During the past few weeks, despite the appalling heat, I have been enjoying a lot of adventuring and rockhounding in the Sonoran Desert. When I am out in the field I always carry a little pocket Nikon digital camera with me. I need a camera or three, primarily, to document our expedition work, but I also like to pause and take pictures of the life around us. I have always been fascinated by the details of the natural world, particularly patterns and shapes. Stopping to appreciate them for a moment, here and there, can be a welcome break from sometimes arduous field work.

A good macro (close-up) lens allows an observant and patient photographer to examine the minutiae of the plants and animals that live with us here in the Sonoran Desert—a unique habitat teeming with natural wonders, some of them not found anywhere else in the world.

In the old days, the dedicated photographer had to haul a bulky macro lens around in the camera bag and mount it on an SLR for those close-up shots. Digital cameras, with their built-in macros, have made those brief journeys to inner space so very much easier, but no less fascinating.

Here are some details from this week’s adventures.

Photographs © by Geoffrey Notkin. All rights reserved. No reproduction without written permission.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 9th, 2009 at 9:17 pm and is filed under Desert Flora, Photography, Sonoran Wildlife, Technology. Tags for this post: Bisbee Beehive cactus, cacti, Ferocactus wislizenii, horned toad, macro photography, mesquite tree, nature photography, Phrynosoma sp., Sonoran Desert. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.