The rains missed us last night and this afternoon but the upper reaches of the trails were still wet. I took a slightly different route up the mountain today to see if I might find some different flowers and sure enough, I was graced with some beauties.
The Starburst lives up to it’s name, especially when it’s back lit like this one. In two days of hiking and covering 13 miles of trail, I only saw two of these, and the one yesterday was shaded and did not turn out well.
The Nodding Onion, while pretty, did not turn out quite like I had hoped. I have another that I took in the Slideshows that I prefer and I was hoping to duplicate that effect. Perhaps next week.
Finally, out of the thousands of Stanley’s Four O’clock that were along the trail I saw this group with their petals in the shade and the yellow tips of the flower in the light.
This was only my third climb up the mountain since it reopened and the second attempt to see how my new (to me) camera would perform. Fortunately we have had plenty of rain these past weeks and the flowers have started to appear again on the mountain.
One would think that it is spring again on the mountain, especially with all of the Apache plume that is in bloom.
I can’t help myself when I come across a purple geranium, especially when it’s inhabited by a pollinator.
I’m giving the camera two thumbs up. After today’s session I’ve decided to retire my Olympus 5060 zoom as my hiking camera.
I’m adding this final image, not because it’s great, but because it’s great to see rain drops left on leaves long after the storm passed. The mountain is getting wet again and that’s good news.
I was working on a home improvement project Thursday evening when out of the corner of my eye I saw a flash of light. In my house however that’s not always what it appears since we have some kind of anti-hardshell bug repellers that emit a bright blue flash of light on a regular basis.
This time however, I saw the light in an area where it did not normally appear.
Thus began a three hour saga of storm and lightning that I will document over in the journal pages.
This year represents the 9th year of taking photos of lightning and in that time, I captured more images this night than I had in the last several years combined.
With the second hike in for the new post-drought season, I’ve taken a new camera to the mountain to see if it’s a “keeper” or whether I’ll simply return it to E-Bay from whence it came.
Although I didn’t get any time to look at the manual before starting the hike, I have a good feeling about it. More testing to come this weekend.
First I came upon a Tufted Geranium or the Purple wild Geranium
Shot in macro mode – using auto focus. Not until the last two images did I try the manual focus with the camera.
Columbine – with great back lighting.
I included the ant in this next image so you can see just how small the flowers are on the Stanley’s Four O’clock .
Next – Showy Goldeneye
Slideshows of New Mexico Wildflowers can be found on the slideshow pages.
This year fireworks are pretty much banned all around New Mexico, except for the public displays that are put on by various townships and cities. As we drove into Alamogordo last night we happened to catch a lot of the action since it was set up in the foothills above the city.
While hiking the next day, we found this riot of color right near the side of the road.
While wandering through another path in the woods I spotted this beauty, which is as of yet, unidentified. It’s about the size of half of a dime.
It’s about time. Hopefully the photo drought is over, as will be the real drought, sooner rather than later. I’ve written about it over in the journal.
I happened to be driving home yesterday from the fix-it store and remembered that it was the “Supermoon” weekend, prompted of course by a giant rising full moon over the mountains. Unfortunately there was a rather thick layer of high cloud that obscured the moon so I put it out of my mind until later in the evening when I walked outside to turn off the water feature in my back yard.
Looking up I suddenly remembered and dragged out the big lens and set up the tripod. Since it was a couple of minutes after midnight, these photos belong to today. I then set my phone alarm for 5:45, a good half an hour before the moon was to set over Albuquerque.
I included this next shot to show the relationship between the “zoom” and what one saw with the naked eye, but really, even this is zoomed, but at the low end of the range for the lens.
I decided that since the traverse of the moon was well to the south of the city, that I’d take my shots, and go back to bed, since you couldn’t really see any of the city from my vantage point.
Note how the moon rotated between the two images – taken about five and a half hours apart.
While working on my slideshow galleries of wildflowers this week I learned a new word, Pollinator. With this word though, came a second new one, embedded in the definition that I found on Wikipedia.
A pollinator is the biotic agent (vector) that moves pollen from the male anthers of a flower to the female stigma of a flower to accomplish fertilization orsyngamy of the female gamete in the ovule of the flower by the male gamete from the pollen grain.
The second word is biotic, and I’ve decided to copy another gallery that I’ve found on the web that shows the various biotic agents at work while attempting to shoot a wildflower. Hopefully I’ll get that posted by the end of the week.
Among other things, I caught these two on the leaf of a sunflower early Saturday morning.
Domestic flower terrorist in training, deep in thought.
I had hoped to try and climb the mountain twice today and as such, I was on the trail earlier than normal, at 6:50am to be exact. Since the mountain is closing due to the fire danger, one of the early victims has been the wildflowers, either wilted shortly after blossom or not showing up at all.
This morning in the depths of the La Cueva Canyon, just in front of the cave as a matter of fact, I saw this flower for the first time. There were only two blossoms but fortunately one of them came out sharp enough at 1/25 of a second.
Its called a Northern Anenome and is a member of the Buttercup family. It’s also know as a Meadow Anenome or a Windflower.
by David Alan
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