First place, Madera Meditation by Steve Peipmeier
Second place, Monument Valley Sunrise by Charles Schinner
Third place, Mexican Jay by Tom Cadwalader
The Photo Club of Quail Creek just completed its 12th quarterly photo challenge, which had a theme of “My Arizona.” Each club member could enter up to three photos, which had to be taken within the calendar quarter. And the photographer/artist could post-process the photo in any way, including using Photoshop filters and manipulation. This challenge proved to be quite popular and drew 32 excellent entries. Club members voted on their favorite photos. All of the photos can be seen on our Flickr site https://tinyurl.com/y7ot3g5z.
Steve Peipmeier won first place with his photo Madera Meditation. Steve commented, “Madera Canyon in Coronado National Forest contains some of the best geology in Southeast Arizona. The giant, smooth granite boulders, along with monsoon water, offer this meditative view.” Steve shot this with a Panasonic Lumix DC-ZS200. The camera parameters were 1/80 sec at f/3.5, ISO 200, and at 28mm.
Charles Schinner took second place with his Monument Valley Sunrise. Charles said that this was a five-image, stitched panoramic shot taken right after sunrise at the Stagecoach Jewelry stop along Highway 163. Charles used a Nikon Z6 for this shot.
Tom Cadwalader’s Mexican Jay took third place. Tom commented, “On a cold Saturday morning, we were birding in Madera Canyon. We see a lot of Mexican jays in Madera Canyon, but they always seemed to be in heavy shade or in the very bright Arizona sun. This was a fairly cloudy morning, thus, casting a more even light on the birds. This bird offered me several poses from this perch, and I thought this was the more interesting shot. As far as settings go, I was targeting birds, so I had my Olympus 300 mm F4 prime with a 1.4x teleconverter attached to my Olympus OMD eM1 MKIII camera body. This is a micro four thirds format camera, so in full frame terms, it would be equivalent to an 840 mm field of view. Hand held at 1/60 sec, f/9.0 and an ISO of 640. I did use fill light from the camera mounted FL900R strobe. For processing the RAW capture, I first ran it through Topaz DeNoise to remove any noise that might have been in the image. I then processed it in Adobe Lightroom. In Lightroom, I made the basic tone adjustments to the overall image. Then I made use of the new masking features in Lightroom to fine-tune both the bird and the background.”
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. Meetings are held the second Wednesday of the month at 7 p.m. at the Kino Conference Center, Mesquite Room. Room venue could vary each month. Consult the club’s constantly updated website www.pcqc.org as well as the weekly HOA What’s Happening for additional information.