Flower Power

Spring is here. The flowers are blooming all around and there is plenty of photo fodder, especially when armed with my 60mm macro lens.

Without further ado, enjoy the photos!

Hanging in There

Busy Bee

Rose Colored Non-Rose

Thing in the Grass One

Thing in the Grass Two

Center Mount

Ring Lit

Spiral Growth

Nucleus

Not Salt

Crowning Glory

Morning Dew One

Morning Dew Two

All photos were taken with my Olympus 60mm macro lens, hand-held. Many of the images cover areas as small as an eighth of an inch.



All photos © 2016, all rights reserved.  Contact me for licensing or to order prints.

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Local Texture

This post contains a few recent Ashland Reservoir photos. Local scenes taken with the attempt to make the ordinary seem a bit extra-ordinary. I titled it local texture, as opposed to local color. That's weak photography humor.

After returning from Zion, and capturing a few silky water shots of the Virgin River, I thought I'd try to duplicate the concept using an extremely tiny stream which feeds the Ashland Res. It is only a minor trickle, perhaps a foot across.

Instead of silky water, I got this:

Water Dance

Even though it was a 1/10 second exposure, the nature of a tiny waterfall is different from a large river. I've no doubt a much longer exposure and perhaps less camera movement would have yielded a different result. The "dance" you see is from the reflections of some of the surface water. The sun was illuminating the falls quite strongly but only on the uppermost surface spray.


Here's a shot of the bottom of the stream:

Watercolor

Green Folds

All shots were taken with my 60mm macro. I focus stacked 8 shots of the green folds plant as I continue experimenting with focus stacking on occasion. Here's the result:

Green at a Distance

While this is technically accurate, and has a lot of the plant in focus regardless of distance from the lens - sort of a "photography feat," I can't help but feel the focus stacking feature, at least in this instance, feels clinical in nature. I much prefer the previous photo. It would appear that having asymmetry and parts of an image out-of-focus aren't bad things in photography :)



All photos © 2016, all rights reserved.  Contact me for licensing or to order prints.

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Zion Day Four - We Bid Adieu

Alas we come to our fourth and last day at Zion post. We needed to head back to Las Vegas to catch a show (David Copperfield!, very entertaining) then to the airport for our red eye flight home.

Before we left Zion, while we had some thoughts of climbing yet more trails with crazy drop offs and views, in the end we decided to take it easy. We strolled along the Pa'rus Trail which meanders along the Virgin River in the valley of Zion Canyon. This gave us a different perspective on the awesome Zion scenery.

Driftwood

I thought I'd try a panorama shot, which in this case was a combination of six separate photos covering at least 180 degrees.

Zion Valley Panorama

Virgin River with Mountains Backdrop

Since it was mid-April, we were a touch too early in the season to see all the Zion flowers, but there were a few. The Watchman Trail and this Pa'rus Trail afforded the best opportunity for colorful flowers to grace our way. Here's a sample:

Utah Purple

Since the Virgin River was the star of this Pa'rus Trail, I thought it only appropriate to take a few more "silky river" shots. These next three pictures are all 1/15 second exposures, which is not particularly slow, but slow enough to cause the water to look this way.

Water Dance

It was mid-day and we were under bright sun. I wanted to slow the shutter speed down as much as possible, so I really needed a neutral density filter on the lens. Lacking that, I thought I'd try my clip-on sunglasses. Deb helped hold them in front of the lens while I held the camera steady atop a rock. Check this out:

High Class Lens Filter

The above photo didn't turn out quite the way I wanted. You weren't supposed to see my "lens filter". After cropping the photo a bit in post-processing, I obtained the next photo. Perhaps it isn't the most spectacular photo, but it's more or less what I originally had in mind.

Virgin River Show

Just twenty feet away from the last shot, this cactus flower was adorning the trail:

Cactus Flowers

This turned out to be the last picture of note. We left Zion to head home via Las Vegas.

We left feeling incredibly moved by the beauty and majesty of Zion National Park. We have had the pleasure of visiting many of our nation's National Parks, and, while they all have something to offer, our Zion visit was truly special. It will remain a fond memory for us always.


All photos © 2016, all rights reserved.  Contact me for licensing or to order prints.

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