From the highest peak in the Tucson Mountains

I've been back in the classroom for a couple of days now...

Last Thursday, though, on a clear cold morning, I went for a hike in the Tucson Mountains. On the western edge of the city, this the lowest mountain range in the area, but from its highest point, Wasson Peak, you get 360-degree views over the entire area: city, wilderness and more peaks on the far horizons.

Water, sunscreen, and iphone...

it's a 7-mile round-trip desert hike with about a two-thousand-foot elevation gain.

(Do NOT do this hike in the summer; there is NO shade...but perfect from late fall through early spring.)

About 2/3 of the way up, this is the view toward the SW,

across the agricultural land of the Tohono O'odham nation,

toward Baboquivari Peak,

the 'navel of the world' in their native cosmology:

No shortage of cholla cactus along the rocky trail...

Here, looking south down the mountain range

toward the distant Santa Rita Mountains.

I played with the 'dark 1' option in the 'drama' filters for the scene above,

then with the black-and-white filter for the version below,

adjusting the white balance in the 'tune image' filter;

I like the imperfection of the flare, shooting

directly into the low sun...

...approaching the summit on the left:

(seven photos fused together with the AutoStitch app)

 Finally, at the peak--4687ft/1429m...

looking off to the NNW toward Picacho Peak...

Not as lofty as the 9000+ ft. peaks in the Santa Catalinas and the Rincons, but still high enough to feel on top of the world...

Below,
--looking NORTH toward the Tortolita Mtns
--looking from the NE to the E toward the Santa Catalina Mtns, across Oro Valley & Tucson
--looking SOUTH down the Tucson Mtns toward the distant Santa Rita Mtns
--looking toward the WEST across the Avra Valley

(made with PicFrame app)

And finally, one more saguaro-studded scene,

using 'tilt-shift' & one of the relatively new 'retrolux' filters:

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Incidentally, in the January NIK software newsletter,

in the "Spotlight on Snapseed" section

THIS blog is featured...

Thanks, NIK!

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:

Inca vs. Spaniard: "macro"-snapseeded chess set

Years ago, I got this while traveling in Latin America--

a Peruvian Inca vs. Spaniard chess-set:

Recently, I thought I'd play around with the almost-macro possibility of the iPhone camera, and this chess set seemed to lend itself to close-ups. For inexpensive folk-art, I like the detail of these little ceramic gamepieces.

While there are special clip-on macro-lenses available for the iPhone, (such as from olliclip.com), I don't have any such 'adaptor;' just using the iPhone itself, you can get remarkably close and still stay in focus:

above: using the tilt-shift filter and then the grunge filter...
below: using the tilt-shift and grunge filters again, but changing the texture
and texture-strength:

below--drama and tilt-shift filters:

...and finally,a heavy blur with the tilt-shift filter, to focus on the faces of the Inca Queen and  King; I don't know if the facial consternation was intended by whomever hand-painted these little pieces, but it seems historically appropriate: