Crater

We visited Sunset Crater National Monument on the way to Wupatki. The volcano erupted over 1,000 years ago, but the whole San Francisco Peaks area is considered active though you can see no sign of that as you walk along the paths.

In the photo below you can see a “squeeze up” in a fissure in the ground. Lava pushed up through the crack and dried as a fin-shaped rock. I love how trees have grown all over the volcano’s cinder cone. Life goes on even after all the destruction wrought by the volcano.

 

Moonie

Yes, I took photos of the eclipse! The Super Blood Wolf Moon! As I write this, the moon is still eclipsed- so much so, that when I bumped into my tripod in the dark, I could not find the moon again in my view finder. Time to go to bed.

Here is the moon on the rise, partly covered by clouds.

 

And here is when the moon was almost completely in the earth’s shadow.

 

 

 

White World

It was a white world out there yesterday morning! I knew it was supposed to snow during the night (and then maybe rain later), so when I woke up at 5:00, I didn’t try to go back to sleep. I ventured outside before the sun came up- trying to take photos in the DARK (not too successfully)- and kept going out until it was light enough to shoot without a tripod. The photo below is an iPhone shot- just as good as my Nikon photos, I think. I added a few touches in Photoshop.

Solstice

The full winter moon was obscured by clouds when we got home last night- and I kept thinking about the photo I missed earlier as it rose. But all the same, I’m glad to have witnessed the timeless beauty of this winter solstice moon.

No, I didn’t see the meteor shower.

Final Series

This is the week my photo series is due. I abandoned my alone-in-a-crowd beach series and opted for the very simple wabi sabi series. Each photo illustrates one (or more) aspect of wabi sabi. Such basic photos are not the norm in this very advanced group, so I hope I don’t get in trouble!

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