretaker. You have to imagine the personality of someone who would voluntarily live up in the mountains, an hour and a half's drive from the nearest town in either direction. He was quite a character. Anyway, in the most recent images gallery, you can see the images from Ruby that have been post-processed so far. Or, if you prefer, I am creating a Flickr set specifically for the Ruby, AZ images. Check them out!

Stitching

Yes, I know that the image is too big for the space that I've put it in. And, no, "stitching" does not refer to sewing machines and textiles. :-) Not in this case, anyhow. The photo above is actually an image that has been stitched from two separate photos that I took while I was in Arizona last month.

Adobe Photoshop is a very powerful piece of software. One of my favorite actions that it does is "stitching". I don't use it often enough, but when I do, I am always happy with the results. When I was looking at the scene (above), I knew I wanted to photograph it, but didn't want the distortion that a very wide lens typically brings to an image. So I took two photos, one of the left end of the scene and one of the right end of the scene. I was careful to make sure that part of the images would overlap in the middle. In Photoshop, you open both images and "merge" them using the Auto-Align tool and then the Auto-blend tool. The "align" tool makes sure that the overlapping parts of the two photos are exactly matched up. The "blend" tool matches the colors and exposure (etc.) from the two images so that the one resulting image looks like it is just ONE image. :-)

I have been inspired to play with stitching a bit more, so please expect to see more of these large res images from me! In the meantime, keep following my Arizona images in the "recent additions" folder in my portfolio.

Back up and running!

Sorry everyone - there were server problems. For a little over a week. Apparently the "wrong" week, because I just sent the link out to a whole bunch of people, who then tried to get on, and couldn't. :-( Oh well ... server outages happen. :-)

SO ... in the meantime, I have been busy trying to process through some of the images that I took in Arizona. It was so wonderful to be there at the end of April and the beginning of May because there were so many cacti in full bloom. This image was taken at the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum. It's not a "museum" like in a building. It's this huge, outdoor walking experience. You see all sorts of different desert flora AND fauna. They have a wonderful hummingbird display with dozens of them buzzing around lots of gorgeous flowers. They fly by your head and shoot all over the place. They're awfully difficult to photograph. I think that I got lucky with this shot. Much to my delight, this shot got a lot of positive attention on Flickr. A very pleasant surprise!

Please expect me to start updating regularly again! Keep checking back. In the meantime, you can follow my progress with the Arizona shots in my recent uploads gallery.

Arizona

I recently spent about a week driving around Southern Arizona. I've never spent much time in the desert Southwest. Nor have I ever been in Arizona. I had a blast. I loved shooting the saguaro cacti (seen here at sunset in the Saguaro National Park, Western division). My favorite cacti were the ocotillo, although I found them difficult subject matter for composition. While in Arizona I spent a lot of time driving the backroads, shooting the desert scenery. You'll also eventually see lots of desert landscape images, shots from the Organ Pipe National Monument, the Chiricahua National Monument, the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum, the Tucson Botanical Gardens, San Xavier del Bac Mission, and even a ghost town called Ruby. For now, all of the newly uploaded Arizona images will be going into my Most Recent Additions folder. Check back to that folder every once in a while, as I will be adding two or three new photos there every day or so. Eventually, I'll create an "Arizona" gallery.