Close to Home

I’ve managed to keep busy over the past month and I’ve done very little photography. No photographic excursions yet, but I have some planned for later. I’m looking forward to them.

Consequently, any photos I’ve taken have been in the immediate area and so I’ve chosen to name this blog post accordingly: “Close to Home”.

I’ve included a new element in this blog, a featured photo beneath the title block above. “Bungalow Among the Boulders” is a photo I took last week. It’s situated on the flank of Black Mountain just to the north of where we live. In order to get a line of sight past the boulder on the left, I took my picture from a mile (1.6 km) distant, using a telephoto lens, set to a focal length of 400 mm. I took two images, one focussed on the boulder, the other on the house. I combined the two with focus blending to have both the house and the boulder in focus. The boulder is much further further back from the house than it appears, about 1/2 mile (.80 km). This is caused by an effect known as lens compression. Lens compression occurs when you use a telephoto lens; things in the background of the image will appear larger and compressed closer to the foreground. 

My next photo was taken in our backyard, just before dark. I was practicing a new technique, combining luminosity blending and focus blending in a single, finished image. It’s done by taking three successive images with different luminosities (a light exposure, a mid-tone exposure and a dark exposure). The first set of three exposures had the same focal point, located in the foreground. The procedure was repeated with the second set of three exposures having the same focal point, this time located in the middle of the image. And finally, the final set of three exposures shared the same focal point, located in the background.

The three sets of dark, mid-tone and light were blended into a single identical image, each having a different focal point. Those three images were blended into a single image with three focal points, one located in the foreground, one located in the mid-range and one located in the background.

The result is a single image with a wider dynamic range (a wider range of light) and greater depth of field (a deeper range of focus).

This is a mesquite tree across the driveway from our house. No Photoshop shenanigans, just a simple conversion to black and white.

This photograph’s subject is is an Organ Pipe Cactus, located in the front yard of the house, just in front of the window behind me where I’m seated right now. It’s a beautiful specimen, one that can grow very tall. I’m not sure when to expect that, but it seems to be a little higher each time we return here. It shows very well in the soft light of the setting sun.

This picture features an array of small cacti in front of a large blue agave plant. Its formal name is “Agave tequilana”or tequila agave in English. It is the source of the main ingredient of tequila.

I took this next picture at the trailhead of a hiking trail in Cave Creek, a nearby small town. It features a lofty saguaro cactus on a rocky ridge.

The saguaro is a tree-like cactus species that can grow to be over 12 meters tall. It is native to the Sonoran Desert in Arizona, the Mexican state of Sonora, and the Whipple Mountains and Imperial County areas of California. The saguaro blossom is the state wildflower of Arizona. 

This windmill of older design is located in the Stagecoach Village shopping centre in Cave Creek. The windmill and the style of the shopping centre fit with the Western character of the town. I’m pretty sure this windmill doesn’t pump water or generate electricity.

This is Eddie. Eddie Owl, a mature male, Great Horned Owl. The photograph was taken through our kitchen window one morning and I was fortunate to notice and get his picture. He likes our house and spends much of his time here. We don’t see him often in the yard but we hear him regularly atop our chimney in the evening and early morning. He appears to use our chimney as a vantage point to spot prey in the nearby desert. Oddly, we don’t see quails, doves and flickers much around our place anymore.

That’s it for today. Watch for further posts in the not too distant future.