Morning in the Desert

Last week I travelled to the eastern limit of Scottsdale to an area near Granite Mountain to capture some early morning, desert scenes. I was accompanied by Bill McAdam and we agree that the conditions were fabulous. The first light was warm, soft and casting some beautiful long shadows.

The area is quite special as well, offering a great variety of rocks, bush and cactus. There is also some evidence of humankind’s presence with a line of large transmission towers cutting across the southern edge of the area we wished to photograph. You can look upon this in two ways: a blight on the landscape, or an interesting subject with its own photographic merit.  I chose to look upon it as the latter and realized I could could get some good pictures of it as well as all the great desert scenes around it.

So, here are two. I’ll get them out of the way and move on to those desert scenes. Let me tell you what I like in this first picture. Strong, geometric shapes, reflections in the puddles, misted mountains in the background and the desert grasses in the centre-right of the image.

I couldn’t resist a close-up of the foreground, so here it is as well. Beautiful light from the sun’s rays just beginning to peek above the horizon, a great reflection. If you look closely, there’s a little bit of lens flare colouring a small cactus, just beyond the puddle. Lens flare is not always an attribute but it works here.

I’ve chosen to put the desert scenes together in a slideshow. Simply click on the right side to advance; on the left to reverse direction. These pictures are self-explanatory, a combination of rocks, cacti and some distant mountains.

Today’s last picture captures the sunrise. The shot is highlighted by the starburst effect created by using a small aperture (in this case, f16) when shooting toward a light source (the sun) which is much brighter than the surrounding environment.You can see the exaggerated span of the sun’s rays as it shines between the arms of the large Saguaro cactus, silhouetted in the foreground. What really appeals to me in this photograph is the cloud pattern and the variety of colour in the sky.