A little less grouchy here…
The reason he was grouchy was because Big Tom came and challenged him for his favorite sleeping spot on the wall.
I shot these with the Sigma 50-500mm lens. I’m liking this lens better now.
Author: Kevin (page 89 of 115)
Another photo from Thursday evening…
Friday’s hike started at the horse staging area near the entrance to the park. I took this photo of the sunrise while we waited for everyone to arrive.
We walked across the road to the competitive track parking area and started by hiking part of the Technical Loop. We branched off onto the Long Loop and then hiked up to Pemberton via Stoneman Wash. We went through the Trailhead Staging Area on our way to the Scenic Trail. After about a mile on the Scenic Trail, we turned right onto the trail taking us back to the Horse Staging Area.
Note: I do not recommend hiking the loops in the competitive track area. They are one way tracks and mountain bikes take them pretty fast. I warned everyone on the hike to listen for bikes and to be prepared to step off the trail quickly.
A view from early on the Technical Loop:
A view of Red Mountain in the distance.
One of the steep downhill sections on the Technical Loop. It appeared in pretty good shape. It often has a lot of loose rock on it.
On our way to the tunnel going under the Sport Loop.
The tunnel…
Another view of Red Mountain.
Linda took this photo of me taking a picture.
We had some cool clouds on Friday.
Sarge leads the way, followed by Bob, Janet, Teresa, Marilyn, and Linda.
Chain Fruit Cholla on the Long Loop.
We saw this horny toad near the end of our hike on the Scenic Trail.
We saw this little critter on our hike today. The end of my lens was six to eight inches away from him when I got this shot. Being a 24mm lens, however, I still needed to crop away a lot of the image to get this close-up.
The Fountain Hills Fountain just after 8pm…
2017-04-10 update:
When I revisited this photo, I felt that the sky (and nearly all of the darker tones) were far too blue. I did another edit which is not as blue. This version also has more definition in the sky.
Below is another version – I liked the color of the fountain in my original edit from 2013, so I did a new edit in which I tried to get closer to that color. When I was done, I did a blend of my two most recent attempts with the following result:
Freckles likes to go out on the balcony and then onto the roof. We let her do this because, unlike our other cats, if given enough time, she’ll come back on her own. Tiger and Callisto are not content with staying on the roof; they like to find ways to get down to the ground.
We lost sight of her when she went over the roof peak. I walked around to the front of the house to check on her; she saw me and walked down to the edge of the roof to see me, meowing all the while.
She found a comfy shaded spot next to the skylight.
It was a perfect vantage point from which to watch this bird:
When it was time to come back inside, her mom scolded her for being away for so long.
I took these photos from the Hilltop Trail in McDowell Mountain Park.
Sunset:
I don’t think that I did an especially good job of editing this photo, but Marie says that she likes it. I was walking back to my truck when I saw this bunny. I shot this hand held at f/1.8 in aperture priority mode. The camera (on auto-ISO) chose ISO 1250 for 1/80 sec.
I took this photo of a saguaro cactus after sunset. For this one, I used a tripod using ISO 100, f/8, 1/20 sec. I ended up using the +2EV exposure of the three exposure bracket. I was surprised that it (alone) worked for both the light areas of the image and the dark areas too. I played around with tone mapping it too, but I prefer this edit obtained by merging various exposure values by hand.
Another shot, somewhat later, with some burnt wood in the foreground.
Marie took this photo of Juniper Berries during our hike at Fisher Towers.
Marie took this photo of clouds over Arches National Park.
