Make Yourself at Home

Our roadrunner guest made himself right at home in our yard. He is a predator after all; I try not to think of what he might have eaten besides lizards. I haven’t seen any of the young quail for awhile, alas. These shots are before and after he helped himself to some water in the fountain.

By the way, this is the same roadrunner I featured in yesterday’s blog post. His crest is sometimes up, and sometimes down. Supposedly the crest goes up when the roadrunner is communicating with other roadrunners, but this one has been a loner.

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Unafraid

Last week, we spotted a roadrunner coming into our back yard several times each day. One day, Carol and I were out there for over an hour with our cameras, and the roadrunner was everywhere! We even watched him kill a large lizard by- sorry!- whacking him repeatedly against the rocks (don’t worry- no photos). At one point, he came down to the lower level and drank from the fountain- leisurely and unafraid.

Here he is in all his glory:

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Sweeeet

I’ve taken many, many hummingbird photos over the years. And now I am trying to take better ones. The hard thing is to take them in flight, in focus, and in a good spot in the frame (good composition and background). So far, I have many, many shots of their tails as they take off- or just sitting at the feeders. At least in this shot, the wings are outstretched and moving.

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Long Lens Technique

Thanks to the expert tutelage of my friend, Carol, I am finally able to use my long zoom lens with the gimbal head I got for my birthday. I am working on assembling and disassembling the lens and tripod combo, as well as focusing and panning techniques for bird photography. I am far from competent, but am thrilled with my results so far!

Meet Mr. and Mrs. Quail, regular visitors to our backyard:

 

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July Sky

My friend, Carol, is visiting! After an afternoon at Barnstar Brewery and a delicious barbecue dinner, we all sat outside talking, laughing, and watching birds until after dark. As we got up to go inside, we were surprised to look up and see clouds which had not been visible earlier. Carol and I got our cameras to photograph the moon peeking out through the cloud cover and were surprised to see the colors that appeared in our images. Smoke from the fire? I don’t know.

In this shot, you can see a star in the lower part of the photo.

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The 19

Four years ago today the nineteen Granite Mountain Hot Shots (mostly from Prescott) lost their lives fighting the Yarnell fire. I remember that day well, because we were on our way to Prescott to buy a house- and all during that time the town was in shock and mourning. As this date approaches every year, tributes appear all over town. And in Yarnell, there are constant reminders. When we were there a few weeks ago, I spotted this door with nineteen purple ribbons.

Good news- the Goodwin Fire outside Prescott is about half contained, and today Highway 69 opened. We will be driving to Phoenix today to pick up my friend, Carol as she returns from another Moose Peterson trip (hummingbirds in the Tucson area), and will be so glad to take a direct route to the valley.

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Sunset and Smoke

A little impression of our sunset view last night- smoke and pink sky. Multiple exposure layered with a view of the moon from the other direction and an added texture. The fire continues to grow as I write this. We are far enough away to feel safe, but it is scary how fast it is growing.

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From the driveway. . .

A sad view indeed . . .

The Goodwin fire has been burning since Saturday, I think- and is over 4400 acres, forcing the evacuation of the town of Mayer and other small communities southwest of Prescott. And no, it is not contained or controlled. If you look closely at the photo, you can see one of the planes that were flying over the fire this afternoon. With this area’s still vivid memories of the 2013 fire that took the lives of 19 hot shots, fire is taken very seriously here. Although we are in the monsoon season, no rain is in the forecast.

A monochrome view:

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Down the Rabbit Hole

Today I posted an iPhone image on Instagram and commented that I had fallen down the iPhone app rabbit hole and was wondering if I was ever going to return to regular photography. A very talented  instagram friend replied, ” There is no “regular photography”, there is just photography and creativity, and there is nothing wrong with going down there and looking for wonderland.” Don’t you love that?

Today I had my photo club friends over to play with paint. We had a blast rolling out colors on the gelli plates and using stencils and all sorts of tools to create textures and backgrounds to photograph and use in our images. It was fun to do art with NO RULES, since rules are traditionally such a big part of photography- although artist/photographers everywhere are breaking them now (yay!).

The above photo (I know- it’s pretty psychedelic. . .) was quickly created after my friends left this afternoon and was edited totally on the iPhone. The texture used was actually the photo below, after it had been through a few apps (Roll World, Brush Stroke, Snapseed- maybe more)- then was combined with the flower in Image Blender and tweaked a little more in Mextures. I still love Photoshop for the control I can get- but with the iPhone or iPad I can be creative while watching TV or when I wake up in the night and can’t back to sleep!

This photo (angel hair lying across paint on a gelli plate) became the texture used in the flower photo:

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Back to First Grade

After a pretty intense “school year” (a big job in AAUW, my photo class and club, preparing for my photo show, and the genealogy drama), I have been pretty exhausted and burned out creatively. So I decided to sign up for a little online class this summer that would be a radical departure from what I’ve been doing. It’s called “It’s Elementary,” and the teacher is Tricia Dewey, a very talented digital and mixed media artist.

The subject of the class is creating your own backgrounds and textures to use in photography and digital art- sounds right up my alley, right? You use paint, a gelli plate, a brayer, and stencils and mark making tools to make prints on paper which you combine in Photoshop or in your iPad- endless possibilities. But unfortunately, I brought my stressed out, left brain attitude to the class and found it pretty overwhelming at first. I watched the videos several times, bought the materials- and that was it.

I finally forced myself to start by announcing at my photo club Tuesday that I was hosting a group next week at my house to create textures and backgrounds- and I now have 4 very talented and skilled photographers coming to learn how to do these techniques.  I knew I love to teach and coach others- so now I am committed (or should be committed?).

I have had a very busy week, but did manage to play a little in the paint, which brought me back to my happy first grade teacher self. Oh, how I wish I had all the stamping and printing materials I used to have in my classroom!  It is fun!

 

I am finding it a challenge to incorporate the new textures and backgrounds into my images, because I normally tend to use textures in a more subtle way- but the idea is to step out of my comfort zone. I’m hoping that my creative friends who come over next week will inspire me to do things in new ways. I will report back!

Some of the textures I’ve created:

The middle one was created on the iPad- no paint involved. The other two started with paint- and then were modified on the iPad.

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Unexpected Beauty

When we were in Yarnell with our friends, Joan and Rudy, Joan spotted a sign pointing to the Shrine of St. Joseph of the Mountains. We followed signs and came upon a beautiful, quiet path up and over a rocky hill which took you through the fourteen stations of the cross, with concrete statues created in 1939 set into the hillside. It was a deeply spiritual and moving experience to go around corners and come upon these beautiful works of art.

Some impressions:

 

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