Saguaro Portrait

We are just back from a sad trip to Kansas for Lonnie’s stepsister, Sue’s Celebration of Life. It was a quick but very meaningful trip, especially for Lonnie who has lost both stepsisters and his stepmother, Laura over the last couple years.

On the way to the airport, we stopped at the outlet mall for a snack, and I ended up having a quick photo session with a beautiful saguaro outside. I have many photos from Kansas that I will share later on- but my external hard drive (loaded with ALL my photos and ALL my genealogy documents and photos) is on its last legs and is headed to our computer guys for a data transfer to a new drive. Yes I have a backup system in place, but I won’t relax until all my files are safely back where they belong.

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Two Guns

Depending on your point of view, you could call this site along Route 66 historic or an eyesore, but photographers call Two Guns a great photo opportunity. This just one of many remnants of a tourist stop during the heyday of Route 66, and the graffiti only adds to its appeal to photographers. Like many areas in Arizona it has a bloody past- you can read about it HERE. Lonnie and I spent a couple hours exploring the area with my photo group and never ran out of things to point out or photograph!

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Wigwam Motel

Back to Route 66! I visualized this image as we drove into Holbrook, where we stayed the first night of our Route 66 trip with my photo club. The last time we were in Holbrook, we stayed across the street from the Wigwam Motel (yes, people stay in these faux teepees, which have nice beds air conditioning, bathrooms etc. ). I knew I wanted to photograph it again- but convert to black and white. It was difficult to get an uncluttered view- I had to walk around the corner to be able to get a clear view of the huge “teepees” against the cloudy sky. Mission accomplished!

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Tide

I can remember my first visit to the ocean as a young child- and how my mother taught me to always keep my eyes on the waves (for safety reasons). And now in my elder years I treasure our visits to the ocean, and my eyes are always drawn to the ever-changing yet constant waves as they rush toward shore. At sunset the light turns golden as the sun bids farewell to another day- a soothing presence in these times.

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Sunset Surfer

We spent a few days in Southern California a week ago, including 3 days visiting beaches in the area. I told myself I have photographed too much surfing, which has produced hundreds of shots that will never see the light of day. But…the golden light at sunset at San Clemente proved irresistible, especially for slow shutter/ICM images.

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Trees in the Rocks

One of the places we visited on our Route 66 trip with my photo club was the Little Painted Desert (outside of Winslow)- an amazingly beautiful spot. I was entranced from the beginning by the creases and folds in the rock formations that looked like tree branches to me. And of course the colors were spectacular!

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Exit 233

As Lonnie and I headed to Holbrook the first day of our field trip, I captured this view out the car window. It had clouded over, threatening rain, and the exit sign seemed to point up into the clouds- suggesting an earthly exit perhaps?

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Route 66 Field Trip

Last week we took a fun trip with my photo club to the Winslow/Holbrook area to view explore this part of Arizona’s Route 66. This iPhone shot was taken from the backseat at Two Guns, a 1920-40’s era ghost town with ruins of a gas station, a “zoo” and many old structures.

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AI (or A-One as it has been called recently…)

We are encouraging our Photo Club to experiment with new techniques (if they desire…). One of the ways we’ve done this is to have an AI gallery on our website where members can post images created with AI or composited with AI elements. I added this AI image of a woman created with CoPilot (after many, many tries at getting the prompt right for what I wanted) to my photo taken last year on a drive through rural Sonoma County. I named the resulting image “Jane’s World” after my mother and one of my favorite paintings, “Christina’s World” by Andrew Wyeth.

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Apple Blossoms

We are having a late Spring, and I don’t think I’ve seen our two fruit trees produce half as many blossoms as they are this year! The bees have discovered the apple blossoms, and I hope this is predictive of a good apple crop (there’s always a first time…). I am loaning my Lensbaby 56 to a friend, so I thought that before that I would use it for the blossoms. It creates a soft glowy effect which I think works beautifully on spring images.

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Morning Birding

What a sweet face this Cooper’s? Hawk has as it sits atop the shepherd’s pole waiting for birds to come out of the bushes to get breakfast from the feeder hanging below! I only got one click of the shutter through the window and off it flew! Update: Although my Merlin birding app identified this photo as a sharp shinned hawk (with Cooper’s as second choice), my son-in-law thinks it is a Merlin Falcon, and he is pretty sure. Lonnie thought it was a falcon as it flew in- and I thought kestrel or peregrine falcon because of its size, but I trusted my app! Now I’m not so sure!

Meanwhile across the yard, our Gambel’s quail family was making an entrance. The mom has discovered the Bird Buddy in the apple tree and enjoyed her breakfast for a good ten minutes as I took photos through the window.

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