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| West Fork Black River, White Mountains Arizona |
Temperatures in the low desert of Arizona this time of year are
somewhere between the surface of Mars and a deep fryer. You might think I’d
have enough sense to gain some altitude for summer photography projects, but
you wouldn’t be entirely correct.
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| Waddell, Arizona |
Several areas around Phoenix sport floral agriculture,
spectacular enough, I thought, to justify the inconvenience of the heat and the
3:00 AM wake up required to get there in good light. I’d been thinking about the roses for years,
and more so since I started flying the drone. Around Waddell Arizona there are rose
fields. The farmers are not selling
blooms, though, they’re selling desert-adapted rose bushes for landscaping. Varieties are planted together in several rows
and extravagant blocks of color reveal themselves at blooming time. The bad news; these fields are located in Luke
Air Force Base airspace. I can ask
permission to fly my drone there, but word has it that I’ll never hear back
from Luke. A friend who flies drones
commercially and has a rather impressive history with the Air Force (I’ll omit
further details in order for him to remain anonymous) suggested I just fly it;
what’s the worst that could happen? No,
not so much my style. My reasonable but
not perfect solution was to press into service an 18-foot pole my husband had
from his survey days. We found it cleaning
out the garage, but that’s another story. I fitted it with a tripod head and
was off.
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| Waddell, Arizona |
So, I’m driving around 45 minutes before sunrise, squinting
in the near-dark and cursing at the many road closures and detours. I would say driving in circles, but the
geometry was infinitely more complex. There was one field I liked. Finally, I concluded that the only workable
angle was from a freeway offramp, near an 18-wheeler apparently parked for the
night. Walking back and forth with my
18-foot pole, I perturbed the driver’s dog, who awakened his human with his
crazed barking. I’ll give the driver
attitude points for his friendly wave.
Maybe he was blissful because he got to sleep to the scent of roses.
Maybe he was laughing at my pole.
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| Sunflowers, Maricopa Arizona |
From there, I drove to a sunflower field outside
Maricopa. I’d been seeing images of it on
social media, so I jumped on the photographic bandwagon. There I could put the aircraft up, thank
goodness. I’ve mentioned before that I have a dayglo vest that proclaims me an
FAA-certified Drone Pilot. The point,
more than pride and vanity, is to convince people that I belong there, and that
they should leave me (the heck) alone when I’m flying. That morning, because of the vest, I met a
photographer from a local news station who let me know he’d be flying a drone,
too. We had a chance to look out for
each other, a benefit of the dorky vest I’d not imagined.
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| Sunflower backlighted, Maricopa Arizona |
I had some fun with “land” camera shooting, too. Since sunflowers are heliotropic (tend to face
the sun), that can be a little challenging.
Things photographed with light directly on them look flat and a bit
boring. I played with this by shooting
from other angles and casting shade.
Incidentally, for those of you who remember the Polaroid Land
Camera, it was first manufactured in 1948, long before camera drones, and the
name reflects the surname of the inventor, not the terrain it was meant to be
used upon.
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| Black River Watershed, White Mountains Arizona |
All this was an adventure, but I was ready for more
comfortable temperatures. There was a
family trip to the White Mountains, interrupted by delightful trip to Urgent
Care in Pinetop-Lakeside. My husband quickly recovered with medication, and we
scooted back out camping. This is my
favorite of the aerial images from that trip.
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| Ferns & Iris in the forest, White Mountains Arizona |
The wild Rocky Mountain Iris were blooming as well. Summer at 7500 feet is much lovelier than in
the desert, flowers notwithstanding.
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| Blue Ridge Reservoir aerial, Arizona |
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| East Clear Creek aerial Arizona |
We were able to visit some favorite (“fishy” as my husband
says) Mogollon Rim Country spots as well.
These looked cool with a new, higher perspective.
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| Marco in a "fishy" place, White Mountains Arizona |
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