How to Photograph in the Arizona DesertDave Blinder ventured out into the Sonoran sunshine with his versatile Tamron trio: the SP 24-70mm VC, SP 90mm VC Macro, and new SP 150-600mm VC lenses. |
Article by Jenn Gidman Images by Dave Blinder |
Old-time saloons, camouflaged creatures, and spectacular sunrises through the saguaro are par for the course in the Sonoran Desert. For East Coast nature and wildlife photographer Dave Blinder, his first desert photography trip to Arizona revealed aspects of the natural world he had never seen before. "I visited places within a close radius to Tucson, including Patagonia Lake State Park, the Sabino Canyon Recreation Area, and Catalina State Park," he says. "I stayed in a laidback community called Green Valley that served as my launch pad every day. It was terrific to experience these vast amounts of open space where being outdoors is such an important part of daily life: People will get off of work at 5 p.m. and then still go on a 4-mile hike." |
On his survey of the Sonoran landscape, Dave used his Tamron SP 90mm VC Macro, SP 24-70mm VC, and new SP 150-600mm VC lenses. "I had plans before I went to use each lens for a specific purpose," he says. "The 24-70mm is a sharp, fast lens that gives me a very wide angle of view, especially on a full-frame camera, so I wanted to use that for most of my scenics. I knew the fast-focusing 90mm Macro would be ideal for capturing all of the little critters, bugs, and butterflies I like to photograph. And I figured the new 150-600 would be great for small subjects that you don't really want to get too close to, like birds and snakes. And it was great for that, but it also worked really well as a telephoto to get close-ups of the mountain ranges in sharp detail." |
Dave used the 90mm VC Macro lens to showcase desert wildlife, including camouflaged tree frogs and regal-horned lizards, whose color scheme blends into the background to help them avoid predators. "It was close to sunset when I spotted one of those regal-horned lizards-it was a really soft light," he explains. "The lizard crossed the road and disappeared into the gravel; I had a pretty hard time relocating it because of its camouflage. Getting a sharp photo with the sun that low to the horizon was tough, but I got down to the ground and photographed it at 1/30th of a second, F/5, which is still a pretty narrow depth-of-field when you're shooting something close to the lens. The lizard softly melts into the foreground and background and shows how well it's complemented by its surroundings. The 90's Vibration Compensation helped keep the image sharp in the low light." |
In a photo Dave calls a "happy accident," he captured a silhouetted image of a damselfly-a relative of the dragonfly-after he tried to take a picture with flash in Patagonia Lake State Park. "The flash misfired and didn't go off, but when I saw the resulting image I thought it was very cool," he says. "I decided to try to backlight it and frame it as a silhouette and get it a little sharper. I set it up to create even more depth-of-field so you can see the intricate veins and patterns on the damselfly's wings. The 90 is a highly resolving lens: The image is so sharp that you can even see some of the hairs on its face." |
Although Dave usually dedicates much of his picture-taking day to creating images of local creatures and plant life, he wanted to take at least a couple of more "touristy" photos that showed the history of the area. He got his chance in Patagonia, a small town that used to serve as a supply base for nearby mines and ranches. "I was taking a coffee break in between taking pictures in downtown Patagonia when I spotted the Wagon Wheel Saloon," he says. "I shot this handheld using the 24-70, which is great for this kind of broader shot and for capturing the details of the storefront you see here. Plus I love how blue the sky is: There's not a lot of air pollution out in that part of Arizona, so the sky is naturally that darker, richer blue-no polarizing filter required." |
The long focal length of the 150-600mm lens offered Dave maximum reach for when he couldn't get close to his subjects. "The lens does a great job of selectively blurring the foreground and background in my wildlife images," he says. "For a picture I took of a white-winged dove in Greasewood Park, it isolated the bird, with a beautiful bokeh on the larger cactus to add depth to the photo. Meanwhile, the lens resolves the details so well-you can see all of those details of the bird's feathers and the spines of the cactus jumping out at you. I was shooting at a pretty low shutter speed on a tripod, so the Vibration Compensation feature was handy in helping to cut down on image shake and keep the image sharp." |
Another creature Dave found running around in Greasewood: a Harris's antelope squirrel, a chipmunk-like animal that cools off from the hot weather of the Sonoran Desert by "heat dumping"-lying down in a shady area with its belly pressed against the cool ground to release heat from its body. "These squirrels are so charismatic and animated," Dave says. "I was pretty far away, shooting at 550mm, but the image isn't cropped. I was able to pull in enough to show its personality and a catchlight in its eye, but still get some of the background in there." |
An early-morning shot through a saguaro cactus gave Dave the chance to create a classic desert image. "This turned out to be my favorite photo of the trip," he says. "I was out in the morning at the base of the Santa Catalina Mountains in Catalina State Park, and I wanted to get to a place where I could catch some morning sun when I spotted that saguaro. The sun was at just the right height so it was visible through the cactus. I shot it at 150mm and set the aperture to F/22, which showed the detail on the cactus and in the foreground foliage. It also creates that sunburst effect when you stop the lens down that much; you wouldn't see the sun appear like that with a narrower depth-of-field. It's a picture you'd expect to see from a Southwestern desert. Right time, right place, right lens-everything came together in this one photo." |
To see more of Dave Blinder's work, go to www.flickr.com/photos/davidraymond. |