Blog
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I-70 Silhouettes
Our son recently drove out with his dog to visit us at our new home near Denver, Colorado. It was a long road trip of about 1,100 miles from Louisville, Kentucky. The plan was for him to leave early in the morning and for me to fly to the midpoint (Kansas City, Missouri) where he…
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Coyote Woes
Coyotes are common and widespread in and around Tucson, Arizona. Many washes (stream beds that are usually dry except right after storms) cross through Tucson, giving wildlife of all kinds relatively safe passage through even dense parts of the city. And once you get closer to the outskirts, for example the foothills of the Tucson…
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Whitewater Draw Landscapes
The sandhill cranes are the main—but not only—reason to visit Whitewater Draw. While the immediate area is pretty flat, there are mountains in the distance in nearly every direction. Arizona, of course, is frequently blessed with colorful skies that often can be exploited by compositions that show a lot of sky, such as the image…
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Winter Afternoons at Whitewater Draw
About 100 miles east of my former home in Tucson, Arizona, and well south of Interstate 10 is the Whitewater Draw Wildlife Area, winter home to roughly 30,000 sandhill cranes. Interestingly, the number of sandhill cranes at the much more famous Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge is only about 10,000, although the latter compensates…
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Ruler of the Night
My first memorable encounter with an owl was on a winter dawn in the Windy Hill Open Space Preserve just off Skyline Boulevard above Portola Valley, California. It was December 31st, 1990. It was still very dark as I walked downhill down the path with my camera and my tripod. I had not made it…
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Birdbane
Bobcats aren’t the only predators that frequented our yard in Tucson. Cooper’s hawks were common in our neighborhood, helping to keep the population of doves and other small birds from getting out of hand. While it is not clear that they were totally successful, we saw them frequently flying at high speed through the yard…
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Holiday Bobcat
After 29 years living in Tucson, Arizona—and 20 years in the same house—we moved to Colorado this past January. Now that I am caught up on blogging about my trips to Santorini and AndalucÃa, I decided to write some posts about our old home and some of its more interesting visitors. Last year I was…
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AndalucÃa Lens Usage
When I concluded my Santorini blog series, I wrapped things up with a tabulation of how much I used each of the lenses I brought on the trip. I have two main reasons to be interested in this data. First, I want to know whether bringing a certain lens was even worth the trouble. Second,…
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Corks and Other Corkers
On our last photography day, we drove west through some beautiful country outside Ronda. Much of it was very photogenic and well worth attention in the morning light, but it wasn’t readily apparent that there was somewhere safe alongside the road, so we pressed on. There was much excitement about thirty-odd griffin vultures circling overhead…
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Floors and Ceilings
Our penultimate photography day in AndalucÃa was spent in Seville. And what wasn’t spent in Seville was spent driving to and from Seville. It was about two hours each way—which made for a long day—but was well worth the effort. We began with a short session with the banyan tree above. After about 20 minutes…