A rock squirrel shows off its expansive home.
📷: Nikon Z 7II | Nikon 24-200
🗓️: April 13, 2024
Tag: rock
The Four Corners of the Earth
I Always Feel Like Somebody’s Watching Me
A canyon towhee keeping an eye out for scallywags, ne’er-do-wells, trouble-makers.
📷: Sony A6600 | Sony 100-400mm | Sony 1.4X
🗓️: May 28, 2023
Bones
Throughout the desert embedded in the boulders you can see the planet’s spine exposed, a reminder of how thin the veneer of life is. An osteogeologist could tell you exactly which vertebrae these are but to me they are just the bones of the earth.
📷: Nikon Z 7II | Nikon 105mm macro
🗓️: September 24, 2023
The Night Owls
Two night owls, one on each side of the camera. One of us has excellent vision, one of us doesn’t get dizzy when standing on a high ledge, both think mushrooms and green beans are disgusting. My favorite image from a set right as a mountain started to block the setting sun.
📷: Sony A6700 | Sony 100-400mm | Sony 1.4X
🗓️: November 21, 2023
Symbiosis
Sperm whales often sleep vertically with their heads below the surface but here they poke their heads above the desert floor, providing antelope squirrels protection from their many predators while relying on them as lookouts for orcas or peg-legged hikers with a look of mania about them.
📷: Sony A6700 | Sony 100-400mm | Sony 1.4X
🗓️: November 21, 2023
Surprise Test
Though I see them frequently in the neighborhood I rarely see roadrunners in the local preserve and have never photographed one there. So of course as I took a quick hike to test out a camera so newly arrived I hadn’t yet set it up to my liking, the first animal I see is a roadrunner posing on a boulder. So lovely to see, as their name implies while they can fly they prefer to walk, and can really scoot when they want to.
📷: Sony A6700 | Sony 100-400mm | Sony 1.4X
🗓️: November 21, 2023
Five Years in the Making
It took me 5 years to make this picture, not that there is anything complicated in the setup, rather it took me 5 years of hiking in the desert to see my first chuckwalla. Back on a spring Saturday I finally got up for a sunrise hike, mostly motivated by the hope of photographing saguaro buds and flowers. Flush with success I headed home and picked up Bear and brought him back for us to hike together, and thankfully so as it was on this hike I first spotted the chuckwalla.
I came back the next morning for some more saguaro photography but as I passed by where I had seen her the previous day, I stopped because the pattern recognition part of my brain told me something was interesting but couldn’t tell me what or where. I stared for the longest time before finally realizing the thin rock in a crevice between granite boulders was in fact a tail. It’s obvious in the picture since it’s highly zoomed in courtesy of the telephoto lens, and I’m down at a lower level and different angle where the gap is more pronounced. She’s sleeping back in the darkness and protection of the crevice.
As before I went home and brought Bear back and she was more visible though still deep in shadow. I didn’t have the telephoto with me and besides Bear was eager for our time together, and so was I, so I snapped a quick picture and we continued into the desert.
📷: Sony A6600 | Sony 100-400 | Sony 1.4X
Date: May 28, 2023
Keeping One Eye Open
Thousands of years ago a visiting Cyclops commemorated their love of the Pacific Northwest by crafting a self-portrait, the only known example still in existence today. I had the pleasure of photographing it in 2013 and was surprised by how delicate and fragile it was given the powerful force that created it, suggesting Homer’s portrayal of the Cyclopes as ignorant brutes in The Odyssey was little more than slander.
In the Shadows
When I passed a gap in the boulders this owl appeared as a silhouette to my naked eyes as the sun hung low and bathed my pupils in its glory, leaving the shadows an inky darkness. Even though I liked the look of the silhouette and a much brighter version, I settled on this exposure with the shadows lightly raised as I think it speaks to the reality of what I saw. The owl and its mate (on a different rock) were using the boulders to shield the sun’s intense gaze, the approaching sunset meaning I was on my way out of the park but for the owls the desert was about to become their hunting ground.
Boolie 