Ladee's Travels

A coworker wants to practice photography skills for an upcoming trip so we went to Tempe Town Lake to capture some sunset shots.

I am always excited when there is a full moon.  I drove to several places this afternoon to scout out my "ideal spot" for tonight's event.  I have found a new favorite. Pending thunderstorms threatened to block the full moon, but I was happy to be out shooting.  Keeping a positive attitude (not always easy when it is 108 in the desert), I set up the tripod and tested the settings. I was disappointed by the cloud cover in the direction of the moon, but was able to get a few photographs before it was hidden.  The sunset, however, did not disappoint. Here are the photos, in the order that I took them.  Running back and forth from sunset to moonrise!! Thunderstorms on the way in and I was able to catch a lightning strike in the east. Facing the northwest.  The tower is at the Phoenix airport. North east, big zoom, playing with the zoom lens to see what I could get. The virga (the dark thin lines coming down from the cloud...rain!) near down...

Curiosity got the best of me and I opened my "PhotoPills" app on my phone to see get time information for the full moon rise and the sunset.  As luck would have it, both would occur within an hour or so of each other.  And the best spot would be from the Charles Bridge, a famous bridge in the Old Town part of Prague.  I found a few travelers from the group that were open to walking tonight (remember, we arrived in Prague this afternoon!!).  We had to have a nice pace to get through the town and to the bridge with enough time to scout out the perfect spot.  Jim knew the way, so off I went with sisters Martha and Jane. We started off on our street Na Porcini to nám. Republic (Republic Square).  In the distance I see the top of a beautiful building dome.  This is Francouzská restaurace Art Nouveau , a beautifully restored art nouveau restaurant.  I can't stop to visit now, but you can take a brief pause and look at the old and new photos here...

The Peralta Trail is located on the southwest edge of the Superstition Wilderness in Gold Canyon east of the Phoenix metropolitan area.  The colors were better than expected. A fellow photographer is shown in the bottom right corner working on lighting the cactus for his photo. I had the camera packed up and put away.  I turned around to look back up the trail and the view was so beautiful.  You can see the starburst light on other photographers returning to the meet up area.

I saw the sunset at the Cedarbrook Golf Course the night that we met for the Pre-Reunion gathering.  I didn't have my camera with me that night so I went there a few nights later to see what I could capture. The first photo is about 60 minutes before sunset.  Light was filtered by the grey clouds.  We were rewarded for our wait.  The clouds stayed high and the sun cast golden light as it sank in the sky.  This shot is looking north, north east.  I don't know how people can play golf with these beautiful views.  One more photograph as the sun sank from view.

Cathedral Rock in Sedona was the scene of today's adventure.  I stopped by to pick up Karl in my new Jeep Patriot 4x4 and off we went to meet a group of photographers venturing to Cathedral Rock in Sedona.  As I prepare the photographs for this post, I see that today's learning was mainly around making panoramic shots.  In my opinion, the views pushed me to do this as a single photo doesn't capture the wide vistas with the vibrant colors of rock, sky and vegetation. We left Phoenix early and had a lot of time to stop at viewing points that I normally drive by.  Here is a panoramic with the dramatic rocks and sky. We had a little time so we drove in to Sedona and had coffee at The Hidden Garden Cafe at the Tlaquepaque shopping area. We met the group leaders at Weber's IGA Parking lot (corner of Highway 179 and Verde Valley School Road) at 5PM.  We then drove down Verde Valley School Road, past where the pavement ends and parked in the dirt parki...