A Quick Photo Trio

Once or twice a year I get a little surprise with a few photos published (and a check!) in the Tucson: Official Destination Guide; a tourist magazine put out by the Metropolitan Tucson Convention and Visitors Bureau (hmmm, quite a mouthful) and soon there will be a copy in every hotel room in Tucson!  This last issue they chose three of my images...and since so many blogs seem to include a requisite amount of self-promotion, I'm telling you about it.

This first image I have posted before, it's a 45 minute-plus exposure of polar star trails...probably on my old-pro standby film Agfachrome 50.  I had intended the organ pipe cactus to be a silohuette, but to my accidental satisfaction, the light of our campfire (about 100 yards away) decided to get in on the action.  The sky is made green by the lights of both Phoenix (about 100 miles away) and Ajo, a small town in southwestern Arizona (about five miles away).  The Destination Guide used this photo for a write up on Kitt Peak.

The second image I self-titled "Brittlebush Road" and is one of my personal favorites.  It was taken on the Bunker Hill Road, southeast of Mammoth, back in March of 1995.  I think of it as "the backroad" into Copper Canyon, a interesting little area to explore in the Galiuro Mountains; featuring mines both old and active, exciting 4-wheel driving, and the old ghosts of the Sibley Mansion and general store.  Interestingly, the Destination Guide identified this as Saguaro National Park, which it isn't (though you can see it from there).

The last photo I took specifically in mind that the editor of a tourist magazine might go for it...a simple sign in a public garden with a bounty of color and desert plants.  They bit.  That said, I've had previous success with photos taken at Boyce Thompson Arboretum, where we found this scene in their demonstration garden. (This time the Guide identifies it as Tucson Botanical Gardens.  I think maybe I shouldn't say anything.)