A Day at the Museum

I don't get out much these days - chemo leaves me tired and a little weak but yesterday I went to the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum with my Nephew Bryan and Brother-in-law Daniel. I brought my new Canon EOS 1D Mark IV (well not new - but new to me. I bought it from my good friend Michelle who sold it to me for a great price.) Man this thing is fast - at 10 frames per second you can burn through a 16 Gig memory card pretty quick. I think I took over 2500 images during the 5.5 hours we were there (yeah - and only about 100 were worth keeping or not duplicates - typical of my imaging success rate :-)).

My friend and "student" Frank meet us there and based on what he has posted on FB - kicked my arse. The student is now the Master - time for him to leave the nest.

Anyway here are a few of my efforts with the new camera. Most were taken with the 400mm F/2.8 monster - I was unfamiliar with the camera controls and therefore the images are not of my usual caliber. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it. :-)

Out of the House

Today was a pleasant day out of the house. My friend Frank took me to Sweetwater Reserve - a duck lovers paradise. I brought along a pile of equipment (I should say Frank brought along a pile of my equipment since he hauled it into the reserve for me as to not tire me out.) So here are a few obligatory shots of DUCKS (I hate ducks!) and then on to something a little more interesting (for me at least.)

I spent some time setting up for a couple of portraits - trying to over power the sun with a couple of speedlights. Here are the results. The first one is probably the only self portrait I've done in over 5 years.

A couple IR images of Frank and the setup.

And an unretouched image of how it was done.

Reid Park

My first photographic outing since I got sick. Went with Frank to Reid Park for some bird watching. Here are a few shots from the short day in the Park.

Red Hills

Spent a few minutes at Saguaro National Monument West this afternoon. The Red Hills Visitor center has a magnificent set of arched ceiling beams on the back porch that - at certain times of the year and certain times of the day - present some amazing shadows.

The mountain upon which Kitt Peak National Observatory resides - seen in Infrared light.

The reflection of the porch in the giftshop windows.

If you take the image below . . .

and perform a little transformation trick called "Magic Circle" . . .

You get this . . .