CCintheSouth's photostream

When anyone who is interested in photography gets an opportunity to photograph skies that look like this and the person their with...which happens to be thier spouse...refuses to stop and let them take pictures...it surely justifiable grounds for divorce?!!!!

This was the color of the sky on the way back to Phoenix from Sedona. And these shots were taken out of the car window at about 60 to 70 miles per hour.

...And I guess I can forgive my husband, as his back has been giving him problems...On second thought...no I can't... this was really worth a little extra pain...after all I had two of his children!!!

(I'm in Michigan this week)

This is a bird I associate with the Southwest, so I was thrilled to get photographs of it....and even better yet, when I got one of it running that wasn't out of focus! Though I lived in Phoenix back in the late eighty's and early ninety's, I don't recall ever seeing one of these birds. I found some interesting facts about this bird on the internet that I had not known before. These birds can run up to 20mph, but only in short bursts....and they can only fly for a short distance, too. Even though they are part of the Cuckoo family they do raise their young, but if they lay 10 eggs, the early hatchers will most likely get eaten by the parents. Roadrunners are mostly carnivorous. They will jump up and snatch a hummingbird out of the sky as it flies by....and they will catch rattlesnake and fling it back and forth on the ground until they kill it. They eat their prey whole and since they cannot digest the entire snake at one time they will run around with part of snake hanging out of their beak, while they digest a little at a time.

Steve and I lived in Phoenix, AZ when we were first married and he was starting out his career...we had our first child, Stephanie, there...so it was exciting to go back. However, it did not take me long to remember the summer temperatures of 108-122 (might be higher now, but that was a record temperature we saw while we lived there)

I was not a birder back then...well I'm not really a bird now...I just like to photograph birds...Anyhow, I just did not appreciate all that was around me back then. This time I was like a kid in a candy store...everything I shot seemed to be a new bird for me.

I have been so sick of getting the same bird photos over and over again...I had pretty much stopped shooting them altogether, and had been focusing on portrait photography. I found this to be quite challenging and have spent a lot of time and energy learning all I can about it. And one of the things I found out is how much I don't know. Portrait photography is completely different from nature photography and lighting is key. In nature photgraphy, you pretty much have to work with the lighting your given, but in portrait photography, you create the light you want.

While I realize that flickr has quite a large group of portrait photographers, In the past, I have been focusing on nature photography and since most of my flickr friends are interested nature photography I have not been posting to flickr lately. I do not want to bore you all with photographs of people you don't know...but I still may start posting some of my portrait work because flickr is a great way to learn and get feed back.

While I was in Arizona, I chased several Hummingbirds but I had a very hard time IDing the females. I only got one shot of a Male and I think it was a Black-Chinned or a Costa's. This was in Phoenix, AZ One of the locals told me that they also have Anna's, Ruby Throated and the Broad-Tailed. So without really good lighting, it was really hard to ID them.

This is really the most interesting thing that I think I've seen in nature. I was pretty excited to see these owls resting in the grass and I am curious about whether this is normal behavior for owls...I did try and do research on the internet and it did say that Great Horned Owls will hunt from the ground, but I could not find anything on whether they would nap on the ground too. I would really like to know if these were fledgling like Ed thought or if they are a mating pair. I am also curious as to whether this one is injured and that is why he/she lays in the grass. I know both of them can fly, but this one did not fly very far.

After it got pretty annoyed with me taking it's picture, it flew off to a nearby tree where it was promptly attacked by two Humming birds....and that IS the strangest thing that I have ever seen in nature! I just wish I could have gotten better quality photos of the harrassment...but still pretty cool to see!

This is interesting...I found this pair laying down on the grass during the middle of the day. Steve and I stayed at the Hilton Pointe at Tapatio in Phoenix...and every day that we were there I would find one or other of these owls laying down on the grass...this was the first time that I had seen both.