Cactus

Who the hell knew that cactus got this big? That's not even unusual for around Phoenix.

I was also surprised to find out that the State is very mountainous and Flagstaff is at 7,000 feet. That's considerably higher than Denver.

Arizona

I'm in Arizona for two-weeks on a work trip. I did not take my camera because it's big, bulky and I just didn’t have the room for it. So I bought a $70 "point and shoot" camera to take on the trip. The photos are not great but it's better than nothing. I've found the quality so low that I've mostly been shooting low-quality video that I can send to Cia. Anyway, here is a huge meteor crater that I visited. It's about 4,000 feet across and 550 feet deep. It's supposedly the best preserved meteor crater in the world because of Arizona's dry climate and that fact that it's *only* 50,000 years old.

This photo was taken using the cameras built in panoramic feature. It's three shots stitched together.

Another great wildlife photography tool

I once had someone ask me if hunting wildlife or photographing wildlife is harder. The answer is that it depends on if you are photographing truely wild animals or ones that are accustomed to humans. If they are truely wild animals, then it's much harder to obtain great photographs than to simply kill one.

For example, when photographing whitetail deer the wind direction is crucial, just like with hunting. However, you also have to find a much larger shooting opportunity and the direction of the sun (something that's usually not a factor with hunting).

One of the most important things in wildlife photography is the direction of the sun, especially since most of the action occurs at dawn or dusk and you will not be able to see details on your subject without the direct sun. Figuring out which direction the sun is going to be at certain times is challenging.

You might be thinking, "big deal, the sun comes up in the east and sets in the west!" Well, it's not that easy, in fact it changes throughout the year and it's almost never exactly east and west.

So when I'm setting up my blind for an afternoon set up or when I'm in an area before sun up I need to know where the sun is going to be at certain times. I've searched online and was not able to find that kind of information but yesterday I did find a great app that can help. It's called Sun Seeker. I've tried it out and it's dead on accurate.

New photography tool

A couple of years ago I bought two ghillie suits. These are the suits that snipers wear and are superior to the 2 dimensional camouflage that most people wear.

There were two types available; a "grassland" version which was the exact color of the grass in the background here or a "woodland" version which is what I have. I did not want to buy both versions but I wish I would have now because obviously the darker does not work well in the yellow grass. It still works quite well though when you are sitting as in the second pictures.

If I wanted to spend the time I could make this very effective by placing grass into the suit. This is about 10 seconds worth of effort. If I had spent 5-minutes, I think a person would be nearly invisible, even standing in the open.

I used this in the spring turkey woods last year and it was unreal how well it worked. You can even move around turkeys IF you do so very, very slowly.

Moon tonight

800mm 1/320th of a second f13 400 ISO

The ISO was much higher than I would have normally set it for this type of shot but I simply forgot to check it.

You know it's been too long when you cannot log in....

I just tried to log in to my account for a good 15 minutes. Seems that it's been so long since I've logged in that I had forgotten my account information.

The problem is that I've not been doing any photography. I have been obsessed with work and trying to make this consulting business work out. The good news is that so far I've already exceeded our income goal for 2011 so my job feels really secure for now. The bad news is that it's never enough for me and I have a hard time not continuously chasing opportunities.

I did go out in the lawn a couple of times this week and shoot some birds. Nothing special but maybe they are worth the electrons you're using to view them.