Winter in Tucson

Here are some photos of Tucson, Arizona, taken near the end of December.

Flowers Gone By in a Colorful Planter

Prickly Pear tea is made from Purple Prickly Pear cactus, shown below.

Purple Prickly Pear Cactus

Towering Saguaro

Many of the following photos are taken in Agua Caliente Park.

Oasis in the Desert 1

Oasis in the Desert 2

Palm Shade

Oasis in the Desert 3

At a Small Horse Farm Near the Park

This Roadrunner was literally running in the road at Sabino Canyon.

Roadrunner Doing the Proper Thing 

The Three Amigos

Classic AZ

Saguaro Missile Ready for Takeoff

Through the Trees

Spiky Color

Duck Face

Fast Wings

Female American Wigeon

You've heard the expression: "If it looks like a duck, acts like a duck, ..."? Well an American Coot looks and acts like a duck, but this bird is not a duck.

American Coot 1

American Coot 2

All photos © 2015, all rights reserved.  Contact me for licensing or to order prints.

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Patterns in Nature

Still doing some catchup blogging here. This collection reflects a few different photo outings.

This is a miniature horse I passed during a walk in a neighborhood with which I was not familiar. The horse was a welcome surprise. I had not anticipated passing any farm animals on this particular stroll.
This is taken with my Nexus 5x cell camera.

Miniature Horse

These next three sunset shots were taken - you will not believe this - from the parking lot at Trader Joe's.  I stepped out from grocery shopping and was greeted with this amazing orange sky. These are taken w/my Nexus 5x. Need I mention it was even better in person? At least you get an idea from the photos.

Memorable Sunset 1

Memorable Sunset 2

Memorable Sunset 3

While also a sunset, the following is taken on a different day with my Olympus and 12-40mm lens. The sky's purple color felt soothing.

Late Light

These next two are different crops of the same photo.

Against the Sky 1

Against the Sky 2

Leaf Texture and Color

This is Ranger. He's my sister-in-law and husband's dog. He's a Catahoula. He's looking at something important.

Eye of Ranger

Eye of Gargoyle at Ranger's House

Afternoon Buds

Wood Grain 1

Wood Grain 2

All photos © 2015, all rights reserved.  Contact me for licensing or to order prints.

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A Horse is a Horse, of Course, of Course

For those of you that remember the Mr. Ed TV show theme song, you'll know where I got today's post title. Today I'm sharing a few horse photos. I'm not really all that familiar with horses, except to plainly see that they are beautiful powerful animals. It was a complete and unexpected surprise when two horses decided to show up for a visit during one of my regular walks around the reservoir.  One of the horses loved to play in the water. It turns out they are stabled nearby and visit this beach spot often, just not always when I'm there. In any case, I'm glad our visits coincided on this particular day. All photos below taken with my 75-300mm lens.
 

You gotta love the hair.  His eyelid has a greenish hue; I don't know if that's normal or not.  I haven't modified the color.

Less than Half a Horse Head

Do you think this horse's mane is short?  Or just all on the other side?

Horse Enjoying the Sunny Day

This horse is not running through the water. He is quite stationary, and raising and lowering his leg to intentionally splash the water. His trainer / owner (the woman in black) informed us this horse loves to splash in the water.

Splashing Away

All photos © 2015, all rights reserved.  Contact me for licensing or to order prints.

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Moving Water Drops

I've got some water drop pictures that having nothing to do with morning dew after a rainstorm like the last post.

Unknown Dog Shaking Water Off Doesn't Look So Friendly

This Horse Loved to Splash in the Water

Here's a picture of my smiling spouse doing one of the things she loves best: picking really local and organic food.  If you look closely, you can see the movement of the rain drops.

Deb Picking Some Cherries From our Very Productive Cherry Tree

This one is interesting in that I wanted to freeze the sprinkler spray so I could see the water drops, but it was very late in the day and it was getting dark.   This is the "out of the camera" jpeg:

Out of Camera JPG

Not too useful, right?  This was shot with my Olympus EM-5 MkII with 12-40 lens at 1/2000 sec.

While I shoot mostly raw files now, this happened to be a jpeg only image.  Could I save it, even though it's a jpeg?  What do you think?

Neighbor's Sprinkler in Action

It is amazing the amount of image information that is buried in the shadows, even in a jpeg.

All photos © 2015, all rights reserved.  Contact me for licensing or to order prints.

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