backyard birds and blooms, trailrun, saguaro permutations

Spring continues here in the Sonoran Desert...

Some doves built a nest in our backyard; it's amazing how fast the chicks grow--I took the two photos below with my iPhone5, just six days apart:

The nest is up under the patio roof--kind of dark there...

snapseed is perfect for 'brightening up the exposure--

before-and-after:

A few feet from the patio, a ferocactus in fiery bloom: 

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Now, for trailrun scenes: 

down by the creek in Sabino Canyon this morning: 

bees loving the palo verde trees in bloom:

hedgehog cactus starting to bloom on the exposed hillsides:

(I have yet to get one of those macro clip-on lenses for the iPhone;

you can get remarkably close almost-'macro' shots by just holding still

and selecting the focus area on the touch-screen.)

above Sabino Canyon, lined with cottonwoods getting greener each day,

some glorious ocotillo in bloom:

The clarity of the scarlet blooms against the sky got me thinking that this scene would be a good candidate for a particular 'grunge filter' effect that I like: photographically real images imposed on a texture that mimics parchment or heavy watercolor-paper, for a pseudo-illuminated-manuscript effect:

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And now for some saguaro permutations--

using symmetry and isolation against the sky

for a surreal effect.

Here's the original shot,

of my favorite pair of saguaros

near Sabino Canyon:

Cropping the tops,

then using (actually, repurposing) PicFrame app

in order to get a mirror image:

...and then re-cropping 

and re-mirroring the image to end up with this:

...again--

imposing the photographically-real

on a texture that evokes older methods of illustration,

using the 'grunge filter' in snapseed...

...and one more,

a color version:

a weekend framed by books and a tortoise...and first wildflowers of the year

From an unusually chilly and overcast Saturday morning to a sunny Sunday evening in Saguaro National Park, lots of mobile photo fun this weekend in Tucson...

...beginning with the Tucson Festival of Books, one of the largest book festivals in the country:

 (note the snow coming down on the Santa Catalina Mountains)

...and ending with my first in-the-wild sighting of a desert tortoise:

 More about the tortoise later...

The Festival of Books--so much more than just books--more of a temporary tent-city (on the campus of the University of Arizona--hundreds of organizations and vendors spread out on The Mall) that distills the literary tastes and cultural possibilities of an entire region. Authors from all over the country, cooking demonstrations, national park docents, a food-court-restaurant-village, readings, signings, science-for-children, SW Native American arts...

 Some Tohono O'odham basketry--by artist Della Cruz...

...and Apache flute-playing, in one of the Western National Park tents:

And of course, books. Find your author.

(I got to meet an author I've admired for years: Chang-rae Lee, incidentally.)

And of course, what would a public event on a university campus be,

without some provocative (offensive?) 'free-speech:'

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Sunday afternoon, I took my phone with me as I ran the loop-road in Saguaro National Park East.

Hard to believe the place was snow-covered just a couple of weeks ago, now that the first spring wildflowers are coming up--some fairy-duster among the prickly-pear above, and desert bladderpod (member of the mustard family) below:

The carpets of yellow bloom caught my eye and made me get off the trail...
...and that's when I stumbled upon this guy--my first in-the-wild-sighting of a desert tortoise:

Plenty of edible blooms for him...

And, of course, in the park--saguaros.  

Some of these specimens are two centuries old,

weighing many tons...

It takes decades for the first arm to sprout, and then...

 (playing around with black and white, 

warming up the white balance 'temperature,' 

and adding some texture)

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Last week, in Sabino Canyon, was when I noted the first wildflowers of the season--a few Mexican gold poppies beginning to appear in the lower canyon...

...and cottonwoods leafing in along the creek--

 (more playing around with monochrome and texture...)

 

...and even a few ducks in this desert riparian oasis:

submissions...from a far shore to the backyard

For what it's worth, here are my five submissions for

The Mobile Photo Awards.

From Sokcho, South Korea...

...to Seoul's Gyeongbok-gung Palace...

...to a cactus bloom in the backyard here in Tucson;

ephemeral color among the spikes--

each flower lasts for just a day:

pointing to the coming rains

Last night, at a friend's house in the foothills of the Rincon Mountains, on the eastern edge of Tucson,

the sunset lit up the cloudy sky to the east--bringing out my iphone...

[Below each snapseeded image you'll see the 'before' shot.]

 ...a saguaro 'crowned' with its fruit, pointing to the promise of the coming monsoon rains:

For the above shot, used the "ambiance" tool within the "tune image" filter,

a bit of  "drama"...For all of the pictures, I cropped them into squares,

influenced, I guess, by the format of 'instagram' and the old 'holga' cameras...

Most of the holes in saguaros are birdhouses excavated by Gila woodpeckers.
The crimson fruit are gathered and made into wine by the native Tohono O'odham people for their "singing down the rain" ceremonies...

For this one, I zoomed in on the rainbow and mid-section of the saguaro,

and then a bit of the 'selective adjust' tool to brighten the cactus itself.

The rainbow was up in the 'virga'--desert rain that evaporates before it ever reaches the ground; that's just how dry the air is before the monsoon season really gets under way...

For the final picture, I used the "straighten" tool...

The building is not a house--it's a stable;

horses livin' in style in the desert...

Today or tomorrow, the rain should finally reach the ground...

"early blooms" and 'updated' Peruvian scenes

...always a fun surprise to see a photo published in the morning paper:

(taken with my iPhone after a run in Sabino Canyon;

used snapseed to 'brighten' the flowers a bit,

and then slight 'tilt-shifting' to blur the top of the cactus)

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A couple of weeks ago, I 'rehabilitated' some old snapshots of Switzerland;

 this week I did the same for some photos from a trip to Perú.

On the flight down to South America, our camera got left on the plane! Of all places to be--Perú!--with NO camera!? So we had to buy a camera down there--I still wasn't ready yet to make the switch to digital, which would have been prohibitively expensive anyway, given our travel budget...So we got a point-and-shoot film camera and made do.

Thinking back, it was like having a 'toy camera' of sorts...and so I went for the 'toy camera' effect when editing these 'transplanted' shots with snapseed--using plenty of vignetting and tilt/shifting or 'center-focusing.'

The 'campiña' (countryside) outside of Arequipa,

(Perú's second-largest city, about 8000 feet up on an Andean plateau

in the south of the country)

with the El Misti volcano looming above

pre-Inca terraces still being farmed:

 One of the baroque 'sillar' (white volcanic stone) courtyards

built during the colonial era in Arequipa:

The next four photos are also from Arequipa. In 1580, just four decades after the Spanish founded the city, the Monastery of Santa Catalina de Siena was established. Wealthy families paid lavish dowries in order for their daughters to become nuns here. (The existence of servants' and slaves' quarters, along with the nuns' lodging, testifies to the curious luxury that accompanied the isolation here.) A veritable city-within-a-city, this complex has been open to the public since the 1970's.

Now, down to the arid coast around Lima. The capital itself is dotted with excavations of pre-columbian cultures, but in Pachacámac, about 18 miles/30 km SE of the city, the ruins literally spill out of the sandy hills above the ocean. I visited mid-week--there seemed to be more archaeologists than tourists. Temples and tombs cause archaeologists to continually push back the date for the origins of civilization in this part of South America.  Pachacámac is one of the easiest-to-get-to pre-Inca locations to visit and learn more about these societies. On a quiet mid-week visit, it's sobering to wander the ruins of was once a vibrant complex...

 ...and below is the 'pre-Snapseed' snapshot; using a 'gentle touch' with one of the 'drama' filters brings out the texture of the sand, and then vignetting draws your eye toward the zig-zagging passageway...

a girl and her sheep,

on the Altiplano on the way to the Cañon del Colca:

mid-morning in

Machu Picchú: