I planned my passage through southern Arizona when the giant saguaros would be in bloom. I always enjoy shooting flowers, but these blooms posed a new problem for me - they were all twenty to thirty feet above ground. As I hiked around exposing film on all sorts of life, I not only came across a good steep hill, but it had a large healthy cactus growing right next to it. Thanking mother nature for making this possible, I set up on the side of the hill and maxed out my largest zoom lens to capture these blooms.

tall Saguaro cactus towering over others in southern Arizona

this is a shot of the massive amounts of water going over Niagara Falls (Canadian side).

following a simple trail through an Oregon woods, i enjoyed the surrounding environment of wildflowers, boulder outcrops, and thick forest. About a half-an-hour in, i came across Proxy Falls in early afternoon light peeking through the trees and in a few minutes found a good location to begin the camera setup process. While immersed in the constantly changing light readings, i heard another hiker nearby, but was only moments away from capturing this shot so i didn't break my concentration. After i captured the event, i was greatly surprised to notice a small crowd of 8 other hikers with cameras and tripods all encircled behind me shooting over my shoulders. I learned they were on a guided photo tour group and this was a good stop.

distant wall of sandstone in warm evening light (Utah wilderness)

Many northern states like Montana have an abundance of colourful stones delivered by glaciers long ago. These happen to be at the edge of a lake under a few inches of water. The entire beach area and bottom of the lake (as far as I could see) was covered in this manner and the stones just under the water provided great rich colour with minimal wave distortion. To be able to shoot straight down and not have any perspective in the stone pattern, I stood in the water and waited for the ripples to disappear before capturing this neat texture image.