Today’s post is a collection of unrelated photographs taken in and around our community in Scottsdale. There is no particular theme, style or genre, simply some images that appealed to me at the time I selected them.
This first one was taken a few weeks ago in the nearby community of Carefree. More precisely, it’s situated on Black Mountain, a peak located just north of our community.
Last week, I took our recent visitors, my cousin Jennifer and her husband, John Lanyon to the nearby town of Carefree. John and I took a few photographs of this scenic town, including this water feature at the Carefree Desert Gardens. I used a very fast shutter speed, 1/8000 sec. to “freeze” the motion of the water as it arced above the pond beneath. There were a number of “hotspots” among the water droplets from light being reflected by them. I removed as many as I could without adversely affecting the overall appearance with spot healing blemishes.
This is another water feature at the Carefree Desert Gardens, also shot with a fast shutter speed.
The next scene is a low key, black and white photograph of a Palo Verde tree, taken at night in our back yard. It was taken several weeks ago, before its leaves emerged. I find the bare branches more interesting, a better subject for this type of photograph.
I was practicing with my macro lens before taking some floral pictures in our back garden. I shot this picture of a handy matchstick and I like the outcome. I find it’s not a bad, minimalist picture so I chose to include it today. For those unfamiliar with a macro lens, it is designed for the purpose of taking close-up shots of small objects, such as insects, flowers, ice crystals, etc. My lens has a 100 mm focal length, placing it in the telephoto range. It differs from usual telephoto lenses; it’s built to focus at distances close to the subject. In the case of my lens, I can focus from a distance as small as 11.81″ / 30 cm. The combination of long lens magnification with close proximity to the subject enables me to get great detail and enlargement of the subject.
My final picture was taken with the macro lens but is not a true macro shot. I backed away to get more of the flower into the scene. It is a close-up shot and offers good detail.
That’s it for today. The flowers are beginning to bloom in the yard. I’m looking forward to photographing them as the month progresses. Hopefully, I’ll get some I can share on a blog post.
Well done