It’s high summer here in Tucson. The clouds building up each the afternoon, the lightning flashing on the horizon and thunder rumbling in the distance – all are tantalizing hints of monsoon rainstorms. Sometimes there’s even a payoff with a sprinkle or a deluge, our reward for suffering through the high humidity of the season.
June as always was hot and dry, burning the spring flowers to a crisp. So it is a pleasure to go through my files and relive that glorious season of just a few months ago when the desert was bursting with color, blanketed in rampant wildflowers and cacti in vibrant bloom.
Nikon D4, 105.0 mm f/2.8 @ 105mm, ISO 1600, f/3.5 @ 1/8000 sec, 0EV
I photographed the lavender Santa Rita prickly pear cactus with its profusion of yellow blooms, hand-holding a 105 mm lens to narrow the focus down to just a few very fine details. And I crawled on my belly at dawn with a wide angle 14-24 mm to capture a landscape blanketed in pink by a bumper crop of Mexican primrose.
Enjoy. I did.
Click on any photo below to open up a slideshow.
Nikon D4, 105.0 mm f/2.8 @ 105mm, ISO 1600, f/3.5 @ 1/8000 sec, 0EV
A pack of three coyotes came visiting the other day in casual search of a meal. It was broad daylight, almost noon. We watched through the window as a lot of digging and pouncing took place, eventually rewarded with the capture of a round tailed ground squirrel as a late-morning snack. I’m not too sorry about the rodent – coyotes have to eat, after all. The ground squirrels are cute but we have whole cities of them on our property, riddled with burrows and upheavals of dirt.
Nikon D4, AF-S 80-400mm f/4.5-5.6 VR @ 400mm, ISO 400 f/11 @ 1/750 sec, 0 EV
Eventually one of the threesome wandered over to the stone fountain just outside our bedroom window. I photographed him/her through the glass until the coyote finally went on its way, stopping en route to pick up this huge frog, some kind of leopard frog, that he must have snagged during an earlier fishing expedition and set aside for dessert. I’ll miss the very loud raucous croaking of that frog keeping us awake at night, but I’m sure another will move in shortly.
Nikon D800, AF-S 80-400mm f/4.5-5.6 VR @ 400mm, ISO 800 f/9.0 @ 1/800 sec, -2/3 EV
Click on any photo below to open up a slideshow and camera settings.
It was time to catch up with my daughter and her show jumpers competing in California. Last Saturday I drove from Tucson to Del Mar near San Diego to watch Michelle ride our Holsteiner stallion Clintord I in the $100,000 Grand Prix of Del Mar. Actually I planned to leave on Friday but the wind was gusting so violently in Tucson that driving seemed an unappealing prospect. The same windy weather was whipping up a fierce wildfire in the Hidden Hills area near LA. At its peak the fire threatened some 4,000 homes and a university campus. There are also numerous horse farms in the vicinity including several top grand prix show barns. A thousand horses were evacuated to safer surroundings and fortunately by next day the hot, dry, windy weather abated and the fire was brought under control without inflicting as much damage as was threatened.
The Del Mar National Horse Show is one of a select few remaining across the country that continue to offer the pomp and circumstance that marks a true event. So many of today’s horse shows operate in a closed loop, existing only to bring in entries and crank out classes for the benefit of the participants and the venue’s bottom line. In contrast a show like Del Mar goes the extra mile to entice the public with fun and pageantry, generating an electric energy absorbed by fans and competitors alike. The stands are filled with enthusiastic spectators while the riders suffer an extra edge of nerves to suit the occasion.
Only a limited number of entrants were allowed in the big money class, so a qualifying $25,000 speed class Thursday night served to narrow the field down to 32 horse/rider combinations eligible to compete in the big ring Saturday night. Clintord acquitted himself admirably in the qualifier with a clean round (video) and a 5th place finish to secure his place in Saturday night’s order of go. For the main event we were pleased with his 4-fault effort in a class that saw only four horses produce clear rounds over an imposing course of very big jumps. Congratulations to Duncan McFarlane and Mr. Whoopy for the win, well-deserved for their gutsy ‘full-throttle’ jump-off round!
Now I’m hanging out at Michelle’s Cross Creek West training facility in nearby San Marcos while the horses take a break. After last week’s fire, the weather turned grey and drizzly. While the daily activity of a training stable took place around me – exercising the horses and coaching the students – I prowled the property seeking candids of horses and people but I spent the majority of my time with Clintord while he was turned out in the pasture, green with new spring grass and dotted with cheerful pink wildflowers.
Photo notes: The overcast skies produced a soft light that served well for the impromptu candids I was shooting. This was my first time using Nikon’s new 80-400mm lens and it was awesome! Fully zoomed in across a field, hand-held, ISO kicked up a bit to compensate – the lens captured such details as individual whiskers on a horse, barn flies frozen in motion (later to be cloned away), and sparkling bright eyes all in crisp focus. The quality of the lens and the great flexibility of its range earns it a permanent place in my shooting bag. Traveling overseas frequently as I do always creates a packing dilemma but this lens will solve a lot of my decision-making agony.
Welcome to my newly resurrected photography blog. I’ve decided to expand my journaling efforts to include a photo specific website in addition to The AVATAR Logs. My last photography post was nearly three years ago! A lot of digital film has passed through my camera in that time, so the first posts will play catch up – casually perusing past images before moving on to current events.
I considered posting straight into The AVATAR Logs blog but decided instead to publish both in parallel with each linking to the other. Hopefully it will be easy to navigate back and forth between the two seamlessly. When we are cruising, posting to The AVATAR Logs will take priority. When land-based, CBParkerPhoto will take the lead.
If you are on my notification list for The AVATAR Logs, you will also be sent notices when I post to CBParkerPhoto. Feel free to contact me if you wish to opt out. Mostly I use these blogs to stay in touch with friends and share adventures in a visual way, so I hope you will continue to enjoy the expanded content.
For starters I’ll reminisce about a wonderful week in early April in the Four Corners area of the desert southwest. I joined Laurie Excell again for one of her Excellent Adventures – this time a tour of Monument Valley in Utah and the Slot Canyons in Arizona. Laurie asked me to write a post for her own blog, so I’m republishing the content here along with a few favorite photos from the trip.
You can read the original post on Laurie’s website here, but it is reproduced in full below:
I’ve lived in Tucson for decades and true to the cliché that one never explores one’s own backyard, I had never spent time in the spectacular surroundings of the Four Corners area of the southwest. Having already enjoyed previous Excellent Adventures with Laurie (Bosque, Katmai) I was feeling the need for a photo workshop “fix” – a chance to chase pixels with like-minded enthusiasts. During a workshop we are all in pursuit of the same goal. The nit-picky details have already been prearranged, enabling us to focus strictly on our photography. The itinerary has been fine-tuned to take best advantage of the allotted time; the ho-hum details of car, lodging and meals have already been handled; knowledgable local guides have been booked in advance to take us off the beaten track and open the doors to a more unique experience.
In college my art instructor once commented that the creation of a painting becomes a souvenir of time and place for the artist. That thought struck a chord that has stayed with me through the years and applies equally to the images we are making. Why am I doing this, anyway? Does the world really need another photograph of The Mittens in Monument Valley or the rays of light in Upper Antelope Canyon? Surely images of these subjects have been recorded in the tens of thousands over the years and by better photographers than I. Why not just purchase a postcard or a coffee table book at the gift shop to remember my visit to the desert southwest?
But the photograph that I take myself has an entirely different significance to me than those commercial images. In the process of pursuing another worthy photo to add to my collection, the entire experience of its creation is imprinted on my brain. It is not just the snapping of the shutter – it is the process of working the subject that makes it my own. Months later one glance at the finished image and the adventure leaps to life.
– Camaraderie in the back seat of a rented Suburban with new acquaintances sharing the same passion…
– And the same frustration of arriving in Monument Valley during a sandstorm that obliterates sky and light…
Nikon D4, AF-S 28-300mm VR
– Followed by the revelation a day or two later that this same sandstorm has refreshed the dunes and made them pristine for our lenses!
Nikon D4, AF-S 28-300mm VR
– Friendly Navajo ponies with their eyes squinted shut against the blowing grit…
Nikon D3S, AF-S 28-300mm VR
– Lurching in four-wheel drive through the rough back country to access remote locations…
Nikon D4, AF-S 28-300mm VR
– Photographing the Milky Way from the hotel balcony while asleep in a comfortable bed…
Nikon D3, AF-S 14-24mm 2.8
– Trudging through the desert on a moonlit night lugging 30 pounds of equipment on my back because I’m afraid of leaving behind that one essential bit of equipment needed to shoot the night sky…
Nikon D3, AF-S 14-24mm 2.8
– Cold fingertips on a brisk morning waiting to capture a starburst of the sun rising over The Mittens…
Nikon D4, AF-S 28-300mm VR
– Our Navajo guide Lionel (a photographer in his own right) opening locked gates to ‘the Rez’ after hours to shoot Upper Antelope by starlight with not a single tourist in the vicinity…
Nikon D4, AF-S 24-120mm f4 VR
– Gingerly setting up my tripod at the edge of a precipice to capture the curve of Horseshoe Bend in its entirety…
Nikon D4, AF-S 14-24mm 2.8
– Climbing up (and down) Home Depot ladders and squeezing our gear (and ourselves) through the narrow passages of Rattlesnake Canyon and the satisfaction of zeroing in on rhythm and pattern encapsulated in the overwhelming maze of the slot canyons…
Nikon D3S, AF-S 14-24mm 2.8
– And the sweeping vistas and play of light and shadow as the sun set on the last day of our most excellent adventure…
