A Wordless Wednesday for the Birds...at the AZ Sonora Desert Museum Raptor Free Flight

...from a few days ago; my wife and I went to the Raptor Free Flight at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum. We go just about every year--it only takes place from October through April...

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More information available here:

http://www.afar.com/highlights/up-close-at-the-raptor-free-flight 

http://www.desertmuseum.org/about/articles/afar.php 

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And while this bird is definitely not a raptor,

Lilac Crowned parrots live in the dry deciduous

forests on the southern fringes of the Sonoran Desert: 

Desert wildflowers--an early spring in Tucson this year

We've had three record-breaking warm days in a row now--88 on Saturday, 85 Sunday, and 86 today. Even for Tucson, this is about 15-20 degrees above normal. 

Last year, around this time, we had snow:

This year, we're having wildflowers:

Fairy duster, also called 'mock mesquite,' in the foothills around Sabino Canyon

This is all about a month earlier than normal.
And here are a few spots to see them.

Santa Catalina prairie clover, along the loop road in Saguaro National Park East

Brittlebush beginning to bloom, here in Saguaro National Park

Desert globemallow, along the Rillito trail

It's too early to know yet if we'll get the carpets of poppies and lupine later in some areas, like this scene from last year, along the Sutherland Trail in Catalina State Park:

The timing and temperatures have to be just right...stay tuned...

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So, it's turning out to be an early spring...

...while at the same time, on a recent run in Sabino Canyon,

this particular cottonwood was still hanging on to last fall's leaves...

...and about a quarter-mile away in the canyon, 
the first flush of spring on these cottonwoods:

Crazy canyon micro-climates...

Closer to home,

a sure sign of spring in our backyard--

a close-up of some lemon blooms,

just about to open:

(They always remind me of Chinese hats.)

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...Also...I've decided to discontinue the other blog, "snapseeded." 

Here's the last post from there:

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Yeah, it's been a few months since I last posted.

I'll explain more in a bit...

But first, some recent news.

Just a few weeks ago, I found out that this photo

was one of this year's honorable mentions 

in the Mobile Photography Awards

Travel category:

"Changing of the Guard,

through Gwanghwamun Gate"

(taken in Seoul, June 2011, iPhone4,

edited with snapseed and BigLens)

That trip to Korea several summers ago was when I first had my eyes opened to mobile photography...and then about 7 months later, after I got the snapseed app, I began this blog...

And, in

TZIPAC's upcoming special issue of 

43mm magazine,

(an exposé on mobile photography)

I'm honored to be published

on pages 124-127:

Peruse this issue's pages...

It truly is an honor to share page-space with some of today's great mobile-photography artists...

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So, yes, it's been a few months since I last posted.

I'd been re-thinking if/how to proceed with this blog--which began with my initial interest in mobile photography. I can hardly believe it's already been two years since I began it...I averaged 3 posts per month the first year, but last year, I only posted a couple of dozen times...

One of my posts, back in 2012, even caught the eye of the snapseed team and was featured in their newsletter: http://snapseeded.blogspot.com/2012/03/step-by-step-from-sidewalk-in-insadong.html 

It was a step-by-step 'how-to' showing the potential of snapseed, which back then, hadn't become as well-known...

But since then, while I still use snapseed as my 'go-to' editing app--my 'intial digital darkroom' for my iPhone-photos--I've incorporated other apps into my 'toolbox,' and it no longer seems reasonable to continue a blog about iphoneography which features only one app in its title. 

And so, after two years, this is the last post for snapseeded...

I'll continue posting iphoneography--and even that term, I wonder how much longer it will 'live'--on my other blog, allophile.com. 

It's been such an interesting time to be involved with photography and image-making, as phone-cameras have exploded...Art, journalism, travel-photography--all are being affected by what many are calling a 'new democratization' of photography due to mobile photo technology...I'm looking forward to seeing how it all will continue to evolve...

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I think back to what I wrote in the first post of this blog...

I'll re-post it here:

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With snapseed so ideal for travel-photos, for capturing and playing with a sense of place,

this description of travel, by writer Rebecca Solnit, comes to mind:

"Perhaps people travel for pleasure because the visual is much more memorable than the tangible, the seen than the felt.  At the time, traveling may be nothing more than a series of discomforts in magnificent settings:  running for the train to paradise in a heat wave, carrying an ever heavier pack in alpine splendor, seeing sublime ruins with stomach trouble. Yet it is the field of images and not the body of sensations that lingers.  My mother once remarked that if women remembered what childbirth felt like, no one would have more than one child.  And so I, third child of a third child, owe my existence to forgetting and my taste for travels to the dominance of the eye..."

(--from A Book of Migrations)

"The field of images...the dominance of the eye..."

     ...all to be played with in the palm of one's hand...      

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Let's see where it continues to go...

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It's all here, for now...