Wednesday, February 25

Wow!  Sunshine.  Sunshine all day long.  We bused East to shoot Superstition Mountain (home of the famous Lost Dutchman Mine)  near Apache Junction after we had spent the morning at the hotel being critiqued by Jeff Kida.    He was very gentle and supportive, yet he was quite skilled creating learning examples as he talked about each image.

We were each allowed to "nominate" five pictures from each of our two days.  I had to hustle (blush) to find ten decent ones to show out of several hundred taken.  My joke to Jeff is that he turns out to be a real "cropper," because he ably demonstrated that cropping a photograph (there is usually a picture within a picture) can lead to vast improvement.

For us digital folks, it is easy to do post processing with a program like Adobe Photoshop.  That is where color balance can be adjusted, little blemishes can be removed, contrast can be nudged, and lots of cropping can occur.

Jeff's view on the ethics of touching up a photograph were based on the value of keeping photographic integrity.    Remember, those who have grown up developing prints in darkrooms have long known how to dodge, burn, crop, etc.

The afternoon journey was a great relief after the first two fairly wet days.  We spread out across the landscape snapping away at the Cholla Cactus  (Genus Opuntia ), the towering  Saguaro Cactus (Cereus giganteus) and etc. while waiting for a much anticipated Sonoran Sunset.

We were even treated by a small motorized glider that swooped in and out of view nearby.  The sunset did not disappoint, and everyone got some great shots.  After ribs at the Mining Camp Restaurant in Apache Junction we bused back to the hotel to rest up for our final full day at the Boyce Thompson Arboretum..

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