Lonnie and I went with my photo group to Yuma for a couple days last week. On the way we stopped at Castle Dome, an area filled with old mining cabins and buildings-a photographer’s delight!
Here’s a “found still life”- old bottles on display. I don’t think there was a right angle to be found in this old ghost town- so I gave up trying to straighten anything but the door in this image!
Sunday night we visited Phoenix’s Desert Botanical Garden for the Sonoran Light exhibit by Bruce Munro. We got there around 5pm, before sunset to see the plants and to preview the installation before it got dark. We stopped for snacks after the sun went down- and then ventured back out on the now dim and crowded garden paths.
This post could easily be titled “Stumbling Around in the Dark.” I have new appreciation for my photo buddy, Carol, of In Focus Daily as she walks along jungle paths at night lugging all her camera gear. At one point I simply lost my balance and fell over! And then there was the problem of attaching my camera to the tripod and adjusting my settings in the dark! Lonnie learned how to work the flashlight on his new iPhone finally which helped- but didn’t save me from accidentally changing from RAW to jpg file format in the dark.
Below are some images of Water Towers, a huge installation of water bottles that lit up and changed color. Using a long exposure was a bit tricky as people continually walked in front of the lens- sometimes not even showing up in the photo. I am not very experienced in night photography, so I just went with the flow- and it was fun!
Here is a view of the general scene- note the lights on the hill in the background!
A closer look:
And even closer:
I’ll be posting more photos from Sonoran Light as the week goes by. By the way- these were all jpgs.
The other evening, I glanced over at my entry hall as beautiful light from the setting sun cast a golden glow over my forgotten ranunculus arrangement on the cabinet. I am always complaining about the lack of good light in our house, so I felt compelled to run and get my camera and snap photo after photo until the light faded. My lensbaby Sweet 35 was on the camera- and of course I don’t remember what the aperture was set at- maybe f/4, which produced a lot of blur on the sides (more than I usually like). The second shot shows my adjustment- pushing the bottles together to put more of the flowers in focus. Closing down the aperture would have forced me to raise the ISO more than I wanted to in the excitement of the moment, so that was my speedy solution.
melinda anderson photography 