… yesterday morning I was up on the tram checking out the red tail chicks and they are maturing rapidly … they are spending aa lot of time exercising their wings while standing on the very front edge of the nest and sometimes halfway down the face of it. I love the shot above where two of the chicks are peering over the edge and looking into the abyss … the one on the right seems to be thinking “here I go,” but he didn’t.
In the photo below I was looking “over the edge” from the perch in my three-dimensional tripod named Mariah … otherwise known as a motorglider. I was at 6300′ msl looking to the north from over the Village of Oak Creek … our home is on the golf course near the lower left corner of the image and my view is from about 2100′ lower than this. On a diagonal from the lower left corner and about mid image you have Castle Rock and to the right of it Bell Rock … SR 179 runs between the two. Above and left of Castle Rock is Cathedral Rock and then you can see the runway for Sedona Airport (KSEZ.) Chapel of the Holy Cross is to the right and below the airport, above the airport is Thunder Mountain and up towards the right Wilson Mountain, one of only two real mountains in Sedona … and above it all the Colorado Plateau and all the beauty that is up there. I was about 600′ below the rim so not much of a view from this vantage point … move the tripod up another thousand or so feet and you get it all.
It was a beautiful day today and much of it spent doing lapidary work … accidently popped a sapphire off the dop stick while polishing it and much time trying to get it properly centered and aligned on a new dop … hoping to still get a two-carat stone out of it. In gemstones carat is a unit of weight and equals 1/5th of a gram … karat for metals is a unit of purity and 24k is pure, 18k is 75% (18/24) and so on.
Into yet another beautiful day … always a choice you make each day! Keep breathing and smile, you are here, and you can make a difference in someone’s life … smiles are game changers.
Cheers,
Ted
PS you can download all photos by right clicking on them. Many people have saved hundreds of them and use them as screen savers.
Out of the winter of the past have crept the buds of
spring, and once again have I planted love in my heart,
and therefor found love in others.
The lips of malice have at last whispered a gentle
word and courage was born in me again.
Toils, though it brought not what I sought, brought
something, and nursed again to life the withered
blooms of hope.
The dogmas of the world that bound me to pain I cut,
as with a knife;
And now I wander freely, taking counsel of my human
nature and the love of life, lingering where I will,
denying me nothing.
And through the mist of the world I seem to see again
the God of my youth; but grown older, gentler, and
more compassionate, as I myself am older and more
compassionate.
excerpt from Through the Mist of the World by Max Ehrmann
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The easiest way to reach Mr. Grussing is by email: ted@tedgrussing.com
In addition to sales of photographs already taken Ted does special shoots for patrons on request and also does air-to-air photography for those who want photographs of their airplanes in flight. All special photographic sessions are billed on an hourly basis.
Ted also does one-on-one workshops for those interested in learning the techniques he uses. By special arrangement Ted will do one-on-one aerial photography workshops which will include actual photo sessions in the air.
More about Ted Grussing …