I was in Tucson a couple of weeks ago and now that i'm about to post a few photos from there i'm reminded about my lack of foresight when it comes to displaying photos from a particular place of city. I have no photos of Tucson per se; it never occurs to me to photograph a city so that i can show the setting of the shoot. Just gotta remember that!

The second morning there a friend directed us to a parking lot in the hills outside of Tucson from which we could look across the city and plains to a raising sun. It was a spectral sunrise:

It was interesting to see the sky go from relatively dark to amazing colors of red, orange and yellows back to a somewhat subdued grey and white clouds as the sun rose higher and higher.

Eventually the sun's rays began to appear:

Part of the difficulties of presenting a series of a sunrise is to keep the changes consistent to their original appearance and not boast the colors, contrast, etc., or they lose their original value ... leastwise, they do to me. 

And eventually we have the, more or less, daytime grey and white clouds of full daylight

As you can see i didn't really think this series though before shooting. Once the sunrise begins so does the shooting and if i've not thought it though (which i hadn't) then capturing a coherent story falls to the wayside and i end up with some nice sunrise photos but not really a sunrise story.

SOoooo, that is somewhat the purpose of this blog ... to allow me to see how i'm progressing along the spectrum of "shooting to show" which is a title i just made up and rather like. Yes, i want to lear to "Shoot to Show" and will work towards that particular goal in and with this photo blog.

The area around Tucson is known for its Saguaro Cactus and even has a park dedicated to them: Saguaro Park.

 And this is how they end up ... all the outer skin falls off after a couple hundred years and they become 'Ghost Saguaro Cactus' and become very skeleton looking. Eventually even the dark skin falls off and the cactus looks like bamboo poles sticking into the air.

Sadly, i neglected to photograph any of those (which are rather rare for reasons i don't quite understand).

Manjushri

GGF Altar

One of my favorite images of Manjushri; the bamboo is around her for the Thanksgiving Day set-up which is when this photo was taken, Nov '05.

Sunday we used our Groupon to spend the midday at Filoli Gardens, an estate given to the American Heritage Society in the mid 70's. http://filoli.org  I have know about it since it became open to the public in the 70's but have never visited. It is an amazing place and if you live in the Bay Area i recommend a week day visit as its fairly crowded on weekends. Built by a very wealthy couple it was designed based upon an old castle in Ireland:

Muckross House which they also owned and gave to the Irish Trust at the end of their use.

The house was amazing with 24 rooms and a living space for a household staff of 10. 

Dining Room

Ladies Sitting Room

Everywhere were beautiful flower setting, all from their gardens - even in October. 

While beautiful gardens surrounded the house, they too were suffering from the drought in CA.  And except for low-level watering, most of the surrounding area was brown and dry. Still, the reflection pool was cooling just to look at as it was in the mid 90's by noon.

This was their apple harvest, 3-4 dozen different apples. Were were a couple weeks late for their harvest and plan to return next year in early Sep to see the laden trees and perhaps purchase some-yum!


This weeks Creative Photography homework is about relationships and i have some ideas for that - more in the coming days.

http://www.spiritualage.org/zen-living.aspx

The above line is a 20 min talk by Norman Fisher, a friend and buddhist teacher from my time at SFZC. If you have any interest in buddhist practice, meditation or just grounded living, this is an excellent presentation of that possibility.

This is today's home assignment for the Creative Photography Class. The subject was to photograph sound. Of course, sound is not visible so the images has to evoke a sense of sound. This was, and still is, a challenge. Initially i had the images in the opposite order starting with the sound graph, then the song id followed by the speakers. When i reversed them i like the sense of movement better and think it gives a more compact image of sound. Of course, now that i'm thinking about it again, i'm not so sure of the order. I had many other images in mind but this was immediate to my camera's location, so i went with this ... i'm fairly happy with it.

This image:

taken last week is of the Australian Walking Stick's egg. It is exceptionally small and using a macro set-up, i was able to get this shot. Yesterday i worked at getting a closer shot of that strange horse shoe shaped appendage; alas, it was mostly a failure. Oh, the set up was fine but i live on the second floor of an apartment bldg and there is just too much movement going on to get such a detail photographed without movement. I'm looking for a venus that is stable - i'll post the photos when that happens.