In Focus Daily

For the first time in a very long time, I spent early morning on my patio with a cup of coffee, the soothing sounds of the gurgling of my fountain, and of course, my hummers. It’s been so long since I’ve just sat and watched and talked to them that I didn’t think they’d be comfortable around me but this guy perched just a few feet away from me, nodded off a couple times, defended his feeders from other hummers, looked over at me occasionally, and finally, after about half an hour, stretched his wings and flew off. He’s got a cluster of pin feathers emerging behind his left eye. I think he’s one of the three male Anna’s Hummingbirds who grew up here last year. I’m going to have to think of a name for him.

I wasn’t expecting to see the Milky Way while I was in Monument Valley but when I looked out from my balcony on our first night there, I could see the Milky Way over Mitchell Mesa. There were a few unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) streaking through the sky (or perhaps only slogging through since this was a 13 second exposure) but they were there. UAP is apparently the PC way to describe what used to be known as UFOs. What amazed me was the sheer number of stars filling the sky.

One of the few things I remember learning from my high school chemistry class is the order of the colors of the rainbow, abbreviated by the initials of the colors, ROYGBIV. As I mentioned in my post yesterday, when there is a double rainbow, the reflection is VIBGYOR, something I just learned a few days ago. Somehow, those initials don’t roll as easily off the tongue, but this image illustrates it pretty well.

As the clouds built up on our last afternoon in Monument Valley, I had a time lapse running from the balcony of my room.

The morning rainbow at Monument Valley was one of the most vivid rainbows I think I’ve ever seen. And, it was a double rainbow at that although the more transparent outer rainbow is just barely visible at the left of the image. My friend Emerson pointed out to me that when there is a double rainbow, the outer, paler rainbow is actually a reflection of the main rainbow and instead of the standard red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet (ROYGBIV) order of the colors, the outer rainbow is its reflection so it is VIBGYOR. If you look closely at the outer rainbow, you’ll see it.

The weather changed as we sat on the outdoor deck near the restaurant at The View watching the sunset in Monument Valley on our last evening. The color in the sky disappeared quickly, the clouds piled up, and thunderheads rolled in so I shot this scene in black and white to give emphasis to the impending storm.

On our last evening in Monument Valley, we had quite the light show! When the pouring rains came, I had to run out to the balcony to save my camera from getting drenched before the light show was over but I did manage to capture this cloud to cloud strike.

Yesterday morning’s sunrise here in Monument Valley was the most spectacular we’ve had this week. Gorgeous clouds moved in and it even sprinkled while I was shooting this scene.

Although I try not to anthropomorphize animal behavior, I do have a tendency to anthropomorphize inanimate objects like rocks. I see faces and other man-made and artificial features in stone and since I’m currently visiting Monument Valley and environs, that tendency is now front and center. I have just discovered that this tendency of mine stems from something called pareidolia which is the human brain’s instinct to spot familiar shapes in random patterns. Yesterday, we visited the Valley of the Gods near Mexican Hat, Utah, a rugged but scenic sandstone valley with towering red mesas, buttes, and pinnacles that is considered by some to be a miniature Monument Valley. One of the rock formations that jumped out at me looked like the corner of an ancient Greek or Roman building constructed using the Corinthian architectural order, which columns are ornate and decorated with acanthus leaves. This mesa in the Valley of the Gods has a square corner that looked to me like a column with a capital decorated with carved acanthus leaves and small corner scrolls. When I blurted that out to my photographer friends, no one could see it but me. I stand by my illusion.

Three iconic buttes of Monument Valley are West Mitten Butte, East Mitten Butte, and Merrick Butte, seen above, left to right, with Mitchell Mesa behind West Mitten Butte. I wake up every morning to a view of those three buttes, but not this view. It is amazing to see how the look of each mesa and butte changes as you drive the loop. We drove to Ford’s Point lookout which is one of the iconic movie locations that John Ford used to film a number of John Wayne movies. This is the view that John Wayne must have had of these buttes.

Sunrise at Monument Valley is always spectacular and yesterday morning was not exception. The marvelous thing about shooting sunrise here is that we’re able to shoot from our third floor balconies at The View inside the Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park. In my “view” it’s the only hotel with “view” in its name that actually lives up to the hype. This is East Mitten seconds before the sun poked above the horizon.

On my last evening in Montana, we visited the Ravalli County Airport where helicopters fighting the Moose Creek Fire were returning at day’s end. This Skycrane heavy-lift helicopter, which sucks up massive amounts of water from lakes and drops it on wildfires, came in while we were there. I looked up the tail number, which is closer to the nose on this aircraft, and discovered that it is more than 50 years old. Glad it’s still serving.

Sundown at Rattlesnake Butte a couple of weeks ago in Montana.

I couldn’t help fawning over Bambi when I was in Montana visiting Moose and Sharon. In fact, there were three Bambis, a set of twins and a singleton.

What fascinates me about woodpeckers is how they use their tails to support themselves. Those tail feathers are very strong and stiff to help hold their weight against a tree trunk while they pound hard with their heavy beaks. According to the American Bird Conservancy, woodpeckers’ tails act as a third leg along with their feet (two toes forward, two toes backward), sort of a tripod support that helps with shock absorption and braces them when they hammer trees with their beaks. This is a Hairy Woodpecker, using its tail to brace against the Ponderosa Pine on Moose’s ranch last week.

Montana wasn’t all smoky sunrises and silky waterfalls. We did come across a small flock of young Cedar Waxwings along the river’s edge. They were flying after hatching nymphs on the surface of the water where rafts of algae and water plants floated. These two were closely watching the water’s surface and did not seem too worried about our approach to photograph them.

A 90 second exposure calmed the rumbling Great Falls at Ryan Dam in Montana, smoothing them into a silky flow.

The week I spent in Great Falls, Montana created some of the most spectacular sunrises and sunsets I’ve ever seen. We were at Ryan Dam photographing the falls and I looked behind me just after 6 AM to see godbeams streaking out from behind a hilltop as the sun was beginning to rise. Wow.

More than one hundred years ago, these windows on the powerhouse at Ryan Dam first looked over the largest falls in Great Falls, Montana. Today, the powerhouse is still in use but, as in many old buildings, many of the windows panes are missing.

Another smoky sunrise in Montana.