DigiCaptures Photo Gallery

Wooly Senna

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 18:18 -0700

Wooly Sennas (Senna hirsuta) are found during the Monsoons. You can find them in disturbed areas like the sides of roads or the drainage turnouts that border dirt roads. They grow up to several feet in height and are quite distinctive with their bright yellow flower clusters and pods.

Sycamore In The Mist

Sun, 04 Dec 2011 13:47 -0700

It was supposed to snow today. I was looking forward to 2 inches of cold wet stuff.

At 2am, still nothing.

At 6am, the clouds were hanging low.

At 8am we went up into Brown Canyon to see if we could get snowed on. There was a bit of the dry powdery stuff coming down and you could hear it crackling in the stillness as it fell on the dry leaves that still clung to the trees. There was fog all around and I made some images of the white branches of the sycamores enveloped by the mist. After hiking a two mile loop the fog started to lift and we headed home.

By 11am the sun was shining.

#&%#!@ Arizona weathermen!

Mating Grasshoppers (Melanoplus aridus)

Sat, 03 Dec 2011 20:25 -0700

A nicely lit closeup portrait of a pair of mating grasshoppers (Melanoplus aridus), sitting on the coarse leaves of a green plant of some sort. I took this one back in late September, when it was much warmer.

Short-wing Katydid (Dichopetala brevihastata)

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 10:32 -0700

I found a lot of these little Short-wing Katydids (Dichopetala brevihastata) during my last bug hunt at the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area (SPRNCA) back in September. Like any other hopper, the best time to photograph these is in the early morning when the temperatures are cooler. At that time they're not as mobile, tending to move toward sunlit flowers so they can feed while warming themselves up.

Brown Canyon Ranch Corrals

Tue, 22 Nov 2011 14:38 -0700

I've been so busy of late that I barely have time to make new images. So, here's another one from the archives, but only a couple of weeks old, taken for "One Day On Earth 2011-11-11."

It's funny how Mother Nature loves throwing surprises at landscape photographers, just to see how we cope, For me, she'd moved in a weather front with a large bank of clouds that covered the sun just as I drove up to the spot where I had planned to make an image of the morning light hitting the Huachuca Mountain range.

I could have waited for the Sun to come out from behind the clouds, but it was a very large bank of clouds so instead I opted to go up to Brown Canyon Ranch, which was only a couple of miles away. I was hoping I could make some nice images of the old corrals there in the filtered light.

Of course, the Sun had come out from behind the clouds by the time I got to Brown Canyon Ranch, and I did quite a bit of muttering as I set up the tripod, put the NDG filter on the camera, and started making images. It all lasted for less than 15 minutes and then the sun went behind some more clouds and the light went flat. The image you see here was one of photos I managed to create while the light was good.

I packed it up and started to drive home. It was then that I noticed the sun was shining nicely on the hills out on the valley floor. Knowing it was a 15 minute ride to get to them, and that the clouds were building up more around the mountains, I decided to go for it. My "San Pedro Valley One Day On Earth 2011-11-11 image" was the result of that leg of the morning's travels.

Oh well, we were, afterall, supposed to make images of where we live, and I like to think I managed to capture some of the diversity of the ecosystem we have here in my part of the World.

San Pedro Valley - One Day On Earth 2011-11-11

Fri, 11 Nov 2011 17:22 -0700

An environmental landscape image of the San Pedro River Valley in Southeastern Arizona taken near Charleston, showing the geology for this part of the Chihuahuan Desert. The vegetation consists mostly of creosote bush, acacia trees, ocotillo cactus, and the occasional mesquite tree. Through it all runs the San Pedro River, bordered by tall Cottonwoods and running South to North from Mexico into the United States . This image was taken for One Day On Earth 2011.11.11

Milky Way Over The Huachuca Mountains

Thu, 27 Oct 2011 20:24 -0700

Here's another image from the star party at the Brown Canyon Ranch on 2011-09-21. This was supposed to be my test image, where I put the camera up to its maximum ISO and take a quick shot to see if everything is composed properly prior to making the actual image. Well, this one turned out to be my favorite photo of the evening. The streaking meteorite was a nice bit of luck too!

For you stargazers, Sagittarius is getting ready to set and its "handle" is to the right of the large cloud that's above the juniper on the left side of the photo.

Beneath The Starry Sky

Sat, 22 Oct 2011 08:04 -0700

There was a star party at the Brown Canyon Ranch last night. They have them once a month, weather permitting. We weren't sure if this event would go as planned due to cloud cover, but the sky mostly cleared within an hour after sunset and we had a great time. The number visitors was quite manageable for two Celestron 8" telescopes so everyone got a chance to see some amazing things in the night sky.

This was my first try at using the D90 to make images of the Milky Way. After seeing some great images this year of foreground objects painted with light set against the backdrop of our amazing galaxy, I've been itching to try my .hand at this kind of photography but couldn't think of a suitably dark location with an interesting foreground. When Tommy Neyhart, who hosts these events under the aegis of the U.S. Forest Service, told me about the star party, I immediately envisioned how the windmill at the Brown Canyon Ranch would look standing against the Milky Way.

I think it's not a bad first attempt, but I still need to work on my technique, and I need a better lens for I'm pushing the time limit on the 18-200mm at 18mm which will only stop down to f3.5. I don't want to go above ISO 800 and I must... have... more... light!

Waterfall At Lower Emerald Pool

Fri, 14 Oct 2011 10:18 -0700

Zion is all about water and amazing sandstone cliffs. Being a desert environment, water can be rather ephemeral, aside from the steady flow of the Virgin River. Our visit to Zion was during a a dry time in September, when the waterfalls are slow trickles and not the roaring cascades that they can be when it rains.

I took this one while standing against the cliff by Lower Emerald Pool. The two waterfalls that trickled from Middle Emerald Pools above were back-lit nicely by the rays of the sun and I rather liked the perspective from this vantage point.

Hummingbird Doing The Moon Walk

Thu, 06 Oct 2011 21:56 -0700

This is another one of my efforts to make an image of a hummingbird frozen in flight. After watching them for a while I began to notice different types of behavior, composed for it, and tried to capture the bird when it repeated the behavior.

The little birds are constantly looking around and tracking other males. When a more dominant male nears the feeder the less dominant ones will jump backward, away from the feeder and hover for a brief moment. To me, the movement looks very much like "moon walking", that dance move made famous by the late Michael Jackson.

I'm not sure what kind of hummer this is. I think this might be either an immature male or female Rufus Hummingbird (Selasphorus rufus).