Waterfalls are one of my favorite scenes to shoot, period.  Usually, a tripod is essential to capture the crisp surroundings of the water while slowing down the shutter enough to create that common blur effect to the falling water itself.  But this time, I experimented a bit with hand-holding the camera.  All these photos in this post were taken with camera-in-hand (D2h, 105mm f/2.8 Micro).

Medera Canyon in the Coronado National Forest is a beautiful place to shoot, and all of these shots were taken within about 20-yards of each other.  Streams are common-place in the forest, and winter snows quickly turns these peaceful little streams into gushing torrents upon snow melt.

I reduced the shutter speed to around 1/15th of a second for the majority of these shots, carefully bracing myself against rocks, logs and other natural objects to help reduce camera shake.  It was an interesting experiment and one that I’m glad that I took.

Toying with the idea of going back out there with a wide angle and perhaps a tripod, at early evening, to capture the water at full-blur with the sharp, bold colors of the setting sun illuminating this gentle stream.  The experience should not disappoint.

I hadn’t taken my camera out in a while, so I decided to spend a Saturday morning in early September capturing scenes in downtown Tucson, Arizona.  Tucson streets get very busy during the day, and strolling through the city streets before thousands of people descend upon the downtown area was a pleasant change.  All photos were taken with my Nikon D-70 and 17-35 f/2.8 AF-S.

Skrappys is a youth performing arts center in Tucson.  Covered with tasteful graffiti, this place continues to be a excellent photo opportunity for Tucson photogs.

Especially in black and white, this shots depicts the typical western city landscape fairly well.

Iron fences are commonplace in downtown Tucson.  Here, I closed down my lens to f/2.8 and focused on the third pillar in from the right.  The 17-35 still amazes me when I close down the aperture.  It remains tack sharp, background blur smooth and absolutely no light-loss around the edges of the frame.

Street lights mounted on buildings are also common in the downtown area.  Gives a slightly more elegant impression of the area.  Notice how well the lens picked up the individual grains of stucco on the wall.

Downtown memorial area of several wars fought, in large part, by the United States.