Holiday Wishes!

It is the supreme hope of myself, my wife Jill and our family that you and yours have a wonderful Christmas holiday and that 2010 will be a year of growth, discovery and prosperity. Have a Happy New Year and be safe as you celebrate, I hope to share my photographic adventures with you in the future and continue to try and deliver on my promise of one picture and one-hundred words. Even if that means I have to occasionally add in filler like this really really really really really really really really really really really long pointless sentence.

James & family
Sahuarita, Arizona

The Great-tailed Grackle

Quiscalus maxicanus to be precise. Not a spectacularly beautiful bird (so I'm told) and one that doesn't immediately spring to mind when thinking of great birds of the desert Southwest. I don't know if it's the striking yellow eye set against black iridescent feathers of the male that gives it such a negative air or the way it skulks around scrounging for food in the urban environment. But when the sun hits it just right it seems to say "I am fearfully and wonderfully made, I am here for a purpose.... perhaps even to make you gaze and wonder".

Hummingbirds

Hummingbirds. I won’t bore you with statistics but will tell you they’re fast. Amazingly fast. Unbelievably fast! And that’s when they’re hovering; they really scoot when going from point A to point B! They come to my feeders and, knowing my way around a camera, I thought I’d quickly capture a few images to add to my catalog. Well humble pie was on the menu for lunch that day ‘cause they’re HARD to photograph! So I’m “back to school” as it were learning and it’s enjoyable, to have to practice a new skill. How boring if success came without effort.

 

Thunderbolt and lightning, very very frightening!

Lightning. Five miles of electric spark charged with a hundred million volts raising the air temperature around it to fifty-thousand degrees. Branches from the main bolt twist and writhe with no sense of direction, some connecting with solid matter while others touch nothing but air. One of the earth’s great double-edged swords, death can reach those as far as ten miles away beneath clear skies yet we will look and drive to watch it strike and split the sky. I once heard thunder during a snowstorm in the mid-west but alas, it escaped me. Beauty and danger all in one.

I don't understand...

There are many things in this world I don’t understand: why Cheeto dust sticks to your fingers but gold dust doesn’t is an example. Another is how the Gilded flicker can land on a Saguaro cactus without becoming some sort of feathered sis kabob. Early each morning I sit and read the paper and have a cup of coffee on the patio and watch them (as well as Gila woodpeckers, Cactus wrens and others) and simply marvel at it all. Flight alone is cool, controlled flight into a cactus crown is something else. God sure has engineered some amazing sights.

Welcome to One Picture One-Hundred Words!

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. They also say that revolutions are always verbose, but that’s neither here nor there. What I will say is that this blog has two goals: to share my photography with a wider audience and to force myself to talk about those images in 100 words; no more, no less.

This is the next step in my blogging experience. I originally started with “American Yank in England” about the sights seen by me while living in rural Norfolk county, England but for some strange reason we didn’t stay there forever (OK not so strange as our tour of duty at RAF Lakenheath was over). So, here we are. And since this is my introductory post I’ve allowed myself exactly one-hundred and thirty-two words.


Cheers,

James O’Rear