Great Elephant Migration

 Elephants

The Great Elephant Migration visited Houston this month.  The purpose of the exhibit is draw attention to the diminishing elephants.  These elephants are made from Lantana.  A form of lantana that is invasive to India.  An interesting display of life size lantana elephants

Day 2 in Arizona

 Casa de San Pedro

Great little B&B in southern Arizona.  Very comfortable accommodations.  Arrived yesterday afternoon.  Warm welcome form the owner/manager.  Up early for me and wandered around close by.  Forgot to take my map so didn't go far.  Again just sat out at the veranda and watched birds.

Visit to Arizona

 

Went to Arizona for some family visits and such.  Took a couple days to do some sightseeing.  Flew into Phoenix and onto Tucson

Tucson

Our first visit was to Tucson with the intent of some bird watching as this is the migratory season,  Not much luck saw a few.  On the recommendation of the front desk at the hotel went to Tohono Chul Gardens it was close to the hotel., this location is also listed in the guide books. Saw a few birds but nothing great.  Was an interesting walk, good thing it was in the morning and was relatively cool.  Got some exercise and a few pictures;

As you see flowers and art.  Like I said interesting walk.

We left the gardens and headed to Hereford Arizona where we had reservations at a B & B.  On the way we stopped and toured the Saguaro National Park (East).

Saguaro Nation Park East

This was a lot more interesting still not a lot of birding but great scenery. 

About 100 years old to have this many "arms"

Note the "Knob" on the left plant

Gumby?

The "knob" is one of the two in the park/

Hereford

Got to our accommodations' late afternoon.  This B & B was southeast of Sierra Vista (Ft. Huachuca).  It is well known in the birding world.  

late afternoon when we got there so only  some pictures in the golden hour near the inn.

HDR

 In the last meeting of the Northwest Houston Photo Club we had a guest professional photographer, Hugh Hargrave, who specializes in landscape photography.  He said the majority of his work is a combination of 3 or more images, with one at the set f stop and then the other two -1 stop and the other +1  In some circles this may be called High Definition Range (HDR).

       *"This is a technique to capture and display a wider range of brightness and contrast that a typical image can achieve. It involves combining multiple exposures of the same scene to create a single image that reveals more detail in both the bright and dark areas.  This is particularly useful for scenes with high contrasts, like landscapes or architecture where a single exposure may not capture the details in bot the shadows and the highlights." 

*AI Definition from Google 

I had to try this technique and went to the Mercer Arboretum, where I knew there are some Bald Cypress trees in the Cypress Swamp section.  And thought this might lend its self to a HDR image. 

Here are my results

At set f stop

At -1 Stop

At +1 f stop

HDR Image