‘Tis the season. I love fall colors, but I do confess to struggling to capture her true essence. I get in front of all this colorful beauty and get overwhelmed and struggle to put it in proper photographic perspective.

Fall colors can be so cluttered with the fallen trees and scraggly branches. It’s hard to pick out that point of interest to make the photo pop.

Sometimes isolating an individual feature is easier on the eye, making it easy to discern the subject.

If I can use contrast of color or texture it helps to pull out the subject.

I love a ‘grand landscape’ of fall colors, but some forests are too thick and ‘messy’, so one has to find various methods to pull out the color to convey what the eye sees.

Different forest and scenes yield different challenges, so we tried to visit multiple areas for fall colors, and with any luck hope to continue our quest for more fall colors before the season ends.

Grand landscapes that allow you to step back and take in the view are glorious, but often harder to find, dependent on where you are.

Whether you take the photo from far or near, it helps to have layers of color, textural elements, and subject matter.

Lighting is important, whether the subject is backlit or front lit. Well placed light can help to isolate the color and subject and make it pop off the page.

The best times to capture good lighting is dawn and dusk when the sun is low and casts a nice glow. If one waits until mid day the lighting becomes harsh with strong highlights and shadows making it difficult to separate the subject from the background.

With a little luck and patience one might get some fog or clouds that lend to the moodiness of the scene, helping to establish sense of place, and emotion.

Whatever magic and concentration it takes, it requires getting out there with determination and focus to create the imagines, as they rarely come to us sitting around at home.

Recently, I was faced with the challenge of choosing a photo for a house-warming gift for a friend. The decision was discerning as I had to contemplate the best of my photos, and what makes a wall-worthy photograph. I could choose a dozen photos, ask a dozen people which is their favorite, and get 12 different answers.

Below are a few of my, Arizona only, favorites:

Good photographs should evoke emotion, perhaps find the viewer imagining themselves there, or recalling memories from their own experiences.

It could be someplace they have been before, or reminds them of someplace they have been, perhaps the Grand Canyon, Lee’s Ferry, or Lake Powell,

If the recipient of my photograph was particularly fond of water pix, I might pick something more water-centric.

A photograph might ‘strike’ the viewer with an emotional reaction of serenity, spirituality, or excitement.

A picture tells the story. A good photograph tells a story of a time and place, and perhaps the challenge of producing an image.

These pictures are not necessarily my best… but ones that I might (or have) put on my own wall

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.  It bears noting that, while i am fortunate enough to have had a number of photos published, none of these picks have been.. These are a few of my personal faves.  What we individually choose to adorn our homes, is definitely a personal choice.

For more Wall Worthy Wildlife and Structures: https://kritterspix.com/2025/10/10/cool-arizona-structures-places/. and https://kritterspix.com/2025/10/10/wildlife-worthy/

It was our first time venturing into White River. We hoped for animal sightings and beautiful scenery, and we got a little of both.

While the elevation of nearby Mt Baldy as high as 11,000′, the river floor is only 5700′. Soft slight rain cooled down the 85F days, dropping the temps to 50F – 60 F, a pleasant change in a peaceful environment outside of the gurgling rushing river.

We saw lots of happy birds enjoying the green grass and water along the rivers edge, turkey, deer, and coyote.

Most animal sightings we saw were quite fleeting. We did happen to see a small black bear cub dart in front of our path, but unfortunately, no photograph.

The White Mountain Apache Tribe manages the area. Dispersed camping with no amenties is $15 / day, with a required permit for each individual date. We found the site very relaxing and beautiful. We were also happy to be able to identify, before contracting, the massive patches of western poison ivy through the area.

I love puffins. We have seen them before, but only from a boat… far away. It barely counts. So while in Scotland, we took the opportunity to do a puffin excursion from the Isle of Mull to Lunga, a small uninhabited island with a large puffin colony.

We were able to get off the ship and walk on to the island and watch these funny little birds going about their business. It was so wonderful to be so close to them and be able to witness their cute antics up close and personal.

The Atlantic puffin spends most of its life at sea. They come ashore from May through August to mate, have their chicks, feed them to nourish them for a life back out at sea. We watched as large birds flew over, as they scampered into their burrows.

Puffins usually pair up with the same partner as previous years – some may have been together for 20 years. The puffins dig their burrows with their beak, and line it with grass, to have their pufflings. Both mates take turn incubating the egg for 36 – 45 days. The puffin only lay one egg per breeding season.

The parents fish for sand eels to feed their chicks until the puffling are big enough to ‘fledge’ or leave the nest. Once the pufflings are born, the puffins have to stave off the savages of seagulls quick to steal their mouthful of sand eels to feed their young.

The lack of sand eels currently endangers the puffin population. Overfishing threatens the sand eels targetted by industrial fishing operations using large quantities for fishmeal and fish oil.

Once they go out to sea, their bright orange beak changes color to a gray-black, to camouflage them at sea.

We just loved watching the little guys, nicknamed, ‘clowns of the sea’, as they awkwardly scurried around, and flew in and out. They looked like little stuffed animals. It was a truly special experience.

Special thanks to Victor Soares of Focus on Wildlife, for his tips in maximizing my wildlife photos.

See more photos from our Scotland trip… https://kritterspaw.com/2025/06/18/scotland-adventure/ and https://kritterspix.com/2025/06/18/wild-scotland/

Having just returned from Scotland, we found it a very diverse destination. It had tons of history, gorgeous scenery, wonderful wildlife, and great selections of Scotch.

In an attempt to consolidate our adventure, here are some highlights.

Repeatedly we were reminded of the conflicts across the world then and now stemming from religions. The Brits and the Scots had dozens of battles and seiges pertaining to religion and independence, and many artifacts from the many rebellions.

The old buildings and architecture were fascinating. The fact that they remain in tact after hundreds of years in astonishing.

The scenery, meanwhile, throughout was lush and green, oozing with waterfalls and streams.

The Isle of Skye yielded endless hikes.. not to mention tourists, rain, and midgeys.

We especially enjoyed the coastal regions along the East coast and the lovely fishing villages.

Maybe best of all was the wildlife we saw, which was wide and varied and deserves it’s own entry…. https://kritterspix.com/2025/06/18/wild-scotland/