Posts in Category: Santa Fe
Mourning Cloak
Mourning Cloak, Bear Canyon, Randell Davies Audubon Sanctuary, Santa Fe NM
Carol and I did some hiking yesterday morning while waiting for Anna to get out of work. We hiked the trail at Santa Fe Canyon Preserve (Nature Conservancy) and then the trail at the Randell Davies Audubon Sanctuary. It was a wonderful morning with good birds, wonderful scenery, and some interesting history of the Santa Fe watershed. At Randell Davies we took the short extension up Bear Canyon. I don’t know what I expected, but I certainly was not expecting butterflies on this brisk March morning with patches of snow still on the trail in the mountains of Santa Fe. Yet, as we reached the end of the maintained trail in Bear Canyon, high up among the Ponderosa Pines, a Western Tiger Swallowtail came up off the ground by the stream and went high into the trees (as they will do). Then, a few yards beyond, a Mourning Cloak (the one in the pic) came floating down above the stream. It eventually landed so I could get some shots. Finally, either a Comma or a Question Mark (I did not get a shot of the closed wings so I can not say which it was) followed the same route down the stream. We saw the same, or additional, Mourning Cloaks further down the main trail. Butterflies!
Sony HX400V at 1200mm equivalent field of view. 1/320th @ ISO 125 @ f6.3. Processed and cropped slightly for scale in Lightroom.
Color Riot!
wooden / paper flowers in Santa Fe, NM
We are in Santa Fe New Mexico for a few days, visiting our daughter Anna who just started Grad School in Art Therapy at South Western University. We spent out first afternoon walking around the Plaza area and along Canyon Road, poking into shops and galleries. This riot of color was at an amazingly eclectic shop just off the Plaza. I am not certain if they are painted wood or paper, but the effect, in mass, is irresistible…or it is to me. (Someone suggested they might be corn husk.)
To be as unobtrusive in Sunday crowd of tourists I shot mostly with my little pocket Sony WX220, which is small enough so most people mistake it for a phone 🙂 I fit right in, and it produces images just as fine, within its range, as my superzoom! This is an in-camera HDR at the wide end of the zoom…25mm equivalent field of view.
Processed in Lightroom on my Surface Pro 3 tablet.