Tucson Living in the Desert
I wrote a couple of weeks ago about The Digital Photography Book by Scott Kelby. BTW everyone taking digital photos should read this book. Each page is a chapter with an incredible list of things you will have learned by the end of the book. It is like taking a walk with a friend that knows a whole lot about digital photography and is willing to let you in on some of the best and easiest secrets to taking great images.
I carry a camera with me all the time and never know when I’m going to see something I want to freeze in time to share with everyone that reads this blog. Here are a few of the images I took this week. In a rambling story form.
Wednesday morning I was up early because I had to be in the dentist’s chair by 7:30 am. Meaning I was up before the sun. I was almost to my daily breakfast stop when the sun started to creep up over the horizon at Pusch Ridge. I pulled over set the camera and started snapping away as now it seemed the sun was no longer creeping, instead it was beginning to race into the morning sky.
Thankfully my dentist is a personal friend and one of the oldest friends I have in Tucson. I’m not saying he is old, no, I met him and his wife not too long after moving to Tucson. But that is another story. I had broken a tooth and this was the day I got the permanent crown. It didn’t even take an hour and I was on my way.
A few days before I had been at a home we have on the market located near Colossal Cave on 10 acres in the desert. Duh, of course it is in the desert all of surrounding Tucson is in the desert, but I digress. I wanted to get some pictures of a little cactus known as a pincushion cactus. They looked to me like little mushrooms growing in the desert. They are fun to hunt, but you can’t pick them and you certainly can’t eat them.
I knew there were a bunch of them growing behind the house so off I went with my camera and I was really surprised to find these little fur balls had the most beautiful flowers.
I snapped away and had a lot of fun looking at them when I got home. They really are as cute as a cactus can get. Their flowers are one of the prettiest and most delicate looking.
Today we were back there to check the house after a monsoon rain (it was fine). I wanted to see how the flowers were doing, it had only been about 5 days and I wanted to see if there were more blooms on the cactus.
The flowers were gone, on ALL the cactus everywhere I looked! In the picture to the right all you can see are the dried up blackened remains of what just a few days before were incredibly beautiful flowers.
It was at the moment I took this picture I realized how fortunate I was to be in the desert on one of only a few days a year when the pin cushion cactus changes into a beautiful flower vase with thorns. This is the way it is here in the desert. Timing is very important as is staying alert when in the desert.
I have some more images of barrel cactus blooms and a jumper cactus, do you know why it is called a jumper cactus? But it is late and I’ll share those, possibly tomorrow.
For now on this Friday evening August 10, 2007 I’ll leave you with a classic Arizona sunset I took this on Wednesday evening to round out my very long day. Yesterday evening ended in a drive back from Phoenix with a new car ( new to us ) arriving home at 1 am. Now it is almost 11:30 pm. I’m about to fall out of my chair and I can hear the call of the pillow. Nite, nite. : )
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Dave Smith | Tucson Real Estate
Gorgeous photos, and thanks for the tip on the digital photography book. I think today everyone’s a budding digital photographer who could use a few tips.