{"id":13864,"date":"2013-03-31T03:00:58","date_gmt":"2013-03-31T09:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=13864"},"modified":"2013-03-30T19:33:58","modified_gmt":"2013-03-31T01:33:58","slug":"a-spring-morning-in-the-west-desert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2013\/03\/31\/a-spring-morning-in-the-west-desert\/","title":{"rendered":"A Spring Morning In The West Desert"},"content":{"rendered":"

We had a wonderful\u00a0time out on the west desert again this morning.\u00a0 The light was great, the birds were\u00a0singing and\u00a0everything was clear, crisp and clean.\u00a0 This post is meant to give you a feel for what it was like.\u00a0 I didn’t get any stunning photos so don’t expect any here but I think you might enjoy the variety of what we experienced.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"horned<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a01\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light (these settings were a mistake for the situation)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

The Horned Larks like to perch on rocks this time of year.\u00a0 This is the male.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"horned<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a01\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 640, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

And this is the female, singing.\u00a0 Their soft, subtle\u00a0call is music to my ears but you have to be quite close to appreciate it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"western<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a01\/4000, f\/5.6, ISO 640, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, natural light<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

I was just the right distance from this singing\u00a0Western Meadowlark for a take-off shot but when\u00a0it launched it\u00a0did so in the wrong direction (behind it) so I didn’t get that shot.\u00a0 I wish I’d been closer for this static image but still liked it.\u00a0 For you photogs, my\u00a0settings were meant for the take-off.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"mule<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a01\/640, f\/8, ISO 500, 100-400 @ 130mm,\u00a0natural light<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

This is what it’s like when 12 huge ears are pointed directly at you.\u00a0 These Mule Deer were interested in us for a few moments but fairly quickly they became unconcerned…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"mule<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/1600, f\/7.1, ISO 640, 100-400 @ 300mm, natural light<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

and jumped a fence to leisurely cross the dirt road right in front of us.\u00a0 Not a great shot, but interesting nonetheless, I thought.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"moon<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a01\/800, f\/16, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

This photo was taken in full daylight\u00a0at 8:07 AM, just as the moon began to drop behind the mountains to the west.\u00a0 It’s amazing just how fast the moon seems to move when it’s so close to whatever\u00a0forms the horizon.\u00a0 I decided to post a large version of this image for the moon detail.\u00a0 Please forgive the obnoxiously placed copyright logo.<\/p>\n

I love Utah’s west desert.\u00a0 I remember when I was a\u00a0relatively young squirt, soon after moving here from NW Montana 45 years ago, thinking that Utah was largely a\u00a0wasteland compared to the alpine splendors I’d left up north.\u00a0\u00a0Boy, was I ever wrong!\u00a0 We have our own extensive mountain splendors but in addition we have the Colorado Plateau with its spectacular red rock country, the\u00a0Great Basin with all that includes, huge\u00a0wild areas like the San Rafael Swell and the Book Cliffs and the list goes on.\u00a0 About the only thing we don’t have is a true ocean.\u00a0 But instead we have the unique\u00a0Great Salt\u00a0Lake and all of its wetlands.\u00a0 I’m convinced that no other state has the variety of\u00a0physiography that we do.<\/p>\n

Yes, we do have some social and political quirks (in my opinion) that can occasionally\u00a0try one’s patience but I don’t think Utah can be beat when it comes to the variety of what we have to offer in our landscapes, flora and fauna.<\/p>\n

That said, I still love Montana and I go “home” several times\u00a0every year\u00a0but it’s just\u00a0too damned cold up there for me in the winter…<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We had a wonderful time out on the west desert again this morning. The light was great, the birds were singing and everything was clear, crisp and clean. This post is meant to give you a feel for what it was like. <\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[334,354,370],"tags":[174,220,1359,311,533,323],"class_list":["post-13864","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birds","category-horned-larks","category-western-meadowlarks","tag-horned-lark","tag-montana-2","tag-mule-deer","tag-utah-2","tag-west-desert","tag-western-meadowlark"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-3BC","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13864","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13864"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13864\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}