Tag: #northern Arizona
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How to take a photo of the filtered sun and get a starburst effect
Taking the shot It’s dangerous to aim your camera at the sun. You could harm it as well as your eye, especially if you loook right at it for a prolongued period of time, or point the camera likewise. I am an amateur like many of my readers, so I am not 100% sure this…
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Afterglow of moonset on morning of November 17
.I found that, as often with sunsets, it is not the hot white globe, even in setting, that is most compelling to me as a photographic subject, but the aftermath especially on a cloudy morning. The photo below can best be viewed, and is available for sale, on SmugMug
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Noise, one of the enemies of clarity in photos—and, a solution!
Once upon a time, in the days of film cameras, photographers struggled against “grainy” shots. “Noise” is the equivalent in the era of digital photography. If you blow up one of your photos you might be surprised to see irregular blotches throughout. Blurriness is a different problem. Blurriness is caused by camera jiggle or movement…
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Motion Blur #2: Photographing American Avocets in Flight
I live hundreds of miles inland from the Pacific, but late in August, Flagstaff was visited by a flock of American Avocets. As you saw in my first Motion Blur post, the technique produces some cool effects. (By the way, like yesterday’s post, this shot was taken at the Old Walnut Canyon Road Ponds. I…
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What’s With the V-Formation?
It is an inspiring, though common, thing to see flocks of ducks or geese flying overhead in V-formation. A duck flying alone is also beautiful, as is this mallard… http://www.wilcephotos.com/Northern-Arizona/JMW-Birds-Bees-Etc/i-qndbZbn/0/Th/BIF-Duck%3B%20BubblingPonds%3B%20IMG_9073%20C1PSD1-Th.jpg … but a group of birds synchronizing or coordinating their behavior presents us with a different kind of beauty. This group of Canada Geese flying…
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Hawks: Chasing and Being Chased
Anywhere you see hawks you are likely to see them being chased by smaller birds and not just chasing after them. The following photos (some of which are links to wilcephotos.com) tell two stories. The first story consists of a single photograph of what we might expect to be most common—a bigger, more carnivorous bird…
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How great to have an arboretum nearby
It seems to me that supporting one’s local arboretum is a darned good idea, if one is lucky enough to have one. The Arboretum of Flagstaff is part of a network that includes the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix (dbg.org). That’s doubly convenient for us, since we travel to Phoenix from time to time. Four…
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Encounter with a Coronado Skink
We’ve been taking advantage of a series of hikes organized as part of the Roving Rangers Program — a wonderful service offered through a collaboration of the US Forest Service and the National Park Service in the Flagstaff area. The last such hike we took led us along the Hidden Hollow trail, where we came upon…
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A summer of learning: Butterfly upperwings and underwings
My first “wow” butterfly moment in the summer of 2015, described in Butterflies Part I, was really about butterflies and moths, and their antennae. The second moment of amazement is this realization: One butterfly, and in fact each individual wing of that one butterfly, can be very different when seen from above or below. Their…

