Filed under: Home, Photography | Tags: Home, Hummingbirds, Learning, Photography
Ugh, I’m frustrated with my new camera (the Nikon D7100)~not really it but, rather, my slow learning curve with it. I just finally fired off a bunch of shots this afternoon but I have a lot of settings I need to change because I’m not happy with these shots.
I sort of prefer manual focus but these were all done auto focus to take advantage of the 51 points of focus that is touted in the reviews. But now I know I have some things not set optimally and have to change them.
I also shot in the 1.3x crop mode but I still further cropped in post processing so I don’t like the look of these.
Oh, well, this little guy is cute and was trying to be a good model for me. If the sun had caught his head right, you could see all the red but it didn’t. He’s a male Anna’s hummingbird, I believe. You can catch a glimpse of red in the 3rd photo and a little bit on the top of his head below.
So, it’s back to reading more and messing with the bazillion settings again. I need a one-on-one coaching session.
Filed under: Arizona, Blogging, Home, Photography | Tags: Arizona, Blogging, Home, Hummingbirds, Learning, Photoblogging, Photography, Verdins
A short story, told mostly in pictures…
A cheery little hummer enjoys some sweet nectar and happily flits around.
Until…
The bossy hummer is happy again.
This is what I love about blogging~that I feel compelled to take more photos than I normally would, pay more attention to my surroundings than I normally would, and then research what I’ve found. I now know a lot more about various butterflies, birds, flowers, animals, places, artists than I would have ever discovered if I wasn’t trying to capture them all digitally and record them here.
This previously-unknown-to-me little yellow bird is a verdin (aka yellow-headed bushtit). They are found in only 5 of the US states, all desert southwestern states: Arizona, California, Nevada, New Mexico, and Texas. They’re inquisitive yet shy, only 4 inches long at the most, and one of the smallest perching songbirds in North America. They build unique, basket-like, enclosed nests (which I have yet to see). They love nectar but are not pollinators. Verdins will also visit hummingbird feeders, sometimes using the feeding holes, but more often probing small cracks or openings around the feeders to collect dried sugar water. They also like pomegranate trees and we have one. Read more about these pretty creatures here.
Filed under: Art, Phoenix | Tags: Art, Downtown Phoenix, Flora, Global Community, Greater Good, imagine, Learning, Phoenix, Valley of the Sunflowers
This is the last growing season at the Valley of the Sunflowers.
The bulldozers and cranes are encroaching and soon this former dirt field that became gloriously yellow will be a construction site for the future Phoenix Biomedical Campus and the Arizona Cancer Center, already in progress the next lot over. Fortunately, for those of us who loved seeing the sunflowers, there are plenty more vacant lots in downtown Phoenix and the sunflowers have been such a hit that they will probably be back a few blocks away.
The sunflowers have been an A.R.T.S. (Adaptive Reuse of Temporary Space) project sponsored by the Roosevelt Row Community Development Corporation in collaboration with Arizona State University, University of Arizona, Intel, Bioscience High School, and others.
Filed under: Art, Phoenix | Tags: Art, Downtown Phoenix, Flora, Global Community, Greater Good, imagine, Learning, Phoenix, Valley of the Sunflowers
Well, I was a week too late to see all the sunflowers in bloom at Valley of the Sunflowers (which I have blogged about 1, 2, 3 other times since September) because they had started to harvest them 2 weeks ago. Today the rest will be harvested to be made into biodiesel fuel and soon the field will be back to brown and they will start the cycle all over again…one more time, in February. After those flowers are harvested, building is scheduled to begin in the formerly empty field. But you will still be able to see, from these photos, how quickly the sunflowers grew and how beautiful the field was…briefly.
And, yeah, their signs got tagged 
There have been a lot of articles in the local media in the past couple of weeks. You can also keep up with this truly awesome project in real time on their Facebook page.
They’re gorgeous!
Some bees are going to be very unhappy when the flowers are all harvested.
Bye, sunflowers…
Filed under: Arizona, Art, Blogging, Cats, Home, Phoenix, Photography | Tags: Arizona, Art, Blogging, Butterflies, Cats, Downtown Phoenix, Flora, Global Community, Holidays, Home, Hummingbirds, imagine, Lalo Cota, Learning, Murals, Phoenix, Photoblogging, Photography, Photoshop, Resorts, Sedona, Travels, vacation
Hope your shiny new year is off to a great start! I wasn’t planning to do a 2011 year review but it seems like a good idea to take stock now and then and look back but, mostly, it’s an excuse to use photos I already have since I’m running low right now. So, in no chronological order, here are some of the highlights of my blogging year (some coincide a little with my personal year).
In April, after 17 years together, Tony and I got married.
We had a little wedding but a big party.
I made the invitations for the party.
We went on a staycation at the Hermosa Inn in Paradise Valley.
I did some “imaginary vacation” photos around town in the heat of summer when I couldn’t think of anything to photograph. The first place, El Maya, was torn down a couple of weeks after I photographed it. Oh, and I learned how to do rounded corners and played with textures a lot more in 2011.
A few weeks later I did another local imaginary vacation in the sweltering heat.
We did a day trip to Sedona, I took a lot of photos, and got 2 blog posts out of them. It’s really hard to take bad photos in Sedona. One of those posts was Freshly Pressed on WordPress!
2011 was the year that I FINALLY got some good butterfly shots! Some Giant Swallowtails:
Some Skippers:
And a Variegated Fritillary:
As if that weren’t enough, 2011 gave me some good hummingbird shots, on two different occasions, something I had also never gotten before.
I continued shooting murals in downtown Phoenix, something I’ve done for 2.5 years now.
I got all enthused about another downtown Phoenix project, the Valley of the Sunflowers, and will post some new shots in a few days.
I took a lot of photos of our 3 indoor cats as well as our numerous outdoor cats. Sadly, 3 of our outdoor cats died in 2011, including WB, our faithful friend for many years (as well as Snowy and Isabella).
My hibiscus plant was the subject of a few posts. It almost croaked last winter through a few frosts even though it was covered. It recovered and thrived through the spring and early summer. Again it got very sickly looking during the intense summer heat, and now it is once again thriving…
I learned how to do animated gifs, providing myself hours of fun!
I got hooked on my old 50mm f/1.8 lens from my old Nikon film camera and have to shoot manually when I use it on my DSLR which is fun. I like the looks of the photos with it, too.
We grew a giant basil plant from seed and it provided a lot of seasoning for us until quite recently when it died. We’ll be doing that again as soon as it gets warmer. They flourish in heat and sun, which we have plenty of here.
I took a zillion rose photos, some got texture added to them, some didn’t.
We took another train ride on the Verde Canyon Railroad with Tony’s sister and her husband when they were out visiting in November. The railroad asked for permission to use a couple of my photos, this one in particular, and in return sent us two first-class passes for another trip (and a photo credit, of course). Someone else has asked for permission to use another photo from that same train ride and it will also result in a photo credit and some goods that I may mention at a later date.
Some photos I liked, just because.
And a lot of my photos were just taken around my yard and neighborhood.
So that about sums it up for 2011 on this blog. Thank you to all of you who read it and I really enjoy reading yours, too, and seeing your photos of your lives. Photoblogging is one of my favorite pastimes as I’m sure it is for most of you, too. I hope we all have a fun, productive, creative 2012 blogging experience.
