Green!

Ron NiebruggeAnza-Borrego, California, Photos, Travel 4 Comments

Green!

Cactus from today in Anza-Borrego State Park, California.

After spending many months in a black and white world – winter in Alaska – seeing anything green just look amazing! 

Speaking of green, many area of Anza-Borrego are really green right now – and they received another half an inch of rain here just yesterday!  Even before yesterday’s rain, this was reported in the Borrego Sun;

Anza-Borrego Desert State Park Ranger Steve Bier reported the area is “certainly looking good” for a spring wildflower crop, he said predicting it could arrive as early as late February.  Some plants in Borrego Palm Canyon, he said are just “waiting to go”.

I must admit, we are here a bit early, I saw very few flowers today – but you can tell there should be some great areas showing in the next few weeks!

New Computer – Falcon Northwest

Ron NiebruggeCalifornia, Miscellaneous, Photos, Travel, Wildlife 12 Comments

Quail

I had always heard that best way to bring attention to a blog is to write something controversial.  Little did I know, my decisions to replace my digital darkroom with a PC instead of a Mac might be controversial, but 24 comments and a bunch of links later, it was by far my most active posting.  There actually was a lot of valuable feedback in that post from many people and I really appreciate it. 

So now that I have used my new Falcon Northwest digital darkroom for a few weeks, I thought I better provide an update to that threaed.  And since I’m sitting on a plane – what a perfect time to write!Read More

Desert Wildflower Updates

Ron NiebruggeCalifornia, Photos, Travel 4 Comments

Desert Wildflowers

Imperial Sand Dunes, California.

In a couple weeks, we will be hitting the desert area for a couple of months, and wildflower conditions are sounding better and better thanks to another large storm.  It may not be a huge bloom, but it should definitely be at least average, and probably above average – a big improvement over the last 2 years!Read More

2008 Desert Wildflower Forecast

Ron NiebruggeAnza-Borrego, California, Photos, Travel 6 Comments

Carrizo Badlands Overlook in Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, California.
Carrizo Badlands Overlook in Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, California.

Well now I’m officially excited about the wildflower prospects for this year!  Anza-Borrego just received another .4 inches of rain in the last few days to go with the .88 earlier this year, and the person I just talked to at the visitor center said more could still fall today.  It may not be a huge year like 2005, but unlike the past two years, there should be at least some wildflower activity.  I could tell the ranger was excited even though she did say there are no guarantees.  Some of the other southwest desert areas sound even more promising.  Read More

Saturation Masks

Ron NiebruggeCalifornia, How to, Photos, Travel 9 Comments

Beavertail Cactus

I recently discovered a wonderful new Photoshop tool – the use of saturation masks.  This is somewhat of an advanced tool – if you don’t use layers and masks in Photoshop (you should), this won’t make much sense, but I do believe many subscribers here may find it useful.Read More

Poppy

Ron NiebruggeCalifornia, Photos, Travel 2 Comments

Poppy

A bumble bee view of a California Poppy at the Antelope Valley Poppy Reserve, Mojave Desert, California.

This fun technique is one I would like to play around with some more this winter.  What I do is put my smallest extension tube on a wide angle lens.  This now gives me the ability to focus very close.  I basically have the lens sitting in the flower, and I’m able to focus on portions of the flower that are a mere fraction of an inch from the front of the lens.  With certain wide angle lenses, I can actually focus on the front of the lens.Read More

Death Valley Wildflowers

Ron NiebruggeCalifornia, Photos, Travel 4 Comments

Death Valley Wildflowers

Death Valley National Park, California.

Well continuing with the desert wildflower theme, here is a photo of Death Valley from the amazing winter of 2005.  Hard to imagine Death Valley with huge meadows of wildflowers, but this is what it was like that year.  Here are more Death Valley Photos.

Desert Candles

Ron NiebruggeCalifornia, Photos, Travel 4 Comments

Desert Candles

I wanted to show the size of the desert candles from yesterday’s post – I needed a way to show scale, so I put my camera on self timer and sorta posed with the unique wildflowers. 

This is a pretty rare photo – not because it is hard to find desert candles, although it is – but it is more rare for me to be in front of the camera!