[Leica] Some sexy shots from the Sonoran Desert

[abridge at gmail.com (Adam Bridge)]

This past week we celebrated my wife's birthday with a trip to our
place in Black Canyon, Arizona.

The morning of her birthday we were about to drive off to Tucson when
we saw the small cactus had decided to bloom. We quickly unpacked our
cameras to catch a few shots - figuring we'd come back the next day
and break out the tripods.

Here's the collection of flowers on top of the cactus array:

<http://www.splitsecondfilms.com/2005/05/05/_L3U2116-rev1.jpg>

A close-up of a single blossom. Somehow in doing this the colors have
become a bit more saturated.

<http://www.splitsecondfilms.com/2005/05/05/_L3U2122.jpg>

The inside of the flower has this formation that is like another flower 
inside:

<http://www.splitsecondfilms.com/2005/05/05/_L3U2128.jpg>

When we returned we discovered that the cactus bloomed for only a
single day - the blossoms had collapsed and lay like deflated balloons
across the plant onto the ground.

The saguaros are also in bloom - a challenge: how to photograph the
blossoms when they are two stories up in the air. Our solution: find a
back road with a precipitous verge and an appropriately placed
saguaro. We found a couple of those:

<http://www.splitsecondfilms.com/2005/05/07/_L3U2219.jpg>

<http://www.splitsecondfilms.com/2005/05/07/_L3U2231.jpg>

and in the process found this quail perched on a limb looking for a mate:

<http://www.splitsecondfilms.com/2005/05/07/_L3U2257.jpg>

Here he's giving his best song:

<http://www.splitsecondfilms.com/2005/05/07/_L3U2260.jpg>

And now he's about to fly on to another bush.

<http://www.splitsecondfilms.com/2005/05/07/_L3U2276.jpg>

The first image in this sequence was done with the Canon 24-70 f2.8L,
the other blossom closeups were done with the 100 APO - hand-held.

The first quail image was shot with the 280 telyt (hand held) while
the rest are with the 560 f5.6 and are also hand-held.

Comments are most welcome.

Adam