Cactus and snow covered hillside

There are plenty of snow covered Saguaro Cacti on this snowy hillside. This image was taken at 100mm focal length with an exposure of 1/1600 seconds at f/8, ISO 400.

Cat Mountain rises out of the mist

Cat Mountain, on the southern end of the Tucson Mountains rises out of the mist and snow. The flank of Brown Mountain is on the left. This image was taken at 70mm focal length with an exposure of 1/8000 seconds at f/8, ISO 400.

Snow covered Saguaro

Still from last Monday's snow day, here are some snow covered Saguaro. This image was taken at 168mm focal length with an exposure of 1/2500 seconds at f/8, ISO 400.

Cholla on ice

Normally these two cholla cacti would look almost lethal with their spine filled bombs, but covered in snow, they don't look quite so dangerous. This image was taken at 70mm focal length with an exposure of 1/1000 seconds at f/11, ISO 400.

Snowy Trail

Another snowy picture from last Monday morning, looking down a snow covered trai at the distant mountain peaks. This image was taken at 70mm focal length with an exposure of 1/6400 seconds at f/5.6, ISO 400.

Out of the clouds

Snow covered Golden Gate Mountain rises out of the clouds. This image was taken at 70mm focal length with an exposure of 1/400 seconds at f/5.6, ISO 100.

Ice Crystal macro

This is a macro shot of the snow and ice crystals on the top of a prickly pear cactus. The image was taken at 300mm focal length at 2:1 macro with an exposure of 1/400 seconds at f/11, ISO 100.

Desert Snow

The early morning fog started to clear out to reveal the snow covered mountains. Golden Gate Mountain in the Tucson Mountains west of town is the subject of this image. A cholla cactus stands on the right in the foreground - looking much less dangerous than normal. Several Saguaro cacti stand in the distance and an Ocotillo is in the right foreground. This image was taken with the kit lens at 18mm focal length with my Canon 20D. The exposure was 1/40 seconds at f/8, ISO 100.

Snowy Saguaros

This view is from the side of Signal Hill in the Saguaro National Park, West towards the Tucson Mountains across a field of Saguaro Cacti. Tucson had a rare snow day yesterday, as most of the city got at least an inch overnight. It didn't last long in most cases and only in the mountains around town did the snow linger beyond the end of the day. This image was taken at 300mm with an exposure of 1/1600 seconds at f/8, ISO 400.

Snow with cactus and mountains

On the way back home from Kitt Peak, after leaving the mountain road and heading back towards town, the snow level had dropped far enough to have fallen along the main road. Here, a Saguaro and a cholla cactus offsets the snow covered mountains behind. This exposure was made with the kit lens at 27mm focal length with an exposure of 1/200 seconds at f/8, ISO 400.

Snowy tree

A trip up to Kitt Peak today was a snowy one. Visibility was low and the colors were nearly gone in this winter wonderland. Converting to B&W was almost not needed. The grey overcast made for low contrast and dark images. Doing a contrast stretch or levels adjust would have made the scene artificially bright compared to actually being there. This image was taken at 18mm focal length with an exposure of 1/160 seconds at f/11, ISO 400.

Walnut Canyon ruins

On the way back from the Grand Canyon, we stopped at Walnut Canyon where there is an extensive collection of cliff dwellings above a small creek that was dry the day we were there. Here are a few of the rooms. The dwellings are spread out over quite a large area and there is no large dwelling like we saw at Montezuma's Castle. This image was taken at 21mm focal length with an exposure of 1/8 seconds at fi/11, ISO 400.

Birds nests

These birds nests were in the cliff above Montezuma's Castle. I didn't see any of the inhabitants that day, but we did see other birds around the area - Raven's flying around the cliffs and smaller birds in the trees and bushes along the walkway. This image was taken at 238mm focal length with an exposure of 1/500 seconds at f/8, ISO 200.

Twilight at Sunset Crater

Twilight fades at Sunset Crater as the stars begin to appear. The eastern flank of the volcanic cindercone called Sunset Crater northeast of Flagstaff is visible looming at the bottom of this image as a craggy tree provides balance with the stars and fading twilight. This image was taken with my 24mm lens with an exposure of 20 seconds at f/4, ISO 400.

More rooms at base of cliff

These rooms are at the base of the cliff at Montezuma's Castle, left of the main cliff dwelling. I can almost picture the inhabitants working to maintain their way of life, farming grains and carrying water from the nearby creek. I'm sure glad I live in modern times with my digital camera and computers! But communing with nature in a more one-on-one way would have been one positive trade off. This image was taken at 18mm focal length with and exposure of 1/400 seconds at f/8, ISO 200.

Montezuma's Castle - the wide view

Richard was borrowing a 10-22 zoom to test drive before buying his own and kept bugging me to give it a try, so I did once or twice. He was having so much fun trying to keep his toes and me out of his pictures, that I couldn't resist.... This image was taken at 10mm focal length with an exposure of 1/320 seconds at f/8, ISO 200.

Montezuma's Castle - the whole cliff face

Here is another view of Montezuma's Castle, which Richard and I visited on the way up to the Grand Canyon back in December. This shows the whole cliff dwelling. Besides the obvious main structure, you can see many other small rooms all over the cliff wall. This image was taken with the kit lens at 18mm focal length with a polarizer and an exposure of 1/100 seconds at f/8, ISO 100.

Daylight visible Comet McNaught

This is comet McNaught, just about 6 degrees from the sun today in broad daylight. I wasn't able to see it visually (gotta find something better than a palm tree to block the sun so I don't get sunspots in my vision), but with only a little stretching, was able to find it using my camera and 300mm lens. If I could find my binocs, I'm confident I could see it.... This image was taken at 300mm focal length with an exposure of 1/400 seconds at f/8, ISO 100. (Thanks Richard for cleaning up the dust...)

Comet McNaught over Tumamoc Hill

The brightest comet in 30 years is still quite a challenge to see since it is only about 10 degrees from the Sun. With the right equipment, it can be seen in the daytime. While my camera was able to capture this image (somewhat stretched to make the comet more visible), at the same time with unaided eyes, I was unable to spot the comet. This image was taken at 214mm focal length with an exposure of 1/200 seconds at f/5.6, ISO 400 and was cropped to about 1/3 to 1/2 of the frame. The comet is just left of center about 1/3 of the way from the top of the image. This image was taken about 20 minutes after sunset from the UofA campus. Tumamoc Hill is a flat-topped hill in the Tucson Mountains west of town which has radio towers as well as a couple small telescopes - you can see the largest dome of a 20 inch telescope silhouetted on the left.

Montezuma's Castle

I wonder what it must have been like to be one of the inhabitants of this area 800 or 1000 years ago? This cliff dwelling and its neighbors provided a home for a hundred or so people. A river runs below the cliff which allowed them to farm the area and they probably were in contact with a small community a couple miles away called "Montezuma's Well" that even had some irrigation ditches. Life must have been a challenge in those days. This image was taken at 55mm focal length with an exposure of 1/640 seconds at f/8, ISO 100.

Meeting the neighbors

Isis meets one of our dogs - Storm. She was not happy. The dog was not fazed at all by the growling, hissing cat. Storm was a little too "enthusiastic" for Isis on their first encounter. Funny to watch. No dogs or cats were harmed in making this photo. This image was taken at 55mm focal length with an exposure of 1/60 seconds at f/16, ISO 400 with flash.

Birds in the Grand Canyon VI

This common raven flies high over the Grand Canyon, almost invisible against the busy canyon walls behind him. This image was taken at 300mm focal length with an exposure of 1/500 seconds at f/8, ISO 100.

New Family member

Meet Isis, our new family member. She's a Bengal Cat (Bengalus Housecatus), about two and a half years old. A friend needed to find a home for her and my wife volunteered to give her to me as an x-mas present. She's very affectionate and has quickly adopted her new family. This image was taken at 70mm focal length with an exposure of 1/60 seconds at f/16, ISO 400 with flash and a soft focus filter applied in Picasa.

Birds of the Grand Canyon V

Here is that same Common Raven, pecking a hole in the snowbank. He's put things like sticks, rocks and even ice chips into the hole, then take them out, then put them back. Funny to watch. This image was taken at 190mm focal length with an exposure of 1/200 seconds at f/5.6, ISO 400.

Birds of the Grand Canyon IV

The most common bird we saw in the Canyon were the Common Ravens which were quite numerous. This one near Grand View point flew into a nook in the canyon wall then hopped up onto the walkway and wandered across the parking lot to play in some snow. This image was taken at 1/320 seconds at f/8, ISO 100 at 214mm focal length.