PCQC Photo Contest: Trees

Jim Burkstrand

The Photo Club of Quail Creek continued with its monthly member’s contest, with November having the topic of: Trees. Each club member could enter up to three photos taken in the last three years. This subject was a popular one for the members and drew 38 entries. All of the photos can be seen on our Flickr site, tinyurl.com/y2v95tcx.

John Tubbs won first place with his photo Tree with Swings. John commented, “This is a shot from the Tumacacori area. The sturdy old tree with two tire swings on it reminded me of my uncle’s farm growing up; no manufactured swing sets there! The area and buildings nearby were very rustic, and texture was everywhere in the scene. I thought the shot would work best in monochrome, letting the basic tones show the scene, without any color to distract. This image was captured with a unique camera that only shoots in monochrome—it is not converted from a color image to black and white. The benefit of this is that there is no color filter over the sensor, which allows tremendous detail to be captured as the actual tones, rather than converted to color and then back to monochrome. Very little post processing was done on this shot, just converting from RAW to JPEG with a few very minor tweaks.” John used a LEICA M10 Monochrome. Shooting parameters included a shutter speed of 1/750 sec, f/6.8, ISO 160, and a focal length of 50 mm. The photo was processed in Adobe Lightroom.

Larry Hudson took second place with his photo Arizona Sycamore. Larry commented, “My photograph of an Arizona sycamore was taken in Madera Canyon while hiking their nature trail. I have always loved the smooth bark of the sycamore, and I was taken by this single individual branch with its bright orange fall leaves against the backdrop of the graphic whites and grays of the tree’s bark.” The camera used was a Canon Rebel ti. Shooting parameters included a shutter speed of 1/125 sec, f/5.0, ISO 250, and a focal length of 150 mm. The photo was processed in Adobe Lightroom.

The photo Rail Fence Cottonwood by Steve Piepmeier placed third. Steve said, “The cottonwood is the largest tree in AZ. This photo was taken at Rancho Santa Cruz and was my third visit to capture the late fall color and different times of light.” Shooting parameters included a shutter speed of 1/2000 sec, f/3.7, ISO 200.

The Photography Club of Quail Creek has a monthly photo contest for its members and also schedules numerous photo field trips for members throughout the year. During the current COVID-19 pandemic, we are meeting via Zoom. Consult the club’s constantly updated website, www.pcqc.org, as well as the weekday HOA What’s Happening for additional information.