David's Images of the Day Photoblog
Prior to leaving Sedona, we spent the morning photographing the morning sun lighting up the red rock buttes. I set up a Nikon D4 camera and 16 mm f/2.8 fisheye lens to record a time-lapse video. I managed to walk in front of the camera a few times.
Monarch Butterfly. Eleven-years ago while driving home from work I saw purple wild flowers on the side of the road at an abandoned golf course in Hillsborough. I pulled over to see if there was a picture. The purple wildflowers attracted dozens of Monarch butterflies providing more colors. I took this image with my favorite 80-400 mm telephoto zoom lens. The hard part was working at the minimum focus distance for the lens (~ 7 feet). I needed to keep stepping back to get the image in focus. One more reason I always have a camera with me.
Every year after that I would check the place at the same time of the year, but never saw as many wildflowers or Monarch Butterflies. The last several years the place became a construction site for a highway bypass and interchange. Now that the construction is complete and the bypass open, it looks like wildflowers may come back. We will see if the Monarch Butterflies come back in the future.
Individual images in the slideshow can be viewed here.