We drove Bush Highway from Mesa to the bridge today to see the extent of damage from the fire. There's a section where it was so hot that it burned the supports for the railings and the railing is all twisted. Pretty bad right there. Most of the rest looks sort of spotty and probably further away from the road. Some of the pull-offs are closed. We couldn't get down to where the huge cactus is to see if it survived. Most of the saguaro that burned seemed to be faring sort of OK. I guess they had enough water stored inside. They're blooming. One was obviously toast. We did drive in to see how the second pull-off fared. We saw no damage and my favorite tree was still there, looking as much on tiptoe as usual!

The fine print: Shot with SX50 on aperture preferred, f8 at 200, ISO 200, auto WB

Anyway, I love this tree. Enjoy. Comments welcome.

On April 15th I posted a photo of a Canada goose on her nest at out local park/Senior Center. Several people asked that I post images when they hatched so... We've been checking on them almost daily since then. This past Saturday mamma was still on the nest and no goslings were evident. Late yesterday, Sunday afternoon, we checked and low and behold there were seven goslings with mom in the pond. A quick check of the nest and sure enough, 7 empty eggs...they all hatched! Here are photos of the happy family!

Learning my way around a digital world decades after leaving a career in the film (stills only). ALL opinion/criticism, hopefully constructive are appreciated.

One HUGE mistake. In Death Valley, with amazing night skies overhead, spent a couple of hours trying to capture the stars with and without trails. My wife says I looked like I knew what I was doing. Felt like it too, that is until I got back to the hotel, uploaded to my laptop and realized that ISO had been set to 100 the whole time! I'd figured the previews were dark, because, well, it was dark! That's one mistake I won't make again. Anyway, thanks to all my fellow hogs out there.