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You Can Find These Scenes
Most of our work is from Arizona, and we visit some places in every season to be
sure of lighting, weather and blooming. Here's what you need to consider:
1. Animals are always rare. There are some places that are more
likely, but going there will often result in no shows by the creatures.
Other times, they are where they shouldn't be. Some days we barely see a
dove or a quail. On others, the coyotes are hunting the cottontails,
leaving us with the hawks to watch the whole thing. They have their own ideas.
Prepare, and hope.
2. Most plants, including the
trees and most low-growing cactus, bloom in the mid-spring. (Yes, every
cactus blooms--some bloom at night--and they are always amazing.) But
saguaros bloom a little later and barrels bloom in August.
Agaves, aloes, ocotillos, and yucca are anyone's guess. Think altitude,
climate zone, and latitude.
3. Most desert plants do not
lose all their leaves in the winter. Nevertheless they are most lush in
late spring and during the summer monsoon.
4. Sunsets are most beautiful
when the clouds are just right; often this is during monsoon. Smoke from
California forest fires sometimes provides wonderful changes of light in the
summer and fall.
5. Heavy weather pictures in
the Sonoran Desert are rare. Catching monsoon floods or snow requires
quick thinking and sometimes long drives; check it out as soon as you wake up in
the morning. Shots of monsoon lightning are beautiful, but we don't have
the nerve. If you insist on getting them, keep a ground wire between your
teeth at all times.
6. And finally: use a
real camera. If you haven't already purchased the Canon reflex and a 900
mm. lens to go with it, don't. We use a light mirrorless Olympus with
interchangeable lenses for most work, but you can get good results with fairly
simple cameras. The camera in your phone is difficult to line up,
may not give you the resolution you want, and is tricky to focus sharply.
Whatever you do, shoot in .tif, not .jpg. The latter is a "lossy" format
that trades greater camera memory for loss of image detail.
Now, you are ready. Go for it:
Southern Arizona:
Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum
Catalina Mountains
Chiricahua National Monument
Madera Canyon
Organ Pipe National Monument
Reid Park Zoo
Sabino Canyon
Saguaro National Park
Tombstone
Tohono Chul
Tucson Botanical Garden
Mid- and Northern Arizona:
Apache Trail and Tonto National Monument
Boyce Arboretum
Canyon De Chelly National Monument
Colorado River Basin (the whole thing!)
Desert Botanical Garden
Monument Valley
Petrified Forest National Park
Sedona-Jerome-Oak Creek Canyon
Vermillion Cliffs
Wupatki National Monument
And of course, just look around.
Ready? OK, now we'd be happy to print those pictures for you on paper or
canvas in any size that works for you.
Tap
here.
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