Arizona Photography

050 - Red Mountain at Sunset

Caught this fun sunset east of Red Mountain one afternoon. It seems to happen a lot where I head out with a particular shot in mind but in the process of shooting along the way - end up with something very different and more appealing than what I planned for. The desert was pretty thick after some good rains a few weeks earlier and I had to stop a couple of times for scenes that caught my eye - like this one. Lots of tall dead grass out there. The biggest challenge getting this shot was all those dang burrs that stick in my socks! I need some anti-burr hiking socks I guess.

036 - Arizona Monsoon Lightning Storm

Shooting lightning in the Arizona deserts is always an exciting challenge. Radar apps help to follow the storms and then it's a race to get there in time to find a cool frame, start shooting and then just hope you go home with something worth while.

002 - Ancient Stone

2:00 AM shot of Superstition Buttes from the top of Treasure Loop Trail shot Monday night. So awesome and quiet out there in the middle of our warm Arizona summer nights - except for my shutter and an owl. He was somewhere up in the rocks above me doing his owl-hoot thing and it was echoing all around those towering ancient cliff walls ... awesome fun stuff!

018 - Neowise Comet Over Arizona

Very cool to get a chance to shoot the Neowise comet before it disappeared into deep space. It was easily visible to the unaided eye directly below the Big Dipper until about 2.5 hours after sunset when it dropped below the horizon. Needed dark skies to the north for a good frame so headed north on the Beeline. Bit of a crazy hike to find a decent frame after all the wildfires - ended up climbing one of the desert boulder hills north of the Four Peaks turnoff. Fun stuff in the skies over Arizona! . . . Tech photo stuff: Sony A7R2, Canon 24-70 f/2.8, (12) 15 sec exposures @ 5000 ISO stacked in Starry Landscape Stacker, edit in Lightroom & Photoshop.

037 - Red Mountain Saguaro Lightning

Red Mountain from a trail above the Salt River that I run regularly. Expected to be hiking back drenched by the looks of this system as it approached from the north, but all I got was a couple of sprinkles. No complaints, ended up ideal for shooting an awesome lightning show! . Tech stuff: Sony A7R2, Sony 24-105 f/4.0, 10 sec exposures f/5.6 ISO 500 shot about 40 images, used the best 5 or 6 shots stacked in Photoshop including one that was a bright enough flash from overhead to illuminate the mountain and foreground.

001 - Picket Post at Superior AZ

052 - Three Sisters Sunset - Superstition Mountain

The Superstition Mountains have so much to offer; awesome majestic formations all over the place. The trick is anticipating the right conditions long enough beforehand and getting in to the ideal spot. The Three Sisters formation near the Peralta trailhead is one I had not shot before. Not an easy hike to this location, pretty thick with lots of cholla. Have to literally watch every step for about a mile of bushwhacking. Whatever it takes to get the shot.

Neowise Comet over Red Mountain

Red Mountain on the Salt River under Neowise Comet from (7/18/20) shot. . Tech photo stuff: Sony A7R2, Sony 24-105 f/4.0, (21) 10 sec exposures @ 5000 ISO stacked in Starry Landscape Stacker, edit in Lightroom & Photoshop

014 - Milky Way over Totem Pole at Monument Valley

Totem Pole in Monument Valley from last August. I would love to camp for about a week in this amazing territory and come home with tons of awesome stuff, just no end to the beautiful shots. Biggest deterrent is the expense - this shot cost me $100, which was cheap as Navajo guides go who are willing to tromp around in the sandy valleys in the middle of the night - not easy hiking. Just have to save my pennies I guess ... . Tech stuff: Sony A7Rii, Sam Yang 35mm f/1.4 @ f/2.0 ISO 6400, (10) 18 sec exposures for the stars stacked for noise in Starry Landscape Stacker. Ground was shot poorly with (3) 121 sec exposures #6400 ISO (needed at least 10) and stacked in PS, Totem Pole lighting was from another group lighting my ground shots :[ and I was barely able to salvage enough images that worked. Also forgot to turn on Long Exposure Noise Reduction which is pretty bad news with the ground as dark as it was but thanks to Sony's magical sensors and some cleaver photoshop tweaking it all worked out. Adobe Lightroom, Photoshop and Starry Landscape Stacker.

003 - Old Dead Tree Under The Stars

Scenes like this old tree against the Milky Way just speak to me of the passage of time and the innumerable living things that have come and gone on our planet - fulfilling their unique and honorable role in some gigantic master plan. A divinely conceived plan, implemented by our great God in Heaven so many eons ago ... and just for us! It really is all about us! .

004 - Saguaro And Milky Way

Found this awesome Saguaro in the dark deserts of southern Arizona. Very cool to shoot directly south and not have any sign of the typical glow on the horizon from a distant community - nothing but desert all the way to mexico and beyond. We had to wait for the moon to set at about 1:30 so took some time to explore an old ranch house and get freaked out by roosting birds and scary suggestions. Then we headed over to an old bunk house building and my son-in-law Zach got stung by an overly aggressive bee. I knew from a couple of years ago there had been a beehive in there so we stood outside just looking and listening quietly for maybe 30 seconds when a bee hit him in the lower calf. I have encountered a lot of bees while out shooting but never been stung that I remember. We all know there are highly aggressive and dangerous swarms in the area so took it as a sign and bugged out of there. . Another fun thing about these remote and un-peopled parts of the Arizona deserts are how untouched the saguaro cactus are, like this one; tall and straight, well balanced, healthy and majestic. BTW, thats Jupiter and Saturn on the left of center frame - Jupiter is the super bright one ... . Technical stuff: Sony A7Rii, Nikon 14-24 /2.8 @ apx f/3.5, ISO 10,000, (12) 20 sec exposures median stack for noise. Astro composite form (12) shots of the same sky at the same settings aligned and stacked in Stary Landscape Stacker.

088 - Lake Powell Sunset from Alstrom Point

We have boated around, camped and flown over the Lake Powell area for decades and have been forever eager to get to one of those highly inaccessible but alluring plateaus on the north side. I recently became aware of this spot, Alstrom Point, which is accessible by a 2 hr 4x4 ride from Big Water. So I planned a trip during the astrophotography season to camp, shoot the sunset and to finally shoot the Milky Way over this awesome terrain - which requires a frame to the southeast. It all worked out without a hitch. We built a nice fire and grilled some awesome ribeyes right in front of this crazy scene - very cool. Just don't want to be stumbling around in the dark with our camp being literally at the edge of a 400-500 ft drop-off to the Lake level. This is an HDR edit panorama from four frames of 5 shots each - so a total of 20 images were used to compile what you see. I really can't get enough of the beautiful red rock layering of the Colorado Plateau

035 - Arizona Saguaro Cactus Monsoon Lightning

Everyone loves lightning right? Can't image otherwise. And lightning storms are one of the coolest things about our monsoon season in Arizona. But a good lightning shot, like Milky Way shots - need something framable (or worthy of a shot all by itself) in the foreground - all part of the composition thing right? So first find yourself a cool foreground subject and line things up to get the lightning in the background. I lucked with this one. Stumbled onto this nice Saguaro which lined up well with a couple of others in the distance, and Red Mountain to the right also helped with the frame. I shot 22 exposures at this position and used five of them with good lightning - so this is a five shot composite. In other words, camera on the tripod, adjust the frame and focus then set the intervalometer to shoot every 10 seconds and hope for the best. The shots with the best lightning strikes are loaded into photoshop to create what we used to call double exposures - where two images are combined. But Photoshop lets us do that with many images - same cactus and foreground but with different lightning strikes all added together to create a single final composite. Cool thing here was that all the good lightning exposures were centered just right around and over my primary Saguaro ... planets were in alignment maybe? . . Technical; Sony A7Rii, Sony 24-105 f/4.0@4.0 24mm, 10 sec exp @200 ISO

019 - Horseshoe Bend under the Stars

Horseshoe Bend is close to Page, Arizona but sp close the the city lights cause too much problem when shooting the stars. This shot took a whole lot of planning and work to both shoot and to process. First of all, the classic Horseshoe Bend shot is framed almost directly west - which doesn't work well if you want the colorful Milky Way in the frame. Most of the time, Milky Way frames are pointing to the southeast. The stars don't come this far west until August. It's also a little precarious to be hiking around the 800 ft drop in the middle of the night on what is hopefully a very dark night. What you see here was complied from about 40 exposures - a bunch for the starry sky and a bunch more to bring the minimal light out of the dark canyon.

078 - Grand Canyon North Rim at Sunset

Caught a clear day with perfect clouds and little rain cells for a sunset shot at the North Rim of the majestic Grand Canyon in Arizona. I was born and raised Arizona but had never visited the North Rim. Iconic majestic places like this can look good no matter what the weather is doing I guess.

072 - Four Peaks in the Clouds

Iconic Four Peaks stands at 7,657 ft East of Mesa, AZ - shot out the window of a Cessna in Jan 2010

012 - Milky Way Over the Grand Canyon North Rim

I was born and raised in Arizona - and this was my first visit to the North Rim of the Gran Canyon ... pretty stupid right? Being an avid astro-photographer, I have known for some time that this part of Arizona is the absolute darkest part of the state in terms of light pollution in the atmosphere. Which means it is an excellent area to photograph the stars! Fortunately, I had enough clear sky to capture that awesome Milky Way as it crossed once again over the Grand Canyon just before it started raining. This image was composited from multiple photos from this position close to the North Rim Visitor's Center. Multiple exposures of the stars (about 8 I think) were aligned and merged together in a process called median blend photo stacking that reduces almost all sensor noise from the resulting digital image. Then, multiple long exposures (4 or 5 6 min. exposures) of the canyon were also merged in the same process. The distant lights are at the Grand Canyon South Rim area 10.3 miles away and include lights from hikers descending (or ascending) along the Bright Angel Trail. The orange glow is from the lights of Flagstaff some 72 miles distant.

059 - Sedona Glory at Sunset, Sedona, Arizona

Merry-go-round rock in Sedona, takes a four wheel drive to get to, but is worth it, especially on a rainy day at sunset.

051 - Arizona Desert Monsoon

So that's an Arizona monsoon, right? Got the shot, grabbed the tripod and camera and ran for my car. 🚘🏃🌩

096 - Epic Monument Valley Wide

Blues skies and cumulus clouds hovering over majestic formations in Monument Valley, Arizona.

Growing Superstition Saguaro's, Desert, AZ

Green ground cover and growing Saguaro’s against the looming Supterstition Mountains.

045 - Scarface Sunset