Robert Thoresen
Helen Phillips’ winning first place photograph Two Wheel Cart was taken in Tubac three years ago. The afternoon sun cast interesting shadows and the wagon draws one’s eyes down to the pot of plants. Helen usually likes pictures popping with color but this one is sedate and natural. No after effects were done except for cropping. Helen does have an affinity for the Tubac area. Canon PowerShot SX 30-15, f/4.5, 1/320 sec, ISO 200, focal length 35mm, aperture 5.0, No flash. Last month her image of the granary behind the Tumacacori Mission church placed second in the Things in a Row themed contest.
April’s theme was Two Wheeled Transportation and was limited to photographs taken in the last six years. Contest rules put no location requirements on submissions but all three placed photographs used Arizona locations in the photographs.
Colorful Bikes, Jeff Krueger’s entry, placed second. Jeff has found a whole community of colorful murals, painted and decorated utility boxes around ASU’s downtown Phoenix campus. He has actually put a gallery of such images on his website. While wandering around downtown Phoenix (he does a lot of wandering since retirement), he came across a café with a mural on the front of the building and a grouping of painted bicycles forming a sort of fence around the front. He felt it was fitting for the contest theme. If he had taken the picture a month earlier, it would have also been fitting for March’s contest theme. Canon EOS 5D Mark III, f/14, 1/80 sec, ISO 100, focal length 250mm, aperture 5.0, no flash.
The evening image from Bisbee’s Brewery Gulch garnered club president Patricia Thoresen’s Bratwurst a third place finish. After departing the Copper Queen an hour before dinner at La Roca, she wanted to try her SONY NEX-5R for some night scene shots. After presetting her camera to night scene mode, she traveled down to Brewery Gulch which was hopping with Thanksgiving weekend revelers. At the home of the Bisbee Brewery Company restaurant/bar she took her picture of a lone bicycle propped up against the wall. Dramatic lighting adds suspense to the photograph and makes one want to venture in to join the happy group seen through the door and window. The photograph was taken last November when the club organized an overnight photo shoot of Bisbee’s annual historical home and garden tour. SONY NEX-5R, f/3.5, 1/60 sec, ISO 3200, focal length 18mm, aperture 3.7, no flash.
The Photography Club of Quail Creek has monthly contests for its members. Residents are invited to attend monthly meeting/presentations held the second Wednesday of every month (excepting summer), in the Gold Room at the Madera Clubhouse at 6:30 p.m. For club details visit the club’s website at http://www.pcqc.org.