What better way to test out a new camera then harass my cat Buttons. Not bad for auto settings and low yellow light. I used the Canon Zoom Lens EF 75-300mm 1:4-5.6 III on the little darling asleep in her cat tree cubby hole. It’s been a long day of exploring and attention seeking.
I am here to tell you about the trip I almost took to Ajax Mine in central Arizona. Picking a location on Google Maps is where I first start my planning and the plan ends there. I did skim over a blog by Bold Canyon Outdoors on their adventure and it sounded easy enough. Easy enough for a 4 x 4 vehicle… I was thinking it looked more like the typical wavy smooth roads with occasional areas washed out.
The first half of the trip was a straight flat track with ripples. I fantasized about the photos I was going to take of the Milky Way rising above the abandoned Ajax mine. The landscape was typical untouched wilderness of the Sonoran desert. You can see the Jumping Cholla, Prickly Pear, Ocotillo, Palo Verde trees, Jojoba and Saguaros cacti in the landscape.
Once passing the fence line and cattle guard from Cottonwood Canyon Rd leading to Mineral Mountain road I encountered some areas a regular passenger car would start scraping their under carriage. Google maps will have you take a route to a gated ranch. Which if I had fully read the blog earlier, I would have just taken their custom route. It didn’t take long after passing a camper packing it out and a recreational shooter that I encountered the furthest point my Mitsubishi Outlander could handle. It was 4.1 miles from the mine and I literally said, “Four miles ain’t shit!”
Paraphrase of Proverbs 16:18
About a half mile up I was already thinking I should retry to climb the hill as the trail was looking good to go again. Then I came up on the first water hole for the open range cattle. They all had horns and they were too far away to tell if any were bulls.
As I approached a couple of them popped up out of a resting position to their feet. There was apart of me ready to turn around in fear. There was also a very steep hill past the herd I was not looking forward to hiking up. I pressed on despite those inner voices seeking safety and comfort.
About halfway up, I was thinking of the final week of basic training at Ft. Benning. They take us on a 15 mile road march with a combat load. Today I was only carrying a camera gear and a half gallon of water. So counted my blessings resting my legs every so often. I lost signal to Google maps converting the directions from car to walking until I reached the peak of the hill. It told me I was only about a half mile in.
Once again I was thinking about turning around. The inner voice said, “This is suicide to keep going with a half gallon of water and the sun setting and intermittent cell phone signal.” In reality it is pretty dangerous, but it was only a few miles. I couldn’t just quit though.
Then a moment of grace between the first and second hill happened. I could hear birds frantically chirping away just off the carved mountain path. I saw a brown bird with a red breast fly off from a Jumping Cholla. A dark cluster between arms appeared to be a nest. I climbed up a few feet to see the chirping was coming from a couple baby House Finches.
I pressed on to a second challenging hill. It was obvious my vehicle would never make this journey. If it made it there, coming back might be another challenge.
Still with three miles to go I stood there trying to figure out the distance to the mine. Google maps said it would take an hour, which would put me at the mine during the blue hour giving enough light for some nice long exposures.
I came to a junction and a large dry wash. It lead to North Ajax Mine Trail and some unmarked OHV trails. Luckily Google maps saved me from taking the trail in the picture above. The Ajax Mine Trail is actually behind the mountain. The hike was pretty easy from that point crossing a couple washes.
I came around a bend and found another herd. They looked like they might be penned, but as I got closer one of them was definitely outside the fence. It started rolling it’s head around. In my mind, I was trying to figure out if it was shaking off some cacti needles or if it was an aggressive gesture. Despite it’s cowbell and long eyelashes, it’s horns were all I was thinking about. I happened to stop next to a Catclaw Mesquite with some Tarantula Hawks having a feast. I figured I could work out my fears while taking pictures of these little monstrous looking insects.
Unfortunately momma cow was not budging. I could see her calves now and my creative mind went off. Not only would I be walking past on unstable ground the narrow path had no real cover. I imagined myself running through the desert in a thin pair of shorts catching all the cacti needles and eventually being brutal gored and trampled. Not to death though just a thorough ass kicking, because God would want me to walk bloody and broken back up those hills. Regretfully I started to walk back looking over my shoulder. Then momma came out of the brush in my direction. Great she’s stalking me now!
I continued to walk briskly and took the wash to throw her off my trail. Coming to the first uphill on the 2nd Hill. The sun was setting behind it. Fully paranoid at this point I was sure a rattlesnake would be repositioning from their day lair for a meal.
I continued on and came across the first herd again with a few missing now. A little further up the road I spooked a calf and this time another cow was standing on the side of the road. Fuck me man! I powered through my fear and calmly walked by. This cow just looked goofy with one horn pointing up and the other down. It might have been crossed-eyed too. At this point I felt foolish for turning around in the first place. What’s even funnier is I was running scenarios of fighting off mountain lions and bears in my head before all this. Really I do look at these thoughts in a comical way though. Which allows me to enjoy some of the beauty I would miss otherwise.
Recently after some careful consideration I pulled the trigger on getting a Canon RP and went with the 24-105 STM lens. I’ve had a few Canon cameras at this point, so jumped right in with little instruction.
To the right is the first picture I took of my cat. It’s been a tradition with new cameras. She’s getting a little more comfortable in front of the lens. Even though the look on her face is “Great pictures…ugh”
I am very happy with the results so far. I was surprised to see this was taken at f/7.1 1/20th Sec. at an ISO 12800. I wasn’t even trying to hold the camera steady.
The second picture I attempted manual settings at f/8 1/60th Sec. ISO 40000. The image at full size is pretty noisy, but I think this still came out with good results.
I could use photoshop to soften the noise, but it also reduces the texture in her fur. This is the sixth picture and now she’s trying to ignore what’s going on.
I was pretty tired by the time the battery charged, so I decided to get some rest and hit the road this morning. I figured just hiking with the setting on Auto would be fine. One of the things photographers struggle with in Arizona is the intensity of the sunlight. It’s tough to use the LCD or viewfinder to make sure the subject is in focus. I didn’t play with auto-focus other than have Eye-detection on. I think this may have added some difficulty. Also Auto Focus is locked to face detection in Auto shooting mode. Still it did produce sharp images, which I was relying on.
I added a cropped close up of the Saguaro fruit and needles. This was taken at 105mm at about 50ft from the Saguaro arm. (Without doing the math) Below is a closer shot on a low hanging arm with budding flowers. Kinda cool to see this perspective as most saguaros you would need a tall ladder to see what’s going on.
The conversion to jpeg reduces the quality of these dry Saguaro ribs, but this is like a macro shot at 95mm standing about 2-3 feet away. I really didn’t do this photo justice in auto mode with an aperture of f/7.1. Lesson learned!
Below is a landscape image I struggled with using other cameras and lenses. In general whenever I would get home and zoom in the sky and ridgeline would have chromatic aberration, a purple line dividing the two. The green brush and trees below are crisp in comparison to past photos.
Below are a few shots where I was struggling with the focus. The depth of field bothers me a little, but still think these came out pretty good after all. I appreciate this little guy hanging around while I intruded on it’s lunch break.
I experimented with some depth of field after getting home and working on this post. I read some instructions earlier about focus bracketing and didn’t bother to look it up again. The RP has a feature that works with Canon software to bracket shots with different depths of field and combining them into one image. This is going to be a separate project for another day.
Next up was testing night photography out. Again who needs instructions?!!?1… It was fun I first started out like I did back on my old Canon T6 trying to find a bright start to focus on automatically. I didn’t realize I had left continuous focus on and that was a bit frustrating. Finally after thumbing through the menu I had the focus completely in manual. I discovered the greatest feature so far with the Canon RP, a focus meter! It still took a few shots to dial into infinity.
It’s still pretty early in the Northern Hemisphere Milky Way season, so I made sure I could get a few pictures with some stars in focus. My final settings were single shots at f/4 at 8 secs. with an ISO of 5000 at 24mm . No bracketing. Very very happy with the results and know there still some play with the settings.
I’ve been traveling to a location recently looking for wildlife along the Salt River in the Tonto National Forest in Arizona. A lot of people come hear looking for the wild horses that roam along the Salt River and the Bush Highway. My goal is to find whatever roams this narrow corridor along the river and desert trails.
Deep on a trail I happened to hear the cry of something unfamiliar. I was hoping it wasn’t the skunk I smelled earlier and slowly walked towards the call to find a couple Cooper’s Hawks perched above the trail.
Arizona is home to several raptors and guessing this is a juvenile Cooper’s Hawk based on images from AllAboutBird’s.org.
I’m not sure what it was eating, but it seemed to be another predator with a full belly. Momma hit the jackpot. She didn’t stick around for the photo session unfortunately. I attempted to zoom in to see what it was ripping apart. In this instance it looks like feathers are being discarded.
This young bird didn’t seem to mind the shutter and kept working on it’s meal. In this image it appears it has a fish head. Although I saw other parts and pieces that resembled reptile legs with feet.
In the three images above the juvenile Cooper’s Hawk takes a break from it’s meal to check out the camera. The last one a hard stare at the shadow clicking away below.
Now the meal is devoured, it’s time to clean up as the young Hawk looks for any left overs and brushes it’s beak on a twig.
The juvenile Cooper’s Hawk takes one last look back over their shoulder before taking flight. I thanked it for a one in a million opportunity to see this activity in the wild.
Yesterday a new camera, Canon EOS 2000D (T7), arrived to replace the one lost. I’m really happy with the results working with about twice the pixels of the 1300D (T6).
The Oleander shots required some work to bring out the whites and soft tones. Surprising the noise at 400 ISO is subtle and hardly noticeable in the jpegs.
The cover photo was the first sunrise and this is the first sunset captured. Looking forward to many more.
This was a cute moment momma walking behind her duckling to keep it safe.
Finally had to get one of Boots. He’s a new friend. Can’t say as much for Harper quite yet. She more bothered than he is. Boots gives her a slow eye kiss and a rough crackling meow.
Today was a productive day after being down with the flu for a week. Glad to be back in action even at 3/4 speed. I was trying to find a way to Red Mountain and might have stumbled onto a desert scout that those big signs warn people about. Joking aside I was in a secret location in North Mesa, the picture below is more benign.
After getting some great stock photos of the Sonoran Desert. I had to go back home and figure out how to pay bills. Currently I drive rideshare and delivery, which is awesome for someone that needs thousands of pictures to make money selling stock photos.
The route went back East to Fountain Hills, where I got to see the storm develop with a mountain top view. I took my time, usually I am trying to set delivery records. Tonight I finished just in time to catch the squall that hit about 6:30 PM. I was leaving the last neighborhood and saw a dead end. The Airborne Ranger in the Sky was looking out tonight. Reviewing the weather radar, a squall formed over Gilbert hitting Fountain Hills right as I made my last delivery. I popped my trunk and just started shooting.
It took about 700 shots to get these three. I didn’t have time to focus man! A raging storm was throwing out lighting and I was laying down suppressive fire in response. Petting the Pig! Working that Canon 5D MKIV like it was one anyway.
Alright lesson learned. Again.
I need to look into new approaches for catching lightning. I think these were cloud to cloud. I honestly don’t remember hearing thunder. This time I just used the button, but the last time I would shoot ten frames at a time on tripod. Next time going with time lapse like I know I probably should. It’s tough to be in the right place at the right time to set-up though.
It did give me a bit of a chance to play with settings, but figuring out the best settings is challenging. I was parked at the bottom of very dark fishbowl surrounded by mountains. Lightning caught at the right moment would act as a flash.
Here’s what worked for these shots on a Canon 5D Mark IV.
After sleeping on the files I discovered some more beautiful shots and reworked these a bit. I am creating a sequenced video file also, but probably will abondone my grand scheme for it. Note to self. Try video next time. I am not sure what I captured, but it certainly is a weather phenomenon. It looks like the lightning is remaining in the same general area. And some shots appear to be balls, but that’s probably due to the camera being out of focus.
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