oil & soap & water

A quick experimental photo: top down shot of a little vegetable oil and dish soap in a blue plastic tumbler, lit from the side.

reflections on water

I escaped town today with a short drive up Mt. Lemmon (one of the mountains surrounding Tucson) to listen to bands perform at Music on the Mountain in Summerhaven. The forest was wet from morning rains -- very pleasant for walking around and taking a few snaps before the music began. The rain droplets at the end of pine needles looked like blown glass ornaments.

No passing this puddle in the center line strips of the road. I decided to try my luck at "working the angles" of pothole water reflections. This angle gave a surreal reflection of some pine tree trunks along the road.

A puddle pines for time it will return to the sky.

my muddled leaf image is all wet...

Footprints from the sky

Time to walk back and catch some tunes!

Back up in Summerhaven it was time to kick the shoes off with the rest of the crowd and listen to some great groups perform, such as the Nathan McEuen Band (above). It was very relaxing sitting under the large tent listening to the tunes, raindrops hitting the tent, and thunder in the sky. Nice.

2:00 shadow

A quick snap of a bougainvillea shadow outside at 2 pm today. No photoshop effects, just cropped.

Hubbell Trading Post old farm equipment

Here are a few snaps that I took in July of old farm equipment sitting behind the Hubbell Trading Post in northern Arizona. It was nice to see them in the open, sitting more or less where they might have been when they were in use by the Trading Post.

This also illustrates one of the no-win trade offs faced when dealing with historic items found outside: Do we leave objects where found, allow them to age and decay naturally over time, and let visitors experience them in their normal environment while they last? Or, do we whisk them far away from where they were found and put them in sterile environments, on concrete floors, where their structure is preserved but spirit lost? Probably some combination of the two is best...

last week's cacti blooms

Spotted several nice cacti flowers last week. The red fish hook cacti above is right outside my home office window. It was a naturally occuring cacti started by a passing bird that I relocated away from my foundation to its current location. Seems to have tolerated the move just fine.

And the rest of these guys were taken Friday at a brief stop at Tucson Botanical Gardens...

[Links: GrannyJ has posted some great pictures of a colorful moth well worth checking out on her blog at WalkingPrescott.]

purposeful shadows

I was sitting out on my patio early this morning, sipping coffee and making some notes on a notepad when I noticed some interesting shadows from a patio plant on my notepad. Hey cool, I never thought of purposely getting plant shadows versus just finding them where they happen to fall on the ground! A quick trip into the house to get some blank paper, my camera, and off to wander my backyard to try to capture some purposeful shadows.

I've got to refine my technique on this, but I do like how things came out for a first try.

At first I thought I'd just go for the shadows alone, but quickly changed my mind with shots like the above of subject and shadow.

This was pretty neat, two perspectives in one shot. The one from where I'm standing and the one from where the sun is in the sky.

It was something of a challenge to keep my own shadow out of the picture. Now I know how a groundhog must feel! The picture above has the shadow of a hanging bell clapper in it as well as the plant.

A golden barrel cactus. I tweaked the contrast and brightness of several of the snaps in photoshop.

Even a dead dried weed takes on new dimensions.

I think this has some possibilities for future shadowy snaps of various objects in the future. OK, ok, back to work on my original note taking...

goats, living on the edge

If you look closely, you will see a small herd of Navajo goats resting under a tree on the side of a canyon wall in Canyon de Chelly (zoomed view below, click for larger size).

They must have a good view from up there. Shade and probably a nice breeze too!

petrified of heights

This interesting sculpture greets travelers in Holbrook, AZ at the intersection of highways 77 & 180. The cowboy on top of the petrified log seems to give new meaning to the expression "petrified of heights"? A much saner native american figure watches from a safe distance below. Great design and fits the region well!

click pic for better view...

Petrified Forest National Park Rock Art

This large (see radiator in background) petroglyph of a mountain lion was discovered by a bulldozer in 1930.

Looking down on "newspaper rock" from a park overlook (as close as you can get to this one). Note that there are many petroglyph sites in the southwest called Newspaper rock, people seem to like to use this term when they discover a large number of petroglyphs on one rock.

Here a closer view of Newspaper Rock, click on it to wander around... These petroglyphs were chipped through the oxidized rock finish between 650-2000 years ago.

Part of Newspaper Rock...

Another location in the park near the Puerco Pueblo ruin which was built/occupied around 1250 AD. There are some solstice petroglyph markers in this area that only get aligned with a band of sunlight on the summer solstice.

My photos are slightly enhanced to darken the patina finish on the rock, its actually a little lighter in real life with slightly less contrast between the patina and exposed underlying rock that has been chipped out for the petroglyph. There are also a very large number of petroglyphs on privately owned land with restricted/no access in the greater surrounding area of the park.

One of the issues with petroglyphs and pictographs is that they do degrade over time due to erosion, patinas reforming in chiseled out portions, vandalism, etc. One option would be to remove them and put them in sterile museums. Another would be to build protective covers over them (like the huge monsterous structure over the Casa Grande Ruin in Casa Grande National Monument). Another is to let them be, keep them in place in their natural environment. This last option is the current option favored by the Park Service and by the Navajo. I tend to agree. Seeing something in place is a different experience than seeing it thousands of miles away and behind glass.

The mountain lion petroglyph symbol is found in modern reproductions like this metal art piece at the park headquarters. It is a pretty cool figure.

I wonder what people of long ago would think if they could see and handle this paper bag with several of their symbols displayed? Or would they be more fascinated by the text? Or just the paper bag itself? Ok, well this wraps up the Petrified Forest National Park pictures, next up is Canyon de Chelly.

Painted Desert day hike

While in Petrified Forest National Park last week, I went on a several hour, ranger guided, cross-country day hike in the Painted Desert badlands.

The "dunes" look like sand but are actually a soft crumbly clay-like rock.

mixed with hard rock

the main objective of our day hike was to see these petroglyphs (click on picture to wander around a larger image of the rock art). There is evidence of human history in the area for more than 10,000 years. Pictographs and petroglyphs disappear over time and most are much more recent, roughly in A.D. 300 - 1900 range, depending on where you are and what you are looking at.

after wandering around for a couple of hours, time to climb back up to the rim...

catching my breath, or pausing for another landscape picture?

Ranger making sure he isn't leaving any fossils behind...

looking down at several petrified logs, one has been undercut and now forms what they call an agate bridge (since the log is now quartz agate). As an aside, there was once logging done of the petrified logs, since they could be ground up to make good abrasives. That was one of the factors in putting aside part of this area in 1906 as a National Monument to preserve for future generations to enjoy. [biting tongue to avoid inserting modern day political commentary here... *smile*]

and back at the top, none the worse for wear although I appear to be taking on some of the surrounding coloration...